Richard ChambersRichard Chambers, head of marketing at JPMorgan Funds, won FA's Fund Marketer of the Year award. The award, presented during the 15th Annual Mutual Fund Awards at the Pierre Hotel in New York, was recognition for the marketing campaign that JPMorgan put together for its line of six Intrepid Funds.
Richard Chambers
The Intrepid Funds use behavioral finance as the theme around their investment selection. As such, the focus of the marketing campaign--one of the firm's first integrated retail marketing efforts--was to explain behavioral finance concepts. Focus was also placed on highlighting the funds' performance, in part to prepare the ground for five-year performance figures, which became available as of Feb. 28, 2008.
The marketing push saw e-mails--including one that offered respondees a Starbucks gift card--direct mailings and a micro Web site. The campaign reached out to 85,000 advisors, more than 8,000 of whom replied; of those 8,000, 70% had never worked with JPMorgan Funds--"Precisely the groups we're striving to reach," according to Kristen Batteria, spokeswoman. The success of the Starbucks offer was eye-opening for the firm. About 8.5% of e-mail recipients responded compared to just 1.5% of those who received direct mail--a testament to bringing consumer marketing ideas to the fund world, using incentives to encourage advisors to respond. The firm is now reassessing its use of e-mail versus direct mail in its marketing campaigns.
The marketing effort also involved the firm's wholesaling team. Internal wholesalers talked about the funds while external wholesalers hosted themed events. The events included breakfast meetings called "Latte and Learn" which featured Starbucks coffee and chocolate covered coffee beans. The firm hosted 30 road show events across the country, during which wholesalers presented to about 1,000 advisors. JPMorgan also sent out client portfolio managers to meet with advisors to explain behavioral finance strategies.
The campaign produced significant results for JPMorgan. Sixty-three percent of advisors said their interest in the firm and its offerings increased because of the campaign and JPMorgan found that awareness of the behavioral finance strategy among its key target audience increased by 20%. Helped by the marketing campaign, flows into the Intrepid Funds nearly doubled from $695 million in 2006 to $1.1 billion in 2007, while assets in the line jumped from $1.5 billion to $2.6 billion. "Although our key objective was to create awareness, the uplift in sales from our responders was impressive," said Chambers. --Sam Mamudi For full coverage of the 15th Annual Mutual Fund Awards, please click here.