Digital Strategy Insights

At SS&C’s recent Future of Digital Roundtable, digital strategy leaders from across the asset management industry met in New York. The opening keynote set the tone of what’s to come by discussing ways to connect with the next generation of advisors, who are reinventing wealth management by delivering personalized financial strategies online.

This article focuses on three areas that generated a significant amount of conversation:

• Hiring, training and motivating the right talent.
• Optimizing content strategy.
• Collaborating effectively with Sales.

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Half of advisors say they don’t visit asset manager websites because they can’t find the information they need. So asset managers need to think more about what advisors need and how to provide that information more conveniently, if they want to play a bigger role in advisors’ research process.

Five best practices will help asset managers:

• Provide a wealth of organized information.
• Offer robust filtering options.
• Include all product categories.
• Offer easy access.
• Start with a differentiating statement.

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With the vast majority of advisors beginning their evaluation of investment products and asset managers online, the digital experience a firm offers has long affected advisors’ perception of a firm. At times, a great digital experience has been a tipping point in an advisor’s decision to do business with a firm. In this article, we’ll look at five lessons from apps that are disrupting financial services that asset managers should consider incorporating into their digital experience.

Learning from these apps will help marketers win the attention and business of the next generation—and everyone else who follows their lead:

• Design for customers—and mobile—first.
• Deliver truly personalized insights.
• Leverage social proof.
• Demonstrate fee transparency.
• Enable voice search.

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Our research with financial advisors finds that just a fraction of them primarily uses asset manager websites when researching products with which they are unfamiliar. We look at why they don’t, and what marketers can do to get advisors to use their websites.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers.

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A number of asset management marketing teams are redesigning their websites, so it is an opportune time to examine what financial advisors are using websites for, what keeps them coming back, and what deters them from visiting. What can advisors learn about your products, people and process that cannot be found anywhere but on your site, or in content you have contributed to third-party sites? How can you get them to visit your site?

In this article we'll review

• Where advisors look for information about a fund or product.
• What deters them from visiting asset manager websites.
• What gets advisors to return to your website.

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Today, according to our Advisor Insights research, nearly half of advisors (46%) take a model-centric approach to investment allocation, while a further 20% take a blended approach, combining model use with individual investment selection. While advisors remain a key focus for most asset managers, nurturing relationships with home office gatekeepers—and getting your firm’s products on models and recommended lists—is also critical to a successful distribution strategy.

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As Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant and Alexa will tell you, there is no rest for the weary. Each day, 20% of Google’s mobile queries are voice searches. When you consider that 50% of Google’s approximately five billion daily searches occur on mobile devices, the number of potential voice searches becomes staggering.

Advisors use voice search, too, with one-third of advisors using voice-activated assistants to get answers to their questions. While advisors are asking, are asset managers prepared to deliver the answers?

In this article, we'll review:

• Voice search is growing.
• What advisors want.
• What asset managers are doing.

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Advisors prefer email to other forms of notification by asset managers like texting or social posts. But a number of issues deter advisors from opening asset manager email. We provide insights and recommendations on making email more engaging for advisors.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Asset managers have been talking about the importance of having better alignment between Distribution and Marketing for years. Yet, organizational structures and cultural differences have presented challenges to effective collaboration across Sales, Marketing, National Accounts and Product teams at many firms. Based on our annual CMO Roundtable and Distribution Summit last month, that finally appears to be changing.

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As home office relationships become more powerful, the approach asset managers take to build an effective strategy for winning market share must also change. At most firms, however, National Accounts does not effectively coordinate strategy with National Sales, Marketing and other parts of the organization that have a stake in the outcomes of these important relationships.

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While there are many reasons for advisors to repeatedly visit fund company websites, for almost 60%, timely, expert commentary represents a primary driver. Market and investment commentary helps advisors understand the ever-shifting environment, allowing them to make better decisions and, in turn, better articulate to their clients the “why” behind those decisions. It can also provide context about the “big picture” active portfolio managers are operating from as they make investment decisions for their funds.

