Launch Checklist
This guide gives you the best practices that you will want to review prior to inviting investors to the platform.
Test your Portal and Tie Up Loose Ends
- Masquerade (Login) as a few of your investors through the CRM and spot check Investor Dashboards. Find a tutorial here on masquerading in as an investor.
- Make sure your investor website is live by typing in your selected URL. It should bring you to the login page. Note- Google Chrome is the preferred browser.
- Ensure that you have a “login” link or button on your company website that redirects investors to the portal. Your company IT person or whoever manages your web content can help you with this task.
- Verify that your reply-to email (found under the Details tab of Admin Settings) is correct and that someone on your team has access to that inbox. All Portal Notifications, including the investor invitations, are sent from this e-mail. If an investor replies to a Portal Notification this address will receive the reply.
- Review the CRM. If there are investors with an ‘@imsinvestor’ or ‘@imsplaceholder’ email, these are placeholder e-mails and need to be updated if you would like these users to receive an invitation and have access to the portal.
- Test the launch process and launch to a group of internal individuals with investor logins.
Review Portal Notification Templates
These Portal Notifications are automated messages from the platform that are customizable. Find a tutorial here on accessing and customizing portal notifications.
Particularly make sure you review Investor Invitation New User, Investor Invitation Existing User, and Password Reset prior to launch.
Prepare your Coming Soon Email
We recommend sending an email through IMS within 24 hours of launch introducing your investors to the idea of the portal and alerting them that an invitation will be coming. Sample text and more information on setting up this email can be found here: ‘User Invitation Coming Soon’ E-mail Template. For more information on setting up and sending a bulk email, find a tutorial here.
Important Note: When using our bulk email tool before inviting investors, DO NOT include any button in the email. We recommend using the “Basic” template setting. Once investors have accepted their invitations, the buttons available in the “Custom” templates will work as intended.
Invite Investors- Launch!
After sending the ‘Coming Soon’ e-mail blast, send invitations to your investors through the CRM. Find a tutorial here on sending invitations to investors.
Things to keep in mind when scheduling your launch:
- We recommend avoiding going “live” on a Friday or past 6pm EST – this will ensure that the IMS Support Team is available for questions.
- Only individuals are invited to the platform. Entities, Trusts, IRAs, and Joint Accounts can be viewed by the individuals connected to them, but will not get their own invitation or have their own login.
- User Invitations expire after 7 days and can only be clicked once for security purposes.
- Google Chrome is the optimal web browser.
- If an investor has trouble viewing or logging in it might be a network firewall. For example, Newmark Grubb Knight & Frank has a firewall and employees are not able to log into IMS while using the NGKF server; however, have been able to successfully log on from a home network.
Manage Investor Activity
You can see an investor’s activity in the CRM Status column.
- Active: The invite has been sent, and the user has set their password and accessed their account
- Invited: The invite has been sent and is awaiting a response
- Invited (Expired): The invite has been sent more than 7 days ago. You will need to resend in order for the user to access the portal.
- Waiting: No invite has been sent
- Accepted: The user has received an email with a button before making an account, or perhaps clicked the invite link, but did not complete the setup. A support ticket will need to be sent in order to revert the user back to Waiting status so another invite can be sent, or you can send the user a Reset Password email.
Once the user is Active, the Login Count column will update to show how many times they have logged into the portal.
Utilize the CRM Advanced Search functionality to filter by Status in order to see which users are Active or which users need to be reminded and invited again. To resend an Investor Invitation, click the arrow dropdown to the left of the profile name and choose Invite to Investor Portal.
IMS Security overview
IMS Security one-pager for your review. Feel free to send to investors who are cautious about entering secure information into the platform.