**Modeling of suitable data structures**
We designed a database application that extracts, structures and stores data from various sources. This includes, for example data from social media and marketing campaigns, cookies collecting certain data points from visitors on our website, newsletter and lead contacts and customer data from our cooperation partner. Staff members in the realm of public relations and marketing contributed to the question what kind of data could be accessed in which way. Particularly, we implemented control and review mechanisms for performance marketing, including the integration of conversion tags. ETL tasks (extract, transform, load) and an analysis module for calculating key figures and plots were implemented in a Python-based program package. The program package is set up to make regular updates conveniently possible.
**Interaction with customers and leads**
In June 2023 we launched our first product which enables private investors to invest into sustainable portfolios. In the investment process of our MVP (minimum viable product), our customers are asked a particular set of questions – partly concerning their financial situation and their risk adversity, partly their expectations concerning sustainability. That paves the way to understand customers' wishes and opinions regarding environmental and social measures when investing and to stay in touch with potential future customers (leads).
In September 2023, we enriched our content offerings with the production of new video content. Additionally, we launched several targeted marketing campaigns. Moreover, we initiated a series of marketing webinars and prepared new blog articles. We cooperated with several influencers to market our product and increase our following. To personalize our interactions with customers, we introduced tailored email chains, enhancing our communication and nurturing client relationships. In January 2024, we acquired a G2 license for Google, empowering us to advertise financial services effectively – particularly Youtube.
As a result, our following has increased from the project start by around 50%, we have currently around 600 followers on Instagram and 500 on LinkedIn. Our newsletter goes out to around 300 people. Our marketing campaigns during the project have reached up to 145.000 people.
Furthermore, we improved our sales pipeline by identifying leads that started but did not complete our investment pipeline. We reached out to them via email and telephone and asked a set of questions. We aggregated information about from where they knew us, if our website and product was convincing enough and if there were any major obstacles in our pipeline. We included their feedback into our process.
**Development of a suitable data pipe line**
As planned, we established a robust data protection statement to ensure compliance and safeguard customer information. On our website we have stated very clearly and transparently which cookies are set and what purpose they serve in order to fulfill all legal requirements and to gain our customers trust. We streamlined our data management processes by implementing a data pipeline to seamlessly integrate and merge customer and lead data, ensuring efficiency and accuracy in our operations. In this process, the customer data was anonymized in order to comply with our data protection statement but structured it in a way such that it is still granular enough to allow algorithms to extract relevant pieces of information.
**Integration of the data into portfolio decisions*
Since our potential customers are very critical with respect to transparency and sustainability, we decided to apply for the FNG certificate (SRI quality standard on the German-speaking market). As part of the application process, we made our portfolios more sustainable – we received the certificate in fall 2023.
As a frequently asked question concerned the soundness of our sustainability criteria, in order to decrease research risks we included more data sources into our sustainability measures – among others data from the NGO Urgewald. To explain our methods and our complex sustainability criteria, we prepared information materials like blog articles and videos that we are continuously releasing.
We set up a data pipeline such that personalized customer choices can be more easily integrated into our portfolio calculations. To do so, we implemented a dashboard that gives an overview of the tailored strategies using diverse suitable plots and tables and aggregating sustainability data of the portfolio together with risk return measurements. Also the software provides a backtesting application that can be reviewed via the dashboard.
In order to further and more thoroughly test our model, we continue to collect lead data and costumer feedback.
