Are You Planning For Text Alerts And Push Notifications?

As long as you can overlook a little rah-rah for the email channel, you might want to check out the 2012 Channel Preference Survey, a 36-page research report published last week by email provider ExactTarget.

It offers a good discussion of what ExactTarget identifies as the six factors that frame consumer preferences for a channel:

• Content
• Immediacy
• Accessibility
• Privacy
• Formality
• Initiation (the channel where the consumer initiated communication, a factor that ExactTarget says has the power to trump the other factors)

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But Is Marketing Ready To Buy Technology?

When I was a corporate marketer on the inside years ago, I would occasionally run afoul of IT. My infractions? Oh, I took a few meetings with technology vendors that IT didn’t schedule. The vendors initiated the meetings…most of the time. And every once in a while maybe I’d bend the ear of a senior executive about technology that a competitor had and we didn’t. No, IT didn’t like that at all.

“Why do you have to agitate?” someone in IT asked me once. But, you know, that’s not how I saw it. My perspective was that Marketing had a right to pursue its agenda. To do our digital marketing job, we needed technology. What kind of corporate stewards would we be if we let disinterested or under-informed (on marketing technology topics) IT partners stand in the way of our effectiveness?

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"Astonishing" Advisor Research Suggests Necessary Changes To Mutual Fund/ETF Communications

I was so eager to get at the recent Advisor Perspectives/Inside Information research that I read the complete 65-page report on my 4-inch phone while sitting out in a cold car waiting for a Realtor to show my house over the weekend.

The conditions notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. “Investment Trends in the Financial Advisory Profession: Key Implications for the Investment Management Industry” lives up to its promotional email.

Authors Bob Veres (Inside Information) and Robert Huebscher (CEO of Advisor Perspectives) wrote a page-turner filled with some provocative ideas for mutual fund and ETF marketers focusing on the elusive RIA channel.

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3 Reports To Cite In Your Next Go-Round With The Social Media Skeptics

Three reports surfaced in the last week that may help your “evangelizing” about social media and even the impact of digital communicating in general.

Changes In Advisor Content Consumption

kasina shared some high-level findings of its annual "What Advisors Do Online" research and facilitated a conversation with two marketers—Liesl Leach, JP Morgan head of digital marketing and advertising, and Catherine Heron Carroll, Allianz Global Investors’ senior vice president and director of digital marketing, during an audio Webcast Thursday.

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Financial Services Trails Other Industries' Click-through Rates

Digital marketers at financial services companies, including mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) companies, spend a healthy chunk of their time working on outbound emails. So, how are you doing?

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