In their day-to-day work, hedge fund managers use an array of different platforms to conduct client outreach. For emerging funds in particular, keeping an open line of communication with clients and prospects often requires copious amounts of manual data input, multiple accounts to keep track of, and toggling between open tabs. To optimise your external communication strategy, the benefits of using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to alleviate these teething issues are huge. In fact, our previous blog outlines why hedge funds should be implementing a CRM from the outset (spoiler alert: it makes everyone’s life easier later down the line).

However, to truly maximise its value, the more connected your CRM is, the better. A good CRM automatically captures data from various facets of your business, allowing key information to be collected, centralised, and accessible for future use. A fully-integrated CRM cancels out the need to switch between multiple third party websites, allowing you to manage client outreach from a singular platform.

Here are a few examples of useful CRM connections:

Investor portal. Connecting an investor portal with your CRM is a strategic choice in streamlining your investor relations operations, as portals are a key source of intelligence for your fund marketing team. Think fewer hoops to jump through for prospects and investors to access firm and fund information; more data flowing into your CRM delivering deep insight on your investor behaviour.

Data room. Connecting your data room with your CRM provides you with meaningful intelligence on clients and prospects, allowing you to visualise their actions, track engagement, and produce comprehensive reports. It also lets you control access to your data room via the CRM, rather than needing to maintain a secondary database within the data room.

Email marketing. Connected to the wider CRM, an email marketing system is automatically supplied with all the information required to execute campaigns, such as contacts, target lists, and customised email templates. It also sees engagement data such as opens and clicks captured in the CRM, contributing to the holistic understanding of your clients.

The fund marketing solution

While direct or intermediated connections to your CRM are commonly available, the most effective setup is to use a singular, fully-integrated platform. Surprisingly, there are a limited number of these ‘all-in-one’ comprehensive fund marketing solutions on the market. One of these is Edgefolio’s FundPortal that offers a CRM with a built-in data room, investor portal, and email marketing system.

Creating an automated flow of information between systems saves you the time and effort required to manually input data from various formats. Internally, this allows your team to work more efficiently as all the material required for client outreach is accessible from one solution. It also reduces the chance of errors or oversights, with data automation, task management, and a single client view. Our latest white paper discusses the topic of CRM connectivity in further detail, exploring how the more your CRM captures and shares information through automation, the harder it works for you.