As the world of investor relations becomes increasingly complex, it's essential teams adopt CRM tools to streamline workflows, encourage efficient processes and maintain effective communication with investors. By implementing a CRM, you'll be able to successfully acquire and onboard new parties and ultimately grow your business. Over the past weeks, we have done extensive research into the market to bring you the pricing plans, pros, cons, and features for 8 of the best CRM software for investor relations in 2023.
Building deeper and lasting relationships with your company's financiers is vital for growth and increasing profits. Investors are extremely careful about where they put their money. it's the job of the investor relations team to convince and assure them of a risk-free investment. This task can be very laborious, involving many different investors that demand your utmost attention.
So how do you effectively manage your shareholders and secure sufficient funds for your company? You need an effective CRM tool. While CRMs are for the most part designed for clients and customers, they can also be used to great effect to manage investors. After all, investors are buying your company or clients' shares, so they deserve the same if not higher priority than your customers. Consequently, obtaining a CRM should be the first task of any investor relations team.
What features should you look for in a CRM for investor relations?
- Document and signature handling
A good Investor Relations CRM should have an efficient document handling interface. Investors should be able to provide their electronic signatures on contracts, deals, and other documents from anywhere in the world and they should all be stored in one place (your CRM). - A combination of sales, marketing and customer communication features
The best CRM for you may not have the most tools and features, but the ones available must meet your investor relations needs perfectly. You should look for a CRM that comes with a combination of sales, marketing and customer support features as investor relations involves a combination of these three. - Ease of use / good UX
Ease of use is an essential factor to consider when picking a CRM for investor relations. Any CRM worth subscribing to should have a user-friendly and intuitive interface. Even the best investor relations CRM is utterly useless if users find it difficult to navigate its UI and use its features. - Plenty of accounting, documentation, quotation, e-signature integrations
Beyond ease of use, an investor relations CRM must provide integrations with other business management tools. Using many different software means that data is scattered across multiple platforms, making it difficult to have consistent information on all your leads and investors. Proper integrations help to alleviate this problem by consolidating data in a central location and sharing it across all platforms. - A built-in CMS (Content management system)
The importance of a content management system to your business cannot be over-emphasized. A CMS allows sales and marketing teams to publish branded and styled content on the web, ready for your investors to access. It makes publishing this content a breeze - with no technical knowledge required. It's also a platform for you to extoll your company's virtues and outline reasons for investment.
Examples of how investor relations use CRMs
Managing your investors isn't very different from managing your clients and customers. The workflow is largely the same, and the end goal is to keep your shareholders happy while increasing your capital. To that end, there are several tasks that your investor relations team must use a CRM to perform. Some of these tasks include:
- Lead nurturing
The first step to obtaining investors is identifying and building relationships with them. IR consultants use a CRMs onboarding pipeline to store contact information, rank leads based on win probability, and establish communication channels with them. These communication channels include live chats, email messaging, and VoIP calls. - Schedule appointments
The investor relations team will have several meetings with shareholders to discuss the company’s finances and close deals. CRMs help to book appointments, manage them effectively and send reminders to all meeting participants. - Manage deals
Investor relations involve negotiating the prices of your company’s shares with potential investors. The deals pipeline helps you automate and effectively manage this process. It creates a proper workflow for you to follow and tracks the progress of ongoing deals. - Track fundraising
CRMs help investor relations teams track funding sources and document them appropriately. This is useful to measure performance and helps the accounting team make an accurate assessment of the company's finances. - Share information
Investor relations teams leverage the knowledge base and customer portal in CRMs to share relevant information about the company. Investors will undoubtedly require your company's financial information before committing, and the knowledge base provides easy access to that information. You can also use the knowledge base to advertise your company and attract more investors.
