Category Archives: Marketing

Retirement and The Catchers in The Rye

Leaders of the retirement industry met this week at Morningstar Corporate Headquarters in Chicago to exchange thoughts on the future of retirement income solutions.  The more than 150 industry leaders who attended share a common vision: connecting the silos of the retirement industry to facilitate the delivery of more robust solutions for households transitioning into or in the retired life-stage.   Their interest is in part driven by the increasing attractiveness of the 50+ segment, which, for  example, controls more than 50% of 401k assets under management.   As these assets are converted to streams of retirement income, opportunities and risks will increasingly emerge.

There are many barriers  today that prevent the industry from delivering optimal retirement solutions to households – both in the workplace and outside the work  place.  Some of these are legal, some are economic, some are cultural, and some are behavioral.

Despite all of these challenges, the retirement ecosystem is evolving quickly.  This evolution  is  being driven by changes in consumer behavior and attitudes and the high indebtedness of all sectors of the US economy.  As a result, an  increasing number of intermediaries and distributors are modifying their approaches to serving  households, plan sponsors, and participants.  The pure AUM model is going to be challenged and product selling is  being replaced by more process-centric, solution oritened approaches.   An increaing number of channels hold insurance and securities licenses and therefore consider insurance and investment products to design a retirement income solution.

Manufacturers that want to preserve market share and sustain growth will need to adapt to these changes, particularly in the area of product development and relationship management with channels.

Those that adapt quickly and support this evolution will win the loyalty of their channels.  Adapting means speaking your channels evolving language, helping your channels understand how your products fit into their financial planning processes and for which client types your product is appropriate, giving the advisor comfort when presenting your products to end-clients, and becoming the “go to” retirement income expert.   Most advisors become comfortable with a limited number of providers, so time is of the essence as financial advisors modify their practice to serve the increasingly large transition and retired life-stage segment.  And selecting and investing in the right channels to work with is critical.

Now is the time for providers of retirement income products to “lock-in” their channel relationships.  This will require thoughful marketing and sales.  Distinguishing between early adopters, novices, and laggards is critical and allocating your investments in the right market segments is essential.

And for those who are curious about the title of this post and what rye has to do with retirement:

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me.  And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That’s all I do all day.  I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 22, spoken by the character Holden Caulfield

Email Re-Engagement Strategy #4: Looking for Answers and the Last Chance

Recent EMI blog posts discussed the growing importance of email engagement and the roles of preferences and pursuing new tactical and multi-channel approaches in re-engaging customers. But even after you deploy all of these tools, some customers will inevitably remain unengaged. Typical engagement best practice advice will tell you that this is the time to pull out the ultimate arrow in the re-engagement quiver: the Last Chance email. But this is a scary step, especially if you are a company that nurtures a relatively small email list. A Last Chance is, after all, the end of the road—a non-response shuts down all email communication.

For this reason, if the number of remaining non-responders is great enough to justify the investment, we recommend conducting primary research among the unengaged to learn:

  • Are they chronic non-responders? That is, do they sign up with other companies as well and then not view or click on emails?
  • If not, what are the content, messaging, and media elements that drive their response to other companies’ emails?
  • What is their actual, current level of interest in your product and their position in the buying process? 

If this research indicates that there is little hope that changes to the re-engagement program would deliver a strong return, then the Last Chance is an appropriate next (and final) step. If you do implement this tool, think of the Last Chance as a series of emails rather than a single one. Over the course of two or three emails, introduce the recipients to the idea that you will be ending their email communications and then incrementally increase the pressure on them to respond. With the final email in the series, you close the book on the non-responders and treat them like unsubscribers, secure in the knowledge that you have done everything you could to re-engage them.

It’s not news that Internet Explorer is losing market share, but the question is “who is winning?”

EMI recently completed a comprehensive web analytics assignment for a large consumer, membership organization. Using a combination of server-based web data capture and Google Analytics, EMI analyzed user demographics, page frequency, site paths and many other factors.

It didn’t surprise us that Internet Explorer’s market share had declined significantly over 2010. In January, IE enjoyed a 70.8% share; by the end of the year, it was 63.4% — a 7.4 point decline. In the past we’ve seen that most of IE’s share loss was Firefox’s gain, but this no longer appears to be the case. During this same time period, rather than showing an increase, Firefox’s share actually fell slightly (from 18.8% to 18.5%).

For this client, the big winner in the browser wars was Safari (which includes the WebKit-based Android browser), growing from 7.8% to 12.2%. Chrome was in second place with a 2.1 point gain (from 2.1% to 4.2%).

Graph with browser share
Most of Safari’s gain can be accounted for by the increase in Apple Mac’s share, which grew from 9.8% to 12.7%. But the big story, and the trend for 2011, is mobile access growth. The “iFamily” (iPods, iPhones and iTouch) share more than doubled: from less than 1% at the beginning of the year to 2.1% by the end. Android devices started from nearly nothing at the beginning and ended the year with a 1% share of all users’ operating systems.

The takeaway for e-marketers? The small screen is big, and getting bigger in 2011. EMI has found that an ever-increasing number of consumers are using their mobile devices to access the web. This shift has significant implications for information structure, site architecture, graphic design and technology platforms.

Next update: what mobile devices are consumers using?