Our partners at Mediant recently posted about the benefits to public companies of building a long term relationship with their retail investors using engagement platforms like Stockperks. They call it the "digital era equivalent of breaking bread with your retail investors, both as individuals and communities."

Full post below and link to the original at the end.

“Breaking Bread” with Shareholders in the Digital Era

Imagine taking every retail investor out to lunch. How might your shareholders and investor relations (IR) program benefit if you magically had the time to arrange friendly forums during which you could communicate important news, explore shared interests, and respond to investors’ questions or concerns.

Mediant has partnered with Stockperks, an innovative platform that seamlessly connects issuers with their retail investors by offering perks, experiences and opportunities for engagement on a year-round basis. Stockperks rewards shareholders for giving their time and opening up about attitudes and motivations related to their stockholding. Think of it as a scalable, digital era equivalent of “breaking bread” with retail investors, both individually and as communities.

Authentic Shareholder Engagement

Retail shareholders are changing: demographically, attitudinally, behaviorally. Our recent special blog series, marking 20 years since Mediant’s founding, explored the societal and technological trends that combine into a paradigm shift for the proxy industry. Issuers are looking for ways to adapt, with digital methods for cultivating shareholder engagement top of their agenda.

Issuers are asking how they can learn more about retail shareholders, target new ones, and better engage existing ones. They want to improve voting participation, raise support for corporate governance changes, foster brand and product loyalty, and promote ESG programs.

This fits with the approach that Mediant advocates: engaged shareholders have a better understanding of company proposals, are more likely to vote with management, and typically hold shares for longer.

Although they acknowledge the benefits, small or busy IR teams can feel overwhelmed by the demands of a year-round engagement strategy. Digital channels facilitate a two-way dialogue, in contrast to the one-way conversation of traditional shareholder communications, and shareholders value this authenticity. The partnership with Stockperks offers a way of overcoming the time and resources constraints that would otherwise hamper progress.

How Stockperks Works

The Stockperks platform allows IR officers to develop shareholder engagement programs with minimal time and effort. As the name suggests, it allows you to offer perks to shareholders as a reward for their investment loyalty. The platform also allows you to share company news and interim updates on financial performance. You can create surveys, canvassing your shareholder or all Stockperks users, capturing data about sentiment, voting intentions, and meeting participation.

Over time, through more frequent and rewarding interactions, you’ll build more positive relationships, gain richer insights, encourage longer stockholding, and improve meeting and voting trends.

Is Stockperks Proven?

Rewarding shareholders to encourage certain actions has a long history. These have tended to be simple gestures: a coffee coupon with the annual report or a charitable donation in return for voting. However, the potential of rewards programs can be seen in Japan. Kabunushi Yuutai, its culture of shareholder benefits, took hold in the 1990s. Today, more than a third of Japanese issuers offer rewards schemes and these are credited with driving higher share prices, longer shareholdings and consumer loyalty.

Mediant partnered with Stockperks due to its first-to-market experience in the U.S. We found an affinity between its innovative platform and app, and our track record of technological innovation and depth of industry knowledge. Our familiarity with the increasing demands placed on IR teams meant that we also appreciated Stockperks’ intuitive interface and fulfillment support for physical perks.

Mediant and Stockperks: “Breaking Bread” with Shareholders in the Digital Era