Interview with Co-founder and CEO, AdvisorStream – Kevin Mulhern

 

“Personalization is what I think is the real driver of conversions of new prospects and growth in the share of portfolio from current clients.”

1. Tell us about your role in AdvisorStream (AS)?
As one of the founders, and the current CEO of AdvisorStream, it’s been exciting to be part of the adoption of digital marketing solutions in the wealth management space in multiple countries, and now we are serving sales professionals from adjacent industries like: insurance, real estate, mortgage brokerage verticals.

2. Can you tell us about your journey into this market?
I’ve worked with different teams to build tools for financial advisors for the last 20 years, and the opportunity to deploy marketing solutions was by far the most exciting and needed part of the tech stack for advisors and their firms. Adoption of AMP solutions is the number one focus of financial advisors; the growth of digital marketing investments is growing fast as advisor see large ROI from doing so. The journey has never been as exciting as it is today, as advisors of all stripes reap digital marketing returns.

3. How do you think technology is upgrading marketing Sector?

Personalization is what I think is the real driver of conversions of new prospects and growth in the share of portfolio from current clients.

Engagement with clients is now clearly driving retention and large gains in referrals and this is not lost of advisors focused on growth.

4. How has automated marketing platform eased process of marketing?
It’s amazing the gains marketing groups and compliance teams have gained by adopting centralized management of all advisors digital workflows. This is something AdvisorStream has understood since building its enterprise tools under the guidance of input from some of the largest broker dealers in the US.

5. Why do you think customer engagement is gaining more and more attention of the businesses?
It’s the concrete ROI advisors are achieving through digital marketing initiatives. The automated solutions available today were not here 5 years ago. Not in the robust way they are today. There are some great studies highlighting the retention and new business that content marketing across channels produces.

6. How has analytics and AI empowered marketing professionals?

• Personalization (for real!), ability to serve all clients with customized and timely content
• Delivering 1-to-1 content experiences
• Ability to identify new sales opportunities from current clients via target content
• Ability to capture significant new business, through lead capture

7. How do you differentiate your marketing automation platform from your competitors?

• Content Intelligence drives huge engagement metrics (serving 1-to-1 curated content)
• Fully licensed content, allowing a premium and fully co-branded client experience utilizing the world’s most engaging and current content.
• Compliance / Marketing integrations that reduce workload for home office teams

8. What advice would you like to give to the technology Start Ups?
Go to the USA. The sales cycle is shorter, the competitive environment in the US creates the need for firms to access and determine what new solutions will move their goals forward. I think the US should be seen as a first market for start-ups, though I understand that requires investment that is difficult for foreign firms. That was true for AdvisorStream, but was a key decision early on for us, of course that is looking back with what seem like 20/20 vision. Truthfully, it was more murky at the time, but we just looked at the size of the market, the symmetry to the Canadian advisors’ need. What we didn’t count on was the shorter sales cycle. We are launching now in the UK, and hope to see the same kind of adoption.

9. What is the Digital innovation in sales technology according to you that will mark 2019?
I think we are seeing the first sight of AI emerging in content marketing, but this is just the beginning. As systems get more intelligent, we will see extremely targeted content experience possible at the individual level across all digital channels, that is exciting!

10. How do you prepare for an AI-Centric world?
I think that is a hard question to take a stab at. I think the pace of evolution in the digital overhaul of all businesses will quicken. AS is squarely focused on sales professional’s ability to scale their business through automation. AI will allow advisors to deepen relationships driven via extremely targeted content marketing, finding new account opportunities with existing clients and newly captured prospects.

11. What are the major developments you are planning, in recent time?
AI – enhancing the client and prospects profile building and insights to determine next best actions with prospects and clients.

12. Can you tell us about your team and how it supports you?
AdvisorStream is a group of extremely talented and dedicated people who are solving real problems for our subscribers. We hear from our clients and this drives the culture at the company, we are extremely proud of the feedback we receive. You can see this come out in the reviews of our company. So far 50 stellar Google reviews. We are a true team, though we all have our roles, we function as one unit. Without my team I would be speaking with you today.

13. What movie inspires you the most?
I have many.

14. Can you give us a glance of the applications you use on your phone?
We use Google’s enterprise suite of tools to help run the business, so hangouts to stay connected to my team, Inbox to manage the hundreds of emails I get every day, and drive to collaborate on projects. We use slack as well. I do a ton of traveling, Uber is a necessity, as well as Google maps, city mapper. I keep abreast of news via the NYT and WaPo apps, The Economist Espresso, Flipboard, and SmartNews, . I’m pretty addicted to crunchbase as well, likely many entrepreneurs are! I’m working on a better work/life balance, so my headspace app helps me build mindfulness and to relax, and the runkeeper tracks my (ideally) daily runs. I like to unwind with old-school radio, so love my CBC and BBC radio apps. Also love YouTube music.