Although the NASDAQ remains locked in a death spiral, the
Institute for Business Communications is hosting a conference on the the glories of the Internet. The crowd at "
Electronic Distribution of Mutual Funds," at the Regency Hotel in New York City, seemed mercifully oblivious to the latest doom and gloom.
Mark McKenna, senior vice president for
Putnam Investments, spoke about the specific strategies employed by firms that sell load funds. Those firms have face an extra challenge because they have two audiences--advisors and
shareholders.
Putnam maintains separate Web sites for each. Although advisors work in an industry saturated
with the latest electronic technologies, "The general public is savvier about
the Web," McKenna said."Our public site gets five times the volume as our
advisor site, but we don't get anywhere near as many questions. My message to
advisors are that your shareholders are already online. You need to catch up."
One difference between advisor and public sites is primarily visual. The public
site is marketing to shareholders and the general public, and is more colorful
and visually interesting as a result. Advisors are more concerned with speed,
and don't have a lot of time for fancy graphics to download. McKenna takes a
perverse pride in describing Putnam's advisor site as "boring." The firm is so concerned with this issue that certain graphics that download quickly are removed from the site if they could be perceived as slow.
According to Putnam's research, advisors use the site for research, to get quotes, and to read financial journals, in that order. In order to be effective, a site must enable
advisors to carry out these tasks easily and quickly. It must also give advisors
value beyond what is available on the public site or from free sources like
Yahoo or Bloomberg.
Once built, a site requires promotion to spread the word. For example, Putnam is mailing product guides and postcards to advisors, although there's no mass advertising campaign. The company is also holding seminars to teach advisors to use the site more efficiently.
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