By Erik Carlson, CFO & COO, Notified
The concept of personalization in corporate communications and investor relations can be complex and daunting. Corporate stakeholders, including analysts, investors, journalists, employees and customers, have varying information needs, from where they discover materials and how often they expect to hear from leadership to the platforms they use to engage.
Layer in market uncertainty, fast-paced news cycles and recent rule changes like universal proxy shareholder activism and it’s clear that proactive, personalized communication and engagement is more critical than ever for IROs and corporate storytellers. Simply put, there are no second chances to tell your story in today’s business environment. Overlooking critical audiences by not tailoring your communication approach with thoughtful stakeholder personalization is risky.
The old standard for IR was largely a ‘push’ strategy that dictated regulated corporate updates to shareholders. But the days of dialing into faceless, one-way earnings webcasts or accessing financial content solely through stand-alone IR sites are quickly falling behind us. Corporate stakeholders want more than standard financial comms – in fact, according to a recent study conducted by ICR, 76 percent of professional investors rank ‘quality of communication’ as a non-financial factor that impacts investor perception of a company’s valuation. The following are three major trends for IR professionals to keep in mind to personalize storytelling across all audiences and channels.
Rising retail influenceThe core focus of IR communications remains on institutional investors and analysts. Every company has retail ownership, however, including employees – retired, current and prospective – and customers.
Even if the retail community doesn’t hold a large portion of a company’s stock, its use of social media and online forums can nevertheless strongly impact corporate reputation.
Not engaging is at best a missed opportunity and at worst a potential risk. Forward-thinking IROs are now engaging with retail investors via tailored content, including micro-sites and multimedia content that visualizes data and key messaging (while making it easy to share), and retail-focused events like separate earnings calls and investor days.
Accessibility mattersAccessible content means all users, particularly those with disabilities, will have an equitable experience and be able to access the company information and resources they need. Making sure your IR website follows Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA standards is table stakes, however.
To build equity into IR communications, it’s critical to implement technology that gives audiences more control over their experience, empowering them to access information and feel confident in interacting. For example, for earnings events, IR technology should enable the ability to manage playback speed for both live and on-demand content, a text-based Q&A feature, scripts and materials available as transcripts, the option to pause and resume content and the ability to enable picture-in-picture features for video.
AI everythingArtificial intelligence (AI) is top of mind across every industry and IR professionals are exploring ways in which it can transform how they power productivity and generate ideas, while ensuring compliance.
Though still in its early innings, AI has the potential to rapidly analyze and distill relevant data – including from earnings calls, webcasts, press releases and competitor positioning – to extract trends, predict questions that may be asked by stakeholders and recommend messaging, positioning and content to engage both existing and new audiences.
In even more advanced use-cases, AI can enable IR teams to measure the impact of their efforts through post-call analytics, which can improve future interactions with any audience by surfacing hidden cues in sentiment, tone of voice and body language. The potential that intelligent tech has to remove complexity from personalizing IR activities is immense.
As investors and stakeholders increasingly value more deeply engaging communications and content, IR professionals must evolve their methods to meet these changing expectations. When it comes to reaching stakeholders in today’s business landscape, personalization is key to driving impact, standing out – and ensuring your most critical messaging resonates.
Erik Carlson is COO & CFO of Notified, a globally trusted technology partner for investor relations, public relations and marketing professionals that offers communications solutions that help businesses effectively share and amplify their stories. Notified empowers its clients with the tools, technology and expertise to personalize their messages and tell their best investment story. It supports news distribution, regulatory filings, earnings calls and webcasts, investor days, IR websites, ESG communications and more. To learn more, visit Notified.com.
