Use multimedia channels to enhance your engagement
While it’s important to get the building blocks of your IR website right – and it's surprising how many firms fail to list a named IR person on their website – your IR site can also go much further, highlighting the company brand, purpose and identity, too. And whether you favor the clean and simple approach or are looking to add multimedia elements, it’s useful to know what works elsewhere, from video and IR blogs to podcasts and social media.
‘Videos are a very powerful tool for human connection and storytelling,’ says Galina Meleger of Endeavour Silver. ‘I am increasingly prioritizing video: I love providing it for our investors as it helps with differentiating and making our management team relatable.’ Endeavour provides video updates for corporate milestone events, community events to showcase sustainability in action, M&A communications, a teaser video for the company’s sustainability report and a teaser video for its annual CEO letter.
Meleger says blogging is another way to engage with investors, explaining that it allows her to communicate positive company news year-round rather than having to wait to do it once a year in the firm’s annual report.
Making your IR website ‘more human’ helps hold attention, agrees Julia Stötzel, founder of Junicorn Consulting and former head of IR at German fashion firm ABOUT YOU, who notes the importance of a back story. For her, using video on an IR home page is critical to telling that story.
‘Having a video on the landing page feels more engaging than just a picture,’ Stötzel says. ‘We are human, we want to be entertained. Moving pictures are always better than static ones.’
Always looking for innovative ways to share information, she believes that ‘people generally prefer watching videos to reading, and this is especially [important] for retail investors’.
Webinars also work well, Stötzel adds, as do podcasts, which she describes as a very popular medium with the general public – but one that remains underused by corporates.
‘Firms should do more podcasts. Any podcasts our C-suite members give, we gather together,’ she says.
Rebecca Koar of Ascend Wellness believes in including a dedicated TV section, ‘showcasing insightful interviews and compelling videos that offer an immersive glimpse into your company’s world. Additionally, a repository for past investor newsletters within a dedicated newsletter section can provide viewers with easy access to valuable insights from previous communications.’
Extra appealThese bells and whistles aren’t just shiny add-ons but also enhanced storytelling tools that help your company stick in the minds of investors – particularly when it comes to the retail cohort.
Research from IR Magazine in 2021 showed that the average proportion of shares held in a company by retail investors was around the 14 percent mark, compared with an average of almost 60 percent held by institutional investors. Many had seen their retail ownership increase in the previous 12 months.
What this shows is that while retail investors might not make up a significant chunk of your shareholder base, with a busy IRO unable to justify dedicating much time to retail, these investors certainly shouldn’t be forgotten. Many of the elements that go beyond the basics on an IR website double up well for retail communications, from social media to podcasts and bite-sized videos.
IR Magazine’s IR Websites report shows that investor relations professionals understand this. When asked whether they had made changes to their IR website to make it more inclusive to retail shareholders over the past two years, almost half (47 percent) said they had done so.
To assess what changes were necessary in order to make the site more retail-friendly, IR Magazine found that while many professionals consult directly with institutional investors on the appropriateness of the IR website content, peer analysis is more popular when it comes to retail investor content.
More than six in 10 IR professionals conduct such analysis, compared with just under half who seek direct feedback from retail investors. Slightly more than a fifth (22 percent) consult with external advisers to make sure they’re getting their IR retail content right.
For Stötzel, retail investing in particular is about emotions as well as finances. ‘It is people who are investing,’ she explains. ‘If investors can identify with a brand they think is doing good stuff, that likes spending time on its website and communicating with its shareholders, it can enhance good results and lift bad results a bit more.
‘You need to communicate in a way that appeals to a lot of people. Some of the IR community should update its game, and using social media elements and audio uploads gives you a lot of upside.’
While most basic elements of the IR website can be automated, many of the snazzier elements can be, too. Junicorn Consulting’s Julia Stötzel uses a mediabot on the landing page to gather all of the company’s social media postings. ‘It’s a more convenient way to access information,’ she notes.
Endeavour Silver’s Galina Meleger agrees. ‘Our social media is embedded into the website using a plug-in as an iframe [a web page within a web page],’ she says.
