By all rights, e-delivery should be a win-win. The cost-efficiency benefit to the investment company is clear, and investment company marketers have long tried to persuade shareholders of the benefits to them. E-delivery (whose very name suggests how long this movement has been underway) offers certain, fast and secure delivery, it’s convenient and it’s good for the environment. But no matter the size of the sweepstakes we run to coax shareholders into turning off the paper, they aren’t budging.

The majority of brokerage, employer-sponsored retirement plan, life insurance, mutual fund and variable annuity firms report less than 10% adoption of e-delivered quarterly statements, annual
reports, prospectuses, tax documents, transaction confirmations and other client communications. This is according to Dalbar, Inc.’s 2011 national e-Delivery Benchmarks study.

In its current form, e-delivery just isn’t a compelling offer. Some would go so far as to say that it’s a user experience that’s inferior to receiving mail in a physical mailbox. (I know, that’s like a dagger straight to the heart, right?) Surely, ye old mailbox can be improved upon.

The Mailbox As Aggregator

I followed a tweet yesterday from NICSA president Theresa Hamacher to a 9-minute video that offers some hope. It’s a Traders Magazine interview on a SIFMA conference site with Broadridge Vice President Rob Krugman providing an update on a Broadridge/Pitney Bowes project called Volly.

This initiative proposes a “digital mail” solution to serve as a virtual mailbox for all electronically delivered statements. Its premise: When the industry seized upon e-delivery’s efficiency, we overlooked the value of the physical mailbox as an aggregator.

E-delivery—which requires multiple firms sending individual e-delivered links to documents randomly and one at a time to email in-boxes—introduces inconvenience and complexity for clients. That’s the opposite of what digital typically does for a process.

A Krugman blog post on the Volly site elaborates, “On average, consumers have approximately 20 different relationships for which they receive periodic communications (bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, utility bills, brokerage accounts, insurance, etc.). In a traditional world, this information is delivered to a single mailbox that the consumer checks daily. E-delivery requires that same consumer to check their email, remember one of 20 different usernames and passwords, log on to the corporation’s website, hope the email does not end up in a junk folder, and then view their statements and bills. Arghhhhhh!”

‘Digital Mail’

Volly is a technology solution that has been circulating as a concept for a while. CNBC personality Jim Cramer raved about it in the course of a corporate earnings interview with Pitney Bowes President and CEO Murray Martin a year ago. The timetable seems to have slipped some. Martin said we’d see something in 2011, and in this May interview Krugman says the full-scale launch will be next January.

(I should say that I have no information about Volly beyond what I heard in this video and read on the Volly site. I’m simply intrigued by its aspiration to serve up e-delivery 2.0 and because digital mail could be another communication channel for the digital marketer. Do you have any Volly or other e-delivery insight? Please—comment below.)

The image above is a screenshot because the video isn’t embeddable. Before you head over to the interview on the SIFMA site, here are a few Krugman lines to listen for and their time markers:

4:58 “By pushing content to a single location, you have a network effect. Rather than Firm A, Firm B and Firm C each spending several million dollars trying to migrate their client base to electronic delivery and doing so rather ineffectively, because they’re not getting the returns they’d like, we’re able to have all those firms work together.”

6:02 “Let’s be honest, there’s no differentiation in e-delivery. Where there’s differentiation is when you open the envelope, if you will, and what these new services enable firms to do is treat this simply as a new channel and almost create apps. That’s a good way to think about it. If I’m Firm A, I can introduce functionality and provide functionality that builds around my statements and confirms that I’m sending out to really differentiate myself and who I am and enhance the relationship rather than it simply being a regulatory distribution I’m forced to do.”

7:30 “We should see 7%-8% of all [not just investment company] transaction documents migrate to digital mail within the first two years…in several European countries greater than 90% of households have signed up for digital mailboxes.”

8:26 “We’re very limited in what we can do in e-delivery. In e-delivery we send out links, we don’t want to send out too much information in it. In some of these new channels, we can basically integrate a statement with a financial advisor message with an upsell message.”

• In the content that’s being shared
• In prompting people to talk back
• In engaging in dialogue

1. In The Content That’s Being Shared

There’s nothing wrong with using Twitter’s 140 characters to promote the availability of content on a Website or an upcoming television appearance. It happens all day and all night on Twitter. But, when you consider the mobile user who’s checking on his or her stream while on the go, you realize the added value of using the tweet to deliver information.

$1.8 Bil State of Illinois offered this week: A2/A+(at spreads 100 to 185 over a generic AAA – wide …but its refinancing 5%+)

— Fixedology (@Fixedology) April 30, 2012

Municipal bonds issued in April totaled $33.64 billion. YTD total of $112.2 billion is greater than 2011, but less than ’07, ’08, ’09, ’10.

— Rochester Funds (@RochesterFunds) May 3, 2012

The above tweets are examples of how two accounts build followership by providing pithy, sometimes real-time updates on a niche subject. Northern Trust Investments started tweeting municipal bond supply/demand stats within its @Fixedology account, @RochesterFunds did the same and now those who care about the fixed-income market have an embarrassment of riches on Twitter. These are the types of tweets that are regularly re-tweeted by media accounts @Cate_Long (Reuters) and @BobBrinker (Brinker Fixed Income Advisor).

For more examples of self-contained tweets, see @Advisor Shares, @PIMCO when the account starts the tweet with Gross’ or El-Erian’s name, and accounts headed by an asset management firm personality (including @Wesbury, @MarkMobius, @MarioGabelli).

