Blurring The Lines Between Music And Investing

Quick, what tune comes to mind when you think of mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or investing in general?

Nothing, nothing at all? Me either.

In a sound-filled, even noisy world, investing (not trading) is distinguished by its hush. Walk into a mutual fund company, or a financial advisor’s office for that matter, and you’re likelier to “hear” silence than music.

While other businesses use music to communicate energy, optimism or whatever, music is not in the investment firm’s communications toolbox. Too bad, really. Music can add another dimension to an experience. (Not to mention its effect on productivity. If you take a closer look in investment offices, you'll see plenty of people wearing earbuds while they work.)

In the last few months, I’ve collected a few examples of efforts to pair music with investment topics. Is this the start of anything, do you think?

Shelter From The Bonds?

Let’s start with a marketing example—a Bob Dylan-inspired video on an unlikely topic. It’s entertaining, although TastyTrade was probably hoping for more than 60 views.

Branded Playlists

In August it was revealed that Spotify, the music streaming service, was beta-testing a follow feature so marketers could promote branded playlists. 

Ordinarily, the announcement might have fostered just more other-industry envy. Except that Morningstar’s Editor-In-Chief Jerry Kerns has already been doing something like that on Spotify. He’s been creating playlists to accompany issues of Morningstar Advisor.

Issue No. 36_Fund Distribution may be more relevant, but the tracks from Issue No. 35_Bonds will give you a better idea of how the playlist syncs with the focus.

To listen, log in to Spotify and find the jerrykerns account. According to the published numbers, there has been almost zero uptake on this, too. (To be fair, there's been zero promotion—I just happened to see a tweet from Kerns about it.)

The Rhythm Of The Data

Here’s what started me thinking about beats and financial data. The FMS Symphony created a “house-trance,” selecting chords based on the derivative of federal account balance data and a melody based on the federal interest rate data. For more, see this Revolutions post.

Just a warning, when you click on this link or on the image above, you may not love the “cheesy synth” and the volume is set high. But try to hang in there long enough to experience February through October 2008, at least. It’s a soundtrack for the financial crisis.

We have personal life tickers, is it so far-fetched to imagine an asset manager introducing soundtracks for investing over a lifetime? 

Music To Browse By

Do you remember when some early Websites experimented with audio files that auto-launched when visitors landed? There was a bit of a blowback and random Web browsing today is largely free of surprise sounds, including from ads.

Here's one business in private beta, righTune.com, that believes that background music can aid in achieving Website goals. You set the mood and they pick the background music. To my knowledge, this isn't being directed at investing sites. I mention it as an example of more music headed the Web user's way. I'll try to keep an open mind on this one.

Music and investing—do they have a future together?

Could An Advisor Community Form Around A PDF?

How can you ever hope to have a conversation when most of your content is locked up in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files?

That’s been the taunt from me and other people like me to mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers for the last few years. Breaking the PDFs wide open and distributing the content within was the only path to "conversation" that we envisioned.

But check out an app that I’ve been experimenting with. The premise of Readmill (for the iPhone and iPad only currently) is that each ebook or PDF can be a self-contained social network.

Here’s an expansion on the generic value of the idea, from the FastCoLabs blog post, which is where I learned about it last week:

“While most e-readers allow you to share passages or links to the book you are reading, and sites like Goodreads let you share what you’ve read, their implementations treat the book and the discussions around them as separate collections. Worse, these apps force users to venture into the distracting world of the open Internet when they want to share, making it hard to stay focused on reading.”

With an ebook or PDF uploaded to Readmill (online or via the app), iPhone readers can highlight a passage on the page and comment on it from within the book. Other readers of the same document can read the comments and add their own thoughts.

Is That All There Is?

Like you, I’ve participated in my share of content marketing campaigns featuring whitepapers, reports, ebooks, etc. as the deliverable. Sure, financial advisors responded, jumped through whatever hoops that were required (there’s less of that nowadays, thankfully), took the download and left as quickly as they came. 

The process is always a bit of a letdown.

So, what did you think? How did you like that PDF? I’ve always wished that there was an unobtrusive way to follow up with those who downloaded.

This is the promise of the Readmill app: It can capture readers’ reactions, questions and criticisms, with the feedback adding to the value of the original document. (There’s no confusing the original piece with the comments, I hasten to add for my Compliance friends.)

