Let’s start by stating the obvious; emerging managers almost always need to drive investment into their fund. However, they often do this with minimal marketing budget, no dedicated marketing professionals, an unknown brand, and little to no track record. No easy task. 

Sending out a fact sheet, calling out the blue to ask for a meeting, or attending an event once a year likely won’t cut it. Managers need to be strategic and consistent, delivering a great investor experience, providing fund information in a compliant way, and tracking engagement to focus sales outreach. 

One efficient and scalable way to achieve this is with an integrated fund marketing solution. This delivers several key functionalities:

• CRM: a dedicated tool to store all investor information, track activities, and manage pipeline. 

• Investor portal: a gated online platform where fund managers can host fund information, performance data, content, and materials. Investors have to self-certify to gain access, and their movement around the portal is tracked.

• Data room: a secure location to share documents with far greater security and ease than via email. 

• Email marketing: a tool to distribute information via email, with distribution lists, branding options and complete tracking. 

There is a big efficiency unlock in having these different functions in the same tool. Let’s consider a common prospect-to-investor workflow. 

Massimo works for Extreme Alpha Asset Management (EAAM). At a networking event, Massimo meets Janet – an allocator, and they discuss a potential alignment between EAAM and Janet’s investment goals. She’s not heard of them, but she’s interested. 

After the event, Janet visits the EAAM website, and navigates to the investor portal. She is asked to complete the registration process which includes self-certification answering any jurisdictional questions. This registration triggers a request to EAAM, to grant Janet permission to the portal. If Massimo already created Janet as a contact record in the CRM, he could also pre-emptively grant her permission meaning she gains immediate access to the portal. However, if Massimo dropped the ball on this one, upon registering for portal access, Janet effectively adds herself to the CRM and Massimo can quickly adjust her permissions. (We’ll forgive Massimo the oversight, as he’s the CIO and a portfolio manager too; he has a lot on his plate). 

Janet then looks around the EAAM portal, looking at performance data, recent blogs and the latest fact sheet. All this clicking puts her on an internal dashboard of most engaged investors, letting Massimo first realise she is genuinely interested, and then understand where her interest lies. 

Massimo adds her to an early-stage investor distribution list, meaning she receives EAAM’s monthly update sent out via the integrated email marketing tool. She engages with these emails, and climbs the list of engaged prospects. Massimo is focusing his limited time on speaking to people at this stage of the funnel, and has a few meetings with Janet to pitch the fund and discuss her requirements in more detail. He tracks everything they discuss in the CRM, which now contains a detailed picture of Janet and her firm. 

When the time is right, Janet embarks upon due diligence of EAAM. She can access key information including executive bios, service providers, policies and procedures, and investment terms within the portal without any back and forth with Massimo. As the deal moves along, information and documentation can be shared securely in the data room. 

Once Janet is onboarded as an investor, she has ongoing transparency via the investor portal and data room. Massimo can continue to use the CRM to set tasks, view investor balances, and track activities. This ensures Janet receives a high level of service whilst Massimo focuses on the next investor into the fund, and works to deliver on the fund’s ambitious name. 

Not all investor journeys look exactly like this of course, but the ingredients are common. Networking, digital information, email marketing, one-to-one engagement and document sharing. By using an integrated fund marketing solution, there is no need to sync data from one system to another. The CRM is the single source of truth, managing permissions and presenting tracking and engagement data. The investor experience isn’t reliant on a time-strapped multi-tasker, but runs on rails, with a high degree of automation. 

If you would like to explore how such a solution might benefit your organisation, regardless of your current size or sophistication, get in touch.