Eighteen months or so ago I wrote a piece commenting on the new (at least at that time) www.Investec.com website. Since committing my comments to open scrutiny, the www.investec.com has apparently received another update.  I’d like to apologise for not spotting this update sooner… but the feedback I received at that time was that the new site had been received with rapturous applause – I wasn’t  expecting it to be binned so soon after launch… In fact the site was relaunched (again) 4 or 5 months ago.

I’m glad to say however that this new version appears to have taken care of (well almost taken care of) two of the key issues I originally raised with the old site:

1. Site visitors can get to where they need to go – first by selecting ‘who they are’ an ‘intermediary’ or ‘individual client’ as examples. Visitors are then  presented with options based on their location (sitting here writing this in the US I was taken to the home page for Investec US and the various Investec businesses that operate in that jurisdiction). While I applaud this development I think that further work is still needed – from an investors perspective – what exactly is the difference between Investec’s ‘Wealth Management’ and ‘Asset Management’ areas?? Which should I choose to visit? I’ve often commented in the past that business websites should not be structured on how you run your business – but on the needs of the site visitor – or at least those people you are wanting to attract.
2. The site appears to be less clunky from a technology perspective. Items load quicker suggesting the pages are a lot smaller size wise – I’m sure the old site and its intense bandwidth requirements were an issue for many of Investec’s domestic South African audience.

Maybe when the site receives another relaunch (next year) these last issues could be taken care of?

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I’ve been living with my iPad for two months now and thought it time, now that I’m firmly through the novelty phase, to reflect on the impact it has had on my family and digital consumption habits.

Firstly, I’m glad to say that I haven’t at any point suffered from buyers remorse. While the iPad isn’t cheap, (I bought the $699 64gb non 3g version) its proved itself sufficiently of value through changing the way I can readily and easily share and consume information that it’s thoroughly been worth it. Since its purchase I’ve found myself watching podcasts – something I never really ever bothered with in the past. I’ve become avid watchers of gems like Macbreak Weekly and This Week in Tech, both produced by Leo Laporte of Twit.tv. These two shows alone almost justify the expense of buying the iPad in the first place, partly because they are superb showcases for the kind of high quality entertaining content that can be produced online using digital video / audio at very little expense.

Although often two hours in length I have found myself riveted to all of the shows thus far – partly because Leo, as host is a joy to listen to but also because of the often humorous way that topics are dealt with by their guest panellists. I’ve already taken a slight leap and envisaged how this format could possibly be reproduced in the financial services space – a McGlaughlin Group of sorts commenting on recent industry and regulatory news in an interesting yet illuminating way – a project for someone perhaps?

Podcasts aside I’ve also found myself downloading all kinds of applications, some old iPhone favourites such as NetNewsWire, an RSS feed reader, updated to not only take advantage of the iPads larger screen but with added bells and whistles that allow me to share stories to Twitter, via email, or Instapaper for later review.

Of course in a league of their own are those applications that I’ve started using to help me consume other media. Of particular note are Yahoo! entertainment, IMDB and Zap2it apps, perfect for bringing a whole new level of richness to my TV watching. Yahoo! entertainment and Zap2it are the best personalised TV guides I’ve yet come across while IMDB is perfect for looking up movies or actors while watching them on the big screen. Movie and TV related are the apps for Netflix and the ABC player – perfect if you find yourself at a loose end if your not that interested in the episode of Desperate Housewives that my wife might be watching.

I’ve also realised, through watching how my 9 year old son interacts with my iPad, what a terrific gaming device it is. I think its fair to say that since we bought it (see how I say “we”), my son has spent as much time playing games on my iPad as on his Nintendo DSi.

Although everything has been “good” thus far, a little “bad” does sneak through occiassionally. I hate to say it but the lack of support for flash can on occasion be a bit of a pain – although as time goes on this might reflect on how slowly sites, and their management, move – particularly now that 2 million iPads have been sold – if those numbers aren’t justifcation alone to look at HTML 5 what is it going to take!