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Home office research analysts play an essential role in determining which asset managers and products are represented in their lineups. Few are satisfied with their ability to find the information they need on asset manager websites. We review what they are looking for and what they expect firms to provide online.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Our research over the past few years has been focused on helping asset managers weather the perfect storm of diminishing margins, product rationalization, shifting control to home offices and the ever-increasing challenge of capturing the attention of advisors. At the core of our recommendations has been the need for asset managers to use data analytics to better understand which advisors offer the greatest opportunity for the sales force. Our latest research study, Attributes of Top Performing Sales Territories, sought to understand what qualities separate high-performing sales territories from the others.

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Advances in data, analytics and technology are making it possible for asset managers to engage their customers more efficiently and effectively than ever before. Approaches such as customer lifetime opportunity analysis, combined with artificial intelligence-powered marketing technologies, are enabling leading firms to match the right resources — and the right messages — to prospects and customers with ever greater levels of sophistication. In order for marketing teams to implement strategies like these, robust analytics capabilities are essential. Yet, based on SS&C’s 2018 survey of asset management CMOs, nearly one-third of firms (32.3%) have no data analytics roles within their marketing teams.

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Do you know if your content strategy is delivering business results? When we asked chief marketing officers what their top challenges were to implementing their content strategies, responses revealed that their content teams are creating too much unused content, aren’t able to create timely content and don’t know which content is effective. With more than $1 of every $10 marketing dollars spent on content development and production, it’s essential to know what return you are getting on your investment.

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Millennial advisors – age 38 or younger – expect more from digital engagement with asset managers. As digital natives, their expectations for ease of use and personalization are greater than their colleagues.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Because of the considerable assets they can bring to the table, institutional investors should be a high priority for many asset managers. Despite this, digital engagement for institutional audiences has historically been something of an afterthought at most firms. Because of the high-touch nature of institutional investor relationships, asset managers have assumed that institutional investors primarily go to consultants or to their relationship managers at the firm when they need information, rather than conducting their own research online.

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For more than two decades, asset managers have been refining and enhancing their websites. But finding information to answer their questions continues to be a vexing problem for financial advisors. When asked what prompts them to call a fund company rather than use the website, 61.8% of advisors say they can’t find the information they need.

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While Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) have long been an important audience for asset managers, the channel’s rapid growth in assets under management has only increased its importance the last few years. In fact, assets managed by RIA teams grew 21% a year between 2010 and 2018 — faster than any other channel — and the average client assets at RIA teams now rivals that of the once-dominant wirehouses.

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One in three CMOs cite an inadequate marketing technology stack as their top challenge with implementing a content strategy. But the gap may be in skills and experience needed to effectively use the powerful technology they have.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Offering online tools that make an advisor’s job easier provides tangible value and attracts them to your website more regularly. In fact, 46.1% of advisors last year said the provision of useful tools was one of the top three reasons that keep them coming back to an asset manager’s website.

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One of the questions clients ask is, are value-add programs important to offer advisors? The answer is a qualified yes. Three elements should influence your decision to invest in and promote a value-add program…

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In recent years, nearly every asset manager marketing and distribution team has experienced growing demand for timely, customized content in the form of pitchbooks, monthly commentary and performance updates to support professional buyers, institutional investors and financial advisor teams. Curating the information for these needs manually is overwhelming for those who support prospects and customers that require recent, technical and comprehensive detail to make decisions.

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An effective content strategy is more important than ever to differentiate firms in a crowded market. AI-powered technology can help to address top challenges CMOs identify with their content strategies.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Virtual and remote advisor meetings, in which a salesperson meets with one or more advisors using web-based video technology, are becoming standard practice for asset management firms. At SS&C’s Digital and Remote Sales Roundtable earlier this year, almost all participating sales managers stated that their firm has virtual meeting technology. In addition, when participants were asked to identify key focus areas for the next 12 months, several firms mentioned increasing the use of virtual meetings, including for external wholesalers. Once seen primarily as a tool for hybrid wholesalers, virtual meetings are increasingly being used across the asset management sales organization, as firms evolve their sales coverage models in order to engage advisors more efficiently with fewer resources.