Quick comparison of Best CRM Software for Investor Relations:
| Software | Intro Price | Differentiator |
|---|---|---|
| Irwin | On quotation | Designed from the ground up for Investor relations |
| Active Campaign | $19 | Affordable all-in-one software solution |
| Hubspot | $45 | Excellent investor communication |
| EngageBay | $12 | Great integration functionality |
| Less Annoying CRM | $15 | Ability to organize investor follow-ups using customized tasks |
| Apptivo | $8 | Competitors app collects information on competitors |
| Altvia | On quotation | Real-time visibility of all relationships in reporting dashboards |
| Globacap | On quotation | Provides end-to-end digital ecosystem |
The Top 8 Best CRM Software for Investor Relations are:
1. Irwin
Founded: 2017
HQ: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| Key info | Free Plan: No Trial: 7 days (on request) Support: chat & email |
|---|---|
| Best for | Businesses looking for a CRM tailored specifically for investors and shareholders |
| Pros | + Excellent customer support + Effective targeting tools + Dedicated surveillance expert that gives you weekly reports |
| Cons | - May be too expensive for solo IR consultants - Needs more shareholder reporting features |
| Integrations | Salesforce, Accounting Suite, Xero, Quickbooks, and 870+ more | Pricing model* | Available upon request |
Irwin is our top pick for a good reason. Alongside Altvia and Globacap, it's one of the only CRMs on this list specifically designed from the ground up to cater to the demands of a modern investor relations team and after careful assement, we beleive it's the best of the bunch.
Irwin's primary strength lies in its ability to address four major financing problems that businesses face. By leveraging its robust capabilities, companies can effortlessly identify investors, track their investor relations activities, gain access to valuable research, and keep a close eye on changes in their shareholder base.
The tool truly shines when it comes to investor targeting. It provides access to a vast global database comprising millions of renowned investors, equipping businesses with the means to find the perfect fit for their investment requirements. Not only does it offer comprehensive profiles of these investors, including their primary investment areas and contact information, but it also eliminates the hassle of manual data entry. Irwin automatically downloads this vital information from the global database, ensuring accuracy and saving valuable time.
Understanding changes in the shareholder base is a crucial aspect of investor relations, and Irwin excels in this area as well. In our assessment, with its global database of security ownership and integration of consenting shareholders' personal information, Irwin provides businesses with a comprehensive understanding of their shareholder base. This will empower your IR team to analyze risks, identify opportunities, foster meaningful relationships, and make well-informed business decisions. Additionally, Irwin's dedicated surveillance expert offers weekly reports on shareholders and alerts businesses about potential risks, bolstering their proactive approach.
For businesses seeking to make insightful business forecasts based on market trends, Irwin provides access to an extensive database of analyst research. This invaluable resource encompasses detailed information about not only the company itself but also its peers and competitors. With access to transcripts and highly accurate estimates, Irwin equips businesses with the necessary tools to make data-driven predictions and strategic decisions.
Irwin's CRM tools extend beyond catering to regular clients; they are tailored to meet the unique needs of investors and shareholders. In our evaluation, the software provides a centralized location to maintain records of all meetings, calls, emails, and events, ensuring easy access for every member of the investor relations department. Moreover, Irwin offers a library of report templates that enable businesses to effectively communicate their team's performance to any interested party, leaving a lasting impression and instilling investor confidence.
While Irwin may not boast an extensive array of tools and features like some of its conventional CRM counterparts, we believe its focused and purposeful approach to investor relations needs is commendable. Furthermore, its track record of positive reviews on G2, with an exceptional average score of 9.7/10 in ease of use, ease of setup, and quality of support, solidifies our belief that it is a trustworthy and reliable choice.
Ultimately, after our careful analysis and consideration, we confidently declare Irwin as the ultimate pick for businesses in search of a comprehensive CRM solution for investor relations. Its one-of-a-kind features, profound insights, and specialized investor-targeting tools make it a standout option that we think is the best for elevating any investor relations strategy to new heights of success.