2. In Prompting People To Talk Back

For some firms, the risk of participating on Twitter is that any tweet can prompt a response from real, live people in real-time. (And, it’s for this reason that Customer Service needs representation on any implementation team.) Yet others regularly pose questions and try to encourage interaction. See @iSharesETFs and @MarioGabelli, for example.

On National Teachers Day, we’re wondering who taught you how to manage your finances?bit.ly/JX8vo0

— iShares (@iSharesETFs) May 9, 2012

Kentucky Derby… Owner is CHDN…( Churchill Downs) … Earnings call revealed interesting dynamics…. Review it and tell me if u agree

— Mario Gabelli (@MarioGabelli) May 8, 2012

Based on my unscientific but consistent observation, it seems that people are becoming more comfortable engaging tweeting asset managers.

The tweets are not always going to be on-topic, as I’ve noted before. But when the response is on-topic, expect to be held accountable for the tweet to an extent that rarely happens in real life. The Twittersphere is different than the protected environment that our executives, investment strategists, economists, portfolio managers are accustomed to. When a muckety-muck makes an appearance in real life, it has been Marketing’s (and Sales’) job to be sure all goes as planned. Speaking engagements, question-and-answer sessions and, to some extent, interviews can be controlled.

Well, not so much on Twitter.

With almost 69,000 followers, the PIMCO account enjoys a lot of re-tweeting. Overall, my sense is that people who respond largely agree with the views expressed. But, get a load of the negative response to last week’s @PIMCO tweet (which itself was atypical in that it was a random comment not really about investing or the markets). The $119.9 million reference was to the purchase price of Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream.

Gross: $119.9 million could be used to help people as opposed to boost an ego. Scream…

— PIMCO (@PIMCO) May 3, 2012

This tweet was re-tweeted 37 times, according to Topsy, but quite a few others teed-off on what was said. I show a few of the choice comments below. See how the tweeters took the tweet, considered it against what they know about Gross (including the one account that dug up a link to a report about Gross buying Jennifer Anniston’s house). Can you imagine a real-life setting where such unvarnished (but informed) comments would have been directed at Bill Gross? It wouldn’t happen. But that doesn’t mean that people wouldn’t have been thinking the same thing.

@PIMCO Re: Scream. Did you stop taking a paycheck beyond $40K and move into a modest condo. Otherwise, you might sound a little hypocrtical.

— Jim S (@Chevredor) May 3, 2012

@PIMCO the proceeds are going towards building an art museum.Last I heard, the arts have helped humanity since the petroglyph.

— Brad Singer (@azstockguy) May 3, 2012

@PIMCO bill you had your dalliance with super rare stamps!

— david (@stepehn) May 3, 2012

@PIMCO Mr Gross how do you use your fees? Someone ask you. Scream

— antonio banda (@abandar) May 3, 2012

GMAFB Bill read.bi/oUyQLH RT @PIMCO: Gross: $119.9 million could be used to help people as opposed to boost an ego. Scream

— fed_speak (@fed_speak) May 3, 2012

@PIMCO lets not get carried away Gross, you tore down a 20mm plus house to sell the empty lot.

— Mike (@mschuchm) May 3, 2012

As asset manager/public interactions evolve, two questions for you: Would you prefer to send milquetoast tweets that nobody cares about or tweets that stimulate conversation? What do you gain and what do you lose from being on a platform where it’s not possible to shield your business leaders from dissenting commentary?

3. In Engaging In Dialogue

Dialogue along the lines of “Thanks for the re-tweet” and “You’re welcome” is fairly common among asset managers and other Twitter accounts. But, we’re starting to see some actual exchanges.

One of the most riveting dialogues happened between First Trust’s chief economist Brian Wesbury over a period of three days. “Oh no, he didn’t,” I said to myself at one point while watching the back and forth.

We pick up the action last Thursday evening when @Wesbury, one of the most natural and prolific tweeters, sent a tweet commenting that “Cutting government spending, and therefore boosting resources in private sector, is a stimulant to the economy.” It caught the attention of entrepreneur Zach Weinberg. From Thursday to Saturday, @ZachWeinberg disagreed with Wesbury, sending 28 tweets to and about Wesbury and drawing other accounts in.

According to one tweet, he was persistent because “It’s just frustrating to see someone with that position using an argument that has 0 basis in reality. It’s harmful.”

The majority of Wesbury’s tweets are his thoughts (versus links to Web content), and he regularly responds to those who direct comments to him. But what was amazing last week and into the weekend were the 18 tweets he sent back to Weinberg, interspersed with other tweets he was sending.

Most of the tweets tried to convince Weinberg (“Demand doesn’t create growth, supply does. Real entrepreneurs invent new products where no demand exists. Facebook? Twitter?”). However, after Weinberg started sending increasingly provocative tweets that questioned his background, etc., Wesbury began to push back.

Finally, he signed off with this tweet.

@zachweinberg Zach. Going to bed. You need to study economics. I wrote two books, or read Smith, Mises, Hayek, Bastiat, Friedman, Hazlitt

— Brian Wesbury (@wesbury) May 5, 2012

While it lasted, the conversation was, as this account noted, entertaining to watch unfold.

