Touchpoints

Investors use touchpoints

Investors will use touchpoints of their choosing to help them progress on their investor journey.

A company can focus on the most common and most popular touchpoints used, and the likely stage on the investor journey used for each one. Subtly different messages can be tailored and delivered through those touchpoints at the right time to maximise the chance of helping the investor move to the next stage of the journey.

Online and Offline Touchpoints

There are online and offline touchpoints. Typically, on the early stages of the journey, online touchpoints are more heavily used. Commonly the offline touchpoints - for example, telephone and meetings, personal emails - tend to happen later in the investor journey.

Even typical “offline” touchpoints such as newspapers are these days mostly delivered online.

For ASX listed companies, the ubiquitous “ASX Announcement” is rarely delivered on a piece of paper, nor is a broker or adviser analysis of it. These are predominately online touchpoints.

Online and offline touchpoints help investors in their journey.

Controlling or Influencing Key Touchpoints

The corporate website touchpoint is king. Or it should be. Most other online touchpoints, even those not controlled directly by the company, will probably lead the investor to the corporate website, or to a company sourced announcement which is also published on the website.

Making the corporate website the reliable, complete and always up to date source of information is the best way to encourage investors to rely on company provided information to progress through their journey.

Company controlled or influenced online touchpoints might also be an investor app, an email marketing campaign advising of an announcement or event, or a social media post about the announcement, all of which can lead directly back to the website.

Webcasts, podcasts and webinars are all online touchpoints the company can use to meet different investors’ choices of touchpoint.

Online touchpoints can be delivered on a desktop or mobile device. Messages need to be suitable for the medium carrying them.

Many online touchpoints are not under the company’s direct control, such as news services, broker websites, online chat forums, personal social media posts. However, by being first with the content into as many of these forums as possible, and by making it easy for others to re-post company produced content, there is a strong capability to be present in those discussions.

Not participating, or being late, leaves the discussion to be formulated by others.

Social media is an online touchpoint investors use in their journey.

IRM and Investor Touchpoints

IRM has an in-depth understanding of investor touchpoints and particularly online touchpoints.

We have supported ASX listed companies with corporate websites and investor centres since 2002. We provide immediate online news aggregation and distribution, particularly around the ASX Announcement. We have a wide range of investor tools that fit with IRM or client web sites. We design and publish reports online. We help engage with social media.

For a full discussion, download the white paper here