Increasing Client Engagement

We know that a highly engaged client base leads to increased revenue. It’s no surprise then that increasing client engagement is one of the top priorities for investment marketers.

But creating a high level of engagement is a challenge and there’s often a communications mismatch between professional investors and fund marketers.

In July 2021 we interviewed advisors and fund marketers across the globe to gain insight into what causes that divide. You can read the full report but spoiler alert: only 28% of professional investors said most fund marketers struck the right communication balance.

We found that clients expect relevant content that’s presented in a clear and concise manner, addressing the funds they invest in and the needs of the clients they serve.

So where to start? Work with your client services and sales teams to come to a better understanding of each client. For example, what funds are they investing in now and which have they expressed interest in recently? What strategies do they embrace?

Next, organize your content by communication type, product, asset class, or a combination of all three. The end result is a core set of tags that determine the communications your clients receive. It’s worth taking your time here and we can help too.

The simplest way to determine the content your clients want is to ask them. And the simple act of asking shows them you want to create a great experience and you’re respectful of their time.

The most common way of collecting this information is via a preference form. These forms allow clients to explicitly state their interests and they’re most often accessed via a link at the foot of your emails.

The StoneShot platform allows you to integrate these forms into your website, connecting your marketing automation platform, CRM and website together. Your sales and marketing teams can also manage preferences within your CRM, right alongside a contact.

The second way to manage preferences is to observe how each client is interacting with your content. It’s an approach that consumer brands like Amazon or Netflix take, suggesting content based on past behavior. The difference is you’ll likely have a small fraction of the content and categories!

The objective here isn’t to restrict the content clients receive, but to prioritize content around their interests.

Ok, so you’ve defined your content tags and allocated clients to tags. What’s next?

The StoneShot platform allows you to tag your content and dynamically include, exclude or prioritize commentary, fund documents, events, client reports and more for each of your clients. You can connect StoneShot to your website too, picking up content and document feeds and personalize your emails and website.

Through the StoneShot platform you can understand what works well in terms of the content, formats and timing. You can measure engagement at an aggregate or individual contact level. We then help you to continually increase engagement through shared best practices, design services and consulting.

We deliver this for our clients via quarterly account reviews, dipping into our unique benchmark data for comparative analysis.