Vestorly, a digital lead generation service, has launched “browser-in-the-cloud,” a new technology that allows broker/dealers to use the start-up’s digital marketing platform while also being compliant. The new technology also allows advisors to access a new set of data on the identity and behavior of the people using the browser.
Several broker/dealers have already signed on to use the new browser, including Concorde Investment Services, Strategic Financial Alliance, Summit Brokerage Services and Shareholder Services Group. NFP Advisor Services, the latest b/d to offer the technology, is the largest to sign on with Vestorly so far.
“If you were to talk to us a year ago or six months ago, we wouldn’t have been able to get this into a broker/dealer like NFP because of compliance concerns,” said Justin Wisz, co-founder and CEO of Vestorly. “Our browser-in-the-cloud is a way for them to keep it all in a closed feedback loop so that they can pre-approve it in real-time and archive it in real-time for compliance.”
For advisors at b/ds, that means they no longer have to rely on canned content. An advisor can choose a story from the tens of thousands of articles pulled into the browser each day and immediately share those with a content library hosted in the browser. Then, the content can be pre-approved by the firm’s compliance department because it’s all accessible by the enterprise, Wisz said.
“This helps us go up against more legacy systems out there,” such as Hearsay Social, Wisz said.
With legacy compliance systems, like Hearsay, the buyer tends to be the chief compliance officer at a firm; at Vestorly, the buyer is the advisor. These legacy providers put together a library of canned content for advisors to choose from. The advisor then has to manually push that content out to social media, their website or email.
“Using data with this browser technology, we can automate that entire process, saving these advisors hours and hours per week, giving them fresher, real-time interesting content that people will actually read, instead of canned content, and them giving them data on people and what they’re reading and helping them make smarter decisions,” Wisz said.
B/ds can create one level of filters, blocking certain publishers, topics or keywords within the browser. They then have a second level of pre-approval once the advisor chooses an article to push out.
The closed feedback loop allows the b/d to control the advisor’s activities, but it also gives the advisor insights into his or her users of the content, as it keeps users in one place. An advisor has access to the same level of analytics that a browser like Google Chrome would have on a consumer, Wisz said. It captures people’s names, emails, what are they reading and how the advisor knows them. It also captures where the person came from, which could be from social media or from a client who shared an article.
“Because we’re capturing that data, because it’s within this browser experience, the advisor is able to actually have a digital relationship with an individual,” he said. “Then we’re able to use that browsing history to recommend smarter content for that individual.”
This helps advisors get meetings faster and connect with the entire family of a client or prospect. According to Wisz, emails powered by the browser are seeing a 500 percent increase in open rates. Advisors have told Wisz they are saving six to eight hours a week on average.
“[Advisors] don’t have to manually go out and guess what content is going to be interesting to clients and prospects. Our data is able to tell them that.”
With the new technology, advisors can also have access to native digital content for the first time. Vestorly can pull content, such as white papers or research, from the legacy content management systems of the broker/dealer or asset manager, categorize this content and make it easily searchable.
“Our software is a cloud-based reading portal that is now able to absorb any content, including content management systems of broker/dealers and enterprises that are supporting huge networks of advisors.”