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Using BI to identify actionable opportunities
BI professionals from our client community (29 individuals from 16 asset managers) came together for a Roundtable event to discuss how they’re activating data for marketing and distribution. Panelists shared their approaches to evaluating data sources, leveraging analytics tools, and identifying actionable opportunities for their teams. We also sent out a survey after the event with questions about sources and tools and a small but interesting subset of our client community, responded. Here’s what we learned from the event and survey.Marketing agility pro tips for asset managers
Earlier this year, we held a client roundtable of 28 asset managers who shared insights into how they have adapted over the last year. An underlying theme that surfaced from that discussion was agility. Being able to quickly pivot to adjust and apply resources to fulfill changing needs for digital content and communication, virtual meetings and events, and advertising and media coverage, were essential to reach their audiences. Marketing professionals are constantly striving to get the most impact with the resources they have available. We went to trusted asset manager marketing partners: Leibowitz Branding & Design, Sondhelm Partners, SunStar Strategic, and Synthesis to understand how they’ve been helping asset managers successfully adapt. This interview-style blog post shares fundamental questions and the marketing partner’s answers. Read on to learn how you can be more agile in your marketing efforts while focusing on and sharing your expertise.
Data considerations ensure a smoother transition in mergers & acquisitions
You wake up in the morning, scroll through the list of emails that filled your inbox, and scan the headlines. Another announcement of a merger & acquisition that’s being explored or executed. This doesn’t come as a surprise. PwC’s Mutual Fund Outlook notes an expectation that up to 20% of today’s mutual fund firms will be bought or eliminated by 2025. Financial Times article, M&A in 2021: asset management primed for consolidation, explains how we’ll see more of these in 2021 alone. As fewer players get bigger, so does their data and the colossal task of bringing it together to activate it for distribution. In this article, we share data considerations that will help you (as the acquirer) have a smoother transition with your next merger & acquisition.
ETF data – Right-sizing a strategy for gaining intelligence
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are gaining popularity as passive, low-cost, high-performance investment vehicles. While being traded on the secondary market delivers accessibility to investors, you lose transparency on who owns your products. Data providers supply some clues, but challenges arise when you combine multiple sources to gain visibility. In this article, we unpack ETF data—highlighting the benefits and complexities of each source—and recommend three strategies based on where you are in the ETF market. The most effective strategy will right-size the number of sources balanced against the cost of combining them.Asset Manager Marketing: Pandemic lessons inform future strategies
Think about where we were in March of 2020. At that time, there was a lot of uncertainty about what the next nine months would look like. Many questions and many changes were to come. Based on a recent survey of and Roundtable with our asset manager clients, we may be looking at another 9-12 months where we face similar marketing conditions. What learned lessons can we apply to make the next twelve months more valuable than the last?
Products on platforms? How to solve the visibility problem
Depending on your business you may have multiple products that you are selling directly and through different channels and platforms. Bringing non-Mutual Fund data, such as SMA, UMA, CIT, UCIT, and more, into your ecosystem may present a visibility problem. Let’s look at SMAs (Separately Managed Accounts) as an example, illustrate where the problems arise, and share an approach for how to solve them.
Asset managers overcome data struggles for distribution wins
Get the data right first, then build your distribution strategy and infrastructure around it. That was the key theme from a panel I moderated at The SME Forum last month. The topic was inspired by Ignites’ article Data Bytes: Sales Teams Struggle to Use Analytics and panelists shared insights into their progress and some obstacles they have encountered in the pursuit of a data-driven distribution strategy. After having some time to reflect on their insights, here are three approaches asset managers are using to get the data right and use it effectively in distribution.
4 years later: Moneyball lessons learned
In September 2016, we published a post: Journey to 2020: Asset Managers using Moneyball lesson to grow. Now, just over 4 years later, we revisited the themes discussed in that article to share what we’ve seen and learned.