Where's The Fun In The Investment Business?

In real-life some of us can be quite the cut-up. Do investment marketers, and other communicators at investment firms, really have to check their humor at the door?

Before digital, before social, the answer was uh-huh, yes. On a rare telephone conversation a few weeks ago (who needs to talk when you can tweet?), InvestmentWriting’s Susan Weiner and I laughed about the days when something as informal as contractions were frowned upon in investment commentary.

Money management is serious business. Tomfoolery isn’t something that endears a brand to financial advisors or investors. But here and there it is possible to spot some signs of lightening up. Over the last few years (!), I’ve been bookmarking some noteworthy examples. Finally, a few items surfaced this week, bringing my collection to enough of a critical mass to share.

Enjoy these now and I will continue my life's work of funspotting in the investment business.

ETF Tickers That Tickle

Not taking oneself too seriously is a sign of a contemporary communicator. As exchange-traded funds (ETFs) positioned themselves as mutual fund challengers/disruptors early on, it was natural to show a little sass in the selection of their ticker symbols.

MOO (Van Eck Global Market Vectors Agribusiness), DUST (Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bear 3X) and TAN (Guggenheim Solar ETF) are just three ETF tickers representative of the naming creativity among issuers. 

One of my all-time favorite product names was from the now-defunct Claymore Securities (a former employer but this naming predated my stint): the Claymore/Zacks Yield Hog ETF, which perfectly communicated the fund’s objective to traders. Sadly, it was later renamed to Guggenheim Multi-Asset income ETF, defaulting to words believed to appeal to a broader audience.

When A Cartoon Can Capture The Culture

We're all familiar with the difficulties of finding imagery to communicate the features and benefits of the non-tangible investment business. This can be a significant obstacle when faced with the need to provide some visual relief on a Website.

Branding that relies on illustration is rare on the Web. Even rarer is the investment firm that turns to humorous cartoons. The cartoon below is from Ajo Partners’ Philosophy page. I also like the cartoon on the Contact Us page, too. It's a bit edgy for this space.

The Fun In Being Interactive

For some, fun comes wrapped in a quiz. Quizzes have been the rage online for a while now (of all the content published by The New York Times in 2013, a quiz ranked as the most popular).

In this category, there’s no more prolific fund company than U.S. Global Investors. This commodity producer quiz suggests the fun and educational experience provided.

In its award-winning FutureMoves iPhone app released in 2011 (followed with a Website), MassMutual stepped out a little with irreverent messaging intended to focus Gen X and Gen Y on possible retirement scenarios. As shown in the video below, the app involves the addition of a photo of someone and then ages the image, making some predictions—see the first at 0:52.

It’s funny (“hilarious,” according to one iTunes reviewer) and makes the point.

#TBT

As you can tell by now, a fun communication doesn’t require belly laughs. People who consume investment content all day every day appreciate any effort. An unexpected reason to chuckle, smile, even snicker is all we’re looking for to mix things up. It will be remembered, if not always shared.

Let’s start with a fairly new, social-initiated holiday—#ThrowbackThursday or #TBT—and work our way to the high holy day last celebrated Tuesday.

There’s nothing to bring a community together like taking part in a hashtag. #TBT involves the very specific task of sharing an old image (read more about the meme here), and every Thursday brings a new set of updates from brands and individuals, all clustered together by the use of the hashtag.

A handful of investment firms can be counted on to post #TBT updates on Twitter, Facebook or both some Thursdays.

Here are a few recent #TBT posts from Northwestern Mutual, Fidelity and Scottrade.