Stop what you are doing and follow @zachweinberg and @wesbury conversation on Twitter. ECON 101 at its best. #fridaynightentertainment

— Payam Dastmalchi (@payamd) May 5, 2012

But what was all that, exactly? Obviously, none of it was scripted. First Trust has a Twitter account but took no part in these tweets. I see it as a revelation of Wesbury as a populist who’s willing to be accessible via Twitter. This is not typical behavior of a representative of an asset manager firm, let alone an asset manager chief economist. He was willing to mix it up in the interest of being understood. I wonder how Wesbury’s availability on Twitter benefits the firm and the economist’s understanding of life outside the dismal science.

Not all the dialogue has to be contentious and I’ll end here with a sweet encounter I had with @Vanguard_Group last week. Vanguard tweeted about its birthday. The thought of the low-cost provider celebrating its birthday tickled my fancy so I sent a tweet and moved on with my day. In a response, Vanguard tweeted back this photo of their version of partying.

@RockTheBoatMKTG You’ve got us pegged! Thanks for the bday wishes! twitter.com/Vanguard_Group…

— Vanguard (@Vanguard_Group) May 1, 2012

Made me smile. It’s a low-risk demonstration that 1)there’s somebody behind this Twitter account 2)we can hear what you’re saying and 3)we’re not above improvising a little fun.

What also occurred to me after this exchange: Vanguard is an easy firm to interact with on Twitter because we all know what they stand for.

The net effect of these tweeting evolutions? If you work for a Just-Another-Global-Asset-Management-Firm-Offering-Breadth-And-Depth, you may need to dig deeper to differentiate yourself—via your positioning, your content and your people—if you hope to have an impact in an increasingly social setting.

Reminder: An easy way to follow asset manager tweets is to follow this Rock The Boat Marketing Twitter list. If your firm has a Twitter account and belongs on the list, just send me a note.

While fact-checking “the new normal,” I instinctively went to Wikipedia fully expecting there to be an entry tracking the origin of the phrase. But, there was nothing.

That’s a shame because “the new normal”—whose ubiquity eventually earned it the dubious distinction of being Bloomberg’s most overused phrase of 2009—is historically significant. History (and Wikipedia as the 21st century version of the history book) should credit PIMCO’s thought leaders for popularizing the expression used to describe the post-2008 economic environment. It is no less than “green shoots” and may be on par with “irrational exuberance,” both of which are memorialized on Wikipedia.

Factual Errors

A day or two after my “new normal” disappointment, Wikipedia came to mind again when a study reported that 60% of respondents to a Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) research project said Wikipedia articles about their companies contained factual errors.

That report prompted me to take a look at mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firms’ presence on Wikipedia. In May 2012, Wikipedia seems a bit passe, doesn’t it? But there’s no disputing its usefulness as a general reference site or its staying power as the eighth most visited Website in the United States, a function of its high search engine rankings. As shown below, Wikipedia averages 10 million U.S. visitors a day, according to Google Trends.

I approached my search for asset manager Wikipedia pages with dread, though, given where content on the site comes from. In the site’s own words: “Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous Internet volunteers who write without pay.” Contributors are discouraged from writing articles about themselves or organizations in which they hold a vested interest.

A lack of balance, bias and incomplete reporting can diminish the value of any article, Wikipedia recognizes, until “the crowd” working collaboratively eventually gets it right. But add to it the special sensitivities surrounding investment companies, investment products and performance claims, and things can get ugly.

In fact, the volunteers who write about asset managers tend to gravitate toward the firm’s number of funds (an ever-changing number, as we know), selective Lipper rankings (out of date in three months) and litigation.

A spot-check revealed several articles that need a makeover, updating or expansion. How does American Funds (whose page was last updated in July 2011) warrant just two paragraphs while Groupon’s page goes on and on? Other firms, including ProShares, the world’s largest manager of leveraged and inverse funds, have yet to get an entry.

What Would Rodney Do?

What to do? The choices: A. Do nothing and let a dated or marginalized entry reflect poorly on your brand B. Pursue Wikipedia as an opportunity to leverage the visibility and positioning that comes from presence on such a well-trafficked site.

What’s out there today seems to be a result of general apathy on the volunteers’ part. Not to go all Rodney Dangerfield on you, but it’s possible that contributors find other subjects more interesting to write about and edit than mutual fund or ETF companies.

To wit: When Lundquist, an Italian consultancy, in 2010 analyzed the Wikipedia pages of the Fortunate Global 500, guess what company was found to have “the most complete and easily consultable Wikipedia page”? Apple. Not much of a surprise, given the fervor of Apple’s brand fans.

Rather than wait for a group of contributors to take an interest and do a comprehensive job of telling an asset manager’s story, firms may have to be proactive.

Tread Carefully

Fixing the Wikipedia entry is a project for a PR professional to jump on, mindful of the very specific—some would even say prickly protocol—spelled out by Wikipedia.

And, you digital marketers may need to give your PR team a nudge. According to the PRSA research, 25% of their survey respondents (all public relations professionals) weren’t even familiar with their firm’s Wikipedia entry. Those who did seek to engage with Wikipedia reported poor results when they appealed to the editors for changes.

“Editing articles that you are affiliated with is not completely prohibited; you may do so as specified within the COI [Conflict of Interest] guideline, but you must follow our policies,” Wikipedia says on its site.

But, emboldened by the PRSA findings, PR professionals are calling for improved responsiveness from Wikipedia. Clicking on this link will download “Exploring the Problems with Wikipedia’s Editing Rule for Public Relations,” a .pdf written for the Institute for Public Relations by the director of the research.