Bottom line, would I buy one again – yes I would. Not only for the novelty factor but because its proved extremely useful for consuming, sharing and experiencing media in a whole new way. It is likely therefore, and financial services marketers please take note, that I’m going to be spending far more time on my iPad than my laptop. It might be sensible therefore to investigate how to reach out and engage me via this device…..

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Although some financial services companies use Webtrends or Omniture to track their sites web activity many use Google Analytics. While this may sound odd, sizable corporations relying on a free tool such as this, Google has spent a great deal of time and effort investing in their analytics package such that it arguably competes with some of the best enterprise web analytics packages available today. It is somewhat worrying therefore to see this week to see that Google, faced with a barrage of complaints from regulators and many internet commentars about their ‘privacy’ record, are to allow web browsers to opt out of Google Analytics.

While I firmly believe in giving users choice, it is essential for marketers to know how popular areas of their site are and who – not down to the individual, is looking at this material. This allows companies to make informed decisions about the allocation of resources that ultimately benefit the end client. If particular areas of a website are popular, informed marketers focus additional resource around this content as its obviously of interest to prospective customers or existing clients.

Allowing site visitors to ‘opt out’ of this process will ultimately harm Google Analytics credibility as a viable analytics application. I guess Google are hoping that not too many people will download the add-on that prevents Google Analytics from tracking online behavior. The add-on is currently in beta mode and available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google’s own browser, Chrome.

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I’ve been consistently critical of The Times newspaper’s plans to erect a paywall around their site from June 2010. Its not that I necessarily disagree with their intent, I just don’t think their strategy for making people pay is going to work. GBP1 per day or GBP2 per week is simply too high for many readers to consider – particularly when there are so many other sources of good news readily available to people – Telegraph.co.uk, NYTimes.com, BBCNews.com Guardian.co.uk USAtoday.com etc…..

Indeed, I note that a discussion on The Times own site was overwhelmingly critical of the proposal with most people simply commenting that they would turn to the BBC website instead. Unfortunately this discussion lasted a meer 24 hours before it was unceremoniously pulled from the site.

Given the Times’ commercial team past form I wasn’t therefore that surprised to see the iPad application in the UK will only be available to people for a whopping GBP9.99 every 28 days. More surprisingly they aren’t even giving people the opportunity to road-test the application with a limited free download.

Counter this approach to that of the Financial Times. The FT recently launched an iPad app in the US with considerable success. They sought a sponsor to allow people to download the app and access stories for free until the end of July. As a result the FT app is currently in the top 20 of free apps even two weeks after its release. It has also been picked out as ‘New and Noteworthy’ – surely an achievement for such an old lady?

While the FT app will ultimately revert to paywall status, the FT offers considerable value added content, comment and video, something that, having seen the new Times website, is sorely lacking. Maybe this explains why the Times asked ABCe to stop publishing their online traffic figures…. they are aware as anyone that these are likely to fall out of bed once the paywall goes up. My ultimate question is however, how long will this strategy last before its either a) significantly changed (i.e. a lot cheaper) or b) abandoned…… either way I’m sure I will let you know!

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Behavioural advertising, or the targeting of advertising on the basis of an online users past viewing habits has been and continues to be used by many financial services companies, including those in the investment management arena. It is often used to target advertising at financial advisers or consumers who have elicited certain behaviour online. This could typically be visiting the finance pages of a news site such as the Times or Telegraph or visiting the IFA only section of the investment managers own website.

Behavioural targeting in this context is used to:

a) Specifically target advertising at the correct audience segment – delivering advertising to specifically only those people who have visited the finance pages of the Telegraph for instance, immediately excludes targeting site visitors only interested in say sports or motoring news. This filtering of the audience you are interested in is done on the basis that this group is likely to be more interested in financial services advertising given their interest in ‘money’ news.

b) By targeting advertising in this way you are somewhat reassured that your advertising is being more accurately targeted than by simply attempting to reach out to the entire audience visiting that website.

