Should asset management firms use gated content? Gated content is any online resource, like an investor’s guide or research paper, that you can only get after you provide your name and contact information. As a reader, you presumably get valuable information; as an asset manager, you get a way to contact a promising lead.

This guide examines whether asset managers should use gated content as part of their lead-generation strategy.

A Brief History of Gated Content

Gated content is any piece of marketing material that requires visitors to provide information before they can access it. Typically, you ask for a name and email address. Sometimes you request additional details such as job title, firm size, or assets under management.

The idea started in the early 2000s as marketing automation platforms like HubSpot made it technically simple to exchange content for contact data. Software companies adopted the practice first. By 2010, gated content had become standard practice across B2B marketing.

Five years later, many major asset managers and wealth management firms built gated research reports, eBooks, and webinars to create leads. Today, many firms emphasize a mix that favors ungated content, with some programs targeting an 80 percent ungated, 20 percent balance.

The most commonly gated content types include research reports, white papers, ebooks, and similar in‑depth resources.

The Case for Gating Content

When you gate the right content, you can build a great prospect pipeline. Other benefits include:

1. You get qualified leads

Who doesn’t want warm leads? If you don’t care about lead, maybe you’re in the wrong business. Prospects that come to you through a gated asset (a contact form, etc) have historically produced approximately 20–30 percent higher lead‑to‑customer conversion rates than ungated traffic.

2. You can personalize your marketing approach

The contact information you get when people fill out your form can help you personalize follow-up communications by investor interest. Personalization is important. Personalized emails that mention your prospect’s name, company, and key interests typically see around 20–30 percent higher open rates and 30 percent plus higher response rates than generic messages.

3. You can prioritize your audience

Gated content helps you segment your audience. This is important because not everyone who visits your website is ready to talk. By analyzing which pieces of content prospects download, you can score leads and prioritize who to follow up with. A prospect who downloads three research papers in two weeks deserves more attention than someone who downloaded one guide six months ago.

4. You create value

Putting content behind a form is one way of telling prospects that what you have to offer is special. This exclusive access can make investors, advisors, and institutional investors view your research, calculator, or webinar as worthy of their time.

5. You get permission to talk again

You also gain permission to continue the conversation. Once someone shares their email address, you can keep educating them with automated nurture campaigns. Nurtured leads have historically generated, on average, a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities compared with non‑nurtured leads.

The Case Against Gating Content

Gated content is not a panacea. Here are four reasons why:

1. You need money and time

Creating gated content that’s valuable enough to justify asking for contact information means time and money, often lots of both. You may need to partner with a research firm for original data and hire professional writers and designers to put together compelling materials. Then you need a landing page, follow-up emails, social media creation and promotion, and a sales team for personal contact.

Creating a campaign may cost $15,000 to $50,000 or more. Expenses include original research or data ($5,000-$20,000), professional writing and design ($3,000-$10,000), landing page development ($2,000-$5,000), marketing automation software ($1,000-$3,000 annually), and ongoing promotion. Your mileage may vary.

2. You lose leads

Face it, many people don’t like giving out their personal information. Eight out of ten people said they abandoned filling out a contact form after starting it. And don’t ask for too much information. Shorter forms generally convert better. Ask only for the information you need. Name and email address are often enough.

3. You get fake leads

Many people enter false information so they can get your great guide without giving you their real contact information. Nearly one‑third write a fake email address and a made‑up name at least some of the time. Plus, these fake leads are typically lower-quality. They muddy your analytics and waste your sales teams’ time.

4. You make it harder to be found via SEO

Firms sacrifice SEO benefits when they have gated content. Search engines can’t index what they can’t access. Gated content often sits behind forms that search engines cannot fully crawl.

What to Gate: Ideas Investors Can’t Get Elsewhere

You should gate high‑value assets that offer new insights, proprietary data, or tools that help investors make decisions. A useful rule is to gate content that meets these tests:

Original research

If you can develop—either on your own or with a strategic partner—original research, a proprietary survey, an interactive calculator, or a website assessment, you create content that buyers struggle to find elsewhere. Original research is the most valued format, with 38% of consumers willing to share their contact information.

Investor guides

A detailed, professionally designed investors’ guide of perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 words or more can make you look like, and hopefully actually be, an expert in solving specific issues. For financial planners, a “Tax-Efficient Retirement Withdrawal Strategies Guide” may assist clients in optimizing their retirement income. For portfolio managers, a guide on  “Alternative Assets Allocation for Affluent Investors” may be a useful lead-generation tool. Topics and titles should be customized to your clients’ needs.

Webinars

Webinars may be ideal gated content for asset managers simply because they are live, and presumably feature an expert or experts who can answer questions that people worry about. And people love webinars. Almost two-thirds of buyers said webinars were among the most valuable tools for making decisions.

You can also leverage webinars to create additional content, such as blog posts, written transcripts, and social media video clips.