There’s every indication that this work is going to take time and commitment. Once your entry—and possibly other entries reflecting what your company has contributed to the world—is accurate, checking Wikipedia belongs on a list with the rest of your communications to be verified and/or updated at least every quarter.

Overall, the 2012 survey reflects progress that’s along the lines of what we all have been seeing:

• Nine out of 10 advisors now have a social media profile or account—73% Facebook (vs. 71% in 2011), 62% LinkedIn (vs. 55% in 2011) and 27% Twitter (vs. 19% in 2011).
• More advisors are active—56% (vs. 51% in 2011) say they’re either moderate or extensive social media users.
• Access via a mobile device, which is the headline of the American Century announcement, has more than doubled.
• And, something that will please Google, 19% of advisors created Google+ accounts in the nine months that social network has been live.

But there is one finding that’s quite surprising. When asked “Which is the most important social media offering an asset manager can provide to you as a financial professional?”, advisors prioritized LinkedIn Groups, Advisor Communities and Facebook Pages higher than a blog or Twitter feed. If I were asked to rank these, I have to say that this is almost the reverse order that I might assign in terms of their specific usefulness to advisors.

And, this doesn’t quite jibe with what 60% of social media-using advisors say they want from asset managers, which is commentary and market insights. LinkedIn Groups and communities are supposed to be more about interaction than about commentary and market insights. There are other ways for asset managers to push, and for advisors to receive commentary and insights than via asset manager LinkedIn groups.

A Strong Showing For “Don’t Know”

In a telephone conversation yesterday afternoon, Jennifer Sussman, Director of Digital Engagement for American Century, took it in stride when I told her I was skeptical about the LinkedIn group top ranking.

For their part, she said, American Century was surprised that Facebook pages came in second as an answer to the question.

“We have never looked at Facebook as an advisor medium,” Sussman said. “When you’re on Facebook, you’re there for personal entertainment. As much as we love what we do, I don’t think personal entertainment is the class that we live in,” she said, laughing.

Yep, I question that, too. Seventeen percent of those surveyed said Facebook pages are the most important offering an asset manager can provide. Elsewhere, the study says that 2% of the advisors surveyed use Facebook for business use only and 18% use Facebook for business and personal. That would mean that of the total 20% of advisors who use Facebook for business, all but 3% believe prioritize Facebook pages from asset managers above all else.

Maybe the advisors just recognized LinkedIn and Facebook as the social sites they used the most, Sussman offered.

Or, perhaps it’s most telling, she said, that 18% of advisors said they “didn’t know” the most important thing asset managers could do for them in social media.

I agree with that. What advisors know for certain is what they’re up to, and the rest of the American Century research lays out what advisors are doing and thinking about their own level of social media participation. But, as the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously said, “Customers cannot tell you what they need.”

From What We Can See

Many asset managers have already considered the effort required to commit to building a LinkedIn group and decided against it. I wouldn’t let the 22% of 300 advisors surveyed change your minds about that.

Among the largest firms, I count five existing LinkedIn investment management discussion groups belonging to Black Rock, Fidelity, iShares, MFS and Putnam. And, after I published this post, I was reminded of a sixth—Balanced Advisor Sponsored by Janus Labs. (Many other asset managers have LinkedIn groups but for alumni.) From what we can all see from the group statistics available on each LinkedIn group page, I have my doubts that the return on starting a new group today would justify the work involved.

Asset manager LinkedIn Group membership is on the rise, likely in line with LinkedIn membership and growing awareness of LinkedIn among advisors. But engagement in terms of relevant discussions or comments is at a low level in the asset managers’ closed groups (Putnam and MFS). In the best cases, many of the discussions are started by the asset manager admin of the group. In groups that are open communities (Fidelity, BlackRock, iShares), self-promotional spam appears to be overwhelming the group’s intent.

It’s dangerous business to dismiss survey findings just because they’re surprising. So, what could explain advisors’ high LinkedIn Group ranking? A few possibilities, I suppose:

• That there are some asset managers running popular groups that don’t bear their names and therefore can’t be found via LinkedIn Search.
• That there are some closed asset manager LinkedIn groups that are hidden from the directory search and otherwise not visible to the rest of us but providing high value to the advisors who belong to them. …And that this research found those advisors active in the closed groups.
• That advisors are taking in the asset manager content posted to the LinkedIn groups and clicking through to asset managers’ sites, producing site traffic/benefit the rest of us can’t see. However, for whatever reason (Compliance? Shyness?), group members are not entering into conversations in the groups. If this possibility is true, these must be different advisors than join some of the truly active advisor-focused LinkedIn groups.

Just A Head Fake?

I lean toward the possibility that this answer is nothing more than a head fake, which is what you’re going to get every once in a while in a quickly evolving space.

As solid as it may be in providing a snapshot of social media usage, one survey isn’t going to serve as a substitute for the work you and your firm need to do to fully consider the social activities your clients will respond to. I may have belabored the point here because the 2011 American Century survey had such traction last year and I’d hate to think that the answers to this question would be institutionalized without a certain amount of critical thinking. Thriving in ambiguity requires self-sufficiency.

What are your thoughts on this and other insights from the latest research? Do you know of an asset manager who’s managing an effective advisor-focused LinkedIn Group strategy? Please—let us know below.

