In brief
Authors: Neil Thornburn and Adam Grainger.
Client experience (CX) isn’t just about satisfaction – it’s a proven driver of retention (McKinsey, 2021), which is every firm’s largest source of revenue. For asset managers, that means acting now to deliver seamless, personalized experiences that keep clients engaged. This blog highlights the client experience quick wins you can implement in just 6 to 9 months. It is the first in a 3-blog collaboration between Adam Grainger and Neil Thornburn that will unearth the opportunities of CX in the short, medium, and long term. We hope you find it useful. Contact us if you’re curious about how your firm compares or how to prioritize your next moves.
In the constantly evolving world of asset management, quickly adapting and enhancing your CX can be the difference between attracting and retaining valuable clients and losing them to competitors. While long-term strategic initiatives are crucial, you must also focus on delivering impactful improvements within shorter timeframes.
Clients today expect seamless, personalized, and efficient experiences. They are not willing to wait years for enhancements to materialize. In response, you can demonstrate your commitment to them and build stronger relationships by focusing on client experience quick wins.
Benchmark your CX to identify immediate opportunities
First, don’t just rush at it: use the Client Behavior Benchmark to identify your areas of strength and weakness. Compare your CX against competitors to pinpoint, in time and money, where it out or underperforms at engaging clients.
Drill through to analyze your conversion rates. Look for the peaks and drop-offs between the points where clients convert from one setting on your sales funnel to another. These conversion points are the most valuable client behaviors, so to get the highest ROI for your efforts, focus your quick wins on where your conversion rates are low. Â
Case Study: Increasing email-to-website conversions (top of the funnel – awareness to engagement). A European investment firm struggled with low email click-through rates (CTR), with only about half the asset management average converting from their emails to their website. They redesigned their email strategy using personalized subject lines, embedded teaser content, and dynamic CTAs based on recipient interest. As a result, their CTRs began to outperform, driving more traffic to their site. Crucially, website session duration for email-driven traffic increased by 35%, showing stronger engagement, and subsequent conversion to signing up for regular insights grew by 18% within 4 months.
Quick win 1: Strengthen digital engagement
Asset management is no different from our day-to-day lives, where a poor digital experience can turn us off a brand before meaningful engagement even begins.
But enhancing your website or other digital tools doesn’t always mean a large-scale project. Instead, find client experience quick wins by revisiting some of the basics and make sure the fundamentals are still in place:
- Website traffic analysis – use Google Analytics or behavioral heatmaps to determine when visitors are most active and schedule content updates accordingly.
- Mobile responsiveness – ensure your website is fully functional across devices. Your users may not conduct all their business via mobile devices, but research and shorter sessions will be, so ensure you optimize your content.
- Accessibility – often overlooked or done as a post-development ‘check box’ compliance exercise, but improving accessibility and implementing best practices across your digital estate, making content available to all users, including those with disabilities, will lead to bigger gains than you may expect. Beyond compliance, enhancing your accessibility can improve SEO rankings and increase organic traffic. Alongside this, it has also been seen to reduce bounce rates and increase conversion rates as pages become easier to navigate, with clearer content and better structured forms benefiting all users.
- Search Engine Optimisation – revisit your SEO plan and ensure new sections, documents, articles, and any additional tools are consistent. If your SEO strategy has evolved, review the older parts of the site and refresh them. SEO is also not just for the digital / technology teams: ensure all contributors know best practices when contributing content.
- Navigation improvements – ensure changes made to the sites over the years align with your primary user journey and check it remains streamlined, so clients find what they need quickly.
Case Study: a European investment firm found that 70% of its website traffic came from mobile users, yet its mobile experience was subpar. After a mobile-first redesign, bounce rates decreased by 28%, and average session duration increased by 45%.
Quick win 2: Reduce friction
You should proactively engage clients across multiple channels, ensuring communications feel personalized and relevant, but make sure this engagement isn’t overpowering, confusing, and at risk of creating negative associations with your brand.
