Since the day I marketed my first IR website in 2000, I’ve been a staunch evangelist for the product. It’s a hellava smart and simple marketing tool that combines superb, reliable content with a professional presentation of your financial brand. It’s your transparency library.
But I am a tad bias. (Material disclosure: I am paid to love them.) Thus the genesis of our Shareholder Communications 365 Study.
“Hey…we should ask investors what they think.”
Now in its fifth year, this exclusive study asks investors 30 tactical questions regarding how they consume your shareholder communications content. Beyond the IR website, we asked about earnings calls, annual reports, news releases and overall transparency. From these tactical answers, IR teams can sculpt their shareholder communications efforts and budget.
Since 2012, the study has evolved. Initially, it was predominantly retail investor-based. In 2016 we added a Wall Street v Main Street comparison (CLICK HERE). This year, per client discussions, we cut to the chase: 3,780 responses from 100% institutional investors.
Question #1:
Historically, this question always receives a wide variety of comments:
Interestingly, as well as a little surprising, 1/3 of analysts don’t view the IR website as a deal-breaker.
The strongest strategic take-away I have made from this is the IR website is not quite the power tool I always imagined: the key data is very redundant on Bloomberg terminals, etc.
From our inside viewpoint, another factor is the how IR websites are managed today (compared to 2000). Then, they were manually built, pixel-by-pixel, needing very expensive, inflexible and hard-to-find datafeeds. It was work for everybody involved.
Today, the ubiquitous and low-cost of stock data, the ease of HTML5, the backbone of broadband and even the using a company’s own XBRL have eliminated the IROs burden to micromanage their site (and frankly, made our job easier too). Except for during earnings period, most IR websites sit in a very passive set-and-forget mode… allowing IR teams to concentrate strategies on active tasks like targeting and improving their shareholder narrative.
PR Newswire hosts over 780 IR and PR websites for clients.
So, now Question #2.
Author Bradley H. Smith, a self-confessed connoisseur of IR websites, is Director of Marketing and Shareholder Communications at PR Newswire / Cision.
www.prnewswire.com/blog/do-investors-insist-that-you-have-an-ir-website-20623.html
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