It was 1988, George Harrison was topping the charts & we were piloting our 1st voice messaging system #TimeFlys #TBT pic.twitter.com/hnL2N1a8DC

— Northwestern Mutual (@NM_News) February 20, 2014

Our newspaper ad from 1975, when we first started offering IRAs! #TBT pic.twitter.com/cNmmTPONH9

— Fidelity Investments (@Fidelity) February 27, 2014

Today, the Internet turns 25! Here's a glimpse of what we looked like when we first went online in 1996. #web25 pic.twitter.com/jGQRfZscZZ

— Scottrade (@scottrade) March 12, 2014

Obviously, there's room for more firms to take part in Throwback Thursday and with even more imagination. If your firm has any story to tell whatsoever, you can come up with some image-based reminiscences that will both entertain and give your followers a glimpse of your firm's roots.

Not Just For Lovers

Valentine’s Day-related social updates from firms are quite common. But I still LOL when I look back at some 2012 tweets that resulted from a #FedValentines groundswell. They were loosely related to the U.S. economy and Fed policy. (It was what Business Insider called one of the Internet’s nerdiest memes yet.)

The iShares #FedValentines tweets (two examples are shown below) were mostly self-serving, didn’t drive a lick of Website traffic but c’mon, don't you like iShares just a little more because of them?

I’ll $STIP the world and melt with you #FedValentine http://t.co/sE31DWR3

— iShares (@iShares) February 10, 2012

Good one! RT @isharesetfs: If you liked it, then you shoulda put a $RING on it #FedValentine http://t.co/S2DcEaHj

— TheStreet (@TheStreet) February 10, 2012

3 Takes On April Fools'

The April Fools’ celebrations this year started slow.

Fidelity offered a Popsicle-stick quality joke on Twitter and Facebook.

A publication has more latitude than an investment firm. Still, there was extra effort shown when The Economist devoted its daily chart to the comparison that all others know to avoid: Apples to oranges. I loved this, actually. The screenshot below is just a slice—be sure to check out the whole piece.

Finally, the imaginary prize in the investment space for celebrating April Fools' 2014 had to go to FMG Suite. The firm, a marketing solution for financial advisors, created a genuine spoof video for a "world where people still have fax machines."

You have to click on the image above to go watch the 1:30 video on the FMG site, which will take you away from this site. That's OK, don't worry about me. Go. Enjoy yourselves. I want you to have fun!

Compare Your KPIs To The Best In Financial Services

The “financial services” industry is a big ole bucket. 

But given the other industry possibilities (Retail? Media? Technology?), investment firms have more in common with banks, credit card, insurance and brokerage companies. If you’re a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketer looking for data to measure your firm’s digital performance against, you could do worse than look at “financial services” benchmarks.

Smartphone, Tablet, Website Benchmarks

Specifically, Adobe this week published some benchmark data you might find useful. The Adobe Digital Index “Best Of The Best Benchmark” report is based on 210 billion visits in 2013 to 11,000 mostly large enterprise Websites that are customers of Adobe Analytics. The review set included “a few thousand financial services companies. We don’t break out our samples to any level beyond financial services,” according to Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Digital Index.

Adobe reported on the performance of financial services and four other industries (retail, travel and hospitality, high-tech, and media and entertainment) on five key performance indicators (KPIs): 

• Share of smartphone visits
• Share of tablet visits
• “Stick rate” (the percentage of visits that include more than one page)
• Pages per visit
• Minutes per visit 

Conversion rate benchmarks are provided for some industries but not for financial services because, Adobe says, “financial organizations all have a different concept of a conversion." This makes it difficult to standardize for.

The data show that there’s a fairly large gap between the performance of the “best of the best”—the top quintile in each industry—and everybody else, aka “the masses.”

“The results of [the research] make it clear that organizations that invest in people, processes, and technology are reaping the benefits” is Adobe’s high-level conclusion.

Where Finserv Outperforms

The report provides an opportunity to see how financial services does relative to other industries and where the top 20% of financial services organizations are outperforming their peers.

You’ll want to download the full report for all the insights and data. Below are a few tables I created to isolate financial services. Just call me Parochial Pat. (No, please don’t.)

In the table above, you’ll see that the best financial services organizations lead other industries in stick rate. Almost eight out of 10 visits to the top quintile financial services sites included visits to more than one page. That’s impressive, according to Gaffney.

