Commenting On Asset Manager Websites—And Some Said It Would Never Happen

In the brief history of blogs on mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) Websites, the stickiest point of contention between Marketing and Compliance has been the ability to accept and respond to comments.

Marketing: “But if we don't allow comments, how is this different from any other page we publish with market or investment commentary?”

Compliance: “Well, you’re the ones who want to call it a blog.”

As it happens, this stalemate was short-lived. In the last few years, marketers have prevailed, successfully making the case for the benefits to the firm of using comments to listen, learn and demonstrate responsiveness. 

Quite a few firms have opened their sites and blogs to comments. Such permissions have been accompanied by yards of moderation rules and disclosure but that’s to be expected.

Even in the absence of comments, there are more and more signs of a firm’s desire, or tolerance, for a two-way dialogue. And, the hint of the presence of a community can be found on domains controlled by asset managers.

I believe that firms’ generally positive experiences fielding comments on platforms they don’t control (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) have led to less anxiety about the risk of comments posted on sites they can control. Moderation capabilities—including simply choosing not to allow the posting of a submitted comment—can go a long way. It’s also true that the firms are not the troll target that many feared.

Here’s a quick status report on how asset managers are inviting feedback on the content they publish. I should note that this review is happening just as a few well trafficked Websites such as Bloomberg Business and Copyblogger recently dropped comments. They say conversations belong on social media.

Go Big

The BlackRock blog has started to embrace commenting in a big way. See the center bar on its home page which contains a question related to the most recent post. The Add Your Voice button links to a comment box at the bottom of the post. Clicking on the BlackRock tab prompts a flyout box showing rankings of all discussions and commenters.

Last September, we looked at BlackRock’s advisor community site, which was an ambitious undertaking. This is a natural extension for the firm to encourage blog visitors to “join the conversation” and, from the looks of it, relatively simple to execute using a Disqus integration with the WordPress blog.

Blogs that publish comments are some of the industry's best, including Pioneer’s FollowPioneer, Putnam’s Advisor Tech Tips, Russell Investments’ Helping Advisors, SEI’s Practically Speaking, Vanguard's blogs and Wells Fargo’s AdvantageVoice.

Social Sharing Icons

Simply put, if you'd like your content to be shared more on social platforms, your site or blog needs to offer social sharing icons. And, sharing can be a prelude to commentary that happens on those platforms. This is out of the moderation reach and, unless you have systems in place, out of the awareness of some firms.

I commented on the growing prevalence of the icons on mutual fund and ETF sites, including blogs, in a 2011 post. However, some firms continue to face Compliance resistance.

Comments may be turned off on American Century’s blog, but the social sharing counters and the popup of the Most Popular ranking support the user’s experience. The star ratings and total votes combine to provide an alternative form of navigation courtesy of previous visitors to the site—the reviews they've left behind identify what’s good on the site.       

Making Thought Leaders Accessible

The Voya blog offers an Ask a Question feature. There’s none of the authenticity that comes with published account names, there's no date accompanying the question, the investment strategist who answered the specific question isn't named and there’s no opportunity for follow-up, which blog comments enable. It's a controlled yielding of the floor and the content focus to address what an individual reader is interested in. Despite its limitations, it has the effect of making Voya thought leaders accessible.

Not Now Doesn’t Mean Never

When Vanguard started blogging in 2009, I noted that comments were not accepted. It didn’t take long before comments were enabled and some visitors to the investors blog went to town. At the extreme, 472 comments have been submitted to a 2010 post on When to Start Saving Your Retirement Savings and it continues to top the blog’s Most Discussed ranking.

Vanguard accepts comments on its advisors and institutional blogs, but commenting there is much less common. 

As shown below, Franklin Templeton's Beyond Bulls & Bears blog and a few other firms collect comments while acknowledging they won’t be posting just yet.

Twitter Widgets—Yes, But…

Several firms publish a Twitter widget on their blogs, which would seem to be a low-friction way of presenting commentary from other parties. However, this screenshot from the Principal blog is typical of all embedded tweets that I’ve seen published on asset manager domains. The feed is of the firm’s tweets only as opposed to all replies or mentions. This isn't surprising, there’s no telling what kinds of commentary would be published on an unfiltered feed.

But there's another consideration, too. A Twitter widget embedded on your own site can point visitors to content that you shared either on your site or off. By contrast, the interactions your account has with others would be less valuable and may be less effective in prompting people to follow the account. Even when configured to show just your account's tweets, though, the presence of a Twitter widget suggests the firm's participation in and even availability to the community.

How Soon Will Asset Managers Be Texting Advisors?