Social media is a critical yet often underutilized channel for asset managers. It’s not just a platform for brand awareness – it can drive meaningful engagement and position firms as thought leaders. Client experience quick wins include:
- Content cadence and consistency – content is King, but consistency is Queen! Regular posting is essential to improve visibility. Use a mix of thought leadership, market insights, and client-focused updates to keep audiences engaged.
- Platform optimization – ensure LinkedIn, X, and other relevant platforms have up-to-date company information, clear messaging, and accessible resources.
- Engagement tracking – analyze which posts drive the most interaction and refine your approach. Prioritize formats like short videos, carousels, and infographics, which outperform text-heavy posts.
- Hashtag strategy – use relevant industry hashtags to increase discoverability while avoiding excessive tagging, which can dilute impact.
- Commentary and interaction – don’t just post – engage. Responding to comments and contributing to industry conversations helps build credibility and encourages organic reach.
Email remains one of the most effective digital channels, but only when done right. Poorly executed email campaigns lead to low open rates, disengaged clients, and missed opportunities. Revisit your email strategy and benchmark its performance. Common quick wins include:
- Segmentation and personalization – move beyond generic email blasts. Use behavioral data to tailor content based on client interests, investment history, or engagement levels.
- Subject line optimization – first impressions matter. A/B test subject lines to determine what resonates best – whether it’s urgency, curiosity, or direct value propositions.
- Dynamic content – incorporate personalized fund insights, curated articles, or market updates tailored to individual client preferences.
- Strategic send times – analyze past engagement data to identify when clients are most likely to open and act on emails. AI-driven platforms can further optimize timing based on individual user behavior.
- Clear and compelling CTAs – every email should have a purpose. Whether it’s driving traffic to a fund page, encouraging webinar sign-ups, or prompting a portfolio review, ensure CTAs are action-driven and strategically placed. See below for more on this.
- Deliverability improvements – maintain a clean email list by regularly removing inactive subscribers and ensuring compliance with spam filters through authenticated sending domains.
Quick win 3: Differentiate your firm with strategic CTAs
Don’t use dull calls-to-action (CTAs). CTAs aren’t just buttons – they’re revenue drivers, with HubSpot finding that well-optimized CTAs can increase conversion rates by up to 80%. So, our last category of client experience quick wins is about conversion:Â
- Each CTA converts one behavior to another – consider what you aim to achieve before you add CTAs. The most valuable conversions will escalate user behavior from one setting on your sales funnel to another setting. Within your first 6 to 9 months, focus on increasing conversion from social media and their inboxes onto your web estate, and from digital engagement into in-person engagement. Why? Because most asset management clients do not buy after a purely digital-only experience.
- Location, location, location – place these CTAs not just in logical places like the ends of pages but above the median scroll depth to maximize engagement levels of the majority who don’t get to the end of articles.
- A/B testing – experiment with different CTA designs, wording, and placement to maximize engagement and conversion rates.
Case study: A US-based firm segmented its clients based on investment behavior and used AI-driven email campaigns to send hyper-personalized content. Open rates doubled, and engagement on client portals increased by 22% in three months.
The benefits of client experience quick wins
By focusing on short-term CX enhancements, you can:
- Improve client loyalty – personalization builds trust and long-term engagement.
- Increase client retention – satisfied clients stay longer.
- Enhance brand reputation – a frictionless experience differentiates firms from competitors.
- Increase revenue growth – stronger engagement leads to higher assets under management (AUM).
Conclusion: quick wins, big impact
You don’t always need multi-year, high-budget projects to make meaningful CX improvements. Maximize your ROI by prioritizing the areas with greatest scope for improvement. Then act fast to secure the benefits before clients’ needs evolve again.
CX isn’t just a competitive advantage – it’s a business imperative. Small, strategic changes today can create long-term value tomorrow. If you’re curious about how your firm compares or how to prioritize your next moves, we’d love to continue the conversation.
Lastly, stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll dive into medium-term opportunities of CX that drive deeper engagement, automation, and lasting competitive advantage through client-centricity.
