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Has the glory and glitz of gorgeous websites, viral podcasts and vanity videos distracted us from the proven promise of outbound marketing?

Inbound Marketing’s Appeal

Inbound marketing feels good! It’s permission-based and non-invasive, meaning people choose to interact with us. And it makes us all stars — who doesn’t get a boost seeing their perfectly filtered headshots on brilliant ads and invitations?

Inbound marketing is sexy. It lures customers to us through platforms, content and experiences, making us feel attractive, desirable. Close your eyes and conjure your favorite websites, reflect on your recent social media interaction, or imagine yourself speaking at a convention podium. It’s all heady stuff.

Inbound marketing takes many forms (blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, etc.), surfs various channels (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) and appears at popular events (trade shows, podcasts, webinars, etc.) but it essentially serves one purpose — to attract people to us.

Constant Contact compares inbound marketing to a guest at a party who “gracefully joins in with an easygoing nature, serving refreshments, and slowly works to build trust with everyone present before engaging in conversation.”

Underrated Outbound

Outbound marketing, however, was described in that same article as a partygoer who “interjects into conversations, disrupting the light-hearted atmosphere.” If you had to choose, the article continues, you’re probably more likely to engage with the “graceful” partygoer. Ouch!

Outbound marketing is a strategy where you proactively reach out to prospects — often through traditional channels — to get them interested in your product or service. The goal is to push your message to prospects, rather than to pull them to you.

Outbound marketing can feel more challenging and uncomfortable than inbound, but done right, it can make you a popular partygoer.

Let’s reconsider that “interjecting” partygoer. How many times have we been at an event where we felt disengaged, perhaps even bored with meaningless conversation and superficial interactions? But then the life of the party walks in, locking eyes with us, connecting with us about topics that matter, making us feel like we’re the only person in the room. That’s what outbound done right feels like.

Get Personal

When you invest in learning a person’s circumstances you can have meaningful conversations. That’s one of the reasons referrals so often convert to clients: you know that prospect’s problems before you meet them and you show up with custom solutions.

Retail marketing has known this secret for years. Retail giant Target made news more than a decade ago when it successfully predicted which customers were pregnant and sent coupons on related items. Urban legend has it some of these women discovered they were pregnant because of Target! And, of course, since then we’ve all happily shared enough personal data with Amazon that it can tell us when to repurchase our vitamins and suggest the pant size that will fit us best.

What might have seemed creepy to GenX is an expectation for younger generations. In a 2024 article, Forbes reported that 81% of customers surveyed prefer companies that offer a personalized experience, and 70% say it’s important for a company to know who they are and their history. According to Hubspot 94% of marketers say personalization boosts sales, and 72% of them use AI for personalization.

Advanced Tech for the Personal Touch

It might feel counterintuitive, but the best tech creates opportunities for personal interaction. Because it can quickly and accurately assess data, AI can suggest people who match everything from your hiring criteria to your love connections. And because AI efficiently and painlessly performs tedious tasks like these, it keeps your calendar clear and your attitude positive so you can pleasantly engage with those people.

Today’s wealth tech features impressive platforms that identify and profile ideal prospects for financial advisors. Advanced tools, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, are capable of scraping and analyzing vast data sets and delivering them in digestible formats. The power of prospect development was officially recognized earlier this year on Kitces’ tech map with the addition of WEALTHAWK. It was deemed so revolutionary “it pushed us to create a new category on the map,” said Craig Iskowitz as he introduced the new Prospecting category on his Wealth Tech Today podcast.

WEALTHAWK uses AI to assess, sort and make sense of big data because algorithms are more efficient at this task than humans, and, importantly, most people dislike this type of work.

We give financial advisors a great place to start, but where you go is up to you.

While we can connect you with someone who needs your help and even suggest the best way to approach them, people make decisions about their financial advisors based on trust and rapport. Your job ​​requires a high degree of personalization and customization; a deep understanding of the individual needs of your client.

So let WEALTHAWK connect you to the data so you can connect with the people who need you.


Outbound Marketing: Inbound’s Ugly Uncle was originally published in WEALTHAWK on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mon Aug 19 2024
Outbound Marketing: Inbound’s Ugly Uncle
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Growth = Health

Advisory firms need to grow to stay competitive. Organic growth, in particular, increases income, which drives valuation for firms when they sell their entities. So, beyond being a critical stabilizer to keep firms sustainable, organic growth is also a valuable multiplier for RIA firms.