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Our new report Advancing from Scoring Leads to Tracking Customer Opportunity , introduces the concept of the Customer Opportunity Score to help asset managers identify the advisors who aren’t just likely to buy, but who are likely to become the most valuable and loyal customers of the 􀃕rm. It identifies when these advisors need a higher level of attention from sales or marketing. This enables the firm to allocate its resources much more effectively and focus on maximizing customer value throughout the lifetime of the relationship.

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Advisors don’t want to have to log in to asset managers’ websites. In fact 68.4% of surveyed advisors would rather call a RM than visit its website, if they think they’re going to have to log in to get the information they need. To their credit, asset managers offer much more content that isn’t gated with a login these days. As of 2016, 77.4% of RMs were offering advisors access to market and economic commentary without registering or logging in. So advisors may be responding based on long-held perceptions. But RMs could be doing a lot more to communicate what is and isn’t available through login — and making a more compelling case for advisors to do so.

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Financial advisors spend significant time with “value-add” tools from asset managers, and many say those tools will keep them coming back to your websites. Yet firms aren’t driving much traffic to their webpages containing those business-building features. This month’s infographic offers tips for firms investing in such tools.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Asset managers with fully integrated data and sales enablement technology are seeing tremendous results. Research for our recent sales enablement technology study found that asset manager sales teams rated up to 93% of the leads generated from their sales enablement platforms as high quality leads. One asset manager was able to leverage its sales enablement system to build a cadence of next best actions that helped the firm double sales for certain lower margin product lines in just one year.

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Our upcoming report introduces the Customer Opportunity Score, which helps firms identify the advisors who aren’t just likely to buy, but who are likely to become the most valuable and loyal customers of the firm. The Customer Opportunity Score signals when these advisors need a higher level of attention from sales or marketing teams. This enables the firm to allocate its resources more effectively and focus on maximizing customer value throughout the lifecycle of these relationships. You need three types of data to accurately determine which advisors offer the most opportunity.

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Email subscriptions may seem like a mundane necessity to asset management marketers. But our research for What Advisors Do Online finds 49.5% of advisors feel firms that let them choose what and when they email strive harder to be helpful. Offering advisors customizable email subscriptions to thought leadership, commentary and product information also provides an invaluable opportunity for asset managers to learn about advisors and engage more effectively with them.

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Asset managers are investing significantly in sales enablement technologies. Purchase decisions and usage don’t typically include marketing teams. This infographic provides a look into which technologies are being purchased, who makes the decisions, and how marketing teams can both help and take advantage of these tools to work quicker, more efficiently and effectively.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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We often talk about the importance of advisors being able to share asset manager content through social media. Not just because it gives the content some “legs” and helps drive visitors to the website, but because our research finds that 70.4% of advisors say being able to share useful content with peers and clients factors into their decision to choose an asset manager.

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Fund performance data is a non-negotiable element of any asset manager’s website. While industry regulations certainly play a part in what and how performance data is displayed, asset managers should seize the chance to own the story that the performance numbers tell. Advisors can find performance numbers in a variety of places. However, providing context for fund performance is the asset manager’s purview and best opportunity to engage advisors with a compelling, informative narrative. The best practices for illustrating fund performance can be broken down into three components…

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The speed at which your website responds to users impacts customer satisfaction. Slower speeds can affect bounce rates (users deciding to navigate away from the page), the number of visitors to your website, SEO rankings (how likely your website is to show up in the first result on a search website), and even harm perception of your brand.

As Millennials become a larger component of your website’s target audience, underperforming websites can create bigger problems as these users have greater expectations for performance than others. They are more likely to use mobile devices to access your website, which compounds the problem as the expectations for website performance on mobile are also more demanding than for desktop.

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Your customers care how fast your website helps them find answers to their questions. The importance has grown with the proliferation of smartphone use and expectations that come along with it. This infographic explores such uses and includes an evaluation of how asset manager websites score when it comes to speed.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Social media has now become an important component of most advisors’ client engagement strategies. According to Putnam Investments’ most recent Social Advisor Survey, conducted in November 2017, 86% of advisors say that social media activity has helped them gain clients, up from 49% in 2013. Advisors’ use of social media extends beyond prospecting and networking — 88% of advisors also say social media has changed their relationships with their clients, citing ease of sharing information as the biggest change.