I’m intrigued by how this could be used with the broad "advisor community." There are a few advisor communities online—LinkedIn groups, professional association sites, standalone forums and even ad hoc communities that can be found frequently commenting on publication Websites.

But none offers this utility. Could a piece of advisor-worthy content delivered in PDF and distributed using Readmill bring advisors together as sort of a quickly coalescing, friction-free book club reviewing a whitepaper on alternative investing, for example?

To advisors the benefit of participation is discussion with like-minded colleagues. To the PDF provider it's listening, learning and maybe even weighing in with follow-up questions.

A Demonstration

To get an idea of how Readmill works, I’ve uploaded a 14-page PDF—a free excerpt from the David Meerman Scott book News Jacking—highlighted it in three places and made a few comments. 

In the first screenshot, you’re seeing the line I highlighted and then my comment. Others could add their comments to mine or create new comments elsewhere.

The second screenshot shows the prompt for feedback or sharing at the completion of the book.

I hope you can find some time to explore Readmill. Download the app. Then search for the Rock The Boat Demo. Add a few comments and let us all (or at least me, privately) know what you think about the experience.

This is probably too early and there’s some work to do before a Readmill content distribution could be ready to go. Would advisors’ comments have to be archived? Is archiving even possible? Most asset managers would likely feel more comfortable with a private label version library. I wouldn't think that this or the archiving would be a showstopper because Readmill makes the API available. Adoption would require promotion and use by more than one firm.

I could get worked up about this. Could you?

Marketing, IT Need To Work On Their Relationship

Given the digital nature of every business today, there is no more important a function for Marketing to align with than Information Technology (IT), says an Accenture research study released last week.

And yet, according to its provocative findings, CIOs and CMOs can’t even align over that statement. Nearly eight out of 10 CIOs agree that Marketing/IT alignment is needed, compared to just over half of CMOs surveyed.

Financial services represented the biggest sector (35% for CMOs and 37% CIOs) in the 2012 Accenture Interactive CMO-CIO Insights survey of more than 400 senior Marketing executives and 250 senior IT executives across 10 countries.

Is The Marketing Function A Priority For IT?

The study details CMO and CIO priorities and where the disconnects occur. Even though 45% (still, less than half) of CIOs report that they put Marketing near or at the top of their priorities, more than six out of 10 (64%) CMOs think Marketing is at the bottom of the CIO’s priority list.

More than three in 10 CMOs (38%) feel that IT keeps Marketing out of the loop. In fact, one-third of CIOs agree that’s what happens and 35% say they don’t provide the time and technical resources to help. For their part, CIOs also believe that Marketing bypasses IT to work directly with vendors.

The graph above shows the “Internal obstacles faced by CMOs in implementing solutions to further Marketing effectiveness.” There’s a companion graph from the CIO perspective.

A few other findings:

• The CIO’s #1 priority is advancing platforms to aid in Marketing measurement and campaign optimization. That ranks #8 out of 16 priorities for CMOs.
• The CMO's #1 priority is deploying better Marketing execution and operational systems and platforms. That ranks #6 for CIOs.
• Some 30% of CIOs want to further the use of social media and online listening and contact systems; only 24% of CMOs do. (Sorry, Marketing peeps, I have to throw in with IT on this one.)

There is a lot here that ran true for me and may for you, too. Download the PDF to read the full report and recommendations for how improved trust and transparency can save this relationship. For an earlier Rock The Boat Marketing post on one solution posed by others (Chief Marketing Technologist), see “Would This Help Avoid Marketing/IT Collisions?”    

Reaching Advisors Via Gmail? Read This

The end may/may not be near.

Retailers and other heavy email users are reporting reduced engagement after Google’s recent change to how it categorizes Gmail. Some are quite upset, going so far as to suggest that Gmail is "killing" email marketing.

In this industry, email is by far the most effective marketing communication, a point reinforced as recently as this table from the July 2013 Cogent Research*: Advisor Touchpoints™. Even so, my sense is that this industry is closer to the "The End Is Not Near" part of the spectrum. But, it is possible that your firm's email effectiveness will be diminished to some extent, thanks to the Gmail changes.

Are you using media lists to distribute marketing messages? This has bearing for them, too.

