Catchlight eases chase to catch prospects

When it comes to prospecting, it can be hard for advisors to find the right match. After all, there’s a lengthy process involved – from answering queries to marketing and spending hours in conversations with potential clients.

To top it off, with the end of year fast approaching, advisors may be scrambling to set up those leads.

Thankfully, one tool is making it easier for advisors to “weed out” their leads. Catchlight, an AI-powered platform, helps financial advisors save time and grow their firms by predicting which leads are most likely to convert into clients.

Yelena Melamed, head of product and co-founder of Catchlight, said using the tool helps advisors highlight their value to their prospects.

“What we tend to tackle in the product is helping an advisor educate themselves about the lead they're going to reach out to, so they can really contextualize ‘Is this lead a good fit?’ and ‘How can I think about the expertise that I have in servicing those like them by leaning on some anonymized anecdotes of how I've helped other customers realize their goals in the same way?’” she said.

Melamed added that Catchlight helps advisors evaluate leads and creates a full profile so advisors can think about segmentation and what service model that lead fits into. Advisors typically have already acquired the leads through a pipeline of resources, ranging from their websites, subscriptions to podcasts, newsletters and even referrals.

Very little information is needed to create a profile in the platform, just the name of the lead and contact information like an email, phone number and mailing address.

“That's all we really need to get started to go through a process of enrichment, pulling back data in order to create a profile, which we layer in with our analytics, and some pieces of AI,” Melamed said. 

The Catchlight Score is one of the few pieces of machine learning AI in the product. Melamed says it is trained on a growing set of about 200,000, successful conversions for paid advice relationships.

“What we're looking at is really the characteristics that are similar across those that tend to partner with advisors and identifying those that are similar to characteristics in the advisors own lead list by using a score,” she said. “The way to think about it is the higher the score of a lead in my list as an advisor, the higher the propensity that it is someone who tends to buy advice.”

ADVISORS ON THE PROSPECTING EXPERIENCE

While some advisors might like the idea of using Catchlight, others are prospecting for clients the old-fashioned way.

“We do events, we sponsor things, we do the education. We're constantly trying to meet with the right people,” said Ashley Folkes, founder and senior wealth manager of Inspired Wealth Solutions. “We'll have blocks during the day where we’ll do a little research or reach out to people we haven't talked to in a while. We’re very proactive. They understand that we're growing and that's how we grow best.”

Paul Schatz, president of Heritage Capital, said advisors should always have a plan for bringing in leads.

“The plan can be loose or tight,” he said. “I always wanted to have multiprong marketing because things ebb and flow and sometimes you get cold in one marketing idea.”

Schatz added that he’s a big writer, producing pieces for the firm’s online blog, which has led to really good organic growth. “There are a lot of different ways to skin a rat, but for me, you've gotta be constant, consistent and multipronged.”

In a similar vein, other advisors are taking to social media to bring in leads, like Carla Adams, founder of Ametrine Wealth.

“I've been taking advantage of social media and creating and posting educational reels on personal finance,” Adams wrote in an email. “There are not many advisors doing that yet, certainly many are wary of how to navigate the newer changes to the advertising rules and other simply skeptical that social media is a successful way to attract clients.”

“Unfortunately, there are a lot of non-advisors out there on social media giving some really bad and often inaccurate and/or misleading advice so I would love if there were more knowledgeable advisors out there on social media,” she added.

A PERSONALIZED CONNECTION

At the core of it all, Melamed said Catchlight helps advisors to dig deeper into conversations with prospects and customers and create more touch points and questions.

“If you are a fan of bass fishing, are you thinking about creating a subscription to a magazine that talks about it on a regular basis? Are you thinking of purchasing some equipment? What are your favorite spots? Are you gonna go there with family?’” she said. “That allows an advisor to build a personalized connection. That's really where advisor is supported by Catchlight. Not just from a purpose of discovery, prioritization and focus but to create that personalized connection.”