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With $300 billion assets under management, robo-advisors still represent a tiny portion of all AUM a decade after their introduction. But that number will continue to grow exponentially, since the investor pool is projected to grow more than eight-fold by 2021. Clearly these financial technology innovators are doing something right when it comes to attracting assets. And it’s not just Millennials — their customers represent a wide range of investors. So, what can asset managers learn from their success? The answer can be summed up in six lessons.

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Most of us take for granted our ability to surf the web, but for approximately 54 million Americans with a disability, interactions with websites can pose significant challenges. While the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ensures equal access to goods, services and communication, including websites, most websites fall far short of actually implementing accessibility standards. In the past year, asset managers have been subject to legal actions alleging violation of the ADA by visually impaired plaintiffs who cannot access the firms’ websites.

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Effective lead scoring helps marketing and sales prioritize prospects based on potential value to the firm and readiness to do business. To understand more about how asset management firms approach lead scoring — including methods firms commonly use, types of marketing data included and the top marketing automation technologies in the industry — take a look at this month’s infographic.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Most advisors today are increasingly outsourcing investment selection to home office and third-party models, with just 36% of advisors still exercising discretion over investment decisions. And competition to get into those models — or even onto platforms at all — is also on the rise, as broker-dealers aggressively rationalize their product lineups. Consequently, the influence of professional buyers — the due diligence and research personnel who evaluate funds for home office platforms and models — continues to grow. Although the primary responsibility for managing home office relationships rests with National Accounts, a robust digital strategy, tailored to professional buyers’ needs, can play a key role in supporting this important audience.

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In last year’s Digital Engagement Leaders study, 71.9% of firms were sending emails that didn’t require side scrolling or pinching on a mobile device. This year, the number plunged to just 14.0%. What happened? Email is the most frequent form of contact asset managers have with many advisors. And according to our advisor research, 7 in 10 advisors read email on their smartphones daily. So the fact that the numbers are going the wrong direction on a key aspect of the mobile email experience is troubling.

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The term “microcontent” was coined more than twenty years ago by usability guru Jakob Nielsen to describe short-form content like headlines and factoids that need to be clear and able to stand on their own when separated from their original context. With the rise of new platforms and devices, microcontent has become more important than ever to distinguish brands and their products and services.

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Industry leaders in digital engagement have more advanced email capabilities. This month’s infographic highlights three specific ways the email channel improves customer experience — and where these capabilities separate the top firms from the pack.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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We recently completed our annual Digital Engagement Leaders evaluation—our largest ever—of 43 small, medium and large asset managers across advisor websites, LinkedIn, Twitter, and email, on desktop, smartphones and voice-activated devices. As before, our latest research into advisors’ expectations and needs, as well as best practices for engaging prospects and customers online, informed the criteria used to evaluate the firms’ digital experiences.

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Although the majority of America’s wealth is still held by Baby Boomers, affluent Millennials are a group that asset managers can’t afford to ignore. According to one study, 23% of all millionaires today are Millennials. While another study puts this figure at 19%, the fact remains these percentages represent significant numbers of potential investors. Advisors recognize this: in a recent survey of advisors we conducted, 57% of respondents said attracting younger investors is a priority for their firm. However, many advisors are still struggling to achieve this, with 56% of advisors in the same survey stating that attracting younger investors is challenging for their firm.

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Artificial intelligence capabilities are transforming already powerful marketing technologies to enable efficient, effective marketing at unprecedented scale. Combined with access to troves of behavioral and transactional data, these developments enable brands to provide a seamless client experience with highly individualized interactions and recommendations across devices. For asset management firms, our research finds that the biggest gap chief marketing officers identify in taking advantage of the marketing stacks and data in which they have already invested is a lack of experience in data analytics and marketing technology.

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Offering the option of online chat makes it easier for advisors to do business with your firm. In fact, 3 in 10 advisors say that if funds and performance are comparable, they’re more likely to do business with a firm that offers the convenience of online chat. Putnam Investments and Invesco now offer live chat options to advisors on their websites. None of the firms we evaluated for the 2018 Digital Engagement Leaders have gone live with an automated chatbot yet. But several have been testing them, because these AI-powered communication tools allow firms to offer even more convenience.

