When Deb Wasser joined Etsy in 2018, her appointment as vice president of investor relations wasn’t the only change the company had seen since its IPO in 2015. In addition to a new management team that joined mid-2017, the company had grown from a small-cap to mid-cap company in that short time span. With this increased momentum, Deb saw that the investor relations (IR) website didn’t accurately reflect the momentum or unique brand story of Etsy. She shared, “The main dissatisfaction we had was that our IR site was very plain-vanilla – it was originally developed in 2015 in conjunction with the company’s IPO and hadn’t been touched very much since”.
Alongside her team, Deb started to evolve the IR website and look for a partner to help address these needs. They considered a number of vendors including Q4, who Deb included based on a successful relationship at her prior tech company. She shared, “I was familiar with Q4’s process and offerings, so it was natural to consider them for this project. After our initial contact, we spent a lot of time looking at examples that Q4 had designed and provided to us for inspiration, and because many of them seemed to fit with our goals for the site, we knew Q4 would make a great partner for this project.”
Q4 and Etsy set out to create a new IR site that was highly informative and clear but also reflected the brand with a beautiful and unique design. It was important that the IR site included a simple and compelling investment thesis right on the homepage for all site visitors to see, along with related content. Deb noted, “our presentations, earnings reports, and webcast narratives support our investor thesis, so getting it front-and-center was really important to us.”
With that guidance, the Q4 team worked to create a destination that could proactively communicate the online marketplace’s unique value proposition and opportunity. In addition to regular quarterly updating by the Q4 team, since launching the site in November, 2018, the team has continued to add value to this dynamic investor tool, updating and adding content that better communicates the Etsy story.
In particular, in early 2020 Etsy has added new Impact Reporting content to its IR website, as it is among the first public companies to use SASB reporting standards in an integrated fashion in its Annual Report on Form 10K. Deb added, “We are extremely proud to be a leader in integrated reporting, and want our economic, social and ecological initiatives to be front-and-center on our IR website.” Additionally, the analytics reports made available from Q4 allowed Etsy to better understand not only how many visitors the site hosts each month, but who was engaging with their content.
Etsy’s redesigned IR website has become an invaluable tool for communicating and engaging with the company’s growing investor base. Deb explains, “We are fortunate that interest in Etsy is extremely high – according to benchmark data it is significantly higher than many of our SMID-cap peers in terms of investor engagement. Our IR website serves as a great first line of response where investors can solve many of their basic information requirements quickly and easily, while at the same time telling a rich narrative about our business and future growth”. To learn more about how Etsy and Q4 partnered to revamp Etsy’s IR website and experience, download the full case study below.