“Stick rate is very complicated because there are two factors that drive visitors deeper into a site. First, they must be the right visitor so visitor acquisition targeting needs to be optimized. That requires careful targeting as well as testing multiple approaches to discover which ones provide the best visitors.

“But then,” she says, “those visitors need to land on a page (sometimes from their phone or tablet) that works, is what they expected and has a clear next step. So content, responsive design, personalization and clear paths forward have to be in place.”

Bravo, take a bow!

Unfortunately, the best in this industry trail all other industries in percentage share of tablet visits, and all but high-tech’s best in percentage share of smartphone visits. 

But above see how finserv comes roaring back in the visits measures—the best financial services sites have the highest number of pages per visit, and trail only media and entertainment and high-tech sites in minutes per visit.

This data suggests that the best of financial services have some significant digital chops. Oh and here’s a look at the year-over-year improvement. Note the big gain in share of smartphone visits.

For your benchmarking, the table below may be the most useful. Above-average performance on these dimensions would be between the range set by the best in the industry and the average. 

Wide gaps between the best and the average suggest that the best are pulling away from the competition, which is Adobe’s point in publishing the research. Of course, you'd have a better sense of your relative performance if the research was provided for the asset management subsector.

Take a look at your analytics and see where you stand. Thoughts? Please comment below.  

A Must-Read Book For Fund Company Marketers

“Must be curious.”

If I were hiring a marketer for a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) company today, that’s the requirement that I’d lead with in a job posting.

Curiosity is what elevates the marketer from the daily grind of “making the donuts” and propels the kind of inquiry that produces above average work. For content marketing and storytelling, in particular, a marketer needs to be curious about the world around him or her.

There is a way to do fund marketing—just go to the meetings, pick up the work, turn around the work and then route it to everybody else to have the final say. Ugh.

Marketers who overcome this dynamic want to learn more, to know more and to develop a deeper understanding of how investment products are manufactured, managed, distributed and evaluated. With that knowledge as a basis, we should be better able to create and advocate for communications and marketing initiatives that better connect.

Toward Better Question-Asking

It’s never been easier for asset management marketers to learn more about the business they’re in. As I mentioned in my last post, the full ecosystem—financial advisors, wholesalers, investors, media, vendors—can be observed in real-time online.

This week, a new resource has been made available, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. Letters to a Young Analyst is a 99-page ebook by Tom Brakke, with contributions from other industry veterans.

Brakke describes himself as a consultant, writer, and investment advisor. Over his career, he has been an analyst, portfolio manager, director of research, professor, and “creator of investment products and systems for evaluating and communicating investment ideas.”

On Twitter, he is @researchpuzzler, an account (and related blog) that I consistently name when asked about favorite accounts to follow. Brakke discovers and shares relevant content that I wouldn’t stumble upon on my own. Links to his own work provide access to critical thinking on how professionals evaluate and present investment opportunities, including due diligence.

His is a different, increasingly influential voice that frequently comments on what investment managers (including their marketing efforts) are up to. It's helpful as a perspective on how your "audience" is reacting to your communications.

A few examples:

• Alts Boot Camp—Brakke calls out a Pioneer Investments chart as “an example of the superficial simplicity with which retail alternatives are being marketed.” 
• Years of Experience—Brakke says the promise of portfolio teams’ “years of experience” (a common measure used in asset manager marketing materials) is a mirage, and probably not worth giving so much emphasis to.
• A Fund Manager’s Actions Should Match the Message (on the Wall Street Journal Experts blog), in which Brakke answers the question, “What is the No. 1 warning sign for investors in a fund’s marketing material?”

Brakke’s tweets are a must-read, and if you were on my Marketing staff, you’d now be required to read his book. Marketing barely rates a mention in it, and that’s the point. Curious marketers excel by learning more about everything else, including—and maybe especially—thinking beyond what’s happening in Marketing and beyond your firm’s walls. This ebook is an antidote to the “investment guru worship" that asset management marketers can be sucked into (and then help perpetuate).

