3 Reasons No One Reads Your Newsletter (And How to Fix It)

I can’t tell you how many financial advisors I’ve talked to who spend hours every week writing blog posts and newsletters… but have no idea if anyone actually reads them.

And it’s usually because they don’t have tracking and analytics set up.

Side note: If that’s you, get Google Analytics installed. It’s free, easy, and takes five minutes. Or, make sure you’re using a marketing/newsletter provider for your emails.

But even those who track their newsletter performance see the same problem—low open rates, low engagement, and no real ROI. They send out weekly market updates, spend way too long writing them, and wonder why no one cares.

If that sounds familiar, here are the most common reasons why your clients aren’t reading your newsletter—and exactly how to fix it.

1. You’re Writing Market Updates

Advisors across the industry are stuck in the same loop—sending out market updates every week that barely anyone reads.

The problem? They’re only talking to themselves.

Look, economic news matters. People care about the economy.

But they don’t care about how it impacts the stock market.

That’s where advisors get it wrong.

The economy is always a top concern for Americans. Every election cycle, economic issues—jobs, inflation, wages—are front and center.

There are 135 million private-sector workers in the US, plus millions of retirees who all live and breathe economics every day. This stuff isn’t too complex for them, regardless of what the financial world tells itself.

Your clients all want to understand this information. Think about who they are:

✅ Homeowners and homebuyers care about mortgage rates, home prices, and affordability.

✅ Renters care about inflation and wage growth.

✅ Small business owners care about hiring trends, wages, taxes, and costs.

✅ Retirees care about the cost of living, fixed income yields, and home values.

✅ Professionals care about job security, raises, and career moves.

✅ Families care about why groceries and gas are getting more expensive.

The problem isn’t with the information. It’s how it’s delivered.

Everything about businesses and the economy is delivered as if the only outcome anyone cares about is whether it will make stock prices go up or down.

Your clients don’t look at it that way. They want to know how all of this affects their lives.

The main places to get information about what’s affecting your home, savings, wallet, and work are filled with business and markets jargon.

Your content needs to focus on your clients who don’t feel comfortable reading the Wall Street Journal and need someone like you to explain what’s happening.

Because the clients who do want market updates? They’re already reading CNBC and The Wall Street Journal.

They don’t need your email.

So when advisors send out yet another weekly breakdown of what affected the markets this week… they’re writing it for no one.

👉 What to do instead:

Your clients want to stay informed about the economy, but they need it explained in plain English, with a direct connection to their financial reality.

If you can break down key economic updates in a way that’s useful to them, you become their go-to source.

Stop writing market updates.
Start writing financial content that actually matters to your clients.

2. Your Topics Are Inconsistent.

Another common mistake: Rotating through financial topics at random.

This week, it’s about 401(k)s.
Next week it’s about trade policy.
The week after that? Selling a business.

The problem? It kills subscriptions and open rates.

Here’s why:

📌 New subscribers won’t sign up if they see past content isn’t relevant to them.
📌 Existing subscribers stop opening if a couple weeks in a row don’t interest them.
📌 Then, your entire newsletter success depends on your subject line.

And that’s not where you want to be.

If people are only opening your email because of a clever subject line, you’ll always be fighting an uphill battle to get attention. Instead, you want to build a habit where people open your emails because they already know it’s going to be valuable.

👉 What to do instead:

Make your newsletter consistently relevant.

The easiest way to do that without talking about the same thing each week? Include timely economic updates every single week.

Cover 3-5 things that happened that week that affect your clients' lives. Housing, jobs, cost of living, wages—whatever is most relevant.

Then, layer in your rotating deep-dive content. If you’re writing about estate planning, connect it to current tax policy news. If you’re writing about investing, tie it to recent economic shifts.

Even if that week’s big topic isn’t relevant to a reader, they still have a reason to open it—because they know your newsletter will keep them informed on the world.

That keeps them coming back.

Make it skimmable, and you guarantee higher open rates.

Quick and consistently valuable? No brainer.

Dig Deeper: How to Write a Financial Newsletter That People Always Open and Read

3. You’re Doing It for You (Not for Them)

Here’s the truth:

Most advisors write content to showcase their expertise. That’s basically the point of the profession. We’re paid to be experts.

But your clients don’t care about learning what you know.

They care about whether you can help them.

Financial professionals love to talk about intricate strategies, tax nuances, and investment mechanics. It’s how we prove our value.

But is the person reading your deep dive on backdoor Roth conversions really your ideal client?

Probably not. They’re either another advisor or someone building knowledge to handle their planning themselves.

Most of the people who will seek your help don’t even know what they need to know. If you start throwing around deep tax insights or intricate financial planning mechanics, you’re just pushing them away.

Going too deep can actually hurt your business—because if a prospect doesn’t understand your content, they assume you’re not the right advisor for them.

They want to know that you’re someone who can explain things in ways they can comprehend.

👉 What to do instead:

Keep it simple. Your value isn’t in technical depth—it’s in making things easy to understand.

If your content sounds like it’s written for other advisors, it’s wrong. A good test? Look at the engagement. Is it mostly industry people commenting? That’s a bad sign.

It takes more understanding to simplify something than to do a deep dive. Don’t prove your expertise with depth. Prove it with clarity.

Your job isn’t to impress people with technical analysis.
Your job is to help them understand their money.

The Bottom Line

If no one’s reading your newsletter, it’s probably because:

❌ You’re writing market updates.
❌ You’re inconsistent, making it easy to disengage.
❌ You’re writing for yourself, not for them. Keep it simple

The fix?
✅ Write human-centric money updates.
✅ Create a predictable format with consistently relevant content.
✅ Keep it simple—make it easy for clients to understand and take action.

If you want to make newsletter creation easier, faster, and more effective, that’s exactly what we built Share Scoops for.

Want to see how it works? Book a demo, and let’s get your content working for you.