Recent growth in this industry has largely been from market appreciation and merger and acquisition activities, rather than from organic sources, such as current clients depositing new assets and acquisition of new clients.

Referrals Now Unreliable

Though advisory firms continue to rely on referrals, they’re rapidly dwindling as a dependable source of growth. Younger prospects do not value referrals like older generations did and traditional sources of referrals like CPAs are entering the wealth business as competitors rather than growth partners. Traditional referral activities are just not enough to keep firms healthy.

No Referrals? No Problem

Today’s wealth tech features impressive platforms to identify ideal prospects for financial advisors. Advanced tools, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, are capable of scraping vast data sets, analyzing them and delivering them in digestible formats. The power of prospect development was officially recognized earlier this year on Kitces’ tech map with the addition of WEALTHAWK. It was deemed so revolutionary “it pushed us to create a new category on the map,” said Craig Iskowitz as he introduced the new Prospecting category on his Wealth Tech Today podcast.

Once financial advisors identify their ideal prospects on WEALTHAWK, they can reach out with personalized messaging that speaks directly to the prospects’ needs.

Power Your Growth Engine

After advisors source ideal leads, they must nurture them with personalized content and then close these business deals through proactive outreach.

Advisory firms with sufficient budgets can employ call centers and other marketing technology, but firms with smaller budgets can also compete by creating their own content (or leverage online-content platforms) and convert leads through their own, personal follow-up.

Personalize Your Message

A general, high-level message does not resonate with prospects or encourage them to take action, so, instead, personalize your message and tailor it to address a specific financial planning and investment management need.

Get to know your prospects and what messages will appeal to them. Understanding their life circumstances and referencing them in your marketing outreach will appeal to today’s consumers. In a 2024 article, Forbes reported that 81% of customers surveyed prefer companies that offer a personalized experience, and 70% say it’s important for a company to know who they are and their history.

Win Your Client

Your successful organic growth engine should also include follow-up to reach out to prospects quickly and close the business. Conventional marketing wisdom says it takes up to eight touchpoints to engage a prospect, so build that outreach into your customer relationship activity. Despite the advent of advanced tech like WEALTHAWK, human-to-human interaction is the final point of sale.

The good news is that today’s advisors have access to organic growth tools, technologies and platforms like WEALTHAWK that firms can leverage to remain relevant in a much more competitive, complex, challenging and digital world.


Organic Growth and How to Get it was originally published in WEALTHAWK on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tue Aug 06 2024
Organic Growth and How to Get it

Financial advisors like the personal interaction and selective nature of referrals but often need to add more quality clients quicker.

WEALTHAWK enables both. WEALTHAWK is a lead generation platform that combines the broad reach of mass marketing with the personalized touch of referrals. This dual approach builds your business through new leads, enhanced engagement and higher conversion rates.

Referrals: Highly personalized but not scalable
Traditional financial managers grow their businesses through referrals, capitalizing on the trust and satisfaction of existing clients and peers to bring in new prospects. This approach is effective but inherently narrow and not scalable, so financial managers began seeking alternative methods to expand their client base.

Mass Marketing: Broad but Impersonal
To fill the gap created by traditional referrals, financial managers have turned to mass marketing. This might involve purchasing contact data and sending generic marketing materials in the hope of attracting new clients. While this strategy increased reach, it failed to resonate on a personal level, leading to lower engagement and conversion rates.

Clients Demand Personalization
Today’s clients demand a more customized approach to financial engagement. They seek advisors who understand their unique needs and can offer tailored solutions. This trend has put pressure on financial advisors to find innovative ways to personalize their prospecting efforts without sacrificing the ability to scale.

The Need for Scalable, Personalized Prospecting Solutions
To remain competitive, financial advisors need a strategy that combines the reach of mass marketing with the personal touch of individual referrals. This hybrid approach significantly enhances client engagement and increases conversion rate, but only when paired with sophisticated tools and platforms that deliver personalized content at scale.

Introducing WEALTHAWK — where personalization meets innovation

WEALTHAWK is a purpose-built lead generation platform that meets the growth needs of financial advisors. WEALTHAWK leverages advanced data analytics to identify individuals who have experienced significant financial windfalls and are compelled to seek financial advice. It then compiles comprehensive profiles — including education, professional history, and social background — enabling financial advisors to select compatible clients and reach out with customized messaging that addresses their particular life circumstances.

Financial managers no longer must rely solely on traditional referral methods or impersonal mass marketing. The future lies in combining these strategies to offer personalized, scalable solutions. The future lies with WEALTHAWK.