Letters to a Young Analyst contains a trove of insights. I’ve tried but I can’t extract pithy lines to illustrate its value. You have to surrender to the story—in two parts of the ebook, Brakke is coaching a young analyst over a series of several “letters.” It’s a career guide that draws on his experiences, his influences and his biases. Another part of the book includes commentary from others, also filled with gems.

Taken all together, it provides a grounding for marketers who aren’t trained in investment analysis. It's Inside Investing for those who work on a different floor than the Investments team.

A better understanding of what analysts do, and even where they’re vulnerable, can help tune your next information-gathering/content idea-harvesting encounters with your Investments teams. It wasn’t written for you but you can benefit from it.

The last part of the ebook is a compilation of relevant resources (books, publications and Websites) that I’ve never seen pulled together in one place before. Brakke gives a shout-out to a few lists I maintain, and I should say that he provided the book to me as a thank-you. I would have happily paid the $24.95. There's $5 off if you're among the first 100 purchasers using the offer code: puzzlepiece.

You can buy the ebook here. Those who purchase the book will automatically be signed up for a quarterly newsletter subscription.

5 Early Wins For Mutual Fund, ETF Companies Using Social Media

I couldn’t get enough of the coverage this week of the 25^th birthday of the World Wide Web, celebrated yesterday.

Originally, this post was going to be about what the Web has done for mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) communicating, with a few reminiscences.

For example, I smiled when I read this line from the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, on a Google post Tuesday.

Thanks to the Web, Berners-Lee wrote, “You can link to any piece of information. You don’t need to ask for permission.”

Right, I’d forgotten! In the late 1990s, wirehouse account people actually asked for permission to link (their Intranets) to mutual fund company Websites. Ah, the innocence of those early days.

Instead for today, I’ve gravitated toward something fresher and, at this point, evolving more dramatically: The effect that participation in social media is having on how fund companies communicate with their many stakeholders. Let’s date the start of this to four years ago, right about when FINRA released its Regulatory Notice 10-06 in January 2010. I can think of five early wins.

1. Communicating at a higher level than product

As an example, access to Twitter came at just the right time for asset managers willing to provide a steady stream of information about municipal bond markets.

Starting in 2010 with Northern Trust’s @Fixedology account (since renamed @NTInvest) and followed by municipal-focused @RochesterFunds, @MainStayMunis and other broader asset manager accounts, 140 characters have proved sufficient space for pithy updates about markets, issue sizes, demand, etc. all clustered around the #muni hashtag or derivations.

In the last four years, what's going on with municipal bonds has been a topic that many others, and most notably the media, vitally cared about. Twitter provided asset managers an easy entrée into a conversation they could contribute to.

The notion that muni communicators could use a different communication channel to call attention to in-house insights or even just facts was new. Until 2008 or so, it was the equity funds, their stories and their management teams that typically dominated the marketing and public relations resources. And, regardless of the asset class or the timeliness of the comment, there would have been a limit imposed on the number of communications PR would have been willing to initiate—as in, "We can't reach out to a reporter on the same topic too often."

But, a Twitter account can. I’m convinced that steady, consistent communicating served the tweeting firms in good stead when, late in 2010, Meredith Whitney predicted a municipal bond "day of reckoning."

A crisis was avoided but the accounts tweet on, as shown in this random collection of information-packed Rochester Funds tweets. Note that many #muni tweets simply impart information, don't even require the reader to click a link.

Net revenue collections for FY ’14, July – Feb, in Puerto Rico are 10.2% higher than last year. Higher revenues = positive for bondholders.

— Rochester Funds (@RochesterFunds) March 5, 2014

Meeting today with some Puerto Rico creditors in NYC. We were not invited, nor will we attend. PR wasn’t invited either.

