Shortlist best use of direct mail: ‘Empowering Boutiques’In a financial industry experiencing extraordinary regulatory and transparency challenges post-global financial crisis, State Street identified an opportunity to help smaller “boutique” asset managers to liberate themselves from various investment servicing functions. This would allow boutique asset managers the freedom to concentrate on their core business of providing outstanding investment performance for their clients.State Street has an established global business servicing the world’s larger asset managers, but has never before set out to provide bespoke solutions to Europe’s “boutique” asset managers.State Street created a direct mail which demonstrated to boutiques that we understood their challenges and had an end-to-end solution that could be tailored to meet their needs.We targeted the key decision-maker at 88 boutique asset managers with our innovative video-based direct mail which provided a vital first contact for our sales professionals to develop in person. The direct mail duly delivered a 44% meeting rate and we won three major new clients.The innovative direct mail piece was part of a broader thought leadership, PR and marketing campaign targeted at boutique asset managers, demonstrating our understanding of their challenges.