It offers a good discussion of what ExactTarget identifies as the six factors that frame consumer preferences for a channel:

• Content
• Immediacy
• Accessibility
• Privacy
• Formality
• Initiation (the channel where the consumer initiated communication, a factor that ExactTarget says has the power to trump the other factors)

15% Prefer Text Financial Alerts

And, the report goes on to provide research on which channels consumers prefer for various types of communications.

Most relevant to financial services marketers is the change in attitude toward receiving financial alerts via SMS or text messaging. From 5% in 2008, 15% of consumers now would prefer to receive financial alerts via SMS over any other channel. Nearly one out of every four Gen Xers say they’d prefer financial alerts by text. That’s up from just 6% four years ago. (But see how Gen Y in 2012 likes its financial alerts by email, even more so than the general population.)

2012 Preferred Channels For Financial Alerts 

2008 Preferred Channels For Financial Alerts 

The majority of “financial alerts” via text are banking alerts. In a quick spot-check of asset manager sites, it looks as if only the brokerage units of Fidelity and T. Rowe Price offer text alerts. Most of them are transaction-related, but note that Fidelity’s long menu of options includes investment commentary and fund event items, too.

Hmm. It’s bad enough to see asset manager tweets announcing the availability of a fund shareholder report (sadly, a few are doing that). I can’t imagine receiving a text to that effect. But a text that a favorite money manager was about to appear on CNBC? That could make sense and would be better delivered via text than email.

And that’s the point of this ExactTarget work—the synching up of granular communications to appropriate channels, now that we have this plentiful array.

Push Notifications That Aren’t Too Pushy

The other piece of the survey that interested me was its inclusion of push notifications on mobile apps. Only 2% of the very youngest consumers prefer them for financial alerts.

On Day 1 with my first-generation iPad two years ago, a sound notification scared the heck out of me and ever since I’d made a point of systematically turning all app notifications off. But slowly, I’ve been allowing some on my phone and iPad: Chicago Blackhawks scores, flash sales announcements from a nearby store, my Stitcher app pushed me the random breaking news that Whitney Houston died.

I’m warming to notifications because the ones I allow help me in a better way than any other channel does. And, I make a distinction between the type of notification I’ll tolerate on my phone (where they’re always intrusive) versus on the iPad. Based on this focus group of one, I wonder if the next few years will bring the same kind of adoption reported this year with SMS.

Of all of the asset manager iPad apps that I’ve downloaded (see a recent review), only Legg Mason and T. Rowe Price appear to be using notifications today. Here, too, I think notifications can be used for good, as a way for an app to reach out to the user and subtly call attention to itself and its new content. Last year, Localytics reported that 25% of app users download an app and never return to it again. A notification can keep an app from languishing. The Legg Mason notifications, which you can see in this partial screenshot from my iPad, impart information without getting in the way.

With more adoption and maybe a tad more user education about how to control notifications and with some common sense on your part about what’s push-worthy, alerts and notifications may be worth your consideration, particularly for financial advisor segments. What do you think?

Three asset manager iPad apps have launched in the last few weeks. Since it’s been almost a year since I blogged about an iPad app (PIMCO’s), I thought I’d take a look at how the state of the art has evolved, as demonstrated by the apps from OppenheimerFunds, Franklin Templeton Investments and RidgeWorth Investments.

I offer these notes from the perspective of an iPad user and of an investment thought leadership content consumer. I haven’t been involved in the planning, scoping, negotiating, cajoling and maybe even compromising that led to these apps’ launch. Bravo to all three firms involved—you shipped!

More Aggressive Promotion

If you read any of the financial advisor-ish Websites, you can’t have missed Oppenheimer’s ads in support of its Global Tracker app. It’s been reported that Oppenheimer spent $3 million on the advertising alone of this app, as an extension of its $12.4 million Globalize Your Thinking campaign.

Franklin Templeton also launched with a YouTube video for its app. And, it’s running a pay-per-click campaign. That’s more support than most earlier apps launched with.

Something else that’s different: As of this writing, all three apps are commanding front-and-center real estate on the home pages of their Websites. As it should be.

Device-aware Information

Each of these apps presents information or in a way that goes beyond what can be found on their sites—in other words, they provide a reason to use the app. (Example: In another March announcement, Fidelity launched a 2.1 iPad app that accommodates the depositing of an image of a check to a brokerage or IRA account—can’t do that on a Website!)

On its Website, Franklin Templeton offers limited filtering of its funds, but its iPad app really goes to town. This screenshot shows some of the options, including display by share class and display by Morningstar rating. Click on the fund to see more detail, including tabbed performance featuring peppy bar charts.

RidgeWorth’s app enables filtered views, as well, similar to what can be done on its Website. This screenshot is just the top of the screen, filtered to display only yields.

Both Franklin Templeton and RidgeWorth offer a way to customize views. There’s no email address or name prompt required to use either Franklin Templeton’s My Briefcase or RidgeWorth’s Favorites. A hard close on the apps will reset to default settings.

The Franklin Templeton app extends its Website’s My Cart functionality by enabling the saving of fund pages and video in addition to literature.

The public can register on the RidgeWorth site, and a logged-in user can save funds and favorites using the same terminology (My Funds and Favorites) as is used on the app. Imagine how cool it would be if information saved on the app was synchronized with information saved on the Website. NetFlix users who are accustomed to starting a movie on their TV and resuming viewing on their phone might in fact have that expectation. How many people (and who) would take advantage of the feature and is it worth the cost of development? That’s the fund company app roadmap challenge.

