A Look At PIMCO's Content-Dense Mobile App

PIMCO’s release this week of an iPhone/iPad mobile app is among the first (if not the first) non-transactional mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) apps.

Most of the few investment company apps are product and data-based and, as such, may have limited value to non-account-holders. Given the firm’s status as a bona fide investment thought leader, it makes sense that PIMCO would take the lead in developing a content app available to all comers—extending its reach and ostensibly using it as a customer acquisition as well as customer retention tool.

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Looking For Love? Bundle The Best Of Your Brand In An App

The week is starting with two app-related news items—Vanguard's release of an iPhone app for advisors and the news that financial services firms are the enterprises most likely to adopt iPads. We cheer both announcements, as you'll read below in a post that first appeared on the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) Blend site on September 23. The MENG Blend is a blogging initiative featuring bloggers from multiple marketing disciplines and industries. I blog on online marketing and social media.

If we were friends sitting across the table from one another, I’d test your patience by showing you “just one more” application on my iPad.

If we were digital marketing colleagues, we might talk about mobile platforms and analytics.

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Will FinTech Innovators Disrupt By Making Users Happy?

This post will require some indulgence on your part. Commenting on tweets coming from a conference that I didn't attend may seem as bogus as someone recommending a book based on a book review and not having read the book.

It’s just that every day brings news and commentary that underscore the importance of financial marketers stepping up their game and sharpening their awareness of developments in this space.

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Users Are Preferring Apps—And That Includes Finance Apps

Will your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) firm eventually produce a mobile application? If your answer to that question is yes, data released in the last few weeks may help move your plans to the front-burner (yep, right alongside everything else).

A global smartphone study by Zokem points to shrinking reliance on Web browsing as mobile users show a striking preference for native applications.

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Asset Manager Web Sites Lose Their Flash On iPad

The eagerly anticipated Apple iPad just may force a rethinking of asset managers’ reliance on Adobe Flash Player as a means of delivering some much-needed life and vitality to their Web sites.

In an industry not known for its innovation online, Flash-based presentations on a home page or on a financial advisor home page have been the go-to site enhancement on mutual fund sites. Given their young age, almost all exchange-traded fund (ETF) sites employ Flash in some way.

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