Many of its users share our opinion, with one satisfied customer stating:
"Using Irwin has been a big win for me and allows me to perform at a higher level."
2. Active Campaign
Founded: 2003
HQ: Chicago, Illinois, United States
| Key info | Free Plan: No Trial: 14 days Support: Chat & email |
|---|---|
| Best for | Businesses looking for a low-cost, all-in-one solution |
| Pros | + It is simple to segment customers and track their behavior + Great for email sign-ups and pop-up windows + Built-in marketing email templates and email campaign tools |
| Cons | - Some terminology may be confusing to new users - You have to wait about 5-10 minutes to send an email after creating a new email list - Image management for email campaigns could use some work |
| Integrations | Salesforce, Accounting Suite, Xero, Quickbooks, and 870+ more | Pricing model* | Lite: $19 per month Professional: $49 per month Enterprise: On quotation |
Almost every tool and solution ActiveCampaign offers are automated, from marketing to sales and customer services. This makes it an excellent option for IR consultants looking to take on a large number of investors. By virtue of its age and available features, ActiveCampaign sets the standard that newer CRMs strive to follow. Still, it continues to improve and easily competes with modern CRMs.
The longstanding CRM helps you gather more investors in as little time as possible with its sales automation system. Using a simple and intuitive flowgraph builder, you can trigger a sequence of actions that can be conditionally executed. The automated pipeline allows you to conduct email campaigns, nurture leads, and ultimately onboard your leads as investors. Despite its name, the sales automation system is not just designed to sell goods and services. You can easily adapt it to suit your investor relations needs.
ActiveCampaign's sales engagement tool builds upon the sales pipeline. It knows the right time to deliver personalized emails to your leads and investors, helping you to develop deeper relationships with them. This tool bridges the gap between marketing and sales by providing a one-on-one communication experience with your shareholders. You can also score leads using a comprehensive customer view, highlighting high-value targets.
ActiveCampaign's customer service tool is perhaps the most advanced of any software on this list, and that's saying something! Before you have conversations with investors, this software records their past questions and feedback, arming you with the knowledge required to predict their needs.
This software also identifies shareholders who invest the most money so you can offer special deals and incentives. What's more, the customer service tool tracks investors' online interactions and behavior to give you an insight into how best to satisfy them. Among other great aspects, this degree of control makes ActiveCampaign an assured choice for any size business looking to improve investor relations.
3. Hubspot
Founded: 2006
HQ: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
| Key info | Free Plan: Yes Support: Phone, email, & chat |
|---|---|
| Best for | Small businesses looking to improve investor communication |
| Pros | + Great for companies that need extensive features + Abundant online tutorials to learn the software + Excellent email tracking capabilities. |
| Cons | - Workflows are often confusing and hard to understand - It can get very expensive when adding features |
| Integrations | Zapier, Salesforce, Quickbooks, and many more | Pricing model* | Starter: $45 per month/two paid users Professional: $800 per month Enterprise: $3200 per month |
With its huge collection of marketing, sales, and CRM tools, it's easy to see how Hubspot has built such a stellar reputation. Providing hundreds of features in its free plan, there’s little wonder why Hubspot is the most popular CRM of today. What's more, these features are comparable to those offered by the costlier subscriptions of other CRMs. The free plan allows you to manage millions of shareholders and store massive data amounts.
One of Hubspot's central features is the Customer Portal which enables investors to get information whenever needed. This tool gives investors a window into your company's operations and allows them to solve problems independently. Doing so increases transparency and builds trust with your shareholders and financiers. The customer portal is also highly customizable requiring little to no coding knowledge. You can apply your company's logo, colors, and fonts without a professional designer.
Hubspot's communication tools are unmatched by any other software on this list. It enables you to have voice calls with leads, investors, and employees from within the app. It records these calls and automatically generates text transcripts. You can also export call logs in XLSX, XLS, and CSV formats. Likewise, you can integrate email providers with Hubspot and have email correspondence with investors.
