Published: 25 July, 2023

The Month in Digital Marketing for Finance – July 2023

The ProFundCom team has curated the best events, opinions, insights and resources relating to digital marketing from the previous month and looking forward to the month ahead. The team not only look to bring you the best articles for investment managers and hedge funds but also articles, in general, that marketers find useful.

Sentiment Tracking


 

Features

Cognito – The Cognito 2023 Communications Survey: The Future of Finance and Technology

The report uses material from a survey conducted by Cognito of more than 100 senior leaders at global organizations in financial services and related industries to understand their strategic and communications reporting. The survey included those who strictly work in communications and marketing, and those (including CEOs) who interact with these functions as part of a larger mandate. Respondents told us their views on where they plan on increasing and decreasing spend in marketing and communications, the role of artificial intelligence in improving delivery and how they are planning to react to unexpected events. Download the report to see all of the research, all with observations and commentary from a global slate of Cognito professionals. Download here

White Marble Consulting – Martech in 2023: White Marble speaks on marketing automation and AI

The Financial Services Forum hosted their annual Martech conference recently, which allowed guests to be a part of a comprehensive journey through the marketing technology ecosystem as it stands today. Panellists covered everything from the base level of organisational culture, governance and project buy-in to automation, AI and staying on top of the technology trends that all marketers should know about in 2023 – and beyond. White Marble’s Andrew Scott and Ross Treleaven used their time at this event to discuss marketing automation and its evolution alongside artificial intelligence. The relationship between marketing and technology, as well as the capabilities of AI in automation, has dominated headlines of late. The terms ‘AI’ and ‘automation’ are often used interchangeably but, in reality, are distinct technologies. Automation involves using machines and software to automate tasks that require human intervention. Automation tech can vary, encompassing robotics, computer software and AI, and its main goal is to increase efficiency, reduce errors and enhance productivity. In contrast, artificial intelligence involves machines imitating human intelligence to perform tasks that typically require human capabilities. AI tech utilises algorithms, deep learning and neural networks to analyse, interpret and learn from data, enabling it to carry out tasks without human intervention. Simply put, automation is the ‘doing’, whereas AI is the ‘thinking’. Read more

JPES Partners – Content marketing is no place for paper tiger portraits

The influence of legacy paper documents extends beyond the City of London’s corporate governance regulations, and it is still glaring in today’s content marketing, too. Corporate marketers and graphic designers must break from traditional vertical layouts and embrace a more modern, reader-friendly digital-first aesthetic if they want to get their messages across. The formatting of digital documents often still follows the ‘old school’ format of print layouts in today’s digital era – a quirk which has a disproportionately negative effect on businesses trying to get their message across. In the realm of corporate communications, it’s still far too common to encounter lengthy double-column PDFs that do not align with the landscape orientation of most monitors. This format forces readers to scroll through each page multiple times – down, up, and down again in an irritating visual gyration that might as well earn it Peter Crouch’s famous Chumbawamba moniker (if you know, you know). This unfriendly formatting renders content nearly unreadable on mobile devices, making it awkward to skim through during commutes, coffee breaks and other prime target times for casual reading. Read more

ProFundCom Report – How To Boost AuM By Aligning Your Fund Distribution & Marketing Teams

When it comes to funds, alignment is good. Everyone who works at a fund – whether they are talking to clients, analysing data, handling payroll, or making the lunchtime sandwiches – should understand and appreciate the role of each department.Because when there is cooperation and alignment across a firm, it leads to a consequent boost in AuM. But this is easier said than done, as each department has its own responsibilities, priorities and aims, which often don’t align easily with that of other teams. And one area where this is particularly true – but where alignment is so desperately needed – is the relationship between the fund distribution and marketing teams. These two teams, both with the same ultimate aim of raising and retaining assets, often operate as separate silos. Although they are both working to achieve the same thing, they have a different stake in the process and can end up falling out and resenting the other. Download Report

Marketing Week – Direct marketing spend hits 17-year high as brands look for short-term wins

Spend on direct marketing rose at the sharpest rate since 2006 in the second quarter as brands push record levels of promotional activity and look for a short term boost in the face of a still uncertain economic backdrop, according to the latest IPA Bellwether report. A net balance of 7.3% of the marketers surveyed report increased investment in direct marketing, which Bellwether defines as email and physical mail, in the second quarter of 2023. Read more


Resources

Benchmarking

The ProFundCom Digital Marketing Benchmark provides real-time access to all of ProFundCom’s digital marketing data from over the last 15 years, giving users the ability to compare how their marketing campaigns are performing versus sector peers. Further detail of how other organisations are carrying out similar processes and the associated results are also available. The anonymised data is over 10 terabytes in size (which interestingly is the amount of data produced by the Hubble Space Telescope per year!) and will be split into different industry sectors as well as AuM. Access ProFundCom Benchmarking here


Market Sentiment

The chart below shows the sentiment across the main financial sectors in July 2023.

Hedge Fund Marketing and Hedge Fund Markeitng Automation


ProFundCom Whitepapers


ProFundCom Free Tools

As a fund marketer, testing your email marketing campaigns on different devices and email clients is one of the most important tasks. Couple that with compliance, avoiding the JUNK folder, and avoiding getting added to blacklists. What most fund marketers have found is that generic mailing platforms just don’t have that ability. Whilst ProFundCom has this built into our platform, we have made this available as a free service if you are a financial marketer. If you provide us with the HTML in the form below we will run the following tests on the email

Instant Previews – Instantly see how your email will appear on over 70 different email clients
Instant Blacklist Report – See whether your sending address is blacklisted on popular domain blacklists
Instant SPAM Check – Rate how likely your email will end up in Junk folders
Instant Compliance – Compare your email’s content against compliance heuristics

If you want to find out how ProFundCom can help you use digital marketing to raise assets schedule a demo here

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