Collecting Questions During Earnings Calls with Slido

Zillow Group is a leading US-based company that houses a portfolio of real estate brands on mobile and the web. As a publicly traded company, Zillow Group must comply with Regulation Fair Disclosure, which requires all material information to be shared with everyone at the same time through an approved channel and in a public forum.

The company hosts a quarterly earnings call where the management provides an update on the company’s performance and answers investors’ questions.

To make it easier for anyone to submit and upvote the most pertinent questions publicly, Zillow Group decided to use Slido during its earnings calls.

This enabled the company to crowdsource more questions from the investment community and reduce the number of follow-up calls as more topics were addressed in a public forum.

Looking for a better way to collect questions

In 2012, Zillow Group was the first company to answer a question from an analyst submitted via Twitter during its live earnings call.

However, there were some hurdles related to Twitter that limited the number of questions the company would receive (i.e., company firewalls, individuals had to set up an account, etc.). Over time, the questions got fewer and less strategic.

Since Zillow Group already used Slido for internal company meetings, the Investor Relations team decided to experiment with using the tool during its earnings calls, explained Dennis on how Slido came into play.

Slido roll out before the earnings call

To promote awareness of its use of Slido, Zillow Group’s IR team let its audience know it would be doing so and provided instructions on how to submit questions during the call.

We mentioned Slido in our press releases, emails to investors, IR blog and on social media, Dennis commented.

Slido does not require participants to register in order to submit or vote on questions. It’s easy to use, especially for people using a desktop – as most investors are when listening to an earnings call.

The result: Strong engagement during the call

The option to submit questions anonymously enabled anyone from the investment community to ask questions without having to identify themselves.

Using Slido during the earnings calls helped Zillow Group provide access to a wider audience and increased transparency while complying with Regulation Fair Disclosure.

In addition, Slido allowed participants to vote on the questions and choose the ones they wanted to be answered first.

Overall, Zillow Group had an increase in the number of questions asked publicly with Slido. This helped the company decrease the number of individual follow-up calls.

The upvoting of questions enabled the team to prioritize and address the topics the participants cared about the most, making the earnings call more valuable for everyone.