Old Way/Social Way: Advisor Log-ins Vs. Web Authentication

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As inspired by our dear departed Yahoo Internet Life’s Old Way/Net Way feature years ago, we last month teed up the idea of contrasting some Old Way/Social Way examples. This is the second in an occasional series. 

Old Way: Advisor Log-ins

Nearly every mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) Web site has a financial advisor area that requires registration. The old old way (still practiced on some sites today) is to present all unregistered or un-logged-in advisors with a roadblock—a page with nothing on it but a form to use to register or to log in. More progressive sites (see Wells Fargo Advantage Funds and Lord Abbett) start communicating even as they’re asking advisors to register for more.

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2010 Predictions For Mutual Fund/ETF Digital Marketing

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In addition to tracking marketing predictions (see our 2010 Marketing Predictions, Part 1 post for a round-up and see this article for 100 more), we’ve been keeping an eye on business predictions for 2010. And, the short version is that asset-gathering isn’t going to be any easier.

If you’re a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketer, you can expect competition to heat up as your marketing counterparts do what they can to encourage investors to return to equity funds, evaluate their Roth IRA conversion prospects and use new, improved tools and expert advice for investment portfolio-building and re-building.
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Will Sales, IT Get To Social Media Before Marketing?

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Today, in 2009, there continue to be some asset management companies that are surprised when Marketing expresses more than a passing interest in the customer relationship management (CRM) database. Marketing wasn't there when the CRM was planned and Marketing isn't a sitting member of the CRM enhancement prioritization committee.

All of which explains why leads related to marketing activities can't be tracked to the same extent as sales activities, among other database deficiencies from a marketer's perspective.

A former colleague from an investment management company sent me an email Wednesday. His background is in IT; I knew him back in the day before he achieved his current High Muckety Muck status, with all due respect.

In a fairly short email, Lonnie (not his real name) revealed his training and the difference in how he thinks of social media versus, shall we say, a stereotypical right-brain marketer. Marketers may look at social media interactions and see the randomness of the conversations. But Lonnie, in his comment about our AdvisorTweets.com, sees the value of organizing tweets as an added input to a customer and prospect database.

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Tracking The Great Financial Advisor Migration—And Implications for Your CRM

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Dan Miller, Key Accounts Sales Executive for Discovery, is always good enough to update us on the developments in his world of financial intermediaries databases—which the smartest investment management firms use to augment their “organically grown” customer relationship management (CRM) systems. We checked in with him Tuesday after yet another Investment News article about financial advisor migration.

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Email Open And Click-through Rates? Benchmark Study Sheds Light On CRM/Database Development

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Many experts (including this report from Marketing Sherpa) expect email to get a workout in light of shrinking marketing budgets. But email marketing is something that requires a lot of attention to get right. It hasn’t been a strength at many investment management companies previously, and we’d caution against a kneejerk decision to just stoke up the email machinery as you’re cooling off on your direct mail and other print communicating. There’s a high probability you run the risk of burning through some of your high quality contacts.

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