WEALTHAWK — Where personalization meets innovation was originally published in WEALTHAWK on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tue Jul 16 2024
WEALTHAWK — Where personalization meets innovation

Imagine a world in which you want to find and buy a home, but there is no Zillow, RedFin, Realtor.com or multiple listing service. There are no listings; shopping is entirely word-of-mouth.

To find a home for sale, you constantly network with your friends to see if they know anyone interested in selling their homes. Or you knock on doors of houses you like to see if the owners are looking to sell. Or you network with professionals — buddy up to those who sometimes work with homeowners preparing to sell their homes — like painters or handymen, to get a lead or two.

Insane? Absolutely.

But this is business-as-usual for the wealth management industry.

Financial advisors and business development professionals have had no listing service like the MLS, so they make cold calls and spend endless hours networking and courting professionals who might have a lead for them.

It’s wildly inefficient. One study shows that it costs more than $28,000 on average to get a single, qualified $3 million prospect to sit for a pitch. If the closing rate is a very respectable 33%, that’s more than $80,000 in acquisition cost. If that account generates $15,000 a year in margin, the payback period is more than 5 years!

Is this any way to run a business?

WEALTHAWK is changing that.

Think of it as an MLS for the best wealth management prospects.

Each day, WEALTHAWK produces new “listings” of people going through liquidity events that create investable assets. With that information, you can take whatever approach suits you best: cold call, send a letter, network shared connections, or contact them directly.

Your competition will still be chasing the elusive leads from aimless networking, while you work with direction and focus toward people you know need your help.

Come Hunt With Us!


Imagine a world in which you want to find and buy a home, but there is no Zillow, RedFin, Realtor.co was originally published in WEALTHAWK on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tue Apr 02 2024
Imagine a world in which you want to find and buy a home, but there is no Zillow, RedFin, Realtor.co

There’s some hand wringing around AI replacing us, so let’s explore.

At WEALTHAWK, we believe the best AI creates human opportunity to learn, grow and connect with each other. So we use AI to assess, sort and make sense of big data — because algorithms are more efficient at this task than humans, and, importantly, most people dislike this type of work.

We give financial advisors a great place to start, but where you go is up to you.

While we can connect you with someone who needs your help and perhaps suggest the best way to approach them, you know people make decisions about their financial advisors based on trust and rapport. Your job ​​requires a high degree of personalization and customization; a deep understanding of the individual needs of your client.

So let WEALTHAWK connect you to the data so you can connect with the people who need you.

Come Soar With Us!


We bring the AI. You bring the humanity was originally published in WEALTHAWK on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sat Oct 07 2023
We bring the AI. You bring the humanity

By popular request WEALTHAWK now offers creative insights for financial advisors

As much as our customers love our platform, they like customized solutions even more and often ask us to go well beyond our core services to take on special opportunistic projects.

Some requests push us to think outside our platform, and those are the challenges WEALTHAWK thrives on. For example, a wealth management firm in Southern California asked us to investigate potential opportunities surrounding the recent demise of First Republic Bank. Our research showed that First Republic wealth clients were anxious about this turmoil and reconsidering their advisory relationships. These people would be ideal prospects for our customer, but how would we identify them? Further research indicated that banking clients tend to consolidate mortgage accounts and wealth relationships, so we pulled First Republic mortgage data for our customer’s region, cleaned it up and delivered it in a useful format that enabled them to classify and customize outreach to these ideal prospects. Within six months they had onboarded clients representing more than $2.4 million in annualized revenue!

Projects like this are so gratifying for us that we’re now offering Solutions as a Service! We help our customers with:

Client Acquisition — We understand the challenges of organic growth that financial advisors encounter. So we leverage advanced technology to achieve their goals, improve operations, and help them stay competitive, ensuring they make informed decisions when it comes to technology investments and implementation.

Data science consulting — Our expertise in data analysis, machine learning, and statistical modeling enables us to guide financial advisors and their firms toward the best path to optimize their operations. We use predictive AI to identify opportunities, provide insights, and assist in making proactive decisions.

AI development — Our team analyzes customer needs and builds complete, customized systems to address them. We construct chatbots and virtual assistants that can handle client inquiries, provide support, and assist with routine tasks, reducing our customers’ workload and offering their clients 24/7 support.

These are just a few of the ways we’re expanding our services to satisfy our customers. For a more comprehensive list visit our Solutions as a Service page on our website.

Come Hunt With Us!


