In recent conversations with placement agent firms, Private Equity International found that five out of six respondents feel busier than they’ve ever been. Not only are these professionals “overworked and juggling new mandates, secondary opportunities, and advisory work,” but the cadence of fundraising cycles continues to accelerate as well.
Against the backdrop of this congested and competitive environment, general partners (GPs) are increasingly requiring placement agents to hit significantly higher performance benchmarks. To stand out among their peers and attract GP attention, placement agent firms must demonstrate that they have the skills and resources to support these new demands.
With complex relationships at the heart of their business, placement agents must communicate efficiently and effectively with their GPs and limited partners (LPs), as well as within their own teams. To do this, placement agents must first invest in the right marketing technology.
Placement agents can take a page from Briarcliffe Credit Partners, a New York–based private credit placement agency that employs niche strategies outside direct lending. Briarcliffe utilizes DealCloud’s Dispatch solution — a fully integrated marketing tool built specifically for the capital markets — to hit its goals, maintain its complex relationships, and stay ahead of the competition.
How Briarcliffe Credit Partners uses Dispatch
Dispatch lets placement agent firms send sophisticated and branded communications, including deal announcements, industry reports and analysis, and fundraising communications to their industry partners. The solution also enables placement agents to collect performance metrics for each communication sent to their networks. These metrics provide firms with the insights needed to better tailor communications and improve interactions with prospects and leads.
“We chose Dispatch for a number of reasons to help us communicate with the industry,” said Jess Larsen, Founder and CEO of Briarcliffe. “One [reason] is it’s fully integrated into DealCloud, which is important. We need to have all the data and the analysis in our DealCloud system.”
Larsen continued: “Second, it is a very user-friendly system, and it’s easy for us to configure Dispatch the way we like as we communicate within the industry.”
How Dispatch benefits placement agents
Dispatch supports placement agent firms in numerous ways, from enhancing external communications to providing analytics and key insights on marketing activity. Here’s how Dispatch helps Briarcliffe and other firms improve their performance.
Strengthen the brand
In a recent survey of private equity (PE) professionals, the overwhelming majority (86%) said that the need for a strong brand has intensified — especially over the last 2 years — due to increasing competition for deals and LP funds as well as an increase in the market’s number of PE firms.
Additionally, 59% of respondents said the most common reason for needing strong branding was to raise awareness of LPs and placement agents for fundraising. The majority (67%) of PE professionals plan to invest more in marketing tactics like email communications, conference speaking, case studies, and thought leadership content.
Briarcliffe likewise understands the need to strengthen its brand and establish its credibility, and relies on Dispatch to do so. Dispatch lets the firm create and manage professional email templates that drive brand consistency and awareness, allowing the firm to communicate effectively and consistently with the GPs and LPs in its network. Briarcliffe no longer has to rely on multiple sources of record and can now maintain information for each contact more efficiently.
Whether your placement agent firm is reaching out to fund managers, capital allocators, service providers, or dealmakers who are looking for a place where they can make an impact, you can use Dispatch to stand out from the competition and communicate more effectively. Dispatch provides firms with the tools needed to differentiate themselves, tell effective stories that engage potential leads, and communicate consistently with their growing list of contacts.
Enhance targeted communications
Larsen reported that, by enhancing the firm’s communications, Dispatch helps drive interest from LPs and, ultimately, generate more revenue for Briarcliffe.
Dispatch lets Briarcliffe’s professionals easily manage communications throughout the fundraising process and share critical updates like a first close or an exciting deal in the portfolio with their LPs. Larsen explained: “[This feature] allows us to seamlessly update our LPs on all of the prospects and all of the updates we get from our GPs.”
Being able to share this kind of consistent, timely, and valuable content helps firms engage with their partners. With Dispatch, placement agents can create and send targeted emails to a segment of their industry contacts and then access engagement and performance metrics directly within DealCloud.
In addition, the Dispatch Pages feature allows placement agent firms to create and maintain customized landing pages and web forms that work seamlessly with their DealCloud platform. For example, firms commonly use Dispatch Pages to organize industry events. Through Dispatch, organizers can send out email invitations that offer a link to the event’s dedicated landing page. On the landing page, potential attendees can learn about and register for the event. Dispatch Pages then populates the firm’s DealCloud platform with metrics on the email’s open rate, RSVPs, and other key information to streamline and enhance the firm’s event planning.
Accelerate internal collaboration
To truly compete in the competitive capital markets, placement agent firms need marketing solutions that go beyond mere email distribution. Firms must be able to collaborate internally to understand which of their marketing efforts work best and decide whether to double down or pivot to new campaigns.
According to Larsen, one of the biggest benefits of using Dispatch is that its analytics capabilities provide rich and ready insights around the performance of Briarcliffe’s email communications and other marketing activities. “So, we can always improve and make our communication more efficient and more tailored to our industry,” Larsen explained.
Dispatch enables placement agents to centralize their business development and marketing campaigns — along with their associated metrics — all within DealCloud. This collection of data acts as a single source of truth for firms, empowering them to make critical decisions with a more complete and transparent view of their deals and relationships.
How private credit placement agencies can strengthen their brand through marketing integration
Although most placement agent firms are aware of the importance of brand and communications, many still struggle with creating effective strategies around these aspects. As the aforementioned survey of PE professionals revealed, nearly half of respondents believe their firm’s brand awareness is “fairly weak” or “not very strong.”
Now is the perfect time for your firm to get ahead of the competition, activate an advanced marketing solution, and establish a strong presence in the market.
With Dispatch, placement agents can strengthen their brand and set themselves apart in a crowded field. By leveraging this integrated marketing solution, your firm can build and enhance relationships that are key to successful deals.
Take the next step toward a stronger brand and better communications by scheduling a demo of DealCloud’s Dispatch today.