Resources & Other Content

The preheader is an underrated and often unknown portion of email marketing. That extra text under the subject line that contains the first few sentences of the email content…that is the preheader. If you give it a brief glance and forget about it, that is because most emails let the preheader auto populate, so you as a reader are not getting any value from it. When it is customized though, it stands out and makes quite a difference in open rates.

Now let’s be clear about customizing preheaders. First, preheaders are inevitable. If you do not customize them, they will auto populate with the body contents of your email. Second, Outlook, Google, and other standard email services do not allow you to control preheaders unless you are writing your emails in HTML code. So when can you customize them, and why?

For your everyday emails, the subject line and from labels are vital and preheaders are trivial. But when it comes to anything you send from email marketing software, like MailChimp or Constant Contact or Click Dimensions, the preheader is your opportunity to be different and drive open rates even further. So, while you may only leverage a custom preheader a few times a month, you need to ask yourself how to maximize its potential when you do use it.

According to a Rejoiner case study, a 7% uptick in opens took place for large-scale marketing campaigns sent with improved preheader copy versus those with auto populated preheaders. This case study was conducted with the same subject lines and from labels in place, making the study a perfect A/B test where only the preheader differed. The value of a custom preheader lies in its impact on large scale marketing efforts, like monthly distributions to a list of investors or a blanket cold email campaign.

DO: Keep your preheader between 30 and 55 characters

The theme continues. All elements of an email that a reader sees before they open have very limited space. In the case of preheaders, Active Campaign states that mobile email systems can only accept between 30 and 55 characters for a preheader.

It can be longer, upwards of 130 characters for desktop email systems, but remember that if you intend to exceed the 55 character mobile maximum, we recommend you make the first 55 characters able to speak for themselves, so all readers on all devices can be equally served.

The 30 character minimum is just as important as the 55 character mobile maximum. As stated earlier, preheaders are inevitable. If you do not set a custom preheader or you provide one too short to meet the 30 character minimum, email systems will start populating the preheader with email content. To avoid having that happen, you should always set a preheader of at least 30 characters, and the closer to the 55 character mobile maximum, the better.

DO: Use your preheader to expand upon your subject line

Brevo covers the importance having your preheader complement your subject line in detail. The subject is a permanent fixture that all readers will see, and repeating information from it into the preheader is not good practice for going to help drive engagement. Instead, the preheader should use its limited space to elaborate upon the topic at hand.

When investors are the primary audience, preheaders are a great place to put contextual data. For example, a subject line of Jan2023 Sees 6% Growth could have a preheader that notes the comparable indexes and their growth/drop in the same month.

DON’T: Rely on calls-to-action or FOMO

There are many sources that speak to the effectiveness of using calls-to-action and “FOMO,” the fear of missing out, in all aspects of an email. However, investors are not your average audience, and they require a different approach.

Investors are more analytical and data driven than other email recipients, preferring to make up their minds about opening an email or engaging with you based on objective information. This harkens back to the best practices and general approach to finance and investment, but also serves as protection; investors don’t trust just words, they trust numbers. So, stack your preheader with information that gives them security in their own decisions, instead of trying to sway their actions.

On another note, calls-to- or FOMO approaches both can be considered “spammy” in the eyes of investors. The good work done in a subject line and from label can be undermined by a preheader that tries to push the investor to act. Each email element should complement the rest.

DON’T: Fall into traditional preheader content trends

What Say The Experts has a 42-contributor insight article covering tips and best practices for boosting open rates, many of which include preheader ideas. In any other industry, this would be a goldmine of ideas and knowledge to leverage. However, in finance and in investment relations in particular, this resource can serve more as a point of warning. As stated in the above DON’T, investors are not your average audience, and you cannot treat them as such.

Traditional email marketing does not always align with investor preferences, and traditional marketing definitely does not always align with regulations, especially when you start looking into trending practices. It is better to know your audience and give them what they want than to try popular ideas that may stray into regulatory gray area.

CONCLUSION: Simplicity and data win out

If you have been following along, you are already preparing strong subject lines and effective from labels and addresses. You should see preheaders as the means to further that preparation and better assist investors in wanting to open your emails of their own accord. Keep it short, keep it simple, stick to the data, and complement the subject line. Leave the rest to your content.

Fifth Rock will cover email best practices in subsequent parts of this Email Best Practices When Targeting Investors series.

• Email Best Practices When Targeting Investors (series introduction)
• The Subject Line
• The “From” Label and Email Address
• The Preheader

Investment firms use the phrase "white paper" to cover a huge swath of resources, and rightfully so. White papers cover an expanse of topics and purposes and have no definitive length, meaning they can be more or less whatever you want them to be. However, we all know that doing something is not the same as doing it well, and white papers are generally fall into the former category.

To clarify, it is not that most finance-related white papers are poorly written or lacking purpose; it is that most investment firms do not leverage white papers to their full potential. Investopedia does a great job of discussing what white papers in finance are and what they could be, but we covered and expanded upon a few of the highlights below:

• White papers promote products, services, or methodology in a factual manner, and often are used for business-to-business purposes. Most finance white papers fall into one of three camps: context-provision; lists; or issue and solution discussion.
• Investment firms lean on white papers for information provision, using data cautiously and approaching content in a manner that runs away from influence or persuasion. This is to avoid SEC marketing rules and be defensive, but it also means the content often comes off as bland and nondescript.
• Well-composed white papers can still steer clear of SEC marketing rules while also being business-to-customer or business-to-investor and establishes expertise. The effort involved in these white papers is higher, as it requires more tact and precision, but the result could be better marketshare or better brand equity without running a compliance risk.

