Why You Need a Dedicated Investor CRM

In this day and age we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing CRM software. Gone are the days of the rolodex and excel spreadsheets, they’ve been replaced by increasingly robust relationship management tools designed to manage customers and sales leads. But when it comes to relationship management software for investor relations, many people are confused about what they need.

Many IROs turn to the same CRMs their customer-facing teams use, only to find themselves bogged down by irrelevant widgets and limited capital markets functionality. What IROs need for long-term success is a CRM that’s specifically designed with the investor relations workflow in mind; one that will make their job easier, not harder. The main benefits of having a dedicated investor relations CRM software include increased access to critical data, improved business continuity, time savings, and regulatory compliance.

IR CRMs Include Better Investor Data

The main benefit of using a CRM built specifically for investor relations and capital markets is that it should include unique data that provides impactful insight from Day 1 of use. The data should inform decisions around investor targeting and outreach, and should be automatically tailored to your company’s unique characteristics. It should also provide you with insight into the health and trends of your shareholder base and that of your competitors and industry.

Unlike a standard, non-industry specific CRM, an investor relations CRM should be furnished with data across organizations, contacts, transactions and holdings. For example, Irwin's investor database contains over 1 terabyte of data that is used by our users to derive insight on contact information, holdings information, coverage information, styles and types of investors as well as quantum of capital managed. 

Irwin’s suggestive analytics make finding the right contacts and organizations for you as easy as a couple clicks. Without the constant flow of new data and insight, standard CRM users waste time and resources trying to find relevant information and are therefore less empowered to be proactive in managing the capital markets function to success. Irwin also combines Factset’s market intelligence into its IR CRM, supplementing your investor relations workflows with critical industry, peer, and market intelligence.

In addition to information on viable new investors, investor CRM software also allows you to easily generate reports on the effectiveness of your investor relations. Unlike a sales CRM which would produce reports on customer acquisition activity, an investor relations CRM will produce reports measuring investor activity such as share price movements, holdings movements, and investor activity. These reports allow you to track the ROI of conferences and roadshows while also demonstrating which outreach channels are effective. This level of reporting simply isn’t available in commercial CRMs.

IR CRMs Promote Collaboration

One of the main benefits of any CRM is that it makes it far easier to collaborate as a team. Not only can different teams more easily see who's speaking to whom, you can also monitor relationships over a long period of time and refer back to previous interactions. This can be incredibly useful regardless of the size of your IR team because it streamlines communication between IROs and C-Level executives. The increased transparency is especially helpful when working with external consultants or managing turnover, as an investor CRM makes it far easier to collaborate or hand off a relationship smoothly. 

Another key benefit of using an IR CRM for investor relations is that it helps keep your tasks organized. Without a quality IR CRM, you’re on your own when it comes to taking notes, scheduling and documenting meetings, recording calls, and creating follow up tasks. Your IR CRM software should allow you to do all those things from a single page. For example, Irwin customer Jack Cunningham General Manager, Investor Relations at Delta Air Lines, uses Irwn’s IR CRM to track the outcomes of his investor interactions so he can evaluate which strategies are producing the best outcomes:

"Irwin allows us to analyze recent interactions quickly and provides crucial context, such as ownership stakes and position sizes. We can easily see where we've made progress with investors and where we've invested time without seeing results. This enables us to efficiently decide whether to schedule follow-up meetings or place investors on a list for future outreach. The tool is invaluable for prioritizing and managing our investor communications."

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General Manager, Investor Relations, Jack Cunningham, Delta Airlines

Read more about how Jack and his team use Irwin to efficiently evaluate investor relationships and engagement.

IR CRMs Save You Time

Another advantage of using an investor relations CRM is that it’s much easier to use than a sales CRM, an excel sheet, an Outlook inbox, or a physical address book. You’re busy, you don’t have time to poke around fields designed for sales teams and disrupt your workflow scavenging through a tool that isn’t designed for you. Similarly, copying information from spreadsheets is not a valuable use of your time. A good CRM should already be integrated with your investor database to save you time when reaching out to new contacts.

It should be fast and easy to track and update your communications with investors in your IR CRM. Being able to take notes in an investor’s file while you’re on the phone, and using Irwin Assistant to build a summary of themes and talking points is an invaluable time saver. 

Additionally, investor relations CRMs also help you plan and execute roadshows and conferences. For example, Irwin’s comprehensive database of investors helps you instantly compile tear sheets. By spending less time searching for information, you have more time to spend impressing investors. We asked Najim Mostamand, Director of Investor Relations at KushCo Holdings how he uses Irwin to manage roadshows:

"When planning a roadshow, the first thing I want to know is which of KushCo's current investors or contacts are located in our destination. To pull this, I can easily reference all of our data in Irwin's IRM. Next, I like to use Irwin's Investor Targeting function to pull a very targeted list of qualified investors who would be a good fit to invest in KushCo. From there, I can organize which ones I want to try and schedule meetings with."

Director of Investor Relations, Najim Mostamand, KushCo Holdings

Learn more about how Najim uses our investor CRM to plan roadshows.

IR CRMs Aid Regulatory Compliance

Lastly, you want to make sure that your investor relations activities are appropriately organized for privacy and compliance. Not only do you want to ensure that your investor contact data isn’t getting mixed in with your customer data, you also want to ensure that any confidential information is kept secure. This ensures that not only is your customer and investor data as accurate as possible, but also your aggregate data isn’t affected by keeping both groups in the same system. 

Furthermore, you also want it to be as easy as possible to log all interactions and meeting notes with investors for regulatory compliance. Being able to send and track emails directly from your investor CRM allows you to maintain a historical account of all engagements.

Final Thoughts

If you’re still using your inbox, an Excel spreadsheet, or an empty house marketing CRM, stop. Using an appropriate investor relationship management tool will make it easier to collaborate on your IR strategy, prevent data loss, save you time, generate ROI reports, and help you maintain regulatory compliance. It’s easier than ever to make the switch to a proper investor CRM.