20. What they say “ I think this is a wonderful way to communicate with us.” “ This is a great use of technology and the message is well received.” “ Very good way of communicating and also wonderfully time effective . Keep it up and do more frequently. Also worked really well technically - no hassles.” “ Great medium for communication particularly for me working out of the country.” “ These kind of updates are vital in the current climate. This one was helpful.”
Good morning – its great to be here with you and to be part of this conference. I hope that this case study of how we use streaming in our business may add to what you’re already doing. Who is Citadel: I’ve been in the business for 12 years now, and it truly is an amazing place and community to be a part of. We’re a private client wealth care business. If I unpack that Private Clients = focus on assisting individuals & families /we do not provide any services to institutional investors We are in the business of wealth management , assisting individuals and families to chart their own financial roadmap, custom-made for their personal circumstances. Our solutions are global, integrating the fiduciary, risk and tax elements. We are committed to protecting and growing our clients capital over time. Care = Wealth Management is what we do , Wealth Care is how we do it. Not only do we take extreme care in the way that we construct, implement and maintain our client’s solutions, we truly are passionate about what we do and we invest a lot of time and energy on forging deep and strong relationships with our clients and internally within the Citadel family/ community. Its all we do, it is our sole focus . I believe this is what truly differentiates us. What we are not: Citadel is not a private bank so do not operate on both sides of the balance sheet. We do not offer any lending or insurance products and are therefore in a unique position to focus all our energy, expertise and research on financial planning and investment management. We are not insurance or stockbrokers. And we are not asset or fund managers. We’ve been in existence for over for over 14 years now and manage approx 14 billion rands for our clients and their families. In explaining the depth of our relationships with clients, we use analogy of a marriage. When clients join us, its like entering into a lifetime marriage. Our relationships with clients spands over 20 – 30 years. And it’s a very intimate one. So just like in a marriage, it’s important for that relationship to be strong you need to keep it fresh. Just like to show you a video of what some people resort to…. Ok so we quite clearly don’t go to those measures. But for us streaming is that freshness and I’m going to show you just how we go about doing that
Tell the audience who we are as they may not know and also put into context the fact that we’re a client intimate business and staying close to our clients and making them feel like they can sleep at night is so important.
What got us excited about streaming is that we felt it would help us connect with a changing client base
Discuss our traditionally older client base.
Three years ago, we were very nervous to try webcasts because a large part of our client base is retired and we didn’t know if they had fast enough connections. We knew as the market was shifting towards digital communication, we had to do something for our younger clients. They had also expressed the need to receive more regular communication from us on current affairs, the economic environment and their portfolio. So we piloted our first webcast to a select group of clients. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive – younger working clients appreciated it because they could get info without traveling to presentations and older clients also did not have to travel to events as they got older and more immobile.
This was our very first venture into web streaming. We designed two webcasts: Making Sense and Insight. Making Sense is a webcast presented by our investment team three times a year and gives a forward looking view on what’s happening in the local and global economy and changes that have been made to the client’s portfolio. Mention how the client receives it in his inbox – at this stage a very basic but cluttered HTML with a link. Why Making Sense?: We wanted to give clients more of an insight into the behind the scenes work and strategic thinking that goes into the construction of their portfolio. Clients needed more regular updates on what was happening in investment markets and their portfolios. They needed to receive communication that was brief, to the point and easily accessible.
This is a more recent example of Making Sense. We’re constantly striving to make sure the content is new and fresh and to keep things interesting we also make use of video as well as audio. A plus of using both audio an video is that if the presenter is uncomfortable in front of the camera, we can just as easily use audio! The client receives a beautifully designed HTML email, in this case we used some interesting words relating to the economy. The intro copy is short and to the point. The client then clicks on the link to the webcast. Over the years we’ve also realised that sometimes clients struggle to download the presentation and for that reason we always have a back up to supply them – either an audio file if it is a video presentation, or a written transcript. We really try to ensure that the client gets the message. Importantly, there is always an option for the client to unsubscribe. The message is never longer than 7 minutes and the client can also rate the webcast and give us his comments at the end. This has proven to be a valuable tool for us in terms of measuring the success of our webcasts and changing the content according to what clients want to hear.
Insight is a message to clients from our CEO Neil Brown. The purpose of this webcast is to keep clients close to our business and update them on the health and well-being of the business. Clients want to know of any new business developments, what’s happening with the leadership and people moves. They want to know that we’re a healthy and sound business and that they can sleep at night. We chose a very informal photo of Neil as we wanted clients to feel that he was having a personal conversation with them. Clients who cannot download the webcast are also able to download a pdf written version.
We loved it ‘cos our clients loved it so much. Inexpensive way of communicating Needed to look at ways of leveraging our communication
Talk about how we are now using streaming extensively in communication to clients and event summarising our major events into a brief video so that those who couldn’t attend get the message or those who did attend can share the message with friends and family.
Compare the cost per head of an 8 page newsletter (R18) or client event (R300-R500) vs webcast (R15) Leveraging existing communication at a nominal fee. Alton re our network capacity.