Calculators

Interactive online calculators can be great gated content tools—if they provide unique and specialized information and can highlight your firm’s expertise in solving sophisticated investment challenges. They can’t be a basic retirement or interest rate calculator that investors can get practically anywhere. Examples include:

Generational wealth transfer tax calculator. This tool can estimate tax implications when passing assets to children and grandchildren. It helps families understand estate taxes and generation-skipping transfer taxes.

Alternative investment correlation analyzer. This kind of calculator can show investors how allocations to alternative assets, such as private equity, hedge funds, real estate, and commodities, can change their portfolio returns and correlate with traditional stocks and bonds.

Capital call liquidity calculator. Do you work with institutional investors? Consider this tool; it seeks to help institutional investors manage cash flow. Users input unfunded commitments by year and asset class. The calculator projects monthly cash needs over 24-36 months, identifies potential liquidity shortfalls during peak drawdown periods, and recommends optimal asset allocations to meet capital calls without forced selling.

Or you can take a page out of Amazon. Before you buy a book on Amazon, you can often read or download a sample chapter or two. If you like the sample preview, you buy the book. Asset managers who provide previews should get more leads than those without previews.

How to Gate Without Alienating Your Audience

Execution matters as much as strategy. Poor implementation of any gated content campaign can undermine even the best content.

Deliver value immediately

Send the content immediately after it’s requested. You don’t want people to wait for a download or an email. Frustration is not a good look.

Be transparent

To build trust, be transparent about what happens next after investors get their valuable content. Tell prospects exactly what they’ll receive and when they’ll receive it. Explain how you’ll use their information. And even before contacting prospects, you must include a privacy statement in your contact form.

Follow up quickly

A send-it-and-forget-approach will not convert leads. Generally, your salespeople should reach out within 24 hours, before people forget what they asked for and why. Reference the specific material they wanted—”I noticed you downloaded our calculator.”

And follow-up requires persistence. Whether through email or phone calls, it takes an average of about three to nine touchpoints to get a meeting with a new prospect, according to Salesforce.

What Should A Gated Content Marketing Campaign Look Like?

An effective gated marketing plan focuses on a small portfolio of high‑value assets instead of a large volume of similar pieces. To bring these ideas together, here is what a solid gated content marketing campaign entails:

Start with valuable content

Your gated content must be valuable enough so that people will give you their contact information. Generic materials won’t cut it. Many firms choose to partner with outside research firms to develop unique insights and with professional marketing agencies or freelancers to craft messaging, writing, and design.

Promote and follow up strategically

Think of a gated content campaign as a months-long program to build visibility and interest. Many managers create and post several thought leadership pieces on their website and leverage that content for short videos or print posts on social media and LinkedIn. They may also promote the gated content, often through a series of email newsletters that tease its benefits. All available for free.

To Gate or Not to Gate?

Gated content can be an effective lead generation tool, but asset managers must evaluate it against alternative marketing investments.

Every dollar you spend creating and promoting gated guides is a dollar not invested in digital advertising, thought leadership blogs, LinkedIn, social media campaigns, PR initiatives, and media training for your portfolio managers, or other opportunities.

The key question is return on investment: does gating a research report generate higher-quality leads than publishing it freely and distributing it through organic and paid promotion? Does it build your brand as effectively?

For many firms, especially smaller or emerging asset managers and wealth managers, freely available content may produce better returns. You might discover that making a popular piece openly available generates more qualified leads than gated content.

Frequently Asked Questions About Gated Content

What content should asset managers not gate?

Firms shouldn’t gate thought leadership articles, videos, pitch books, fact sheets, infographics, podcast episodes, portfolio manager interviews, market commentary, quarterly investment outlooks, and anything competitors offer freely. These materials build awareness and trust with prospects who aren’t yet ready to share their information.

How do we measure whether our gated content strategy is working?

Start with conversion rates: what percentage of downloaders respond to follow-up emails or schedule a meeting? Calculate cost per lead. Measure lead quality by analyzing how gated content leads compare with other sources, such as digital advertising or social media. Moreover, ask your sales team for feedback. When they contact prospects, what kind of questions do they have? Were they serious prospects or tire kickers?

Why is a landing page a crucial part of a gated content marketing strategy?

A landing page is a single web page designed specifically to convince prospects to download your gated content in exchange for their contact information. For gated content, landing pages are essential for converting prospects into leads. A great landing page has a persuasive headline, clear copy that highlights benefits, no navigation options, and a simple contact form.

The Final Word on Gated Content for Asset Managers

Gated content earns its keep when the content is so useful that qualified prospects are happy to “pay” with their contact details for your great research paper, calculators, or webinar. 

What’s the right balance between gated and ungated content in your overall strategy? For many asset managers, a good allocation might be about 20 percent gated and 80 percent ungated content. This strategy helps people find you through Google and AI search, social media, and LinkedIn with open content, while you save your most unique information for serious prospects with gated content.

Now, go open the gate to great leads.

Schedule a complimentary strategy session with Dan Sondhelm, CEO of Sondhelm Partners, to learn more about how to enrich your marketing efforts.

Frank Serebrin is the Content Marketing Director for Sondhelm Partners. He leads strategic and creative content and marketing services for our asset management and wealth management clients.