It may not feel like it now, but the end of the year will be here before you know and with it, a brand-new year. The final months of the year bring some clarity to your budget. You’ll know how much surplus you’ll have to spend on new initiatives, technologies, and solutions.

While there are many possible ways you can spend this extra cash at the end of the year, your ESG program deserves at least some of it. Here’s why this timely injection to the budget can help your investor relations strategy for the year ahead.

1. Changing Regulations

Next year will be a busy time for ESG funds. That’s when the European Sustainability Reporting Standards come into effect, which will impact any company that’s either based or operating out of the EU. These new standards will change how your company assesses and reports on your environmental impact and risks.

Navigating this new framework is easier when you work with a celebrated IR firm, like Q4 Inc. With the opening of Q4 Denmark, this IR firm has on-the-ground experience with these new standards. Denmark and other Nordic countries have been at the forefront of sustainable and social investing, making it the perfect hub for ESG consultants.

With sweeping changes to ESG reporting set for the upcoming year, the learning curve will be steep. Early ESG consultation with the pros can prepare your team in advance, making sure you work out the kinks before these new standards come into effect.

2. Increased Interest

A year after the European Sustainability Reporting Standards come into effect is another momentous time for ESG. That’s when PwC Luxembourg estimates European-domiciled ESG assets will reach a whopping value of €9 trillion. By 2025, these funds will account for as much as 56 percent of the total European Mutual Funds. Long before then, two-thirds of European institutional investors plan to ditch non-ESG funds by the end of 2023.

Investors want to support sustainable and ethical companies, so make sure your sustainable and ethical value stands out. Invest in a better ESG website that highlights your performance, identifies your goals, and shares the data that backs your claims. You may also want to invest in ESG events to help you deliver your message with beautifully designed and intuitive digital webcasts, roadshows, and more.

3. Engagement Metrics

Using IR tools like a dedicated ESG website and events platform isn’t a one-way street, its sole purpose to help investors learn about your environmental value. They’re also instrumental learning tools for your team. Every click, download, and digital attendance notification over these platforms is an engagement metric that tells you something about institutional investors and analysts alike.

Decoding their meaning is easier when you have an engagement analytics platform that effortlessly aggregates and analyzes these metrics on your behalf. You can track investors as they engage with your online brand, looking at individual behaviour or broad-stroke trends. Between the two, engagement analytics helps you:

  • Recognize content and campaigns that succeed.
  • Target investors who are engaging with your brand.
  • Identify possible activist behaviour in your stocks.
  • Benchmark your program against market peers.
  • Monitor these engagements against the overall performance of your stocks.

Updating your tech to include engagement analytics will set your investor relations strategy up for success next year.

The Takeaway:

Modern IROs know that targeting and outreach are all about timing. With this in mind, you should strategically focus your end-of-year energy on ESG.