ProFundCom Product & Service Notification 28th April 2024
As a user of the ProFundCom platform, we want to notify you that there have been some changes to the platform. We will send these notifications every time there are updates to the platform.
Outlook Line Bug Impact: Medium Sections: Templates Description: Occasionally, you may notice your template has thin 1-pixel horizontal lines through it. This is due to a known bug with certain versions of Outlook, and are a result of the way Outlook displays HTML. This affects anyone sending responsive HTML emails, not just ProFundCom.
There is no hard & fast rule about why they appear, but users have found that simply adjusting the spacing and font sizes can often make them disappear entirely. Each block in the Drag & Drop editor has a ‘vertical spacing’ option – you can try adjusting this by a few pixels and see if it makes a difference. Many blocks also have their own internal spacing which can be similarly adjusted.
New ‘Body Background’ editor feature
Previously if this did not solve the issue, there wasn’t much that could be done. However, we have recently added a new feature which can help to mitigate these lines if adjusting the spacing does not work.
In the editor you’ll find a new setting in the page options:
If you turn it on for a template a new menu panel will appear:
Here you can choose from a few options for the colour of the <body> background in your template. Previously this was always set to white, with the blocks laid on top of it to create the external background colour chosen in the editor – it’s this white colour that bleeds through between the blocks and creates the white lines bug.
So for example if your template is largely dark blue, you can set the Body Background to the same colour and if the lines bug appears, they’ll be in the same dark blue and won’t be noticeable.
If you change this option, you won’t see any immediate changes in your template, as the area it affects lies under the added blocks. But the new panel has its own preview to show the colour chosen.
You can pick:
white – the original default behaviour. If you don’t switch on the Body Background options, this is what will be used.
the default Internal/External colour. This is the default background colour new added blocks have before any styling is applied. The ‘Internal’ background is the inside of the block where the content lies, the ‘External’ background is the colour that lies to the left and right of the block, outside the document’s borders. If you wish these default colours to be changed, you can ask on the Helpdesk.
the most used Internal/External colours in the current template – this counts the background colours used in the blocks you’ve added so far, and sets the Body Background to the ones used the most.
or you can choose ‘custom colour’ and pick a specific colour.
What difference will I see?
On most email clients you’ll not notice any difference. If you use the Delivery Studio to preview your template on all the major email clients, you may notice that on some devices your template has a thin border in the colour chosen – you’ll need to decide whether this is an acceptable compromise. Generally if the aim is to colour the bugged lines to make them unnoticeable, you’ll be choosing the existing background of your template anyway so this thin border will likely not be an issue.
LeadDeck New Signals Impact: Medium Sections: Reporting Description: The LeadDeck now reports on new entries. The new entries are highlighted in yellow. These new leads represent potential new investors, and each new lead is an opportunity to raise AuM. It also highlights new investors who are redemption risks.
Other benefits of knowing new people who are engaging with your fund are
Help to keep the sales pipeline fresh and prevent it from stagnating.
Provide valuable signals on the effectiveness of a business’s marketing and sales efforts.
Help to identify new market opportunities.
LeadDeck Cohorts Impact: Medium Sections: Reporting Description: The LeadDeck now reports on cohorts for a contact surfaced by the LeadDeck.
There are many advantages to knowing cohorts in ABM, including:
Improved targeting: Knowing cohorts allows you to target your marketing and sales efforts to the right people at the right time.
Increased efficiency: Knowing cohorts can help you to identify and eliminate waste in your marketing and sales processes.
Improved decision-making: Knowing cohorts can help you make better marketing campaign decisions.
Better investor understanding: Knowing cohorts can help you understand your investors’ needs and wants. This can lead to improved investor relationships and increased lifetime value.
Increased sales and revenue: Knowing cohorts can help you to increase inflows by identifying and targeting your most likely investors.
Overall, knowing cohorts is a powerful tool that can be used to improve ABM efforts. By using cohorts to target your marketing and sales efforts, you can increase ROI, improve investor engagement, and make better decisions about your fund marketing activities.