For Collecting 'Marketing' Emails

For background: Gmail is #8 among email clients. As part of the Google Apps suite, it has particular appeal to RIAs who have warmed to the idea of keeping their data in the cloud.

But, advisors of all stripes long ago decided that there are benefits to maintaining an email address for the purposes of collecting “marketing” (translation, sorry to say: non-essential) messages. Over the years, many gravitated from Yahoo! and Hotmail to Gmail as their preferred free email service. More often than not, it's a Gmail address that's used as a second address when advisors sign up today for asset management communications, among other online offers.

In other words, advisors have already siloed asset management communications from their primary email account's Inbox.

I was worried three years ago when Google introduced a Priority Inbox feature based on the Gmail user’s reading patterns. But now (starting in late May and continuing on a rolling basis that is believed to be complete now), Google is automatically categorizing email as it arrives.

Here’s the upbeat video that Google created when the tabs were announced.

This is a broadbrush treatment, and Google has yet to reveal the basis (algorithm) on which the emails are categorized. We're not likely to ever know.

It's A Tossup Where Mutual Fund/ETF Emails Go

Most asset management communications are sent on an opt-in basis. More to the point, few are promotional in nature. Global investment perspectives and half-price mani pedi offers don't have much in common. Unfortunately, Google is ruling otherwise.

Over the last few days, I’ve used a Gmail address to subscribe to many mutual fund, ETF and investment media newsletters and the early results are not encouraging. The screenshots below illustrate the problem with representative emails received yesterday. 

Most of your work is showing up in the Promotions tab versus the Primary stream. Google's algorithms notwithstanding, to the naked eye there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the categorization.

The most promotional email in the set is the first RIABiz email in the Primary tab, carrying a sponsored message from T. Rowe Price. The content and tone of the emails flagged as Promotions are different in no perceptible way from the emails that made it into the Primary stream. You can't tell from the return address ("economics"), but the last email in the Primary stream, by the way, is from First Trust. Personalized emails show up under both tabs.

By comparison, all of the emails shown above arrived directly in my Outlook account, none was stopped by its industrial strength SPAM filter.

Remain Vigilant

By definition, emails relegated to the Promotions tab will get less attention than email included in the Primary stream. What's an asset manager email team to do? Here are a few suggestions: 

• Size the problem. Look into how many Gmail addresses you mail to. Maybe this is not your firm's problem. Another relevant consideration is where the Gmail is being read. The tabbed Inbox is available only in the Gmail webmail client and in official Gmail apps for iOS and Android. One recent study found that only 19% of Gmail opens actually occur in official Gmail.

• Monitor the effect. Create a report that segments only the Gmail recipients on your email list, and track the open and clickthrough rates over time. If you use MailChimp, by the way, you’ll want to read "Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates." Also, ReturnPath offers a Gmail Tabs analysis for brands. Unfortunately, the benchmarking data provided is of limited value given that Banking is the closest it comes to investment companies.

• Be proactive. Prepare and send an email that shows Gmail-using advisors how to move your emails out of the Promotions tab and into the Primary tab. This MailChimp post includes the explanation you’ll need. There's nothing to it. But, be realistic about how many advisors will respond to such a plea. You might think about enlisting your internals in the crusade.

Let's keep an eye on this. 

The Next Wave: Asset Manager Executives Take To Twitter

When Nuveen joined Twitter last week (@NuveenInv), it became one of a dozen asset management firms that maintain at least one account for an individual executive in addition to a corporate account.

The Demand

If you work for a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) company and your job includes social media, this development is no surprise to you. From what I hear, thought leaders are chomping at the bit to “get out on Twitter” and are attempting to enlist the help of any random body in Marketing to get it done. Their gravitas notwithstanding, thought leaders have to wait in the Legal/Compliance/IT queue for social media enablement and archiving.

On Twitter, a few users are even asking for accounts to be created for some of the industry’s bigger names. DoubleLine Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer Jeffrey Gundlach is at the top of that list, based on my unscientific monitoring. Gundlach also has the unique distinction in this space for having inspired a fake Twitter account: @fauxGundlach. Until an official @Gundlach account surfaces, users will have to be content using the #Gundlach hashtag.