In theory, everyone benefits – site visitors are more likely to see advertising related to a particular interest that they may have, publishers are able to charge a premium for behaviourally targeted site inventory and advertisers campaigns perform better.

I was therefore interested in reading through the release today from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) about “Online Targeting of Advertising and Prices“. The main stance the OFT appears to take revolves around online privacy and the potential of behavioural advertising being used to target different price levels  at different audience segments.

I confess that this somewhat perplexes me. I don’t understand how offering existing customers a discount over new customers could in anyway be to the end consumers disadvantage. This can simply be justified on the basis that it is more expensive to acquire new customers than to retain those you have.

But one of the concerns voice by the OFT is the potential for certain audience segments being charged more for a product or service. The example they suggest is that certain ‘affluent’ audience segments may be charged more for a product or service than under other situations. Again while in theory I can see how this might happen I don’t see any difference to this than that of a gardener or handyman ramping his quote to a wealthy couple on the basis of the house or neighbourhood that they live in or a chain of high street stores charging more for a product in one area than another.

The key difference here however that the OFT has completely failed to take notice of  the fact that in the online arena, price comparison websites are only a click away. My message to the OFT is therefore simple. Please focus on areas of legitimate concern – possibly those relating to bank charges and let the highly competitive online environment develop naturally. While abuse can occur in ‘any’ environment, as online consumers become increasingly price savvy it is unlikely that they will allow sites to take them for a ride. Those sites that attempt to do so are unlikely to flourish and grow.

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I was fortunate enough last weekend to be one of the lucky 300,000 to pick up my pre-reserved iPad from my local Apple Store here in Tulsa. Now that I’ve had it a few days and been able to get to grips with it I’ve started thinking about how it could be used from a financial services perspective. Here then are some initial thoughts on how it could potentially be used to great effect by financial services marketers and importantly, what, if any implications its adoption could present were it to really take off….

First of all, I should make clear that although I was a late developer (so to speak) I’m a confirmed Macaholic. As I sit here enjoying the warm spring sunshine, behind me in the house there are:

• 3 MacBook Pro
• 1 MacBook Air
• 3 iPhones (two are mine, one for the UK one for the US)
• and of course a 64gb Wi-Fi iPad

I only mention this so the sceptics amongst you can take what I’m about to say with a huge pinch of salt – the iPad is FAR more than I was possibly hoping for. To explain I’d read that the iPad seemed to principally be about the consumption of media as opposed to its production. I, like many of you have faced those long journeys in economy with no movies due to a faulty in-flight entertainment system or simply a poor, (and therefore cheap to the airline), choice of movies on offer. Even when I’ve tried to make arrangements for myself at best I can only get 3 – 4 hours of charge out of my MacBook Pro – not ideal on a 10 hour transatlantic flight.

Of course there are those other occasions such as road trips that entertainment on hand would be a fantastic asset, keeping the children and admittedly myself, occupied with either a game, movie or of course a book (courtesy of iBook the new bookstore app). The built in photo viewer is also a great for family visits or reunions. The idea of carrying your entire family history around with you is incredibly appealing. I therefore was looking forward to getting my hands on a device that was easier to lug around than a laptop, would not represent a devastating loss to my business were it lost or broken and that would switch on in seconds if I needed access to something quickly.

I’ve also now realised how much MORE than this it truly is and promises to be. I’ve downloaded apps like Zinio that allows you to subscribe to digital editions of magazines such as The Economist, Esquire, Bazaar and Cosmo. While this app has been around for a while on other devices such as the iPhone, the iPad’s full size screen is good enough to give FMCG marketers wet dreams. Not only can you check out the latest Burberry on a superb  A4 sized screen you can actually link the advert to a video of Bill Clooney carrying Kate Moss’ bag onto her private jet – suitably aspirational I think.