Live data-connection to Excel Impact: Medium Sections: Reporting Description: All data grids can now have their data imported and updated directly into Excel. Live data connections to Excel offer several advantages and are useful in various scenarios, including business, finance, data analysis, and reporting. Here are some key reasons why live data connections to Excel are valuable:
Real-Time Updates: Live data connections allow you to access and display up-to-the-minute information. This is critical in situations where you need to make decisions based on the most current data, such as stock prices, financial metrics, or project status.
Efficiency: With live data connections, there’s no need to manually update data in Excel. This saves time and minimizes the risk of errors that can occur when copying and pasting data.
Automation: Live data connections can be automated to refresh data at specified intervals, reducing the need for constant manual intervention. This is especially helpful for reports that need to be updated regularly.
Data Integrity: By connecting to the source data in real-time, you maintain data integrity. There is no risk of discrepancies between the source data and what’s in your Excel file.
Collaboration: Live data connections are valuable in collaborative environments. Multiple team members can access and work with the same live data, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.
Historical Analysis: Live connections allow you to access historical data easily. This is important for trend analysis and understanding data changes over time.
Dashboard Creation: Live data connections are essential for creating dynamic dashboards. You can build interactive dashboards that automatically update with new data, providing a comprehensive view of key metrics.
Data Visualization: Live connections enable real-time data visualization. You can create charts and graphs that reflect the latest data, making it easier to interpret and communicate information.
Monitoring and Alerts: Live connections can be integrated with alert systems. You can set up alerts to notify you when specific conditions or thresholds are met in your data, such as stock price fluctuations or revenue targets.
Decision-Making: In business and finance, decisions often rely on the most current data. Live data connections provide decision-makers with the information they need to make informed choices quickly.
Customization: Live connections can be customized to extract specific data from a source, allowing you to tailor your Excel reports to your exact needs.
Scenario Analysis: Live connections support scenario analysis, enabling you to quickly assess the impact of different variables on your data and make informed decisions.
Overall, live data connections to Excel are a powerful tool for accessing, analyzing, and reporting on real-time data. They streamline processes, improve accuracy, and empower users to make timely and well-informed decisions in various fields, including finance, business, and data analysis.
Click this and it’ll give you a URL (with the API key as one of the arguments)which you can copy
Then, in Excel, go to Data->From Web and paste it in
It’ll try to load it as an html table but click Transform Data
Delete the ‘Navigation’ step and double-click the Source step, and change it to CSV
Then click ‘Close & Load’ in the top-left
Live data connections to Excel offer several advantages and are useful in various scenarios, including business, finance, data analysis, and reporting. Here are some key reasons why live data connections to Excel are valuable:
Marketing Sentiment Impact: Medium Sections: Templates Description: The marketing sentiment for hedge funds, wealth managers, asset managers and investment managers can be viewed in the Template Delivery Studio.
Marketing sentiment is crucial in writing fund marketing emails for several reasons:
Engagement: Sentiment impacts the emotional response of your readers. Positive sentiment can make the content more engaging, increasing the chances that recipients will read the email in its entirety and take the desired action.
Credibility: The tone and sentiment of your email contribute to your credibility. A well-balanced and professional sentiment can enhance your reputation as a trustworthy fund manager.
Influence: Sentiment can influence recipients’ decision-making. Positive sentiment can make your fund seem more appealing, while a negative tone can deter potential investors.
Trust Building: A warm, friendly sentiment can help build trust with your audience. It shows that you value and respect your clients and prospective investors.
Clarity: The sentiment used in your emails can impact how clearly your message is understood. Positive and encouraging sentiment can help simplify complex financial concepts and make them more accessible to a broader audience.
Brand Image: The sentiment in your emails reflects your brand’s image. Consistency in sentiment across all your communications helps establish a strong and recognizable brand identity.
Compliance: In the financial industry, adhering to regulations is crucial. The wrong sentiment can lead to misunderstandings or compliance issues, while the right sentiment ensures your emails remain compliant.
Emotional Appeal: Sentiment can tap into the emotional side of investment decisions. A well-crafted sentiment can elicit positive emotions and create a connection with your readers.