If financial advisors are planning to communicate with their clients via text in the next five years—as reported in recent InvestmentNews research—will they also be expecting to text with fund companies?

Here’s the survey data that prompts the question. InvestmentNews also reports that 20% of surveyed investors under the age of 45 expect to be communicating with their advisors via text in five years. 

Note that direct, personal communicating via text is practically swapping places with communicating via U.S. postal mail.

In a May post, BlueLeaf made the argument for the convenience of advisor/client texting:  

“You have a very busy day on the road, but need to contact your client about something quick. You don’t want to call and leave a voicemail in the chance that they won’t listen to it in time (or at all). Email’s no good either, as they could potentially miss important information about your upcoming meeting. You need a tool that will help you to make immediate contact to leave your brief message.”

All of the above could apply to wholesaler-to-financial advisor communicating. Texting provides for a direct, time-sensitive communication that other means don't.

And, I dare say (and the reason for the mention of SMS messaging here), Marketing might well tiptoe into permission-based texting.

But in five years? Five years in this industry is like tomorrow in others. Is it on your firms’ roadmap?

I’m aware of firms that offer text messaging capability related to: 

• Shareholder accounts (see T. Rowe Price)
• Retirement accounts (see Vanguard)
• Retirement account enrollment via text (see The Principal)
• The availability of market and economic commentary (see Northern Trust)
• A whole host of commentary and reports and fund event options (see Fidelity) 

This is almost the same list of automated content pushes that I offered in my 2012 blog post on the topic. I haven’t heard a peep yet about firms adding SMS to their call center support, enabling wholesaler-to-advisor texting or organizing for opt-in marketing communications by text.

Not A Regulatory Concern

Evidently, texting does not break new regulatory ground.

“We haven't talked about text messaging in a while,” says Theresa Hamacher, president of NICSA. “It doesn't seem to present any new areas of concern from a regulatory standpoint. My sense is that texts and emails are lumped together and handled similarly. Social media is a much bigger issue, since it's more public and harder to capture.”

How would a regulated enterprise support one-to-one (as opposed to automated) texting? I found this 2011 video about a SalesForce app that will help you visualize how a CRM might enable the communication, in the same way that a CRM supports Sales' emails. This is just for illustration, note. I know nothing about SMS Magic and have no idea whether this developer's storage of the outgoing and incoming text messages would meet FINRA recordkeeping requirements.

For Wholesalers' Best Clients

In fact, wholesalers today are using text but “only for their best clients with whom they have a relationship,” according to Rob Shore, founder of Wholesaler Masterminds.

"The great wholesaler understands the various methods of effectively communicating with their advisors and, today, texting is one of those options. That said, if wholesalers launch into a texting dialogue without knowing that this form of outreach is welcomed by the advisor it will backfire. Spam texts are more invasive than spam emails," Shore says.

True that, Rob.

(I appreciated being able to create the images above on iPhoneTextGenerator.com, but future asset manager texting will almost certainly take place on 4G-plus devices.)  

Cross-Functional And Complex

Mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers are well aware of 1)the high reliance of advisors and investors on their phones and 2)the immediacy and impact that text messages have. In fact, these SMS messaging stats have been cited so frequently that the date and the source have long since been shed: Reportedly, 98% of text messages are read and responded to within 1.5 minutes versus 2.5 days for email.

Texting offers the potential to improve the relevance, timeliness and even usefulness of what's being communicated. At the same time, preparations for texting will need to be cross-functional and will be complex. My assumption is that these are in the works at least a few firms.

Do you work for the rare firm that has established an SMS capability already? If so, please let us all know below. Others' thoughts are welcome, too.

News For All Of Us: The Principal Shares Gadget, Text Messaging Adoption Data

The Principal Financial Group distributed a press release this week that was good and then better, from our perspective.

Good that the company announced that it was now making certain retirement plan account information available via iGoogle gadgets and text messaging. Few companies herald enhancements to their communications capabilities. We see that when those new capabilities are being sunsetted for lack of adoption, and the marketers responsible for pulling the plug confess, “Of course, we never really marketed it….”

Even better was the usage data that The Principal included in its announcement. Rarely if ever do we see that. Thank you. Now digital groups of other investment companies have some numbers to refer to in their planning and benchmarking.

Jaime Naig, media relations, told us that the initiatives were planned for “frequent visitors,” defined as those who log into the participant Web site more than three times in 10 days from 8 a.m. to 4.

The iGoogle gadget enables participants to view key account information directly from iGoogle without accessing www.principal.com. Here's a screenshot of a sample of the gadget as offered on Google; you'd have to be logged into an account to see an actual.

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