— Rochester Funds (@RochesterFunds) January 16, 2014

We agree with @Muni_Mkt_Advisor's Robert Donahue: "Puerto Rico's leaders are showing considerable courage” h/t @TheBondBuyer

— Rochester Funds (@RochesterFunds) December 26, 2013

Look for more of this social media-enabled content leadership, as the industry educates on alternative investing in particular.

2. Better customer intelligence

Some firms have a much better understanding of the financial advisors who use their mutual funds or ETFs than they did five years ago.

Because of the benefits to them of participating on social networks, advisors have been creating profiles and sharing information—all of which savvy asset managers recognize as valuable customer intelligence. (See this 2009 post for an early perspective on the opportunity.)

When third-party data providers (like Meridian-IQ to name a current-day example) first made advisors’ AUM and production data available, that was the first step in asset managers growing their customer databases with more than just the uneven data input by the wholesaling staff. APIs available from LinkedIn and other social platforms today and CRM integrations available provide real-time, qualitative information that salespeople know how to use to advance offline conversations.

At the 1:14 mark of the following Nimble video, you'll see an example of how social account information is being added to CRMs.  

Nimble Grid View and Smart Summary of Contacts from Nimble Marketing on Vimeo.

It is the rare investment company that is mining this data today. However, many firms are doing something, even if in a low-tech way, or by just adding social CRM to their roadmaps. This will provide a competitive advantage. 

3. Better visibility for initiatives

It can be a thrill to work for a firm with millions of shareholders or investors. However, communicating with them in print usually takes too much time and is cost-prohibitive, two challenges somewhat addressed by the advent of Websites and email. But there, too, there are reasons to take a measured approach. A firm can’t communicate “too often” for fear of fatiguing its lists, and no single initiative can consume too much of the enterprise's communication resources.

Enter Facebook, an extremely accommodating environment to discuss corporate responsibility and community initiatives and to foster engagement. Check out the John Hancock Boston Marathon posts for one timely example. 

Or, consider the single-focus opportunity that a blog affords, as Putnam demonstrates with its five blogs on five niche topics: perspectives, wealth management, advisor technology tips, retirement and absolute return.  

Putnam is also giving a master class on how to use social media to extend the value and life of research findings.

Do you remember the social media research Putnam released last October? Previously, a firm might have conducted research, prepared a whitepaper, launched a microsite, issued a press release and then its news would fade from the news cycle in about a week. Because the research was right on-point for its Advisor Tech Tips blog, Putnam continues to post additional survey-based insights, which in turn prompts sharing and new attention for the research.

4. More natural exchanges

When you talk to people only periodically, there’s a tendency to be more formal and need to say more. Four times a year-reporting means that there's always going to be a lot to have to catch people up on. Updating via social media, though, can be more conversational, even natural.

For its plain-spokenness and word economy, this @Vanguard_Group tweet (which was as a Rock The Boat Marketing 2012 content highlight) continues to be one of my all-time favorite asset manager communications.

Our Advisors app for iPad product comparison tool was too slow. We fixed it. Try it now. http://t.co/Ltoduy5r

— Vanguard | Advisors (@Vanguard_FA) November 17, 2012

We all know how this would have been approached in every other medium—a lot of background information, a mumbo-jumbo quote and a description of the app’s new capabilities. It’s hard to imagine a Web page with just these three sentences on it. The best fund companies on Twitter are keeping it real. (Also, see 2013: Time To Show Some Personality (And All That Implies).)

Theoretically, there’s no better way to project naturalness than to sit in front of a video camera and talk. Except that over the years, investment professionals and the perfectionist marketers who work with them have developed a lot of good habits that could use some relaxing to truly succeed on YouTube.

Here again, the Vanguard channel is blazing a trail toward less stilted presentations. Check out their first Google Hangout from December. There are a few rough spots but the fresh, uncanned approach has a contemporary appeal.

