Why Email Remains A Fund Manager’s Ultimate Engagement Tool
Email is a non-negotiable asset to a fund marketer’s toolkit. Treating it as a cheap throwaway platform can have poor consequences beyond compliance. Multi-tech stacks are necessary to reach a range of institutional and individual investors today, covering the distribution of high-level pitch decks and quarterly reports down to off-the-cuff LinkedIn posts that stoke the […]
RIAs Spend Just 5% of Their Budget on Marketing, While Client Bases Age Toward the Exit
RIAs are currently facing a dual-pronged problem: under-resourced marketing operations and changing demographic customer bases. From a Cerulli Associates report, it is clear that traditional organic growth drivers are shifting as times drastically change. Firstly, on average, RIAs allocate a mere average of 5% of total expense on their marketing effort. Only 14% of firms […]
Open Rates Are Climbing, But Fund Marketers Should Stop Trusting Them
Investor intent cannot be discerned from email open rates alone. Still, that metric is often highly lauded by marketers at hedge funds and asset managers. In this day and age, email metrics are becoming a more difficult nut to crack given the pervasive nature of bad bot traffic and AI-driven inboxes. This is not only […]
The Typical RIA Added One Client in 2025, And Testimonial Use Doubles the Growth Rate
A deep-dive into the SEC’s annual Form ADV filings show two results pertinent to wider fund marketing teams competing for investor attention. The SEC’s Form ADV applies to the standardised approach for investment advisors to register with the US regulatory and state securities authorities. A new quarterly report from Paithos Research has looked into filings […]
Buy-Side Investors Managing $6.7 Trillion Say IR Teams Are Chasing the Wrong Metric
The older techniques hedge funds and asset managers used to hook investors have been called into question, as found in a new research report. Today, institutional investors that manage over $6 trillion in assets are judging firms by the quality of their fewer, well-targeted interactions designed to suit their own sectors or regions. This veers […]
Asset Managers Are Turning Into Distribution-Led Organisations as Performance Stops Being the Differentiator
The age-old investment performance USP asset managers once relied on is being overturned. That may have been a mutual industry-wide feeling that has now been made evident from a forecast based on a report by Broadridge. Within it, worldwide managed assets are projected to grow from around $127 trillion in 2025, to $164 trillion in […]
New Broadridge Trial Shows Most Investors Don’t Understand Financial Disclosures
IRs and fund marketers face a tricky task in making complex issues clear throughout their communications. Sadly, clarity is still missing for many end investors. Earlier this year, Broadridge Financial Solution conducted a controlled trial to determine which standard-form investor communications were understood (or misunderstood) by 1,500 readers. This was done through testing three versions […]
SEC Exams Still Target Marketing Materials at Nearly Triple the Rate Firms Are Testing For It
Compliance officers’ concerns are the mirror opposite of what the SEC is checking for, creating governance holes for investment advisers. This finding rises out of the 2026 Investment Management Compliance Testing Survey; a joint investigation posed by the Investment Adviser Association, ACA Group and Yuter Compliance Consulting into compliance professionals at 411 registered investment advisor […]
Why the FCA’s First Finfluencer Crackdown Will be Systemic
UK-based fund distribution has long suspected the regulatory whip to come for dubious online endorsements. It is a suspicion found to be true. The FCA has been duly investigating the finfluencer space: a growing social media trend involving personalities that promote financial products or share insights and advice with followers. Like many compliance risks involved […]
Advisors Want More Alternatives Than Ever. Most Still Can’t Explain the Risk to Clients
Alternatives allocations may be on the up-and-up next year, at least if advisors are able to justify the risk. Following a survey of more than 800 RIAs, private wealth firms, and broker-dealers across 15 countries engaged in alternative investing, their activity in the space looks likely to increase in the next 12 months. A whopping […]
A New Danger: When the Algorithm Reads Your Email Before the Investor Does
AI can do a lot to speed things up in life, which also includes gatekeeping email inboxes, perhaps disregarding the efforts made by fund marketers. For the very first time financial services and insurance have been studied as a core industry vertical in Zeta Global’s Q2 2026 Marketing Benchmarking Report, tracking email and SMS performance. […]
Broadridge Shows Investor Communications Is Becoming a Growth Line Rather Than a Cost Center
With its noteworthy insights into investor communications, Broadridge Financial’s Q4 results signal budgeting recommendations for fund teams. While already a powerhouse in the US driving transformation in investment management, Broadridge’s largest business line is investor communication solutions, where the segment saw revenue reaching $1.73 billion (an 8% increase that outpaced overall net earning growth of […]
Fund Marketers Without a Social Media Presence Are Invisible to the Next Generation of Allocators
Checking segmented generational activity is key for marketing success, and now is the time for funds to unlock Gen Z’s investment potential. Some funds may be disparaging of younger investor bases in favour of their existing demographics. Many, too, may see social media as an afterthought marketing tool compared to research reports and hefty performance […]
FCA Tells Firms: Metrics Dashboards Don’t Prove You’re Delivering Good Outcomes
Fund marketers place a lot of trust in their dashboards to signify engagement. According to the UK regulator, more needs to be done. To see how firms monitor customer outcomes under the Consumer Duty standard, the FCA took the microscope to 56 firms across sectors, size, and business models. The review examined a range of […]
Financial Services May Beats Retail on Email Deliverability, But the Advantage Is Fragile
Financial services’ notorious deliverability reputation looks to be rounding a corner according to recent cross-industry research. Despite the popularity of email (particularly among institutional investors), for years the sector’s distribution and email maintenance practice has not been brilliant. This includes overly long gaps between sends, low engagement, and cautious subscribers. However, a CFOtech Asia analysis […]
LinkedIn Follower Growth Is Stalling (But Carousels and Documents Are Quietly Outperforming)
Shifts in LinkedIn strategy are another ‘death and taxes’ certainty, where heeding engagement research can point funds toward effective changes. For much of the last decade, fund marketing teams have seen the build-up of page followers on the professional network as a key metric of reach. Global asset managers and multi-strategy hedge funds sit in […]