Oppenheimer lets a user click on a company name (navigated to from an alphabetical list) to learn which Oppenheimer funds invest in it. It’s the flipside of going to a fund and checking its top holdings. And, as mentioned in the video, the app provides far more information about a public company than you’d find on a fund site.

Navigation Required

Sometimes a user (especially a repeat user, which is what app publishers hope for) just wants to get somewhere. And yet, app-wide Search is not a capability of any of these three apps or really of most of the existing asset manager apps. Franklin Templeton does offer a limited Search (“fund keyword, symbol, number or…” on the Find a Fund screen). Oppenheimer could significantly add to the usefulness of the company information available by offering a ticker symbol search to its app.

But though I’ve seen and used Search on lots of other apps, I started to wonder if there was some technical hurdle that just too high. After looking around some, I did find an excellent search in an app from JP Morgan Asset Management in the UK.

Database-driven

These apps show off how the firms have structured both their fund performance data and communications assets. This is likely the result of years of planning—with data architecting work probably pre-dating the 2010 launch of the iPad—and it’s to the firms’ significant advantage.

Video And Audio Stand Alone

Including video and audio in an iPad app is de rigueur—don’t think of launching your app without. Next-generation versions of the Franklin Templeton and RidgeWorth apps might associate the availability of the video and audio files—available in one section of the app—with the fund profile available elsewhere in the app. Without such integration, these assets will be easily overlooked by the people who might be most interested in them.

Limited Communication Outside The App

As at every other business today, communicators at asset management firms are being stretched to think about communicating via mobile apps at the very same time they’re thinking about driving usage of their content offsite, including using social media. Far from being at odds, they complement one another.

Yet, these apps offer awkward to no support for email and they support practically no native social sharing—even of the YouTube videos that offer full sharing on the firms’ YouTube channels. The biggest nod to social is in the Franklin Templeton app, where the firm’s social profiles are listed as a sub-menu under Contact Us.

Maybe this is a sore subject between Marketing and Compliance. If so, I hate to pile on, but sharing is getting to be a natural reflex—readers are used to sharing what they read as they read. As a marketer, I’d worry about the usage (and value) of content that’s confined within an app. More important, I worry about delivering a user experience that many iPad app users will consider subpar. Millions did not sacrifice to set content free on the Web only to lock it back up again on mobile devices.

Data Updating

The process of updating data is much more obvious on these 1.0 apps—the Global Tracker displays a progress bar and there’s a delay every single time the app is opened—than when compared to other data-intensive apps. Hopefully, subsequent versions can display something while the updating takes place in the background.

So, have you checked out the latest apps? What are your thoughts?

No doubt, part of this thinking is shaped by uncertainty surrounding what FINRA or the SEC or their Compliance function will allow them to do. But part of it is also driven by the ego that drives all brands. Brands became accustomed to calling all the shots in Web 1.0. In the early days, only brands had the resources to establish domains and use them to communicate with sizable “audiences” online.

But, that was very much then. Today where does the meaningful interaction happen on the Web? It’s not on a brand (or investment product manufacturer) Web site. It’s where the people are—on social sites, on blogs, on media sites. It’s on sites where brands are typically welcome to sit at the table as guests but not as the masters of ceremonies.

I understand what the mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) company is struggling with. But if you believe, as I do, that there will be mounting pressure and business benefits for those that figure out how to be more social, you might be interested in an opportunity to participate in an online event planned for March 27.

Passionate Bloggers To Show The Roth IRA Some Love

The #RothIRAmovement is a groundswell being organized by registered investment adviser and CFP Jeff Rose. (My first version of this post identified Jeff as an LPL advisor but he since told me that his firm converted to RIA last year.) This is my third blog post mentioning Jeff. The first was when I discovered how high his blog was ranking for the “Roth IRA conversion” search term—and yes, that was by design. The second time was when he was part of a panel discussion on how advisors use social media.

Now, according to his March 6 blog post, he thinks young people lack education on Roth IRAs and he’s calling on personal finance bloggers to publish a post on March 27 “about why the Roth IRA is important, why [you] love it, and why every young investor needs to know more about it.”

As of yesterday, 109 bloggers had promised to participate. As you’ll see on his site, the first to comment was someone from “stakeholder management and mobilization” at USAA, but no other asset managers are on board yet, Jeff told me Friday.

Just a brief digression about the emerging personal finance blogging community. It’s intrigued me for about a year, and I kick myself for not going to their first Financial Blogger conference in Chicago last October, especially after I watched Jeff’s wrap-up video. Watch enough of the 11 minutes to pick up on the sense of community and the shared passion.

The scope of personal finance is broader than investments, of course, and there are more bloggers who aren’t financial advisors than are. But, on March 27 this passionate group is going to be focused on an investment product near and dear to mutual fund companies’ heart. (One-quarter of Roth IRAs are held at mutual fund companies, according to a November 2011 ICI report “The Role of IRAs in U.S. Households.”)

There’s no knowing the quality, depth and even accuracy of all of the content to be published on March 27. The same would never be said about a well funded Roth IRA awareness campaign orchestrated to take place on an asset manager microsite. But, this is a movement and it has the potential to make its own impact, including on financial advisors online. Don’t you want in on this?

Your Options?

You don’t have much time between now and March 27 (social stuff is always on somebody else’s schedule). Let’s think about a few options for you to join in.

If your ad-buying network targets personal finance blogs, you could heavy up on some of them. Ditto for a pay-per-click campaign, I suppose.