A more down to earth application for financial services marketers might be linking the latest fund update to a fund manager interview or presentation outlining ‘the case for investing’ or explaining its performance track record. On this basis, consider the power available to a financial adviser doing a client review. Not only will the information be presented superbly on screen, as soon as he is finished he can tell the client that the report is already waiting for them in their inbox – sent thanks to the iPad. In fact, I’m sure that there are already developers at work in verticals where the presentation of information is key – real estate and luxury automotive to name just a few. The point is, the iPad is going to allow designers / marketers to showcase their products and services in the best possible light.

Now, what’s the downside? Although the iPad is all about the consumption of media it does have its limitations. The iPad doesn’t support flash for starters so all those online campaigns and fund manager interviews diligently produced by investment managers will need to be re-purposed to play on the iPad. Some may consider this a step too far and not bother. My view is that marketers ignore it at their peril. Although iPad usage might be small to start with it is a device designed to consume and more importantly share media. Why commit marketing bucks to online campaigns when you can get advisers to evangelize to the masses about your well executed app or online creative. In a world where more and more financial advisers are turning to blogs, Twitter and even Facebook for leads or information can you afford to overlook such a device? Consider this small fact as well – if some of the publishing worlds’ biggest names such as CNN, Reuters, Time and the New York Times are prepared to produce iPad friendly sites (i.e. they carry flash alternative content), why shouldn’t you?

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While Email design is similar in many ways to typical HTML page composition, the lack of agreed standards can bring its own problems. To explain, if your message does not display correctly in a recipients email client you are potentially missing out on the opportunity of engaging with that person, educating them about your product or service, or at the very least, giving them quite an unfavourable impression of your brand.

While I’ve touched on the issue that designers encounter when looking at certain email clients such as Outlook 2007 previously, I’ve never been able to provide firm numbers around email client market share for certain audiences key to the financial services community. One such audience that companies such as investment managers are always trying to influence and inform are UK financial advisers. The majority of financial services marketers assume that in this B2B space Outlook is the dominant email client of choice. While I think this is a sensible conclusion to draw, designers will be aware that there are radical differences  between Outlook 2000, 2003 and the latest generations 2007 and 2010 and that not taking account of these variations between the versions can substantially impact on how your emails are displayed.

The good news is that I’ve been able to collect and collate some numbers on the state of the financial adviser email client landscape in the UK. This has been possible through the use of a recently launched tool from Litmus called Fingerprint. You might recall from one of my earlier posts that Litmus produce tools for email and browser testing allowing you to ensure that your labour of love is displayed to your target audience as you intended.

Fingerprint, their new offering provides data on which email clients your recipient audience is using. It works through the insertion of a single line of HTML code to existing email newsletter templates. The next time you send out a campaign, Fingerprint’s patent pending technology will deliver near-realtime statistics, showing you exactly which email clients your customers are using.

A little over 4 weeks ago, working with a client, I starting inserting this HTML code in communications to UK financial advisers. I wanted to get a broad feel for the market as a whole so ensured that the communications where the HTML was inserted were general in nature and were not targeted at a specific adviser audience such as top end discretionaries. The results were worth taking note of. These communications were ultimately opened by 10,138 recipients, a sufficiently large enough number to comfortably be judged statistically relevant.

As suspected, on 86% Outlook is the most popular email client in use with financial advisers. It is important to distinguish however between earlier versions of Outlook and the latest version 2007. With 20% of the total market, financial services marketers need to pay careful attention to:

• The use of video in email – not supported in Outlook 2007
• Animated images such as banner ads – not supported (although the image may appear there is no animation)
• Background images – not supported in the usual way in Outlook 2007

Interestingly, the 2nd most popular email client in use is the iPhone with a 4% share of the market – double that of Lotus Notes.

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Incredibly, News International are pressing ahead with their plans to start charging for access to the Time newspaper website from June 2010. I’ve commented in the past that I regard such plans as folly – and now that I’ve seen their proposed pricing structure, £2 a week for access to the site, I think they are doubly so.