This CRM giant also allows you to seamlessly switch between email, chat, and over 1000 messaging apps through its omnichannel customer service. The interface remains the same, giving you one conversation thread across multiple communication channels. Hubspot integrates with Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Jira, amongst others, so there is no communication barrier between you and your shareholders. Just see how AES International increased leads by 75% using Hubspot.
Remarkably, most of these features are available in Hubspot's free plan. However, beware of fully committing to this software as the free plan is designed to attract more customers. You start using the basic plan, and before you know it, you're paying more money to access more advanced features. Ultimately, you could be looking at $5000 per month for the full range of Hubspot's features. Nonetheless, if your company can afford Hubspot, you'll definitely be getting your money's worth!
4. EngageBay
Founded: 2018
HQ: Delaware, United States
| Key info | Free Plan: Yes Support: Phone & chat |
|---|---|
| Best for | Startups looking for an affordable CRM system |
| Pros | + Great CRM to use for Marketing, Sales, and Lead Generation + Excellent funnel builder + Automatic data entry |
| Cons | - Few drag-and-drop options in templates - No SMS Function - The workflow editor can be simpler and easier to understand |
| Integrations | DocuSign, Zapier, QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify | Pricing model* | Basic: $12 per mo/user Growth: $40 per mo/user Pro: $80 per mo/user |
EngageBay is a general-purpose CRM that has risen recently as a powerful tool for investor relations. It offers four software packages you can obtain individually or in the discounted all-in-one bundle. The CRM & SalesBay and Live Chat Software are the most relevant to investor relations. However, the many marketing automation and Help Desk software tools can be tuned to meet your needs.
As an investor relations professional, you often have personal meetings with shareholders and investors. EngageBay's appointment scheduling software ensures that you never miss meetings or mix them up. This software syncs to your Google or Office 365 calendar and sends reminders and notifications to all meeting participants. It also provides an interface that allows your investors to schedule appointments directly.
EngageBay's 360-degree customer view tracks investor behavior and preferences, allowing you to gauge their mindset about your company. This tool pulls data from their social media profiles, company pages, and other internet sources and stores it in a central location. That way, all your investor relations department members have easy access to the data.
The 360-degree customer view builds a comprehensive profile of each investor using their contact information, communication history, engagement, and lead scores. It also updates and syncs this data across all devices, boosting productivity and efficiency.
EngageBay offers free live chat software that lets you talk to investors in real-time—a very useful feature indeed—integrating with the customer view to develop a personalized approach to conversations. Similarly, it provides unlimited integrations with third-party services and websites and sends email notifications whenever someone initiates a chat. EngageBay also collects transcripts and chat metrics that help you to improve business performance.
All things considered, the CRM provides many more affordable features that are useful in investor relations. The marketing tools conduct campaigns that can sway potential investors. Likewise, the landing page builder provides financial information about your company and outlines why shareholders should invest in you. According to G2, most investment managers use EngageBay to manage deals, organize contacts, and schedule appointments.
5. Less Annoying CRM
Founded: 2009
HQ: St. Louis, Missouri, United States
| Key info | Free Plan: No Trial: 30 days Support: Phone & email |
|---|---|
| Best for | Small businesses who want to attract more investors |
| Pros | + Excellent customer support services + Easy to learn and use + Ability to create your subsections, making the database personal and extra functional |
| Cons | - No email integration and somewhat limited reporting options - Fewer CRM tools than competing products |
| Integrations | Badger Maps, Mailchimp, Google Calendar, AgileForms, Simplii. | Pricing model* | $15 per mo/user |
Less Annoying CRM (LACRM) is an easy-to-use CRM solution for small businesses looking to attract more investors. In line with its core mandate, this software targets companies requiring a minimalist feature set, offering only one subscription tier that unlocks all its features with zero hidden charges or complicated contracts. While it's designed for small teams, LACRM offers personalized discussions with larger teams to access advanced features.
