Recent webinar examined how existing market data can propel IR teams to new insights
As any IR professional knows all too well, the market is awash with a wealth of data from myriad sources. Everything from earnings calls to websites to press releases – both from your company and from your peers – can help inform strategic IR work. But where do you start without becoming completely overwhelmed?
This was what panelists Erik Carlson, chief operating officer at Notified, Glenn Schulman, founder and head of IR at Z3 BioCommunications, and Amanda Tang, head of IR at TMX Group, tackled in a recent IR Impact Webinar, held alongside Notified.
While a full replay of the event is still available to watch at this link, below we have collected four of the major talking points from this event.
Proper data management is key
Carlson led discussions with a fascinating statistic: he said that more digital content will be created over the course of 2025 than in the entirety of time before that. With such a proliferation of data, he continued, it’s crucial to have joined-up processes for handling it within your IR program.
Tang said that for her, this started with investor meetings, where she started tracking what had been discussed and comparing it at the end of each quarter to inform future conversations.
‘In the past, our data was more scattered and tracked inconsistently,’ she said. ‘Now we have shifted towards a more structured approach to data management, which enables us to provide more comparability across the data and result in more effective decision making.’
IROs are still split on AI usage
Many IROs have turned to AI tools to help them manage that wealth of data. But a poll of the webinar’s viewership found that there is still a degree of inconsistency when it comes to how often IR teams use AI to process data. The audience almost neatly split into thirds (31 percent respectively) between those who said they never used AI, those who used it monthly and those who used it weekly. Eight percent revealed they used Ai on a daily basis.
There were a variety of reasons for a lack of frequent use or familiarity, too. The majority – 51 percent – said that limited resources or the technology not quite being up to scratch were their main reasons for not using AI more often, while 38 percent of those polled cited the difficulty of interpreting the data output given by such tools. A lack of buy-in from bosses or too many data sources were also named as key issues.
Establishing a baseline
One thing that all the panelists agreed on was the necessity of establishing a baseline in whatever data points you want to track over the long term.
‘You have to start somewhere to build a baseline, to build a trend,’ Carlson explained. ‘And once you do, if you want to be predictive, ask yourself Where do I expect this to land? What are the behaviors or the changes I need to make in my strategy, whether that’s data-driven or communication-driven, to start experimenting?’
This starts with assessing what is important among your existing metrics and ‘revisiting things that are foundationally available,’ he continued, such as engagement metrics at events, website traffic data or even media monitoring – then making sure you measure them correctly.
At the end of the day, it’s all about storytelling
From there, picking the right data points to suit your wider strategic vision – and corporate story – is a matter of careful refinement, said Schulman. This can start with something as simple as seeing who is participating in your webcast or live call – information which is already highly personalized as it represents your company and who is engaged with your story.
‘For IR folks, and I think communications people too, it’s about taking that step back to really look critically at what data you have,’ Schulman added. ‘It’s about having that critical eye, giving that value add and taking a moment to understand what’s critical to the team and for your success, because your story is unique.’ As Carlson put it so succinctly: ‘The common thread between PR and IR professionals is that they’re both linked by corporate storytelling’.
Listen back to the webinar at the link above or download the free IR Playbook: AI and investor relations here.
