Kurtosys’ 2015 Survey aimed to find out how digital marketers at asset management firms were adapting to the ever-changing landscape of technology. Whereas prior findings showed a trend in the role of marketers as supporters of sales and distribution, last year’s results instead flagged the fact that marketers are aiming to increase engagement with clients and target investors.
This year, we strived to dig up more detail. What platforms and technologies do digital marketers use? What is their content marketing strategy? How do they visualise fund data and distribute materials to clients and investors?
55% of our 400 or so respondents identified their primary role as “Marketing”, and a further 12% had highly relevant roles in “Client Servicing”, “Sales”, and “Distribution”.
Content marketing is still predicted to be the most successful channel in the next 12 months, with 71% believing this to be so. Social media, in second place, is surprisingly high at 43%, over and above email campaigns and events. Then again, a very small percentage claimed to use no social media at all.
Unexpectedly, when asked if their company used a marketing automation system (such as Pardot or Marketo), 61% said they did not. A further 57% also identified that they did not actively push their content through a Content Marketing System (CMS). For two platforms that are useful to marketers for delivering content, these results seem fairly unexpected. However, with the number of marketing automation systems on the rise and a vast amount of CMSs around, we can speculate that these results will increase over the new few years.
Furthermore, due to the rapid nature of transformation within the tech industry, two thirds of those surveyed were planning to invest more into their website, with a similar number planning to spend the same amount on security issues. There are further plans to increase the use of content marketing also, with 64% keen to spend more on this. After all, it seems to be the main channel for generating traffic and leads.
The majority of websites are reported to contain fund data which is updated daily. Just over half of the respondents noted that this information was also handled by the company internally, rather than using external vendors, or indeed a combination of the two.