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Knowing whether or not advisors have discretion to make investment decisions uncovers interesting differences in behavior and practices that help asset managers build more relevant and engaging digital experiences.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Each fall, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting holds its annual Distribution and National Accounts Roundtables. At these events, leaders across the industry come together to share ideas, challenges and issues that are top of mind for their firms. Although these events aren’t focused on marketing topics specifically, marketing and distribution are becoming increasingly intertwined. As such, it’s extremely helpful for asset management marketing executives to understand how distribution leaders are thinking about the business. This article summarizes four themes from the recent roundtable discussions we believe are particularly relevant for digital marketers in the asset management industry.

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Fund performance is a key element in an advisor’s investment decisions. While other elements such as portfolio fit trump performance, no one is going to choose a fund that has regularly underperformed its peers. To advisors, how transparent a firm is about product performance is a good proxy for how trustworthy an asset manager is.

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It’s time to shatter the myth that has risen around long-form content. In a race to make content shorter and easily digestible — based on the faulty assumption that advisors won’t take the time to consume lengthy content — what makes for interesting reading is being eliminated. At a recent conference, Andrew Davis reminded content marketers to “quit blaming the goldfish.”

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Our research finds that integrating a great digital experience with sales contacts can lift advisor gross sales. Leading firms make it easy to contact the sales team online.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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With industry forces changing how advisors make investment decisions, it’s becoming increasingly important for sales and marketing teams to identify which advisors have discretion. Advisors with discretion individually select the asset allocation and majority of investment options for their clients themselves. Advisors who do not have discretion outsource the majority of investment decisions to models or an internal investment manager. Our annual research on What Advisors Do Online (WADO) revealed that distinct differences in online behavior and preferences are emerging between advisors who have discretion and those who do not.

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Since the dawn of time, humans have told stories. Storytelling predates written language. It served, and continues to serve, as a fundamental means of forming connections.

Research by Google, which partnered with Motista and CEB (now Gartner), found that 50% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy if they can form an emotional connection with a brand. Storytelling might just be the key to that emotional connection. Stories allow us to motivate, inspire and persuade. If those are your communication goals, creating a story is in order.

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Have you received an email asking if you want to place an order for the product you just studied on a website? Or received a appointment reminder text as you pass by a vendor’s conference booth? You’ve probably used Google’s Smart Reply feature to respond to an email. Has Google’s Smart Compose helped you to draft an email?

These are just small examples of how artificial intelligence (AI) is making day-to-day interactions easier and more relevant.

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With insights on your competitive position with regard to fees and expenses as well as performance ratings, marketers can target advisors with specific product marketing campaigns to develop business with new advisors, increase share of business with current clients, and retain assets with different strategies.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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More than 80% of advisors say the digital experiences they have with a firm influences their perception of the firm’s capabilities, as our annual survey of financial advisors, conducted in association with Horsesmouth, shows. Does age matter?

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After more than two decades of digital initiatives, marketing and compliance at some firms are still at loggerheads when it comes to implementing an engaging digital strategy. Our 2017 survey of CMOs found that 15.8% of firms still cite working with compliance as a top challenge and obstacle in implementing digital initiatives.

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Expectations of younger advisors, and what asset managers provide digitally, are different than their older counterparts. This month’s infographic uncovers specific ways firms can engage advisors under 40, specifically in making it easy to do business with their firm and in being transparent.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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The current investment climate is challenging for active asset managers, to say the least. Money continues to flow into passive investments, while active mutual funds and ETFs continue to lose ground. Although this data may seem discouraging, leading active managers (and strategies) are still delivering results and garnering flows, and there are still strong arguments to be made in defense of active management. However, with the prevailing winds blowing strongly in favor of passive, active managers must work harder than ever to convince advisors and investors of the value of active strategies. Digital marketers have a critical role to play, by ensuring their firm’s online presence clearly shows how the investment team adds value and builds a compelling case for active management. In this article, we address five key elements that digital marketers should address to position their firm’s active strategies online.