Less Annoying CRM allows you to organize all investor follow-ups using customized tasks. It collects all investor data in a central platform so you can quickly overview your standing with each shareholder. Using the Workspace tool, you can define a proper workflow for all events, contracts, and activities. This tool also provides diagrammatic representations of investment leads, reviews, and onboardings, showing metrics on won or lost investments.
LACRM's simple but powerful lead report gives you an updated list of all investment leads in your pipeline. It shows their contact information, current status, and priority in a single table so that the entire investor relations team can follow up on all leads. Each team member gets their login and password and any roles and permissions the account owner sets. This makes collaborations and sharing of investor lists and financial information very easy.
Less Annoying CRM has been criticized for being more of an advanced contract manager than a true CRM. This characteristic may be a problem for other businesses, but it's perfect for investor relations. You can get more investors to finance your company without dealing with the extra functionality in other CRM options. No unused features will clutter the UI and decrease the software's performance.
Less Annoying CRM has been the top-ranked US News & World Report CRM for three years. This ranking is unsurprising given the near-perfect customer rating on G2 and Trustpilot. It has overwhelmingly positive reviews across all categories and is touted as the easiest-to-use CRM. Although it lacks email integration, many customers praise LACRM for its flexibility and customization options. If you're a small business, LACRM may be the perfect tool to enhance your investor relations.
6. Apptivo
Founded: 2009
HQ: Fremont, California, United States
| Key info | Free Plan: Yes Support: Phone & email |
|---|---|
| Best for | Small businesses with a specific set of CRM requirements |
| Pros | + Customizable fields + very flexible and user friendly + Good customer Service |
| Cons | - Certain templates can be difficult to customize - Some of the fields do not display consistently - Creating email templates can be confusing |
| Integrations | Paypal, Quickbooks, Xero, and Slack | Pricing model* | Lite $8 per mouser Premium $12 per mo/user Ultimate $20 per mo/user Enterprise: On quotation |
Apptivo is a highly modular collection of marketing tools, HRMs, and CRMs. This software allows you to customize your experience and create the best collection of apps to address your needs. With Apptivo, you only pay for what you use and what you can use, as the number and kind of apps you can install on Apptivo depend on your subscription tier.
Apptivo features a My Agenda app that organizes your tasks, events, and follow-ups. This app displays all pending, overdue, and completed tasks on an integrated calendar, making it an excellent appointment-scheduling tool. The task system provides powerful filtering functions that sort tasks by status, priority, CRM role, and other user-defined tags. The event system offers similar functionalities and includes the ability to assign meeting participants.
Apptivo’s suite of CRM tools contains apps like contact management, leads, opportunities, and contracts. These apps help you to efficiently organize all contact information and group them based on status. You can easily find all potential investors and create personalized content directed at this group. What’s more, the competitors app collects information on rival companies, so you can devise strategies to get ahead of them.
The financials app collection contains the Fund Raising app specially designed for investor relations, allowing you to manage all funding sources and groups them based on the amount, contact information, and share percentage. It's quite similar to the contact management CRM app in that it stores the contact information of investment leads and investors. Furthermore, the Ledger and Expense Report apps help you professionally present financial information about your company.
Apptivo provides 70 web applications that will find some use within your investor relations department and your business at large. Its customer review ratings on G2 are well above average, with special praise given to the flexibility and customization options. Despite some complaints about the minimal UI and email templates, Apptivo remains a customer favorite.
