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September 04, 2014 at 09:04 AM
Hearsay Social says it has nearly doubled its customer base in the past 12 months, adding more than 40 clients from large organizations such as Vanguard, New York Life and Pacific Life.
The San Francisco-based company, which gives financial services firms a compliance-friendly platform to work on social media, also says close to 100% of its clients have renewed their annual contracts and that it more than doubled its business in the second quarter of 2014 vs. results in the prior period.
“Being active on social media brings firms and intermediaries back to what the financial services industry has always been about: listening to people, understanding their dreams, and guiding some of their most important and impactful decisions regarding the future,” said Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih, in a press release on Thursday. “We’re proud to be fueling the return to that vision with the leading and most innovative financial services and insurance firms in the world.”
In August, Hearsay Social rolled out a program to help financial advisors promote their posts via Facebook ads and boost their social media interaction with clients and prospects. It says that some 2 billion people worldwide use social networks and spend about 7 billion hours on these sites each month.
“Financial-services firms are getting more and more comfortable with FINRA, SEC and other guidelines, and they have generally addressed these guidelines with technology policies and training,” explained Gary Liu, vice president of marketing, in an interview late Thursday. “Technology like ours facilitates that development and helps them go beyond such steps to roll out programs that let advisors and others use social media to engage with clients.”
This online engagement is what advisors really value, Liu says, since they want to deepen relationships with clients and extend their reach within local communities, Liu explains.
Hearsay Social notes that some 92,000 financial professionals in 15 countries use its platform to work via Facebook (FB), LinkedIn (LNKD), Twitter (TWTR) and Google+ (GOOG). To boost its technology, the firm partners with content marketing vendors like Broadridge, as well as with write once read many (WORM) archiving firms, such as Symantec.
“Networking is at the heart of our agents’ business, so we want to empower them to make social business an increasingly core part of their practice,” said Liz McCarthy, senior vice president of agency communications for New York Life, in a press release. “That’s why New York Life partnered with Hearsay Social to help our agents deepen relationships with their clients, increase their productivity, and grow their business.”