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RIAs are less likely than other types of advisors to prefer face-to-face meetings to engage with both new managers and those with whom they already do business. This month’s infographic highlights some of these differences in engagement preferences and provides tips on how to adapt marketing approaches for RIAs accordingly.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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The cost of fund ownership can be a murky area for investors. While a well-performing fund appears to be an ideal investment, the underlying fees and expenses may negate many of the gains. Advisors are often hard-pressed to fully explain how much fees and expenses impact returns, due to lack of clarity and detail on fees and expenses.

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"About Us" sections are among the most popular pages on corporate websites, but the content often seems to be an afterthought. Good ones help humanize and differentiate the firm while building credibility and trust. But too many asset managers think that a statement about being customer-focused and showcasing the number of offices they have around the world will do that.

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In our recent article on "Using Business Intelligence on Influence, Value, and Opportunity to Optimize Sales and Marketing Strategies", we discussed the need for Business Intelligence teams to collaborate with Sales and Marketing organizations to produce insights about influence-ability, opportunity, and value to modernize sales efforts when deciding who to cover and how to cover them.

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Our research shows that digital experiences play an essential role in an advisor’s decision journey to do business with a firm. This infographic shows what is important to advisors from building awareness to earning consideration and doing business with an asset manager.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Our research shows only about half of advisors can be influenced by sales teams. According to our Advisor Insights, in association with Horsesmouth, the remaining half use models to make investment and allocation decisions. It is essential that sales and marketing efforts make the distinction between advisors with discretion (those who can be influenced) and without discretion (cannot be influenced) to craft messages and develop marketing material that resonates with them.

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We conduct a number of surveys of advisors, distribution and marketing executives, and senior managers in asset management over the course of every year. Developing survey questions that yield useful information is essential, because the findings are integral to the research reports and articles we produce for our clients.

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Despite predictions a few years ago that “email is dead,” it’s actually quite alive and well, with more than an estimated 281 billion messages sent and received globally daily. Email is the most frequent type of contact asset managers have with advisors — and the one they are most receptive to. So it’s critical to maximize opportunities to communicate by email.

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Our research indicates an increasing number of advisors are working in teams alongside other advisors as well as members with different functions. This infographic sheds light on the composition of teams and how to identify different members that interact with your firm.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Marketing technology is an $82.3 billion global business that asset managers have certainly supported as they put robust marketing tech decks in place. While chief marketing officers (CMOs) are not outspending chief information technology officers, they are making long-term investments that will allow marketing to expand its abilities to deliver greater value to the organization and more efficiently and effectively move clients and prospects along the decision journey.

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Due diligence/research pros told us they need far more details than most asset managers provide on their website. As with institutional clients, the most important attributes they look for when evaluating funds to add to recommended lists or models are the “Four Ps” of Performance (specifically, the risk/return profile), Process, People, and Philosophy.

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As home office relationships become more powerful, the National Account teams of many asset managers are naturally becoming more important as well. But at most firms, a lack of coordination between National Accounts, National Sales, and Marketing makes them ineffective at supporting these strategic relationships.

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Our research finds that marketing technology skills and experience are a significant gap for asset managers as they continue to invest in building and optimizing marketing tech stacks. This infographic spells out some of our findings and offers tips for firms looking to improve their capabilities.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Cybercrime costs the financial services industry approximately $18.28M per year, more than any other industry, according to Accenture. To battle this risk, firms are increasing IT budgets. But when it comes to one of the biggest threats from cybercrime – damage to the firm’s brand – organizational silos may introduce more risk than the C-suite would be comfortable with.

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One day, it’s business as usual. The next, a poorly worded tweet, breaking news story, or activist group puts your company on the social media firing line. What’s new is the growing number of companies in the past year that have been completely blindsided by organized activist campaigns and angry customers for their indirect relationship to the news event, such as where a firm advertises and which organizations it has a relationship with. Even the battle over the type of investments an asset manager should hold has moved from more rational debates in shareholder meeting boardrooms to boycott threats, in the wake of related news events.

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Influencer marketing has gained quite a bit of traction in the B2C world, where 48% of B2C influencer programs are ongoing. But influencer marketing is maturing much more slowly among B2B organizations, with only 11% invested in ongoing programs.

As asset managers look to more innovative ways to increase engagement, differentiate their brands and products, and build credibility, influencer marketing represents a way to drive value throughout the advisor’s decision journey.