More meaningful would be if you found a way to take part in the conversation. You might:

• Time a Roth IRA-related blog post for that date—give props to the #RothIRAMovement and be sure to send a link to Jeff so he can add your post to his list
• Make a point of commenting on a few blog posts, remembering that you can’t control comments that follow
• Tweet about a few of the posts, remembering to use the #RothIRAmovement hashtag
• Follow the bloggers on Twitter (hey, Jeff, are you going to create a Twitter list?)
• Or find another way to show that you are listening and maybe learning

J.P. Morgan Funds’ Insights

The design of J.P. Morgan Funds’ recently launched Insights page fully embraces the value of the economic and market commentary the firm creates. This screenshot shows just part of the page, be sure to follow the link to see the range of content available in pdf, video and audio form.

Of special note: See the quick access provided via fly-out menus to synopses of sections of the weekly economic update. And, the Insights Finder dropdown menu in the right-hand corner offers content navigation by topic, media type or thought leader.

Legg Mason Thought Leadership

One of the features that users like so much about Pinterest, the social site that has grabbed lots of headlines this year, is its grid design. (See this Mashable post with the over-the-top headline “How Pinterest Is Changing Website Design Forever.”) You can see some similar design elements in the Legg Mason Global Thought Leadership site.

See how each element is a block, and the content is displayed in some order other than reverse chronological. The offer of an RSS feed based on the most popular content is also a twist on the more conventional chronological approach. However, in both cases, as a user, I’d like to see the date associated with each item. And, something was wrong with the RSS feed when I tried to subscribe yesterday.

iShares’ Fixed-Income Portfolio Builder

Putnam’s FundVisualizer raised the bar almost a year ago by accommodating the comparison of just about every mutual fund and ETF. For years, fund companies had kidded themselves about the utility of online portfolio tools that compared only the products they manufactured. Few if any advisors use just one “fund family.”

The iShares Fixed Income Portfolio Builder analyzes just iShares ETFs. In that respect, it’s limited. Still, you need to check out how this tool works, enabling users (it’s not behind an advisor log-in, by the way) to search for income solutions by selecting credit risk and duration.

Many marketers working on asset manager Websites give cursory attention to functionality supporting fixed-income funds. While nobody seemed to notice prior to 2008, advisors today have to work the fixed-income side of clients’ portfolios just as hard as the equity portion. What more could your site do to help?

Oppenheimer Funds/Rochester’s Digital Overview

Oppenheimer Funds/Rochester took its annual overview a different direction this year. The document starts on a Web page whose table of contents launches a digital edition.

I have been lukewarm about these in the past because they seemed to be more about the interactive technology than about what tended to be mostly static content. Also, other iterations I’ve seen have offered lots of information but all of it contained and within a proprietary format. My bias is always in favor of Web pages that search engines can spider and index and searchers can find.

In this Rochester example, a menu in the upper right-hand of each page enables Rochester’s content to be shared at a page level via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. According to the Nxtbook documentation, an XML file containing all of the content can run behind the digital edition, and that’s what search engines index. And, you can do something with this that you can’t do with a collection of Web pages: save notes to the document.

This is an interesting solution if you have a rich story—Rochester uses graphics, video and audio to elaborate on points made in the text—to tell and you expect your readers to be engaged.

It Has Been An Extraordinarily Warm Winter

P.S. Back to social for just for a second. A few years ago, someone told me that hell would freeze over before American Funds had anything to do with social media. Well…with no fanfare American Funds last week established a Facebook page. Just sayin’.

Are there others you’d add to this list? Share the love in the Comments below.

LinkedIn Group: Financial Writing/Marketing Communications

The portfolio manager as a writer, the age-old debate surrounding indexes vs. indices and the nagging question about whether “credit market” is really synonymous for the “corporate bond market.” You’d have to look far and wide to find a group of corporate communicators interested in engaging on the fine topics that can consume financial writers.

But there’s no need to look, just join the 700-plus member LinkedIn Financial Writing/Marketing Communications group (it’s a closed group so I can’t link directly to it). What especially recommends it: It’s one of the favorite hangouts of Susan B. Weiner of the Investment Writing blog.

Podcast: AdvisorGo

You have an array of choices when it comes to keeping close to your client the financial advisor—trade publications offline and online, Webinars, conferences, AdvisorTweets.com, etc. Add the AdvisorGo podcast to your playlist and I promise you’ll benefit from the insights of Stephanie Sammons, a former Merrill Lynch advisor, and Zack Miller, an advisor who’s making the transition to his obvious calling in life—tracking social finance.

Steph and Zack, both of whom I’ve mentioned here before—Steph for her work with WiredAdvisor.com and Zack for his Tradestreaming book—are delivering must listen-to insights and analysis via their weekly podcast. This is your opportunity to understand in real-time the potential that social communicating represents to advisors and the work they do.

Twitter: A Twitter List And A Twitter Chat

I will cop to showing favoritism by suggesting two resources on Twitter, my most beloved social site.

Twitter list: At the end of 2011, Victor Gaxiola of Red 7 Marketing published a list of “30 thought leaders you should be following in financial social media.” Here’s Victor’s post and here’s the Twitter list he created to make it easy to follow the group that I was fortunate to be included in.

It’s a lot of work to figure out who to follow on Twitter. The people on the list don’t miss much and you won’t either once you add the Twitter list to your Twitter app.

