“My email inbox is a feed. Inbox zero is a joke. It’s coming in so fast, I can’t stay on top of it, and have given up trying”

I heard that while visiting a major hedge fund a few months ago. My memory was jogged after reading an article in the WSJ this morning about the ‘ultimate flex’ of moving to fax machines and flip phones. 

The TL;DR is that people are moving back to older devices to move away from interrupting notifications and calls, and back to more ‘deep thinking’ time, and I’m sure the desire is the same in the capital markets.

In my story, the individual (an analyst) lamented the state of communication. Email inbox? A disaster. Bloomberg Chat? A disaster. Phone calls? Gave up on those a long time ago. The three core communication channels all felt broken, with no clear idea on how to fix them. When it comes to how truly broken the inbox is, I love asking one simple question to the buy side: “how many unread emails do you have in your inbox?” The answer is usually 50,000+ (in the last 30 days).

So the industry went looking for unspoiled ground. We found texting and whatsapp. Typing out something on your phone takes time – it’s much more difficult to copy and paste. Much more difficult to blast. Having someone’s phone number is much more personal. It’s also much easier to block someone (or never accept their communication in the first place). 

But alas, just like email, IB, and the phone before it, texting became flooded. Unusable. Then, just to make sure it was officially dead, the regulators came in and dropped the hammer in the form of billions of dollars of fines.

So the industry is back where it started: trying to make the existing channels work, in whatever way they can. 

Having spent a lot of time over the last twelve months talking to the buy side about email specifically, and how they manage their inbox today, I thought it was a good opportunity to share some anecdotes with my (majority) sell side readers. It’s important to remember just how terrible the experience is for clients, and understand why they are looking for any change or improvement possible. Here are some of the things I see:

Probably the most common, the use of Outlook “rules” to put people (and topics) on auto delete. It’s not a secret that this industry is terrible at managing unsubscribe requests. The buy side has largely given up on being able to get off lists, so instead of reaching out to the sender and asking to be removed, they simply put any email from “[email protected]” on ‘auto delete’ or ‘send to this folder’ (any folder but the inbox is usually just another name for ‘trash’). I’ve seen this done for authors, but also topics (I don’t want anything on ABC anymore), and content. The only challenge here is that if a sender gets put on auto delete, then you delete everything from them

Another one: creating a second email. I talk to investors who create a new email at the start of every year, and give it out to their key coverage contacts. I’ve talked to investors who have several different email addresses that they use for various use cases (research, notes, conferences, close contacts, etc.)

Rules to push formal research publications emails into specific folders. There are simply too many research publication emails being produced. Almost every senior buy side professional I’ve talked to does this.

Using a ‘shared inbox’ to save their own inboxes. We’ve seen a huge rise in teams using ‘catch all’ emails with the sell side. They will ask for content to be sent to ‘research@’ or ‘salescommentary@’ instead of directly to them. The real reason: they don’t want to worry about getting on/off lists

Fax machines: yes, just like the article, I’ve seen my fair share of fax machines. One senior PM had a fax machine set up to ‘auto print’, and only a few sell side contacts had the number. His use case? “If something starts printing, I know it’s important and worth reading”. 

I could go on, but you get the idea: the buy side is managing email the only way it can today: at the point of consumption. They have no ability to really manage what is being sent to them, so all they can do is triage it on their end with rules, shared inboxes, secret email addresses, and even secret fax machines.

Importantly, the sell side needs to help solve this problem. They need to help the buy side manage what they are receiving, and from who. When we started building unsubscribe years ago, we always got the same question: “what if I don’t want them to be able to unsubscribe?”. While I understand the concern, there is also an opportunity to learn: why are they unsubscribing? Is it the author? The sector? Leaving the firm? New role? This is the kind of information that the sell side can use to better understand and service their clients. 

The alternative today: they just put you on auto delete

To end, I’ll just go back to the quote that I used to open this email. Someone on the buy side calling their inbox a feed. No control, just a flow of information. More importantly, if the sell side doesn’t help solve this problem, the buy side will continue to solve it on their end, providing less and less clarity and feedback to the sell side on what their clients actually want, and how to effectively service them. The buy side is on a path to becoming a total black box, with a catch all alias email that everyone hides behind.

I’m hoping the solution for this industry isn’t to go back to flip phones and fax machines. I also hope it’s not alias, shared, and secret email addresses. I hope we can fix the infrastructure we already have. At Street Context, we’re very focused on enhancing email for the capital markets, so it works for everyone: sell side, buy side, and corporate. We have some exciting announcements to that effect coming later this year, and hopefully we can help improve the most used communication channel in the industry. 

As always, we’re here to help

Blair

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