5 Investor Relations Tech You Need to Update Today

A bad year for the market translates into one of the toughest years for Investor Relations Officers (IROs). You already have enough on your plate dealing with volatility and risk aversion to worry about outdated tech slowing you down.

With another rough year in the forecast, now is the perfect time to cultivate a suite of IR tools ready for anything the market throws at you. Here are five of them to get you started.

1. CRM Investor Relations Platform

Today’s bear market and tomorrow’s possible recession make targeting investors a genuine challenge these days. Outdated tech complicates this task even further, as it causes inefficiencies in your workday and conceals anticipatory insights into your shareholder base’s attitudes and beliefs.

Besides trouble targeting the right person, bad tech can also cause you to run into issues with undervalued stock, poor valuation, and perception of low strategic IR value.

Updating your investor relations CRM platform can help eliminate inefficiencies that lead to these disruptions in your IR strategy. The latest CRM investor relations tech aggregates data generated by all your activities to deliver insights directly to your team.

Better insights streamline the following tasks:

• Targeting the right investor at the right time
• Understanding your shareholder composition
• Tracking how your investors are reacting to your IR narrative
• Analyzing the impact of your IR strategy
• Reporting on stock performance, shareholder composition, and investor engagements
• Identifying activist accumulations in your shareholder base

2. IR Website

Your IR website is the most trusted digital source amongst investors. That’s according to the Brunswick Group’s 2022 Digital Investor Survey, which polled 250 institutional investors from both large and small firms about company communications.

Investors place IR websites at the top of their list for the second year in a row, higher than email newsletters, Google search results, and Wikipedia. Sixty-five percent of investors visit IR websites believing they’re more accurate than traditional media.

Unfortunately, the Brunswick Group found most IPOs and public companies aren’t using their IR websites to their full advantage. Its analysis of S&P 500 IR sites showed the largest companies still needed significant digital integration.

With these insights in mind, it’s the perfect time to refresh your site, paying particular attention to how it supports your IR narrative. Investors want to see the following touchpoints:

• Risks
• Actionable goals
• Short- and long-term vision
• Industry trends

While updating your site with measurable data and fundamentals, don’t overlook design. Your site should be a sleek, enjoyable experience for investors, so make sure you compare IR website design ideas from multiple sources.

3. ESG Website & Policies

Investing with a conscience will remain popular in 2023 as investors continue supporting IPOs and public companies with strong Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies. According to Pictet Asset Management and the Institute of International Finance, ESG bonds could increase to $260 billion next year, up from $50 billion in 2020.

With a bright spotlight on your ESG policy, you need to make sure your intentions hold up under scrutiny. Talk to an ESG consultant to learn how you can emphasize your ESG policies in a way that meets the latest reporting requirements.

If you don’t have an ESG website already, now would be a good time to build one with a consultant’s help. The top investor relations consulting firms will have a dedicated ESG team to help you navigate changing legislation while underscoring your strong commitment to positive change.

4. Webcasting Tools

Despite President Joe Biden declaring the pandemic is over, a quick look at the hospitalization numbers proves otherwise. While the state of public health has improved drastically since the virus first emerged, the corporate world has yet to return to its pre-pandemic routines.

Most offices have implemented permanent Work-From-Home (WFH) policies, even for those who handle confidential information, like IROs. Likewise, many IPOs and public companies have decided to host hybrid capital markets events.

A hybrid approach to your capital markets events means you can appease investors who want to see you face-to-face and those who prefer to stay behind their screens. It helps you straddle the line between in-person meetings and digital engagements.

Updating your webcasting tools is one of the best tips for running a hybrid investor event. The latest web com investor relations technology gives you the ability to produce a fully branded digital experience that blends seamlessly with your in-person conference.

5. Engagement Analytics

Lastly, engagement analytics represents the single most important IR tech you can adopt today. It’s a way of cutting through the noise when you’re overwhelmed by the amount of data you’re collecting from your CRM investor relations tools, IR website, and webcasting platform.

Engagement analytics connects all these tools in one place. In other words, it assembles data from your entire digital footprint, collecting critical touchpoints from digital engagements, investors’ online behavior, and the market at large. It then consolidates this information in one dashboard, using the latest AI and machine learning to highlight the most prescient insights about your investors.

This cutting-edge software can help you identify investors who need attention right away, targeting individuals who are primed to invest in your brand. It can also protect you against activist activity, as you’ll be able to catch flagged digital behavior in your stocks.

The Takeaway:

Targeted technology designed for the modern IRO can help you handle emerging market trends and everyday challenges with greater poise. More importantly, the right tech helps you position your company as a trustworthy and reliable investment.