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To retain good margins, sales must find ways to increase production or decrease the cost of sales. According to our Productivity Insights research, asset managers allocated on average $84,000 for T&E expenses per external wholesaler. While there are many ways asset managers could better position themselves to target advisors to increase organic growth, they can also leverage technology to decrease the costs of selling.

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Our research has found that Marketing, National Sales, and National Accounts teams move in different directions at most firms. But a few leading firms identify and prioritize distributors where Marketing and National Accounts can jointly influence business development. Read more to see how firms are analyzing and targeting relationships with distributors and advisors.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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As Millennials become more prevalent in both the workforce and the consumer population, we learn more and more how different they are from other generations. The very nature of work, employment, and consumerism is changing. What does this mean for asset manager sales and marketing teams as Millennial financial advisors (those under age 35) become the norm?

According to our research, the average age of a financial advisor is 56 with just three percent of advisors under age 35, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that by 2024, one in four workers will be 55 years or older, a 20% increase from 2014. So we’ll see an increase in both younger and older workers, meaning firms that want to appeal to their entire customer base will need strategies that appeal...

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With popular events like Morningstar’s Investment Conference US 2018, Bob Veres’ Insider’s Forum, and Schwab IMPACT 2018 on the horizon, it’s a good time to revisit your firm’s strategy to maximize the investment of time and resources that conferences require.

Whether it’s getting leads from the trade show booth, positioning the firm as an expert in a particular area, or fostering the relationship with existing clients, conferences offer the opportunity to sprint toward multiple objectives in a short span of time. Of course, every other asset manager is trying to do the same. But three strategies can help achieve your goals and help your firm stand out in a positive way:

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Advisors don’t look for new products in a vacuum. They look for a fund to fill a specific hole in a client’s portfolio or model. Performance is important, but so is finding a fund with a manager they trust to reliably deliver the results they expect.

Clearly communicating the portfolio manager’s investment philosophy and process helps inspire that trust and confidence, because it helps the advisor understand how the fund will behave relative to other funds. In fact, our research finds that nearly 54% of advisors are more likely to choose funds from a firm that makes it easy to learn about its investment philosophy and process online, when products and performance are comparable.

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Our most recent analysis concludes that, on average, a larger portion of traffic comes to asset manager websites through smartphones. A significant shift in the source of mobile traffic has also occurred. Read more to understand the details of this shift and what firms should prioritize in the mobile experience.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Bounce rates are a bit of a chameleon in the world of metrics. Bounce rates can indicate engagement. Or the metric can be a sign that visitors are not finding what they expect, with their quick disappearance underscoring their disappointment.

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If Google has powered your website’s search functionality, you probably know that it is no longer available as of April 1, 2018. Google’s announcement that it was sun-setting Google Site Search this year is a good reminder to revisit why site search is important and what to look for as you evaluate your current capabilities and perhaps, look for a replacement.

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Asset managers have responded to the growing interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues the last few years with a slew of products. In 2016, approximately 20% of total assets under professional management in the US – or $8.72 trillion – were invested in ESG portfolios, a staggering 33% increase since 2014. European investors have long thought of ESG factors as important qualitative measures for assessing a company’s long-term health and growth prospects, and it seems the US is finally following suit.

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We recently uncovered trends in asset manager website engagement metrics – they are on the way up since 2016. This infographic takes a look at general and smartphone website bounce rates and page views, offering tips for firms to improve them.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Lead scoring provides the means for marketing and sales to objectively rank a lead while also determining where the advisor is in the decision journey.

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It’s important to keep up with technology because it is increasingly more significant to business, and imagining the benefits that technology could have for our businesses can be exciting. But before a firm puts energy and resources into block chains and deep-thinking simulations, shouldn’t we ensure we have optimized the technology of today?

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Strong digital engagement helps differentiate a firm from competitors by communicating the right value proposition to the right advisor at the right time — in a scaled way — much like sales has been doing on a more limited, one-on-one basis.

