According to CEO Josh Brown, the average account size in the Liftoff program is $37,000 (with the largest coming in at around $300,000) and most investors who use the service are in their 20s or early 30s. Most of Liftoff’s $2 million in assets comes from 401(k) rollovers and other transfers from IRAs, and almost all account owners set up regular transfers from bank accounts to reach their financial goals.

Brown says he has no problem with people using the term “robo-advisor” to describe the offering, if that’s what they want to do. “But this isn’t some kind of science fiction project. It’s us coming up with a way to deliver advice in a scalable fashion. And it’s head and shoulders above what smaller investors would get on their own.”

To help differentiate Liftoff from free or low-cost direct-to-consumer robo-advisors and build loyalty, Brown and Barry Ritholtz, the firm’s chairman and chief investment officer, turn to blogging and other forms of social media to build a brand and attract younger investors. Brown figures he and Ritholtz have churned out over 40,000 blog posts since 1998. Some accounts in the service also come from children or grandchildren of clients on the wealth management side with smaller accounts and less complicated financial planning needs.

Robo-based programs are popular tools for financial advisors in the early phase in their careers, people often willing to accept smaller accounts than their more established counterparts. Matt Haghighi, who targets clients between 20 and 35 years of age for his new advisory firm, Irvine, Calif.-based Amity Capital, charges 0.85% annually for a service that covers the plan setup, rebalancing, trading and transaction fees. The fee also pays for him to have regular meetings with clients to review their investments and discuss their goals. There is no minimum investment and accounts under $10,000 pay a $5 per month fee, which is waived with a deposit of $250 or more per month.

Haghighi views social media as a critical element of marketing to a generation raised on technology, and he says he spends about one or two hours a day creating and posting content. “It’s important to cast a wide net with social media, and not focus efforts on any one venue,” says Haghighi, who is 23. He cites the website Tumblr as a favored venue because “most users have themed blogs, which presents a unique opportunity to target specific interests.”

Cullen Breen, the president of Dutch Asset Corporation in Albany, N.Y., uses robo-advisor software from a firm called Betterment to accommodate smaller investors with accounts ranging from $10 to $30,000. Accounts of $100,000 or more are handled separately through an online broker. Both account types are charged 1.5% a year and include personal consultation, although the service that handles larger accounts can use mutual funds and individual securities in addition to ETFs.

The larger account side has about $3.9 million in assets under management and 26 clients; the smaller account side has $100,000 in assets and about the same number of clients. Breen says handling a lot of smaller accounts isn’t as cumbersome an administrative burden as it may appear because the program handles all regulatory documents, account openings and other tasks online.

“The compliance responsibility is less than 10% what it is for the larger accounts,” he says. “The program is really quite scalable.” Almost all of the clients who use it participate in an automatic investment program, and Breen screens them to help ensure they have the desire, discipline and income they need to build their accounts.

For advisors like Ritholtz’s Josh Brown, whose goal is to service smaller accounts cost-effectively, the challenge is limiting time commitments without becoming too impersonal. That becomes especially important during bear markets, when investors who don’t have the comfort of at least some hand-holding could flee the scene rather than stay the course.

Alex Teyf at TD Ameritrade believes that while there’s no substitute for a personal conversation with skittish clients, communicating through e-mail, newsletters and other forms of electronic delivery can also help mitigate asset attrition during tough times. “Millennials,” he says, “often prefer the digital touch.”

Upside’s Juney Ham cautioned that as financial advisors move forward with ETF computer programs, they shouldn’t ignore the communications and human side of the business. After all, he says, that is what will separate them from the free or low-cost robo-advisors that investors can use on their own.

“We believe in marrying algorithms with a personal touch,” he says. “That’s especially true during bear markets when clients want perspective from people who can put what is happening into context.”

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