7. Altvia
Founded: 2006
HQ: Broomfield, Colorado, United States
| Key info | Free Plan: No, Free Demo Support: Phone, email, & chat |
|---|---|
| Best for | Private capital markets |
| Pros | + Can be easily customized to fit the distinct processes and needs of your business + Great out-of-the-box functionality + The Altvia team has expertise in investments and private equity space |
| Cons | - Built on the Salesforce platform and constrained by its functionality - Standard reporting (in Salesforce) is a little clunky for building ad hoc reports - Steep learning curve can be difficult for novice users |
| Integrations | Pitchbook, Slack, Crunchbase, DataFox, and many more | Pricing model* | On quotation |
One of Altvia's chief selling points is the centralization of all contact information, email exchanges, and conversations. It's a private equity software focused primarily on relationships and data. Built on the critically-acclaimed Salesforce platform, Altvia is well-tailored to investor relations. And, while it depends on Salesforce's features, it has a wide range of integrations with third-party software.
Altiva provides a virtual data room (ShareSecure) that helps you create, audit, and track documents sent to investors. This investor portal requests and captures e-signatures with ease and sends multimedia files like video and audio clips. Moreover, ShareSecure can create and optimize personalized email campaigns for your shareholders.
Altvia stores all investor information in a secure database for real-time visibility of all relationships in reporting dashboards. These dashboards double as task managers, allowing you to create, assign, and resolve tasks efficiently. Furthermore, Altvia automatically adds contact information when your team members interact with any investment lead or current shareholder.
Customers have praised Altvia's ease of use and data centralization. It has highly positive reviews on G2 and Capterra, with customer support and marketing automation receiving the highest scores. It is also multi-platform and can be used on mobile devices without diminishing the user experience. Despite its small customer base and stiff competition, Altvia is still a worthy contender for the top investor relations CRM.
8. Globacap
Founded: 2017
HQ: London, United Kingdom
| Key info | Free Plan: No Support: Email |
|---|---|
| Best for | Businesses in need of a digitized investor network |
| Pros | + Built-in automated compliance checks + Ensures consistent and professional shareholder communications + Digitized investor onboarding |
| Cons | - Relatively new software with few users |
| Pricing model* | On quotation |
Globacap is a modern, blockchain-based CRM platform loved and trusted for its financial security. It offers several equity management solutions, including an intelligent investor CRM. Globacap relies on the PLAID crypto blockchain to store your investor and investment data. This facilitates faster payments to fellow Globacap users as well as maximum data security.
Globacap’s investor CRM provides a powerful communication platform with automated notifications. This platform digitizes your investor network, allowing you to view all shareholders and their investment history. It also helps you collect and analyze investment data for actionable insights. Additionally, you can invite investors onto this platform and manage their interactions.
Another of Globacap’s features is an automated workflow that creates an error-free onboarding process with minimal human intervention. It provides automated anti-money laundering checks, e-signature support, and a customizable dashboard. This user-friendly dashboard stores all investment and order history, allowing you to access them quickly and efficiently. In addition, Globacap offers built-in compliance checks for investors from over 60 countries.
Finding the right CRM for your investor relations needs
Choosing the best investor relations CRM involves a thorough decision-making process to avoid costly mistakes. We’ve outlined the most important factors to consider and explained how to get the most out of your CRM. It's also important to consider the features each CRM offers. For example, Irwin seems like the most obvious choice because it was designed for IR consultants. Yet, it doesn’t have as many features as the other software on this list.
You must understand your company's needs and goals when searching for a CRM platform. It would be a mistake to take a CRM at face value. Your best course of action would be to give the CRM a test run. All CRMs discussed in this article offer free trials so you can obtain first-hand experience of their operations.
Our Pick - Irwin
Irwin is specifically designed for investor relations consultants. It's very easy to use and offers adequate customer support. These features, combined with a global investment and investor database, make Irwin Toksta's best CRM for investor relations in 2023.
Meet the author
Sam Cassman is a seasoned growth marketer with over 10 years of experience as growth marketer for startups and small businesses. He is the founder of Toksta, a research technology company that helps businesses find and purchase the best software and SaaS. Sam has also run his own growth marketing consultancy Honest Growth, where he helped numerous clients to grow their businesses, including Eventcube, Baluu, Obby, and NBM Group.
