Hargreaves Lansdown, Fidelity FundsNetwork and Alliance Trust favoured online platforms – but most investors prefer literature sent in the post

In March 2012 a panel of over 1,000 investors who have requested information on  investment trusts responded to 11 questions, covering a range of topics including how they like to buy trusts as well as which fund managers they have the most confidence in to manage their money successfully.

The questions covered the different aspects of buying behaviour among those investing in investment trusts and revealed the dominance of online platforms. Some 59% responded that they buy ‘online via a discount broker, fund supermarket or share dealing account’.  Some 22% reported buying ‘via a Financial Adviser’, 20% reported buying ‘via a posted application form sent to the fund manager’ and 17% reported buying ‘via the fund manager’s website’. (Note: survey respondents could choose more than one option.)

The respondents also indicated which online platforms they used with Hargreaves Lansdown, Fidelity (Funds Network), Alliance Trust, Halifax and Barclays leading the way.

Perhaps surprisingly, investment trust investors are rather old fashioned when it comes to how they prefer reading promotional literature. The majority, 45% responded ‘as a brochure sent in the post’ while 30% chose ‘in a pdf’ and 26% ‘on the web page’.

dianomi also polled investors as to how they researched information before making an investment decision. Rather than reading annual reports or consulting with advisers, the investors surveyed relied predominantly on ‘financial websites’, ‘financial sections of national press’ and ‘investment magazines’.

Cabell de Marcellus, co-founder of dianomi, comments, “From the survey results, it looks like the investors buy online but prefer to read material offline. This makes sense as the discounts and convenience are both so appealing online. But if you are going to read a  twelve page report about a major investment decision, you really want to do that in a comfortable chair with a cup of tea.”

The survey revealed more about investment trusts including: investor ratings of the twelve major investment trust fund managers; which sectors the investors want more research on; and specific questions relating to Asian investment trusts.

Clcik here to download the Summary Report – April 2012 – Investment Trust Survey_dianomi

Notes to editors

Methodology: The survey was conducted in March 2012 by dianomi with 1,016 investors participating.

dianomi are leading the way in content marketing with a series of MarketViews guides commissioned for financial services clients including Aberdeen Asset Management, City Index and Henderson Global Investors.

The guides have been commissioned by dianomi and are written by well known expert financial journalists such as Peter Temple, long time contributor to The Financial Times, Investors Chronicle and Interactive Investor.

By combining views from finance professionals with insight from industry leaders, MarketViews guides provide sponsors and advertisers with a powerful marketing platform. Our clients are able to easily identify and communicate directly with their core audience with the highest possible contextual relevance, ensuring that readers will engage and respond. Through our unique partnerships with premium finance publishers, users are easily able to request our guides completely free of charge. These are delivered both as downloadable, interactive e-brochures and as gloss printed copies posted directly to their homes.

  

dianomi’s Julian Peterson will debate display vs performance advertising in “Display is dead” at the Mumbrella 360 conference in Sydney on 6 and 7 June.

The session is intended to produce some lively debate as Julian lines with up with Reprise Media’s Director of SEO Andrew Hughes against Mediacom’s Head of Innovation, Nic Hodges, and Cadreon’s National Head of Operations, Marc Lomas.

dianomi have announced a new product to increase conversions and ROI from Cost Per Click (CPC) campaigns.

Introducing Verified Cost-Per-Click campaigns – everyone wants to increase the number of conversions and cut down on wasted clicks from their CPC campaigns – we’ve been trialling VCPC campaigns and early stats show a decrease of up to 80% in wasted clicks and increase in conversions from the verified clicks.

With a verified CPC campaign the user clicks on a contextual SmartLink advert on a finance site in the usual way but instead of being directed to the client’s site, the user is taken to a dianomi hosted landing page with brief details of the product. The user is only directed to the client if they click again to confirm their interest – and the client is only charged for these verified clicks.

Therefore, the client only pays for clicks from prospects with serious intent.

Download more information on verified cost-per-click or view a customer journey.

By Julian Peterson

Wall Street investors are much braver about the European crisis than their London counterparts, buying stocks and silver and seeing a much less chance of a euro break-up, according to a recent survey of investors from both sides of the pond.

Fourty-three percent of UK investors believe the euro zone will break up this year, compared to just 27 percent in the U.S., according to a copy of a soon-to-be-released poll by Dianomi obtained by CNBC.

“A flight to safety appears to be well underway with U.K. investors moving to cash,” said Cabell de Marcellus, co-founder of Dianomi, a marketing firm which counts financial firms such as Barclays and Fidelity among its clients, in the survey release. The survey of affluent investors was conducted last month with 1,800 respondents from the U.K. and 1,200 from America.

Read more here

Click here for the full results of the US Investor Survey-H1-2012