Mutual fund invests in getting customers to view Web content offline
Say you have a customer base that has an interest in finding out about your Web site’s regular updates, but doesn’t have the time to repeatedly log on. How do you keep your site in mind when it’s out of sight?
Amidex, an index-based mutual fund of Israeli technology stocks, hopes it has found the solution in a new product from New York-based Targetize. The product, ContentMate, pushes Web site content to a user’s computer using software the user downloads for free.
The content is viewed by the user in a window customized to match the brand identity of the content provider, says Oded Shtemer, president and CEO of Targetize. An icon on the user’s screen flashes when new content — text, video, graphics or whatever the provider sends — is available. The user does not have to be online to view the content, which is downloaded “behind the scenes” whenever a user goes online. Shtemer notes that the system is designed to check what the user is doing when online, and will avoid doing heavy downloads if what the user is doing requires a lot of memory.
Using feedback buttons at the bottom of the window, users can “grade” the content pushed to them, letting the provider know if they loved it and want to see more of that type, if they saved it for repeat viewing, or if they didn’t like the content and trashed it. This makes the system “smarter” and able to provide content better-suited to a viewer’s interests every time, says Shtemer. The goal, he adds, isn’t to keep people offline but rather to pique their interest so they’ll visit a provider’s site.
Boaz Rahav, fund manager of Amidex, says his company’s site (www.amidex.com) has been beta testing ContentMate and plans to go live with it this month.
The fund was created in January 1999. To date, roughly $30 million has been invested in the fund, which Rahav estimates has about 3,000 individual investors who have made an average buy-in of $10,000. Israel has the most stocks traded on Wall Street outside the United States, notes Rahav.
The profile of investors, says Rahav, is all over the place. When the fund was created, it was initially assumed the Jewish community would be the primary market. But two other interested segments have popped up: religious Christians who want to show their affinity with the holy land, and true investors just looking for a lucrative investment.
By law, mutual funds have to communicate with investors twice a year. Amidex is looking for ways to leverage those contacts and create a dialogue with investors. Rahav sees ContentMate as a way to do this, by pushing content, text and perhaps even inhouse created audio and video content to site visitors.
Initially, the software will only be available to users via free downloads from the Amidex site. But Rahav says the fund is considering sending CD-ROMs to prospects as a way to promote the fund.
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