Feature
relevant messages—that’s the efficiency.
Ultimately if it is not relevant to the
person who’s reading it or interacting
with it, it’s going to fall on deaf ears. It’s
not going to hit them at a level where
they are going to take action because
it’s not necessarily relevant to what they
are thinking. That is a really important
thing to consider, because ultimately
if it is not about the participant or not
relevant to the participant, it s probably
not going to get through.
What’s a good rule of thumb to how
hard employers should try to engage
employees? Does safe-harbor give
employers protection? Does the law
of diminishing returns mean that
employers can feel satisfied once
they’ve pushed hard enough, and
where is that point?
Generally, I don’t know that I would
necessarily declare it as a rule of thumb.
What is the right number of times to
engage or convey a message? I would
say that in most cases, what happens
is it’s not enough or it’s too broad of
a message. It all goes back to being
targeted—you could hit somebody
with a message over and over and
over again, but if it’s not a targeted and
relevant message, even the first time it
goes out it’s probably not the right use
of resources and not right way to do it.
As you get more targeted what are the
right number of touch points? I think that
is the magic answer we are all looking
for. We use a communications rule of
thumb here, it’s more of a note that we
have in our head which is “an average
adult needs to hear a message repeated
seven times before they retain it.” This
is sort of an old marketing rule of thumb,
but it doesn’t say how the message is
conveyed, because everyone learns
differently: some people are auditory,
some people like visuals, some people
18| WINTER
8
| SUMMER
2014
2013
prefer hard-copy mail. It’s also about
understanding what’s the right mix of
conveying those messages; knowing
that people are getting so many different
messages. It’s also about differentiating
and how to get your message to stand
out. I think that’s some of the things that
we all sort of struggle with and we are
trying to think through the best way to
get our messages through in sort of the
clutter of messages that are out there.
Is there a particular demographic
that most benefits from targeted
education?
I would say we have found that the
pre-retiree population, which we define
as aged 50 and above, are the most
engaged. That’s inclusive of digital
properties, but they’re in need for more
high-tech solutions as well—their needs
are more complex. They tend to have
higher balances just through sheer
force of time versus the amount of time
they have been saving. There are also
several milestones that are happening
up to retirement around thinking about
further investing, distributions and
drawdown—what that is going to
look like? How they are balancing
their priorities in retirement? So we
do get a lot of engagement from them,
typically via phone, but also through
webinars—they have a high engagement
rate as it relates to those. They are really
just looking for a lot of information,
whereas the younger investor tends to
be a little harder to engage. This is for
two reasons: one, they are not the type
from a demographic prospective that
often spends a lot of time on this type
of thing and secondarily, they are not
necessarily engaged on this topic—it’s
too far out—[retirement is] just too
elusive to that population for it to be
a reality. Whereas when you get into
the pre-retiree population, you tend
to have more engagement as you get
towards the end of that population. If
you get to 55-60, even the 50-55 age
range, you could still get people just
beginning to think about it.
Alternatively, are there demographics
which are particularly hard to engage?
I would say generally 35 and below.
There are a couple of things that we
attribute this to: they may not have as
much discretionary income as they tend
to earn less and they don’t necessarily
have a long-term savings view yet. The
other thing we would say is that while
they are very tech-savvy and digitally
engaged, the topic isn’t as relevant to
them and that doesn’t help. I would say
the other areas in which we circle are
people who have not participated in their
plan for a long time—so people who
have been with a company for years and
don’t participate—trying to get them to
engage can be a challenge. Lastly, it’s
people who are not digitally engaged.
The direction we’ve been goin