Pershing adds Vestorly's digital marketing and data services to toolbox

Pershing's broker-dealers and financial advisers now have access to Vestorly, a digital content platform designed to boost website traffic while giving advisers a snapshot of who sees the online content and when they do so. The financial business-to-business service provider, a BNY Mellon subsidiary that serves more than 1,600 broker-dealers and financial advisers, has integrated Vestorly's services on its NetX360 platform, and will be offering those services at a discount. Advisers who use the services will be able to curate and customize posts from around the web for their clients and prospects to view via a separate personalized web browser. Advisers will be able to embed this content in their email newsletters, social media accounts and websites. The “browser in the cloud” technology collects data on investors who view the content, including their identity and consumer behavior history. Vestorly will be collect data from advisers' website, social-media interactions and emails. “We think it will enrich the way advisers will communicate and collaborate with clients,” said Maureen Duff, managing director and global head of marketing at Pershing, adding that advisers having access to the data of their visitors will potentially provide new leads. “It allows financial professionals to finally understand the identity and reading behavior of people who are reading the content they're putting online,” said Justin Wisz, chief executive of Vestorly. “There's a lot of data about portfolio holdings, about the actual act of investing, but the missing dataset is behavioral data on consumers.” Mr. Wisz said the technology will help advisers to build better relationships with their clients and prospects. “It's that human approach,” Mr. Wisz said. “It goes beyond how your portfolio is allocated. What interests you, what interests your spouse or the beneficiaries?” Digital content — and being able to analyze the data that comes out of it — is a major component of the industry. However, there's a gap between the number of advisers who understand how important data analysis is for their practice and how many actually take advantage of the possibilities, said Walter Lis, a digital marketing strategist who works with financial advisers. “The more data you get on your side that you can manage the better,” Mr. Lis said. “But there's a huge disparity between advisers acting on that versus the people who aren't even aware this is possible.”