Three Crowns Mixtape: March 18, 2022
Johnny Sandquist
Founder & CEO, Three Crowns Copywriting & Marketing
Important financial industry news + marketing insights + good music.
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Did you know that Sunday is the first official day of spring in the northern hemisphere? With ☀️brighter days☀️ and warmer weather on the way, we’re definitely here for it.
And if you need some light reading to get you through the rainy weekend – we’ve got you covered. From the latest in industry news to our fave branding wins and fails, this week’s mixtape has it all.
Must-Read Financial Industry & Marketing Articles
Onyx Adds Alpha Architect Portfolios
We love to see our favorite companies come together to build new efficiencies for advisors, and Onyx and Alpha Architect are solidly at the top of firms we expect to do big things.
Onyx, the brand-new community for minority financial advisors, is teaming up with Alpha Architect to put their SRI and ESG portfolios easily into the hands of advisors within the community.
To top it all off, those portfolios will be accessible through another one of our favorite startups, Altruist.
The New Normal Is Spelled R-I-A
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Advisors want to leave wirehouses and join RIAs. Crazy that more freedom is desirable, huh?
The numbers back up the narrative that all of us inside the industry keep hearing. InvestmentNews research indicates that the RIA channel grew by over 1,500 advisors in 2021 and wirehouses lost over 2,000 advisors (both numbers net).
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in RIA land, of course (with recent news that some aggregators are acting more like wirehouses in their approach to advisor contracts), but we have no doubt that RIAs will continue to grow, get stronger, and become the preferred firms for investors small and large.
Kyle Van Pelt Joins Startup as New CEO
Did we already mention we love to see friends come together?
Kyle Van Pelt has been a Fintech mainstay at places like Riskalyze, Black Diamond, and most recently Skience.
This week he announced he’s the new CEO at MileMarker, a startup founded by Jud & Kim Mackrill, former executives at both Mineral Interactive and Carson Group (in fact, Three Crowns wouldn’t be around today without them).
MileMarker is an intriguing company – their goal is to, simply put, give RIAs the ability to see and control their data. In today’s world, data is everything, but most firms don’t know how to access it, let alone leverage it.
MileMarker is looking to change that – and with the star power the team has assembled, we’re pushing all our chips in that they’ll do it.
You’re Probably Gonna Wanna Do Something About This: Google is Sunsetting Universal Analytics in Summer 2023
If you use Google Analytics, then this quite possibly affects you. Your Universal Analytics properties will stop recording new data in July 2023.
Google introduced Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in October 2020 and has allowed users to choose from Universal or GA when setting up since then.
If you set up your Analytics account after October 2020, then you probably have a GA4 account as it was the default option, but if you set it up before then, you’re likely on a Universal account (although GA4 was available in beta for a while before that).
We recommend setting up your GA4 property now to make sure you keep your year-over-year data clean. If you forget and set up after July of this year, then your 2022 to 2023 data will be split between two properties, which is just no fun. See the link to our short video below to learn how to turn on GA4.
How can you tell which one you have? The quickest way we know of is to look at the sidebar in your Analytics property. See the comparison below:

Need to upgrade? We created this short video to guide you through the process. It just takes a few minutes.
A Product Clearly Created by Marketers: Mike Tyson’s Ear-shaped Edibles

Phallic Branding Fail
It’s hard to believe they missed this one, but the Australian government got rid of their new logo for the Women’s Network after basically everyone but them was rather grossed out by their new Freudian slip – I mean logo. They admit they developed the logo internally and did not use any outside agencies on the rebrand.
Just another reminder that an extra set of eyes can save you a lot of embarrassment.

Here’s what we’ve been listening to this week.

Zach McDonald, President & CMO
“My work music this week was Explosions in the Sky.”

Johnny Sandquist, Founder & CEO
“Everything about this song scratches the right itch in my brain.”

Connor Brandt, Graphic Designer
“Really enjoying this album and will probably end up playing it a lot this year.”

Delaney R, Digital Marketing Specialist
“An oldie but a goodie!”

Justine Young, Content Writer
“An oldie but a goodie.”
Keep up with all of our picks of the week over time with the Three Crowns Mixtape on Spotify.
Click here to check it out and favorite it to add it to your collection.