Envestnet goes back to its un-marketing marketing approach as Marion Asnes (mostly) leaves and her CMO spot gets deleted

Brooke’s Note: When Bill Crager hired Marion Asnes, I gave the move an A+. It spoke to how much respect the president of the outsourcer had for the need to market and how little regard he had for off-the-shelf marketing executives. Crager erred on the side of hiring somebody he knew through journalism (Asnes was a trade pub editor); someone who really understood what his inherently — through no fault of its own — hard-to-get business does. That Crager is now eliminating the layer of executive management that we call “marketing” is harder to develop an opinion about. Tim Welsh critiques the move from his perspective as a former top marketing executive at Schwab and top RIA business marketing consultant today. Still, part of me likes the idea of a company in our industry now choosing to make the line between the marketing and business all but invisible. It seems — optimistically — to speak to a company so busy growing that its growth alone is attracting new growth.

After rapidly building itself up as a monopoly platform of separate accounts without ever hiring a chief marketing officer — and then luring Marion Asnes away from her post as editor of Financial Planning nearly three years ago to be its CMO, Envestnet, now poised for further growth, has decided to go it alone. See: Envestnet hires Marion Asnes to tackle its marketing challenge.

The Chicago-based outsourcing firm brought Asnes on board in November 2010 to make the multifaceted back-office business into something advisors could easily recognize and understand. Now Asnes has left her staff position at Envestnet this summer to launch a consulting business, Idea Refinery LLC. She is working from New York, and has no staff or website as yet.

However, as part of her new firm, she is still providing some public relations services to Envestnet, and the firm is her biggest client to date.

“We have no immediate plans to replace Marion. Our new structure allows Envestnet to continue to work closely with Marion on communication strategy,” says Bill Crager, chief executive of Envestnet Inc..

Still, in a back-to-the-future move, Envestnet will erase a line or two from its organizational chart.

Organizational proximity

“At the same time, we are bringing the marketing team organizationally closer to our business units, allowing us to continue to best engage with our clients and the marketplace,” says Crager. See: James Surowiecki has lessons for RIAs about marketing’s mushy middle.

Envestnet’s marketing challenge lies in explaining exactly what the firm does. On one hand, it’s a turnkey asset management program, but it also provides technology. Of course, it’s also a separate-account manager. And it’s also in the position of providing passive investing strategies.

Add to that: Earlier this year the firm announced that it is now selling data to other firms. See: Having won advisor assets, Envestnet’s next — more Google-like — play is for their smarts. Its products can be purchased bundled or unbundled. It’s easy to understand how the most sophisticated RIA, fellow TAMP, head of an IBD or other potential client can find it hard to wrap their minds around what Envestnet says that it does.

But even if the average RIA can’t explain to its mother what Envestnet does in plain English it arguably hasn’t mattered a whit. Envestnet is growing like gangbusters and for the quarter ended in March added 334 new advisors, bringing the total of fee-based advisors to more than 16,000. The firm has more than 23,300 advisors on the wealth management platform. Its share price has exploded in the past year to close to $28 from more like $12 a year ago as Wall Street has bought into its story. See: 5 things Envestnet is doing to grow even faster than most of its clients.

One key reason is that Envestnet doesn’t have to reach the hundreds of thousands — or even the tens of thousands — of end-investors, because it tends to make enterprise deals. What Envestnet does tends to thunder louder than the convoluted language — such as “integrated end-to-end investment platform” — sometimes used to describe such offerings.

Break on marketing

Crager confirmed that Asnes is “no longer serving as chief marketing officer for Envestnet.” In an e-mail to RIABiz after the Labor Day holiday, he said the kickoff of the fall season reminded him of the start of the new year in January. “New chapter, full speed,” he wrote.

As for Asnes, “She has transitioned to a consulting position focused on public relations and content marketing efforts. This new role capitalizes on Marion’s extensive journalism background, including her broad network of media contacts and her strong writing skills, which will help further communicate Envestnet’s unique value to the market,” wrote Crager.

'Branding muscle’ needed

But simply ditching a formal marketing strategy won’t work for Envestnet, says Tim Welsh, president of Nexus Strategy LLC.

“Now that they’re a publicly traded company, the stakes have gone up even higher and they need a CMO that comes from the real branding world. The shareholders will want to see corporate branding muscle. I think they have to replace her. If you own the stock, you will want to see them replace her.”

Welsh says no one needs marketing as much as Envestnet.

“They need a compelling marketing message that will resonate. Everyone is talking about alpha and beta and all of those Greek letters. They need to tell people how they’re going to build value for advisors to tap into the platform. Selling wealth management is very competitive and it’s getting more competitive.” See: With formerly hot TAMP category hitting a cold patch, Envestnet stays on a roll.

Marion Asnes: I’m having the time
of my life.

Stuck between

Welsh points out that Envestnet faces the dilemma of having no semantic silver bullet to describe the company because the firm is so diversified, complex and behind the scenes. He says the challenge for the company is to continue to carve its niche and focus on new projects. See: As Envestnet shares soar, the firm extends its offerings further beyond RIAs with $33-million deal.

“Maybe they need to do more acquisitions and acquire another company or component of technology. They’ve got a board of directors saying to them, 'What’s your next big thing?” he says. See: Envestnet and Chip Roame forge stronger tie.

Conference season

A key indicator in its new marketing strategy may be seen in the upcoming conference season.

“We’ll see the barometer of how visible they are at this conference season. All roads lead through the conferences; we’ll see where they show up,” Welsh says.

In his e-mail to RIABiz, Crager said that his firm will continue to bolster its conference exposure next year. “Envestnet is investing more in conference and educational events in 2014. We expect our Advisor Summit to continue to grow,” he added. See: Envestnet’s Crager and Fidelity’s Durbin both say soon-to-be-realized scale advantages will bring more wirehouse assets into play.

Asnes has been credited with expanding and spicing up the annual Envestnet conference. See: At Envestnet event, Sallie Krawcheck alludes to Crager alliance, blasts women-as-niche marketers and edges perhaps closer to endorsing the RIA model.

Welsh was impressed with Asnes’ performance at Envestnet. “Marion did a terrific job. It was a bold move to bring her from Financial Planning and transition her out of editorial background into marketing.”

New venture

For her part, Asnes says she’s excited to be launching her new consulting business with Envestnet as her biggest client.

In addition to consulting for Envestnet, she also has a strategic relationship with Impact Communications Inc., which provides marketing communications and PR services in the financial services industry, and is working with InvestmentNews. See: InvestmentNews shows it means business in the consulting business.

“I’m having the time of my life,” Asnes says. “I’m looking forward to growing the company even more.”

While declining to comment about Envestnet’s new marketing strategy, Asnes says she loved working for the firm full time. “I’m incredibly grateful that I had an opportunity to learn what I did about the complexity of making this kind of business work.”