News Releases

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - July 20, 2015) - BMO has announced that it is partnering with e8ight Business Services Inc. (e8ight) to offer BMO business customers in the GTA socialstraw™, an innovative social monitoring and engagement platform to help businesses manage their social media and online brand.

"We look for innovative ways to help our new and existing business customers grow. Our partnership with e8ight is another way to provide our customers with an efficient solution to support growth, customer engagement and brand loyalty or address issues and concerns," said Steve Murphy, Head, Canadian Commercial Banking, BMO Bank of Montreal.

A survey from BMO Bank of Montreal revealed that of those small business owners who own a social media account, 35 per cent of them operate it themselves, while 58 per cent leave it to someone else to manage.

The survey, conducted by Pollara, also revealed that the majority of small business owners use social media for the following:

• Over one third (35 per cent) use it to promote products or services
• Almost one quarter (22 per cent) said it allows them to communicate with customers
• One fifth said it helps find prospective customers
• Almost one fifth (17 per cent) said it helps build a corporate reputation

"It's not enough simply to create a Facebook page or Twitter handle with some information about your business," said Curtis Khan, President, e8ight. "Entrepreneurs these days are so focused on managing the everyday demands of running a business that they don't have time to manage their social media strategy. Quite frankly, they don't even know where to start. This is where socialstraw™ comes in - it really does the 'social thinking' for you by helping to guide business owners on how best to leverage their social media efforts for enhancing and growing their business.

"We are thrilled to be working with BMO, a leader in the business banking and innovation space," continued Mr. Khan. "By providing business owners with a platform whereby they can better understand key social data elements about their customers and brand, we believe we can help them to sell more and increase overall customer satisfaction."

BMO Bank of Montreal is currently offering socialstraw™ as part of a pilot to its small business customers. To find out more, customers can speak with a BMO Small Business Banker by going into their local branch in the GTA.

Results cited above come from a Pollara telephone survey with 502 Canadian business owners, conducted between February 20th and March 11^th, 2015. The margin of error for this survey is +/- 4.4 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

About BMO Financial Group

Established in 1817, BMO Financial Group is a highly diversified financial services provider based in North America. With total assets of approximately $633 billion as of April 30, 2015, and more than 47,000 employees, BMO provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets.

About e8ight

e8ight is a social media analytics and data aggregation company that provides monitoring & engagement platforms such as socialstraw™ for businesses. e8ight's innovative platforms and products are used to centralize and consolidate multiple social medias and online data allowing businesses to manage their perceptions through easy-to-use dashboards and reports. e8ight's revolutionary intelligence engine helps drive better business decisions.