Advisors are looking for communications that specifically target them. They find person-to-person communications such as speakers at a company event or participating in investment firm training programs to be the most useful methods of communication when it comes to shaping their opinions of asset managers. These patterns were essentially consistent across all advisor groups.
By comparison, advisors are most likely to describe broad and untargeted communications, including generic emailing (69%), television ads (67%), digital ads (62%) and press placements (60%), as “not very effective” in taking the measure of managers. This overall pattern holds true whether an advisor and asset manager have a pre-existing relationship or not. Emails from managers that an advisor currently works with are twice as effective as are emails from an unknown manager. Yet a majority of advisors still find these emails, whether an invite to a webinar or new product information, to be only somewhat effective.
