The last two years have been a rollercoaster for anyone in business – and the funds sector is no different.
The world of fund marketing – and how people interact within it – has been turned upside down. But one thing hasn’t changed. The most important thing you can concentrate on is to identify new sources of assets and spot where assets may be about to leave. This boils down to people – those who may be ready to invest with you and those existing investors who could be preparing to redeem.
But thanks to both existing trends and the pandemic, the art of connecting and communicating with people isn’t what it used to be. It’s now almost entirely a digital process. So, to connect with these invisible investors – who you will probably never meet – you must use digital channels, systems and techniques. This is the first in a series of posts looking at how you can use your CRM and digital marketing capabilities to raise assets in 2022.
I’ll start with channels – as how you communicate with your audience is as important as what you say.
And there have been two big changes in how communication works in our sector in the last two years. When Covid hit in early 2020 it forced an existing trend towards digital communication into overdrive. Lockdown took everybody out of the restaurants, corporate boxes, and meeting rooms and onto Zoom. And as Zoom took off, so did the appetite for webinars as a replacement for the in-person events that were no longer allowed to run.
The marketing world, through necessity, turned 100% digital almost overnight.
And, let’s face it, despite the easing of restrictions it’s never really gone back – and it’s not going to. Some may cling onto the in-person way of doing deals and giving advice, but that’s in its death throes. Now, people want their communication and information through digital channels.
So, it’s Zoom meetings and webinars forevermore, right?
Wrong.
Actually, back in 2020 we all soon got fed up with the constant barrage of Zooming, Teams meetings, WhatsApp calls and web conferences.
It became too much, And, as a result, people turned to a more traditional (at least in digital terms) method of communication:
A sizable majority now see email as the best business communication method.
A recent survey by Greenwich Associates found that – in the asset management and private banking space – 92% of people want to receive data via email, above any other method. Websites were second on 67%, closely followed by webinars on 63%. Zoom limped in fourth with 25%. The biggest reasons given for preferring email were its capacity to provide detailed content and the fact that it’s non-intrusive. And the preferred frequency of emails? The most popular answer in the survey was ‘as needed’, so don’t be tied to a weekly or monthly newsletter – if you’ve got something important to say, send it there and then. There are obviously a multitude of digital marketing methods and none of them should be neglected. But please bear in mind that email is making a big comeback. And if that’s how your clients and prospects favour receiving their information, then you’d be foolish not to capitalise on that.
In short, email is where you should concentrate your firepower.
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