Twitter chat: Registered Rep magazine has started hosting a Twitter chat with advisors at noon Central Thursdays, and some prominent advisors have been taking part. The chat starts with a focus, but then the advisors tend to take it from there.

Twitter chats can be confusing for people at first. In part, that’s because people mistakenly believe that they need to go somewhere. You don’t. Just add the name of the chat—in this case, #regreptalks—to its own column in your Twitter app and pay attention to the stream. Unlike a statistically reliable survey that takes weeks to tabulate and report, this is a different kind of market research. It’s an opportunity to listen in on advisors communicating with one another in real-time. Or, you might ask a question using the hashtag and see how the advisors respond.

Google+ Circle of Asset Managers

Google+ launched for brands in November and I think we’ve all assumed that it would be just a matter of time before some asset managers added Google+ to their social repertoire.

For a presentation a few weeks ago I scoured Google+ to document who’s out there. As you’ll see in my Firms—Asset Managers circle that I’m sharing with you here, I found 11 firms that appear to have established at least a placeholder account. Click on the image to see the circle on Google+.

Only Putnam and Invesco have posted anything to date. This work is a few weeks old, and I’m not claiming that it’s all-inclusive. If your firm is out there or if you know of others, please let us all know below.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day, love ya!

When I was a corporate marketer on the inside years ago, I would occasionally run afoul of IT. My infractions? Oh, I took a few meetings with technology vendors that IT didn’t schedule. The vendors initiated the meetings…most of the time. And every once in a while maybe I’d bend the ear of a senior executive about technology that a competitor had and we didn’t. No, IT didn’t like that at all.

“Why do you have to agitate?” someone in IT asked me once. But, you know, that’s not how I saw it. My perspective was that Marketing had a right to pursue its agenda. To do our digital marketing job, we needed technology. What kind of corporate stewards would we be if we let disinterested or under-informed (on marketing technology topics) IT partners stand in the way of our effectiveness?

Given all that, a recent report from Gartner should be unequivocal good news. Gartner is tracking Marketing’s role in technology purchasing. And, Gartner Research Vice President Laura McLellan reported in a January 3 Webinar, by 2017 chief marketing officers will spend more on IT than CIOs.

Marketing Has More Buying Power

Citing triangulated data from  Gartner studies and others’ data, McLellan said 2011 business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing budgets as a percentage of revenue were almost three times as high as IT budgets (10% vs. 3.6%). IT budgets are forecast to grow 4.7% this year, and Marketing budgets to grow 9%.

As this Gartner table suggests, Marketing is prevailing in each of the phases of the marketing technology buying cycle. Marketing’s role is gradually assuming responsibility for “front room operations” while IT will run the back room, according to McLellan.

And yet, I am apprehensive. At more than one occasion during the Webinar—directed partly at technology suppliers—McLellan expressed a few reservations, too.

She called the data in the table “reasonably shocking to many of us who say, ‘Hmm, is Marketing ready? Is Marketing really ready for these decisions?”

Is This A Win?

The reflex is to cheer whenever Marketing gains power and budget but I need to think more about whether these findings suggest a Marketing triumph. Is Marketing getting in over its head, to the detriment of the enterprise and marketing management? If this is a win, what exactly did we win here?

Marketing’s perception of IT is that it “moves slowly,” “says no” and “prefers stability,” said McLellan. In her comments about marketers as buyers, she said, “The good news is that Marketing is inventive, marketing is creative. Marketing is willing to try point solutions even if they need to scrap them later if it will help them now.”

Guilty as charged. I’ve pushed for point solutions and know other “entrepreneurial” marketers who have done the same only to incur the wrath of IT. And guess what? Sometimes IT and their cost-benefit arguments (a discipline not everyone in Marketing has yet mastered) talked us out of it. They were right sometimes. Tension sometimes yielded the better, more considered outcome for the enterprise.

Unfortunately, McLellan is right when she tells her vendor audience, “Marketing is not technical, doesn’t want to be technical, doesn’t want to have to understand all the technology …This is definitely a ‘keep it simple, stupid’ scenario.” Ugh. C’mon, if we’re going to take this on, let’s at least take a stab at being informed about it. Let’s make the vendors work at explanations until we fully understand what we’re buying.

At one point. McLellan discussed growth in the hiring of marketing technologists (a subject commented on the MENGBlend previously) and it’s possible, maybe even likely, that someday Marketing will possess the required technical chops.  But how many current-day CMOs do you know who are prepared to buy technology?

Scary Skirting Of Some Of The Issues

In answer to a question, McLellan said, “the CMOs we’re talking to are skirting some of the edges of governance security and regulatory compliance, and many unknowingly which is scary.” This is as concerns grow over technology privacy and customer data, location-aware and context-aware computing gain in usage and more data is bought and captured.

These added concerns are part of what’s driving Marketing to come to a decision to outsource, she said. Marketers prefer to hire others to watch out for what they don’t want to worry about.

OK, again, eek! Evaluating the outsourcing providers is pretty darn important and something else that is not naturally in today’s marketer’s wheelhouse. For help in making marketing technology and services decisions, Gartner data showed that marketers relied heaviest on recommendations from peers. I wouldn’t have any trouble if that was IT’s response (Gartner must have asked IT the question) but this from marketers concerns me.

Well, I’ve fretted enough. I encourage you to listen to the free on-demand Webinar in its entirety and download the presentation. Maybe you’ll tell me that I’m worrying too much.