While £2 a week may not sound like much, consider this, in an online universe where virtually all other news  is free, it’s an awful lot.  Plus, from a purely logistical perspective, asking someone to go get their credit card out of their pocket mid online session is likely to lead to an incredibly high shopping cart abandonment rate. I guess their only hope is with corporate subscriptions – but then again they aren’t the Financial Times…

Of course I’m underestimating the ‘brand power’ and loyalty of Times readers – after all, James Harding, Editor of The Times said that he expects to only lose ‘a lot of passing traffic’ – traffic, that he goes on to explain in a hosted debate by The Guardian online, represents millions of unique but not frequent repeat visitors to the site…..!! So their expectations are that the remaining hundreds of thousands of ‘loyal’ visitors will dig deep into their pockets? Judging from my past experience as a media planning and buyer for Ptarmigan Media I think they are in for a surprise.

I have to confess, the naivety that they are demonstrating strikes me as incredible. This maybe explains why the newspaper industry is on its last legs while other sites like the Huffington Post are going from strength to strength. Let’s just hope Mr Murdoch has extremely deep pockets and that his operations aren’t run on a profit centre basis – if they are I wouldn’t like to be working for the Times online Sales Team come June 2010. I don’t imagine they’ll have as many billable impressions to sell….

My advice to any financial services marketers planning campaigns from June onwards on www.timesonline.co.uk:

1. Get your media planning and buying agency to only confirm the booking subject to a minimum number of impressions delivered during a specific period of time
2. Only ask for impressions delivered inside of the paywall – don’t be prepared to pay for any traffic that appears outside of this – any traffic outside of the paywall is after all highly transient and unlikely to visit the site again.
3. Ensure that any advertising that is delivered on the subscription page is specifically excluded from any inventory counts – these pages will be seen a lot but aren’t likely to have a significant dwell time…
4. Ask for a special rate – you are after all taking the site on unknown (in this new circumstance at least) – why should you pay the price for a change in Times advertising policy.

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I was extremely sceptical about Rupert Murdoch’s comments last year that “consumers will have to start paying for online news”. In a world where media is fragmenting at an ever increasing rate, his comments struck me as incredibly naive. The beauty of the internet is that it gives people choice. If readers have the option of getting their daily news fix from multiple sources, its unlikely that they’re going to continue to keep a site bookmarked that asks them to pay to get their fix – particularly when much of the news these days seems to originate from one story that is then rereported by other outlets.

I think my views were given additional weight today with the release of the Pew Internet study “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” that flagged that “more than 90% of Americans were getting their news from multiple sources”. Interestingly, the study also flagged that many people were now also getting their much of their news through social media – either via blogs or referrals from friends and family.

As I flagged previously, against such a background, its important that news organisations understand that they need to tackle ths issue intelligently. Over the longer term I think the winners are going to be niche or genre players – those  that focus on addressing specific issues for distinct audiences (e.g. investing for retirement) or those that take a particular ‘angle’ when reporting on stories.

In the latter camp, there are various companies addressing the issue head on. Here in the US you have Fox News – very much playing to the right and other media such as the “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” or the “Colbert Report” who are tackling this issue with a mix of comedy and extremely insightful comment. Of course, the interesting thing to note is that Fox News is owned by NewsCorp, which brings us full circle back to Rupert Murdoch. Is his intention to run NewsCorp as lots of “little” fiefdoms with their distinct mandates and approaches? This would afterall, allow for considerable flexibility – if an ‘approach’ or ‘genre’ wasn’t working, companies could be cut loose and sold off to competitors… hmm that’s worth thinking about…

Its only those companies who can tap in to distinct audiences with distinct views or news requirements who are going to have the luxury of charging for content -  the rest, well they’re doomed!

