In March of 2016, when I reviewed FMeX (Financial Media Exchange) in “A Fresh, and Cheap(er) Approach to Digital Marketing,” my first impressions of the platform’s feature set and pricing were quite positive. One criticism, however, was that “there are no application programming interfaces that allow for the sharing of contacts between CRM systems and FMeX, though apparently, ones for Redtail and Salesforce are in the works, so for now, advisors must upload their lists via CSV files.”

As of August 1, that reservation should no longer pose any obstacles for Redtail CRM users interested in integrating Redtail with FMeX’s digital marketing platform.

What does the integration actually offer Redtail CRM users? Once you have connected your Redtail account to your FMeX account:

• Your Contacts will all be synced from Redtail to FMeX (based upon Tag Groups. If a contact is not in a Tag Group in Redtail, all contacts are synced under the “all” tag)
• Your Calendar items will sync from Redtail to FMeX

Once your Redtail contacts are present in FMeX, it’s then a very simple process to begin marketing to them using all of the resources that FMeX puts at your disposal. Any content you share with a contact from the FMeX platform is automatically logged as a Note within their contact record in Redtail, providing you with a readily accessible archive of content delivered from within both platforms.

When you set up your FMeX account, you can complete your account profile (including photo, company logo, company info., etc.) which will in turn help you brand all of the materials that you send out via the FMeX platform. You can also take a quick peek from this same page to see what this personalization will look like on any newsletters or articles you send out from FMeX.

In terms of the types of content available from the platform, you have access to:

• Editorial Highlights – FMeX’s editorial team creates relevant, timely content based on current events in the financial world
• Newsletters – Library of daily and periodic newsletters illustrating key financial planning related topics
• Articles Library – Financial resource library of educational articles to engage with your clients and prospects
• Social – Aggregated, curated and relevant content streamed via popular financial industry sites
• Video – Library of 50+ FINRA-reviewed videos organized by category and available for embed or social sharing
• Regulatory – Quick access to financial literature from all major mutual fund firms
• Calendar – Editorial calendar highlighting key economic events and suggested publications to share

One immediately tangible benefit, particularly for those of you that may not have focused that much on developing a niche market to this point, is that your contact syncs from Redtail to FMeX are based upon Tag Groups. This makes selecting your recipient groups for any given message you want to deliver a simple process once you’ve taken the time within Redtail to establish Tag Groups based upon different subsets of your clients and prospects. FMeX has an area of their platform called Life Stages that breaks down applicable content for clients currently at major life milestones (new career, marriage, retirement, etc.).

Whether you take advantage of one or all of the types of content FMeX offers, the integration provides you not only an easy way to gather your clients and prospects in meaningful ways for easy content delivery (through the Tag Group sync) but also a spur to put yourself in front of those clients and prospects both more regularly and more frequently.  In a nutshell, the integration offers you ways to build relationships and trust while also saving you time on your marketing efforts.