Power in Partnership: Considerations for Futureproofed Marketing Automations
If this decade has proved anything so far, it’s that ‘tech buyup’ has dominated financial services marketing. It’s not surprising that those looking to promote content see shiny big time automation platforms as superheroes promising greater investor engagement with space-age AI functionality.
Yet for all the chatter around potential cut-price capabilities, many automation tools aren’t tailored to fund marketing as they are direct-to-consumer businesses looking for quick fixes – and even quicker sales. Asset raising just does not happen that way. A generic SaaS product will miss the marketing nuances required of a private equity firm, boutique manager of a hedge fund: customer security, compliance measures, and simple-enough technicality to integrate with existing systems used to nurture investors’ digital experiences.
For funds looking to boost their productivity and gain numerous leads in the sales funnel, adopting new automated platforms must take ongoing partnerships into account. When a fund’s brand and strategy can be enhanced by a service provider that’s in for the long haul, this creates flexible, updatable and collaborative digital marketing campaigns committed to upping AuM in the competitive, cost-strapped fund world.
Why Automated Platforms Matter
In their everyday task of asset-raising, fund marketers understand the very human-led approach of working with executives and investor relations teams to promote the business’ investment philosophy through exciting content in shifting macroeconomic times.
Digital marketing now grants a more highly accurate way to facilitate this. A CRM, for example, acts as one giant reference point to automatically capture the varied lead signals that may take place on online channels, while marketers distribute personalised material to investors that expect a fund to do more than shift blanket messages.
That being said, starting and maintaining an automated digital strategy is not easy. A lot of noise is generated by third party marketing applications trying to sell bolted-on accessories, mass scalability and no-code capabilities that could, to a smaller manager, be completely pointless.
Often these will require a complete overhaul for marketing systems that already successfully streamline marketing activities from data collection to trigger-sending emails. Deploying behemoth-style automation tools could also involve extensive engineering work, a financial risk for firms’ marketers whose focus should be on continually crafting awareness for their existing or future customers, and analysing their assistance to the sales effort.
At the other end of the spectrum, no subpar marketing automation platforms should be “fine for now” or a shelved problem to address later. Managers today have to take a thoughtful approach to their operational investments in regards to their whole digital MarTech ecosystem – which ultimately grants an edge of marketing professionalism and quality end-user digital experiences for investors everywhere.
Plotting A Productivity Plan
The modern fund marketer’s role now involves maintaining a codependent relationship with IT specialists, be they an automation platform’s staff support and implementation teams, external consultants, or a fund’s in-house technical staff. Together, considering if a marketing automation tool is fit for purpose involves initially working out where efficiency can be best gained, and if ROI can be redeemed to justify any tech-spend with budget allocators:
Can the platform be set up to track campaign touchpoints?
Is there a way to create a single source of truth for outreach management?
Can data dashboards determine historical touchpoints towards fund inflows?
Are APIs available to tag onto, and enhance, existing workflows?
Are there any hidden costs for staff training and licensing fees?
Addressing such factors will limit the potential for pumping human and material resources into ineffectual marketing platforms; ultimately money pits with a lot of bells and whistles that fail to get investors’ attention. Some funds will thrive using purely email automations, and see no benefits of a dedicated multi-channel social media ad tool, for example, if the software fails to concretely contribute to asset-raising efforts.
An investor that’s already ‘bought into’ the way a fund markets to them is more likely to up assets than an unforeseen source. That can guide a savvy decision to plump for an automation platform that complements consistently successful content tactics, and more likely to improve core go-to marketing operations such as sense-checking communications for financial regulatory requirement, email retargeting, or segmenting regional or persona-based lead scores.
Platforms Helping Humans, Helping Other Humans
Determining these business factors upfront also outweighs any impulse to purchase a catch-all solution. Instead, specialist automation platforms can understand the fund sectors’ very niche pressures for acquiring clients. Vendors should be helpful, supportive humans as much as technical wizards to contextualise a piece of marketing kit in regards to the business’ urgent ROI needs, and install, test, and improve it accordingly.
You see this symbiotic people-platform approach with financial CRMs. The tech does a lot of back-breaking data capture, yet the set up and assessment of its investor engagement features lies with human intelligence and close-knit partnerships to drive respective value. It’s all well and good to see open rates across channels, but more important to jointly engineer platforms that tell you which content campaigns are striking hot, and where, with deep, automated insights that make KPI reporting that little bit easier.
One question to ask when considering a marketing automation tool is whether every investor-centric team member will ultimately be happy to use it. Will it surface marketing attribution metrics that are easily cross-referenced with the sales effort, and be up and running in no time to enrich existing investor data? If so, it’s likely a good bet.
Developing Foundations for the Future
Even before AI and thousands of hyper-specific MarTech tools came along in their droves, fund marketers’ priority was still delivering investment products that solve a range of individualist financial goals, and creating trustful, expert content around them.
That’s never changed. Integrated CRMs and marketing automation platforms cannot be standardised all-terrain vehicles, but applicable to B2B fund sales funnels that are sporadic, long-winded and non-linear. They exist to take a fund’s voice and business further afield, in digital places where investors are researching funds that are creating a compelling dialogue and driving buyer journeys, clearly with investors on their mind all the time.
Foundational marketing psychology underlines any tech-spend on new automated solutions. It’s up to fund marketers to not buckle under the rat race and purchase as many tools as possible, and instead find digital marketing platforms that will provide an invaluable supportive ‘backbone’ for whatever paths digitalised fund marketing will take next to reach all-important AuM wins!
ProFundCom works as an integrated automation platform for investor engagement tailored specifically to the financial services industry, including:
Customisable Integration: Integrating with ProFundCom is highly customisable allowing fund managers to adapt the platform to their specific data models, workflows, and fund structures. This saves time and money in the short term and facilitates future growth and functionality enhancements.
Unified Data Management: Fund marketers can consolidate customer data, engagement metrics, and campaign performance from various sources to gain a comprehensive view of their audience and marketing activities in one platform.
Data Analytics and Reporting: Measure conversion rates and analyse the effectiveness of their marketing strategies to monitor key metrics and optimise lead generation efforts for reliable results.
Automated Lead Nurturing: Set up workflows to engage with leads at different stages of the customer journey, delivering targeted content, follow-up emails, and personalised messages to drive conversions.
Lead Scoring and Qualification: Prioritise leads based on engagement levels and interactions through scoring and focus efforts on high-potential prospects.
