Hedge funds: remember to follow these newsletter tips

In the age of Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, sending an enewsletter to your investors might seem like an anachronism.

However, don’t write off the enewsletter just yet. Studies show that email can be more effective than social media at reaching actual customers – nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined.¹ So why are enewsletters still so relevant?

Their lifespan

A social media post can hit thousands of investors in a second, but may also end up lasting that long before being drowned out by other new content. By its nature, email is stored by its recipient and can be referenced later and/or repeatedly.

The total package

Rather than single-issue postings, an email or enewsletter allows you to combine several relevant topics into a single deliverable.

Making it personal

Targeted emails can focus on the needs and interests of specific groups of investors and, depending on the size of your client pool, can be further individualized as well.

So, if your firm isn’t putting out a regular enewsletter, or wants to reposition its existing one, it’s a good time to take another look at what could be one of the most important communication and branding and marketing tools for hedge funds. Here are some important tips and tricks to keep in mind when planning and executing your next enewsletter deployment:

Define what you are, and what you’re not

There is an incredible volume of investment-related enewsletters out there. Some are sales drivers, some charge for subscriptions, some offer investors portfolio building advice. Remain cognizant of who your investors are and build your enewsletter content around that, rather than what others in the business are doing. This will help differentiate your e-newsletter from the myriad other emails your investors might be receiving.

Streamline

Keep the number of individual topics to no less than three, but at most seven (three to five is a good range to start with).

It’s not (just) about you

You can build credibility by linking your investors to external articles, papers or other sources of information that might be relevant to them. It tells the reader that you are carefully screening and curating content and are plugged into objective third-party insights.

Rely on professionals

The best financial enewsletters have a design that is straightforward, but still compelling and visually on-brand. If you don’t have internal financial services marketing resource for that, consider outsourcing production (from content to design) to a financial services marketing firm or a content marketing agency.

Make it passenger friendly

Approximately 55% of emails are opened from a mobile device.² Ensure both your design and content is optimized for mobile phone browsers, particularly those on a commute. This means more vertical/scrollable design and shorter, digestible content (avoiding linking readers to pdf files, for instance).

Want to talk to a professional about putting together your enewsletter? Contact us today at 1.844.243.1830 or info@ext-marketing.com and we’ll help you explore your content options.

Sources:

¹ Nora Aufreiter, Julien Boudet, Vivian Weng, “Why marketers should keep sending you e-mails,” McKinsey & Company, January 2014.

² Jess Nelson, “Majority Of Emails Read On Mobile Devices,” Email Marketing Daily, July 21, 2017.