Recently, I had the privilege of leading a panel discussion at the Mutual Fund Education Alliance (MFEA) e-Commerce summit in Denver. The topic focused on how fund companies can leverage their websites to help advisors during the current economic conditions and I was joined by Philip Parrotta, head of marketing for DWS Investments, and Ted Stauderman, Director, Marketing Services and eCommerce, for Calvert Investments. It was a great discussion and a few themes emerged that are worth sharing.

One of the main issues to emerge is the “Field of Dreams” strategy does not necessarily work. Just because you’ve built a site, doesn’t mean the advisors will show up and use it. Rather, the web strategy needs to be integrated into other communications tactics like email, outreach from wholesalers, etc.  The caveat here, like the not-so-old adage, is that content is king. Marketers need to be cognizant of how much information is being fed to advisors not just from their own firm, but also from competitive firms.  It is therefore imperative that content in emails delivers on expectations and that once an advisor clicks through, that s/he is further delivered relevant, timely and useful content, otherwise, eventually a firm’s emails and other communications will begin to be ignored. Says, DWS’ Parrotta, “We are seeing great success in this approach but it means delivering valuable content – not over-communicating, but rather communicating the right information at the right frequency.”

Similarly, firms need to use their advisor websites as an extension of the sales force. One of the biggest challenges brought up by attendees in this session was how best to get wholesalers to view the website as a tool to assist their efforts and not as a competing channel. Several members said they are exploring hybrid models in which the wholesalers do double duty as e-wholesalers. It’s an intriguing strategy and its success will ultimately come down to the training of these reps (and, of course, their subsequent buy-in to the e-channel).

Another interesting tactic that emerged was making advisor content available in front of a login. It has been a long-time practice for firms to make content available only to advisors registered with the website. Obviously, this means that if an advisor clicks through on an email campaign, for example, and has to first register for the site before he or she can actually access the desired content, the firm runs the risk of losing the advisor’s interest. Worse, we’ve seen firms require advisors to have a selling agreement in place before they can access the advisor website! At the panel, both DWS and Calvert discussed how they have made a lot of content available to advisors before requiring a login. This has helped to make content delivery more efficient and has increased traffic at both firms’ websites.  Depending on the firm’s strategy, there may be interest in getting advisors to register.  This is particularly true for building value-add within a client base.  Putting some of a firm’s best thinking behind the password is a way of delivering more to clients and as a way to enhance the firm’s service model.  DWS Investments is doing more of this, in particular with multi-media content, where they are able to introduce the content on the public site, but then dive deeper into the details behind the password.

Finally, the panel highlighted an interesting upside to the economic downturn: it has given asset managers a bit of breathing room to take a step back and really evaluate the emerging media and other technologies before deciding to deploy them. “We are less in a ‘they have it, so we must also” mindset,” says Parrotta. Slowing down the rush to add the latest technology allows the firms to plan how it will really fit into their e-comm strategy, and more importantly, if the technology has a realistic function at all. Moreover, with technology budgets under pressure, the pause allows firms to consider how they can use off-the-shelf (and often free) third-party tools in such hot areas as social media.  This, of course, is an area we continue to monitor and a topic for another day.