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Our recent evaluation of the digital experiences that asset managers provide advisors not only uncovered who the leaders are, but some low-hanging fruit in terms of gaps that most firms need to tackle.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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B2B companies like asset managers are awash in a sea of sameness. And in our industry, the products are too. If company names and logos were removed from websites, would advisors be able to identify which firm it is, simply by reading the copy?

Portfolio managers and thought leaders are a major differentiator among asset managers. Yet almost five years after discussing how portfolio manager bios can be used to enhance credibility and trust, asset managers are still not fully leveraging them. In fact, just finding the bios on most asset managers’ websites is a challenge, as they’re often only offered on a product page. And then, the bios are merely a rote listing of titles and degrees.

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When it comes to choosing products, performance is important. But advisors don’t look for new products in a vacuum — they look to fill a specific hole in a portfolio or model. So the impact of the fund’s risk characteristics, allocations, and holdings on the rest of the portfolio is also important. Understanding what they can expect, and having confidence the portfolio manager will consistently deliver on that, matters too.

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In interviews with BI executives at asset managers who lead the industry in business intelligence (BI) we learned that there are three keys to having an effective BI program. BI leaders must have a seat at the decision-making table — positioned at a level within the organization where they can have influence over strategy. The BI team should be organized based on functional competencies to fully leverage the expertise of BI staff. Elements of the program that can be done externally should be outsourced to reduce costs, increase quality, and free up data and BI resources to focus on their areas of expertise.

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Were you among the many who received an Amazon Echo for the holidays? Amazon reported record-breaking sales of this popular voice-assisted device. Research shows that more than 35.6 million people will use voice assistance at least once a month in 2018 and nearly 3 of 4 will be using Alexa. In the asset management industry, our 2017 survey of advisors, in association with Horsesmouth, finds that 34.5% of advisors already use Alexa for personal use. Albeit slowly, voice assistance is making its way into the professional life of advisors as well, as 1-in-7 advisors already uses a voice-activated personal assistant like Alexa to get news updates, manage their calendars, and listen to...

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Nearly one-half of advisors are using voice assistants (such as Alexa, Siri, Google, and Cortana) for personal or business. This month, we reveal the top three ways advisors are using such assistants for business and offer practical ways that asset managers can take advantage of this and help advisors.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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Despite the fears that automation will eliminate jobs, marketers and salespeople shouldn’t be overly concerned. Automation will not displace most sales and marketing roles, but it will change them, and enable the people filling them to focus on strategic and complex initiatives.

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Advancements in marketing technology are accelerating at an unprecedented pace. Combined with access to troves of behavioral and transactional data, these are enabling brands to provide highly individualized interactions and recommendations.

For example, offers change on ads that are displayed to us based on the action we just took online. Following a website visit a few moments ago, the copy in the email that was sent this morning changes dynamically as we actually open it this afternoon. But the gap between the digital experiences financial advisors have with asset managers versus everywhere else is growing ever wider. Aging infrastructure and a lack of urgency in cleaning up and integrating data sources are holding firms back to the point where catching up becomes ever more challenging.

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Advancements in marketing technology are accelerating at an unprecedented pace. Combined with access to troves of behavioral and transactional data, these are enabling brands to provide highly individualized interactions and recommendations.

For example, offers change on ads that are displayed to us based on the action we just took online. Following a website visit a few moments ago, the copy in the email that was sent this morning changes dynamically as we actually open it this afternoon. But the gap between the digital experiences financial advisors have with asset managers versus everywhere else is growing ever wider. Aging infrastructure and a lack of urgency in cleaning up and integrating data sources are holding firms back to the point where catching up becomes ever more challenging.

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Our research for What Advisors Do Online shows that a good digital experience can tip the scales for advisors in choosing one asset manager over others, when products are comparable. This month’s infographic illustrates three things the majority of advisors value when evaluating asset managers.

With Digital Insights, SS&C Research, Analytics, and Consulting analyzes website and email data from asset managers to help firms benchmark their digital initiatives against industry peers. Monthly infographics provide actionable insights and recommendations to help e-business teams and digital marketers stay ahead of the curve. Participating clients also have access to a data portal, powered by Tableau®, that enables interactive filtering, analysis, and benchmarking of website and email initiatives. Firms can evaluate the competitiveness of their digital efforts against an array of performance metrics.

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