A Twitter List

Here’s a list of the mutual fund and ETF executive Twitter accounts that I know of. (If I’ve missed any, please advise below.) All of the names below have been added to a new Rock The Boat Marketing InvestmentMngrs_Execs Twitter list. In addition, I’m including them on the InvestmentManagers Twitter list that I maintain, for the broadest way to follow asset managers’ presence on Twitter. 

By my count, Invesco has the most individual accounts, followed by First Trust (we Illinoisans love us some Twitter!). Even PIMCO, where the industry’s most prominent individuals (Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian) post using @PIMCO, has an individual account.

Note that the list includes investment strategists, economists, a product strategist, retirement specialists and just two CEOs. Seventeen names representing a $15 trillion industry? There's a lot of room for growth here, and I believe this is the next wave of what firms will be doing on Twitter—introducing many more voices. (And, recall that Putnam has said that its wholesalers are heading to Twitter next.)

The Advantages

There are quite a few advantages to launching an individual account. 

• It's straightforward. While a corporate Twitter account typically precedes the launch of an individual account, it’s not always in that order. A few firms have found it easier to launch an individual account first. 

“What would we tweet about?” and “Who would do it?” are two show-stopping questions easily answered when a thought leader account is envisioned. 

• Additional followers. People will follow investment strategist accounts who won’t follow a corporate account. Savvy Twitter users, including most financial advisors, know that corporate accounts come with a lot of promotional and/or non-relevant updates. An individual account can elevate brand awareness in its own way. Be aware, though, that Marketing can expect some interesting times as you try to sort it all out. 

Here’s a screenshot of the limited (12%) overlap between the First Trust corporate account (with many fewer followers) and the @wesbury account of Chief Economist Brian Wesbury. People who follow Wesbury get an earful of all kinds of stuff, some on-brand and some—I’m guessing here—far afield. (See a related post from May 2012: 3 Ways Asset Manager Tweeting Is Evolving.) 

• Specialization. A specialized account has extra appeal for those who focus on Twitter. This is just another instance where total follower counts mean little. Example: If I were a reporter following the retirement business or a financial advisor focused on it, Invesco’s Tom Rowley account would be a must-follow.

• Personality and tone. Some corporate Twitter accounts do a terrific job with brand voice and personality but it can be a struggle. By contrast, an individual account has just one, authentic personality to think about. Personal accounts attract more interest and engagement. 

The catch for asset managers: Even more so than for corporate accounts, people are going to talk to individuals and they are going to want to hear back, too. The individual who has authority to post but not re-tweet or reply has his or her hands tied in a way that will limit the success of a Twitter strategy (the non-responsive @PIMCO account being the exception).

The Twitter platform is every bit as able as CNBC to host an exchange between investment or product strategists. Why couldn't this happen?

The unleashing of egos on public platforms without a referee is not for the feint of heart, by the way, as hinted by this exchange yesterday between Virtus' Joe Terranova and someone complaining about a missed forecast. 

@Aftermath_2012 think I did better than that w my mea culpa on Gold not pulling back another 20% by the end of the year

— Joe Terranova (@terranovajoe) August 12, 2013

Who’s Doing The Promotion?

I know of other employees of asset management firms who are on Twitter. They’re not in spokesperson or high visibility positions, however. And, their Twitter bios either omit mention of their employer or explicitly state that they speak for themselves only. If you’re on Twitter but want to stay under the radar, rest assured that I will keep it to myself until you change your status.

The bios of the accounts on the list above expressly mention their official roles, and the tweets have to do with their roles. But if they're not supposed to be a secret, I wonder why these have such low visibility. Few of these accounts are mentioned either in the account bios or on the Twitter backgrounds of the corporate page. There's practically no embrace of them (e.g., a display of recent tweets) on the firms' Websites.

An exception: Check out the prominence Oppenheimer gives its three Twitter account feeds at the bottom of the home page of its site. 

Do corporate entity issues prevent the accounts of some of these firms from acknowledging the accounts of an employee affiliated with a different subsidiary? I suppose that could be what it is.

But, if it's an oversight this is easily addressed. Just as a firm can’t afford to have individuals taking to Twitter without jumping through the required hoops, neither will a firm want to see what happens when Twitter account promotion is left to an individual’s devices. Thought leaders can be pretty creative, remember.

My recommendation: Make sure your individual Twitter account implementation plan considers how to give it presence and ongoing marketing attention. 

Which mutual fund or ETF executives would you expect to see soon on Twitter?