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While doing a little housekeeping on my blog recently I realised that its first anniversary had just passed. Reflecting on the past year I was surprised at how much of an impact it has had on my life. It finally allowed me to set up shop here in the US, establishing another office overseas for my business Condor Digital Marketing Consultancy Limited. That may sound implausible but I can honestly say its not an understatement.

I originally considered setting up a blog while Business Development Director for Ptarmigan Media, a very traditional London based media buying agency. I had read around how successful blogs were at helping companies demonstrate expertise in crowded marketplaces. As a point of differentiation I wanted the agency to be able to firmly go on record about industry developments and more importantly teaching best practice in the area of financial services digital marketing.

I had realised during my previous incarnation as Head of Internet for Investec Asset Management how much guidance and help I and other digital marketers needed in navigating the digital minefield. The simple issue for me as a financial services digital marketer  was that there weren’t enough hours in the day trying to stay up to date with the fast moving digital environment. At least it was impossible to do this while also  holding down my normal day job.

This ‘lack of hours in the day’ despite working from 7am to 7pm and often weekends too, led me to move to the dark and murky ‘Agency’ world – I wanted to have more time to work directly with publishers and companies such as Google. In parallel to try and combat some of these issues around digital best practice I started producing a range of whitepapers for Ptarmigan Media, either drawing on my own experience or researching the topics from scratch where necessary. The initial response from within the Agency surprised me. They were sceptical that the whitepapers would be of any value, indeed some considered them a waste of time.

This attitude was soon to change. Not only did clients resoundingly love the insight they offered around topics such as ‘Email marketing to financial advisers’  but the whitepapers were acting as strong points of differentiation between Ptarmigan Media and their peers in the industry. They soon became leave behinds during pitches or discussion points at meetings. Indeed, the ultimate accolade came when one of the largest UK asset managers approached Ptarmigan Media to write their digital strategy document as a result of its ‘expertise’ in this area.

While I was happy that the whitepapers were going down so well, I was frustated that such ‘high’ value content was effectively locked up within the agency and was reliant on email and hard copy distribution to a relatively limited audience. I decided that the answer resided online in the form of a blog. Why distribute the content to the Agency’s clients alone when a far broader ‘global’ audience could be tapped into – by their very nature, if configured correctly, blogs are highly Search Engine friendly allowing for content to be easily found, indexed and made available to anyone and everyone within a matter of a few clicks.

The benefits to Ptarmigan Media of an inhouse agency blog would be considerable. Ptarmigan would be able to demonstrate its thought leadership online, add to the digital debate and even lead it in some areas such as B2B financial services marketing through the UK and Europe. I was shocked therefore when my approaches to establish an agency blog were firmly rebuffed. Undaunted, I decided to set up my own blog writing about financial services digital marketing. The timing could not have been better.

After 8 months in the role of Business Development Director for Ptarmigan Media I could already see that while I appreciated aspects of the agency world greatly, the access to publishers and new techologies, the money and conditions were less than appealing. I had already decided to ‘take the hit’ in those areas for the sake of my long-term career, but I hadn’t factored in the ‘dubious’ managerial aspects of the job and the intense internal politics of the firm. The time was ripe to do something!

With hindsight the results were comical. Within 3 weeks of my going live I was approached by Ptarmigan and asked whether or not my blog could be brought in-house. I considered this but rejected it out of hand. I wanted independent editorial control and anyway, Ptarmigan had been given the opportunity to be on board from day 1 – that boat had already sailed!

Within 2 months of going live I had been quoted in the Financial Times and other publications and received sufficient interest to be able to set up my own business and part ways with Ptarmigan amicably.

The best bit of all, my only financial outlay was less than $100 for hosting – the rest was simply a question of time. Researching and finding content to write about, I was more than happy to do. While regular readers may have noticed that I write less now than I used to, this is I’m afraid a pure reflection of the success of my blog – the work and clients that it has brought me now keep my small but thriving business well occupied!

If you are looking at setting up your own WordPress blog, I wrote an earlier post detailing how I went about doing this here.

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