Response Rates: The sentiment in your emails can influence response rates. A positive, encouraging tone can prompt readers to take the desired action, whether it’s scheduling a meeting or investing in your fund.
Relevance: The sentiment should be relevant to your audience and the context of the email. Understanding the sentiment that resonates with your target audience is essential for effective communication.
In summary, marketing sentiment plays a critical role in fund marketing emails because it can significantly impact how recipients perceive your fund, engage with your content, and ultimately make investment decisions. Carefully choosing the right sentiment is an integral part of crafting effective and compelling email marketing campaigns in the financial industry.
Database Performance Updates Impact: Medium Sections: All Description: After watching the response time for the application on our internal tests starting to increase, and also seeing our monitoring showing an increase in response time, a review of the infrastructure was undertaken. It was clear that we were seeing a number of peak times during the day where the database instance was under high load. Looking back at the historical monitoring data, there was no significant increase in requests to the database, but more just a constant growth, which was now almost at the point of becoming an issue.
After further investigation, and a few minor tweaks to some tables, indexes, and archiving, the RDS instance was still nearing capacity. Analysing the enhanced monitoring showed that the only current issue was that the RDS instance frequently exceeded its allocated CPU and to cope with the peaks was using burst CPU cycles.
Over the weekend of 14/15th of October, the AWS RDS instance was upgraded. The number of CPUs and allocated memory were doubled. Since the upgrade, the RDS instance monitoring has shown only one occurrence of the CPUs being max’ed and this was during the database backups, which put a large strain on the database. Internal testing and some customer feedback have confirmed that the application is back to running the way it was intended.
In the graph, you can clearly see, the 2-stop upgrade where the DB is failed over to the backup AZ and then upgraded before being failed back again. Now that the instance has 8 vCPU it only exceeded that once during the backups.
Updates to the Event Manager Impact: Medium Section: Event Manager Description: Here are the latest updates to the ProFundCom Event Manager.
New ‘Status’ – can be one of ‘Imported’, ‘Invited’, ‘Registered’, ‘Cancelled’, ‘Declined’, ‘Attended’, ‘No-show’. This shows as a column in the Attendees screen.
‘Imported’ as a status – someone who’s been added to an event but not yet sent an invite
‘Declined’ as a status – similar to ‘cancelled’ but they remain on the event and are still about to receive emails
Only shows ‘attended’ or ‘no-show’ once the event has ended and at least one attendee has been set to ‘attended’. This stops everyone appearing as ‘no-show’ if they’re not recording attendance.
Ability to add custom text to Decline & Cancel screens, similar to the before/after registration custom text.
Template/Schedule ‘type’ is now enforced, it can’t be left blank (although existing ones with the field blank will still work). You can choose to manually enter a custom type.
Only templates with the same ‘type’ as the schedule can be chosen for a schedule.
Only templates with the type ‘Invite’ can be selected to send an invite
Only templates with the type ‘Registered’ can be selected as the registration template
Order now viewable from the Attendees screen – this shows details of all attendees who were registered at the same time
Ability to manually ‘upgrade’ an Invited person to a Registered person from the Attendee screen
Ability to add filters based on attendee data fields, to a Schedule.
Email history is now stored and option to view email history for an individual or an event as a whole
Schedules now show when they are sending/sent and live update from the schedule screen
More warnings about the auto-send being off and what you need to do in order to make a Schedule send.
Mosaico base template updated to the latest one.
Registration template editor removed from the Event Customize screen, as it was confusing people whether they were editing that or the Event Description. The Registration Template can be edited from the Templates screen in the normal way
Option to show cancelled attendees in the attendee list (before they were completely hidden)
If the Event Description is an imported template, it now displays in an iFrame on the event page, as its CSS was polluting the rest of the page
Updates to Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Email Impact: Medium Section: Reporting Description: The regular system emails that report on the impact your marketing is having on AuM will also now include the following charts
Is the distribution group growing
Are the emails convincing
Is the content working
Are people tired of our content
What is the quality of our contact data
It is displayed in the emails, similar to the ProFundCom dashboard