In conclusion, white papers are marketing tools that do not have to be limited to business-to-business or high-level information distribution. In fact, white papers should be used to help establish your position in the industry and help safely convince others to establish communication with you of their own accord. It is time for everyone in finance to stop seeing white papers as "safe content" or "for professional-use only" and instead use them as a means to thought leadership and value for stakeholders, prospects, and the general public.

Fifth Rock will cover white papers further in subsequent parts of this White Papers and Finance series.

Read Part II, Using white papers for public relations >>

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most powerful tools available to the public. It leverages the information of millions of users and contributors, constantly learns based on the queries and questions it receives and translates all that data into composed results. It’s a digital genie, but is that genie ready to be let out of the bottle when it comes to fund marketing?

The short answer is no, and there are 4 reasons why AI is not worth the hassle or investment yet.

1. ONLY AS SMART AS THE INTERNET AND THE PROGRAMMER
   
   To be clear, AI does not presently generate new ideas and produce content on your behalf. Instead, AI uses a high-level information aggregation algorithm to scours the public-facing side of the internet and any assigned databases, cross-references the data it it finds with the request given, and then organizes that data in a semi-coherent manner (how coherent depends on how well the AI can mimics human-generated content). In short, it is copy/paste on crack.
   
   The majority of the internet’s free content is for recreational consumption, and high-level content – academic journals, news articles, research studies, databases, etc. – are behind paywalls and login gateways. This means the information available for an AI to leverage, and thus the quality of the results it can provide, is based on the lowest-valued information available.  
   
   Unless world-renowned fund managers, brokerage firms, and SEC experts wants to start generating thousands of hours of relevant content and publishing them for free, AI simply lacks the necessary information to produce worthwhile, expert-level content. Funds should lean on their own experience and knowledge to market themselves, not low-hanging internet content that doesn’t actually showcase a fund manager’s expertise ors specifically apply to the fund itself.
   
2. AI CONTENT IS SPAM ACCORDING TO GOOGLE
   
   Google’s webmaster guidelines define autogenerated content of any kind, even that produced with high-level AI algorithms, is deemed spam. This is coming from Google, who has their own AI, Bard. This isn’t to say that autogenerated content doesn’t have a purpose; it means that autogenerated content does not produce unique or value-laden results, as it is a regurgitation or translation of what was already there. 
   
   Take Google Translate or Grammarly for example. These tools use machine-learning and databases to take an input and autogenerate an output based on the information available to them. Sometimes they are spot-on. Sometimes they give you half a dozen results and rely on you to manually determine the right result (which they record and use to improve their results in the future), other times they are limited by their own data and cannot produce viable results at all. AI falls into the same category.
   
   Now AI is improving constantly, but the same technology that brings AI closer to actually producing unique, value-laden results is also being used to help track and mark information on the internet as aggregated, false, and spam. The last thing a fund manager wants is to build its content on information that shortly thereafter gets marked as autogenerated or “not written by a human.”
   
3. A COPYRIGHT, LIBEL, AND LIABILITY CONCERN
   
   How often do users of AI request to have all aggregated information properly cited based on where the related data was found? Are prompts being used that specify attribution and copyright and trademark be properly represented? Were cross-reference and fact-check elements included to ensure that the results are accurate according to multiple sources? Did SEC requirements or other industry-specific terms factor into the requests?
   
   AI is simply a tool working on someone’s behalf. It is not required to meet your standards or regulations or ethics or best practices, and even if you ask it to do so in a prompt, it can only do what is within the scope of its algorithm and programming and the information it accumulates. It spits out information without consequence, but that is okay because the result is for the user only…until the user shares it. At that moment, the infringement, misappropriation, libel, straight factual inaccuracies, and whatever other problems the content carries become real, and the responsibility for all of that becomes the users.
   
   The reality is that it takes a lot of work to properly request content from AI in a way that attempts to cover all forms of liability, best practice, and regulation. Then you have to audit the content after the fact to make sure every potential pitfall or liability concern is addressed. Then you are still beholden to the information at the AI’s disposal, which may or may not be properly sourced and accurate and everything else.
   
4. DESIGN IS ABOUT CONSISTENCY AND BRAND, NOT POPULARITY
   If the intent is to use AI in a manner that skirts content concerns, then that leaves automated design. But what does an AI design tool really do? AI is still limited by the information that is available to it, meaning the constructs of whatever database, software, algorithm, or system are in place. It uses that and publicly accessible knowledge to help construct what is visually going to match the given request.
   
   AI algorithms work with what is popular and aligns with the prompt, then allowing subsequent alterations to the prompt to personalize the result. It relies on the user to make each piece consistent, otherwise the various marketing materials just become pretty but standalone pieces. Otherwise, it defaults to what is popular. However, it doesn’t take into consideration accessibility, best practices, software limitations, and a variety of other vital design concepts; it makes that one thing look good.
   
   A fund’s brand is not a collection of pretty things. It is a uniform presentation of what that fund represents, with materials that are in alignment and meant to aid fund managers. What good are marketing and sales materials that are inconsistent or all about shock and awe and do not properly present the vital content needed to actually convert prospects or maintain investors?

At present, AI lacks the finesse to represent funds properly and presents too many forms of liability. What a fund might save in cost for content creation and design it will likely have to spend on copyeditors and lawyers, and in the end the result will not be expert quality. Doing the work in-house or leveraging a professional agency will produce a better result long-term and prove to be worth the investment.

Disclaimer: It is only a matter of time before AI is optimized in a manner that addresses some, if not all, of its shortcomings. For that reason, we intend to follow up on this topic to help determine if and when AI for fund-marketing is viable.