We Now Provide Solutions as a Service was originally published in WEALTHAWK on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fri Sep 29 2023
We Now Provide Solutions as a Service

Altruist CEO Jason Wenk shared his time Thursday at a hosted office hours that morning and an AMA Reddit that afternoon, updating us on the progress of his company and his future aspirations.

On his roadmap for the coming year is prospect development, which will round out Altruist’s tech stack. Currently it offers support with nearly everything an RIA needs to run her business, starting with customer relationships and including portfolio management, performance reporting and, of course, financial custody.

“We’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and we did some testing and work last year on [prospect development],” said Wenk. “That is definitely something that I’m passionate about doing…. We definitely want to go there.”

Prospect development, though, is one of the most onerous and tedious tasks of financial advisors.

At #FutureProof earlier this month, a representative from Broadridge shared stories of financial advisors who had left the industry for this very reason. In particular, he related the story of an advisor who realized he had spent an entire evening at a gala mentally assessing everyone in the room as a potential client. He quit the next day.

Investors need financial advice and financial advisors need new clients, so why is prospect development so difficult? It’s because ideal prospects for financial advisors often don’t even exist until a seismic event — think IPO, company sale, even a personal event like retirement — produces new wealth and drives them to seek financial advice.

Wouldn’t it be great to know who these ideal prospects are so you can give them your professional attention when they need it and direct your personal attention to friends and family?

Well, now you can.

WEALTHAWK is an AI-powered platform that detects money-in-motion events that produce liquidity and tracks that money to the payout recipients — newly wealthy people driven to seek financial advice.

With WEALTHAWK, financial advisors can spend their social hours genuinely connecting with friends and spend their work hours genuinely connecting with prospects.


Prospect development a priority for the only modern custodian built exclusively for RIAs was originally published in WEALTHAWK on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tue Sep 26 2023
Prospect development a priority for the only modern custodian built exclusively for RIAs

Trusted advisors are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs and feel a sense of purpose in their work, according to a study by the Center for Customer Insight. This is likely because trusted advisors are focused on building long-term relationships with their clients and helping them succeed. Contrast that with someone who instead prioritizes transactional sales and meeting short-term targets.

What are the hallmarks of being a trusted advisor?

  1. They’re more likely to close deals. When clients trust you, they are more likely to buy from you. This is because they know that you are not just trying to make a sale, but that you are genuinely interested in helping them succeed.
  2. They have more satisfied clients. Clients who are satisfied with their trusted advisors are more likely to stay loyal to them and continue to do business with them in the future. This can lead to increased revenue and profitability for your business.

Trusted advisors are successful because they prioritize the following:

Long-Term Relationships: Trusted advisors focus on building long-term relationships with their clients. By establishing trust and providing ongoing support, they create a foundation for lasting partnerships.

Client-Centric Approach: Trusted advisors prioritize their clients’ best interests above all else. They take the time to understand clients’ needs, goals, and challenges and provide personalized solutions.

Trusted Source of Advice: Clients see trusted advisors as experts in their field and rely on their knowledge and guidance. Trusted advisors offer unbiased advice, drawing from their expertise and acting as a valuable resource for clients.

Enhanced Client Loyalty: Trusted advisors foster strong client loyalty through their commitment to client success. By consistently delivering value, building trust, and providing personalized solutions, they create a loyal client base that is more likely to stay engaged and seek their advice over the long term.

Reputation and Referrals: Trusted advisors develop a strong reputation in their industry and are known for their expertise and the positive outcomes they deliver. This reputation leads to increased referrals from satisfied clients, helping to grow their business organically.

Greater Influence and Impact: Trusted advisors have the opportunity to make a significant impact on their clients’ lives or businesses. By providing holistic guidance and tailored solutions, they help clients achieve their goals and overcome challenges.

Personal Fulfillment: Being a trusted advisor often brings personal fulfillment through the meaningful relationships built with clients and the positive impact made in their lives. Trusted advisors can derive satisfaction from helping clients achieve their objectives, seeing their progress, and contributing to their financial, professional or personal success.

Being a trusted advisor is about developing a deep connection with clients, offering valuable guidance, and becoming a reliable source of support — some of the main reasons people choose wealth management as a profession.

If you’d prefer to spend your time serving clients rather than prospecting for them, give WEALTHAWK a try. We detect, track and deliver your best prospects so you can spend your time doing more of what you love.


Are you a Trusted Advisor? was originally published in WEALTHAWK on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tue Sep 19 2023
Are you a Trusted Advisor?

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