By David Connell

The idea here is simple, you have clients you want to keep in touch with, and you want to give them something of value—not just a birthday card once a year. The answer is email correspondence with information tailored to their financial interests.

You may want to occasionally and informally email clients when you run across an article during your regular news reading. This helps them realize you're thinking of them and also provides them with news they may not have seen. Or you can set up a regular monthly e-newsletter with several stories you think clients might be interested in. This method can range from a simple text message with links to selected articles to full-blown HTML newsletters that include a masthead with your logo and links to your webpage.

However, you should always remember that almost all Web content is copyrighted, so avoid placing the text of someone else's article into your emails or on your website. Always link to the original article to avoid any copyright entanglements.

Getting content
Once you've decided on what kind of email correspondence you are going to send out, you will need to find content. While your daily reading may provide you with some articles, they won't always be appropriate for clients; and you don't have time to scour the Web every day for news stories. Fortunately, there are sources on the Web that will search the Internet for you and deliver stories to your email in-box, which you can then pass on to clients. "Media Watch" tried some of these out. Here’s a rundown of what we found:

eLibrary
The best solution we found is, of course, the one that costs money. eLibrary charges just under $100 a year for its service, but if you are going to do an email newsletter, it is a worthwhile investment. The service allows you to set up search topics and will email you when stories matching these topics enter its database, which includes hundreds of sources including most major newspapers, magazines and even television and radio transcripts.

During a week-long trial (which is free to those contemplating purchasing the service) we found a great article from Reuters on the financial stages for retirement and several relevant articles from the news weeklies.

Yahoo! News Alerts
Yahoo! offers a similar service to eLibrary through its "News Alerts" system. Unlike eLibrary it's free (you do need to register with Yahoo!), but it's also unreliable. "Media Watch" set up alerts on annuities, financial planning and life insurance. In a week's time Yahoo! returned no results on those alerts, while eLibrary returned over 20 during the same period. With the Yahoo! service you will have to experiment to find the right set of keywords.

The best solution we found is, of course, the one that costs money.

If you find the alerts aren't working, you might want to try searching Yahooo! News or Google News once a week to find relevant articles. "Media Watch" did several keyword searches on both of these sites and came up with lots of interesting articles for clients. The only caveat we'd offer with these services—particularly the Google tool—is that searches may turn up some obscure news sources from India, Malaysia, London and other far-flung locales. However, if you have clients who have relocated to the States or are interested in world finance, this might be a good thing.

CNN/Money
The AOL Time Warner juggernaut offers co-branded columns that cover financial planning. Two in particular—"The Bottom Line" and "Ask the Experts"—appealed to us. "The Bottom Line" offers practical, no-nonsense and brief market analysis from Adam Lashinsky. The emails come every other day and opine on the fluctuations of the market while maintaining an eye toward long-term investment. "Ask the Experts" is a once-a-week offering from Money Magazine Senior Editor Walter Updegrave that answers practical questions from readers. This is especially useful if you agree with Updegrave’s advice.

In addition to these sources, most major newspapers have email newsletters on business and finance; see if one in your area offers this. You might also want to do periodic checks on their search engines. The advantage here is you can get local content that, perhaps, your clients have overlooked. Plus, this could help you brainstorm ideas on getting your own name in the paper, by finding local writers who need expert opinions.

Take a Saturday and explore the Web to find services that send you news directly or have easy-to-use and accurate search engines. This way you’ll always have fresh stories to pass on to your clients. If you combine good content with a clever email marketing strategy, your clients will not only get useful information, they’ll be sure to come to you when they want to act on it.

Am I missing something? Did you read an essential story on investor confidence? Is Law and Order sticking it to the insurance industry again? Have you read a book that deals with the financial services industry? Is this a poorly written column and a disgrace to the industry? Sound off on "Media Watch" by emailing your thoughts to David Connell.

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