Vanguard, one of the first whose blogs allowed comments, is also one of the first money managers to allow Discussion on YouTube. It's inevitable: Through its interactions on Facebook, Twitter and in comments elsewhere, this business will get the knack of responding to investors and others in public.

5. Developing a fuller sense of the ecosystem

In pre-social media days, the enlightened asset managers acknowledged that their business was influenced by people not defined by AUM and sales. Hence, the gatekeeper-type field in a CRM.

But paying attention to social media conversations and interactions surfaces others—industry leaders, investment bloggers and service providers and vendors, also with no production data next to their names. These are influencers that those of us in marketing would have had no awareness of 10 years ago.

Let’s take the example of Cate Long on Twitter, writer of Reuters’ Muniland blog and very influential on the #munis subject with journalists among her top followers. She regularly tweets asset manager (and others') #munis tweets. Of course, she’s in PR’s Contact list, but marketers watching the #munis hashtag know about her, too.

This awareness should be institutionalized—if Long were to sign up for an email newsletter or call in on the 800-number, she should be recognized as someone other than a "non-advisor" in the enterprise CRM.

See where this is going? It’s silo-busting and calls for added collaboration across functions.

A systematic understanding of social networks, as some early adopting firms are starting to develop today, can lead to a fuller sense of the thinking influencing the users of investment products, and result in proactive communicating and marketing.

In what other ways do you see the business being changed by social media? Please add your thoughts below.

State Street Uses TED Talks To Showcase Employee Ideas

Most of us could not try this at home. Nonetheless, it's wonderful to learn about how State Street committed the resources to organize its own TED event for its employees.

TED@StateStreet is the mash-up of two powerful brands—TED being the brand for “riveting talks for remarkable people” and State Street being the institutional investment firm rarely if ever described as riveting.

Following a TED format, 13 State Street employees “told their own stories of innovation, triumph and driving transformation” at an employee event held in November 2013. Those talks, on a range of topics, can now be seen here. 

According to State Street’s page on TED.com, “Everyone knows that the challenges in our world of finance are considerable. But if we as an industry get the next chapter right, so too are the opportunities … for our clients, for society in general and for us. New thinking in finance will require change from within and fresh perspectives.”

That new thinking is needed in finance is not a new idea. TED@StateStreet seems to be a vote of confidence from State Street that new thinking could come from within its own walls.

Response 'Through The Roof'

The TED.com partner page went live in January. But more information and color is available from a Forbes interview with Executive VP and Head of Global Marketing Hannah Grove, published last week. (The image below is just a screenshot to click on. Forbes doesn't allow embedding.)

State Street is just one of three corporations who so far have participated in the TED Institute, the professional development arm of TED. Boston Consulting Group and Intel are the others.  

At about 4:30 in the video, you’ll hear Grove explain how the program came together. More than 200 of State Street’s 30,000 employees applied to present a talk. The TED team, not State Street, selected the speakers and, according to this Businessweek article, provided coaching. The speakers range in seniority from an associate to Alison Quirk, State Street’s chief human resources and citizenship officer.

Grove is especially tickled that four of the State Street talks have been added to TED.com. One presentation is by Joe Kowan, a graphic designer on her staff speaking about his stage fright. Watch it not just to hear what Kowan has to say but to also see some shots of the State Street crowd looking more genuine than most TED Talks audiences. 

Response to the State Street program have been “through the roof,” both externally including from clients and internally, according to Grove. 

“It felt like we started a movement,” Grove says. “Our employees have such great ideas, and to sort of bottle that up, we’ll definitely do it again.”

Maybe not under the auspices of TED and maybe not for a public audience but would an employee talent show—which is essentially what this is—be so out of the question for other firms?

Social Media Strategy

Bonus: At 9:30 in the Forbes interview, Grove discusses the “safety-first” direction of State Street’s social media strategy. And, she brags that the firm was the first business-to-business firm to use Vine. 

Below is a Vine the firm created to promote TED@StateStreet.