Problem

The City of Houston is a mega government client with $1.2 billon in assets at Empower with a plan sponsor who wouldn’t run communications campaigns to their city’s participants. I was assigned the client in August, which did not provide a lot of time to develop a relationship with the plan sponsor and craft a campaign for National Retirement Security Month (NRSM) in October.

Solution

After some brainstorming, I came to the conclusion the client was only provided universal, in-the-box campaigns as options historically, when she was fully aware other clients with similar demographics received fully customized offerings. Once I identified the root cause of the client’s resistance, I knew a customized NRSM campaign would build trust with the client and better serve the City of Houston participants.

To develop a truly unique concept, I conducted extensive research to develop a multi-pronged email campaign centering around and celebrating what makes the City of Houston great; their employees. I selected the landmarks around the city to weave into and personalize the campaign, creating relevance for participants. Imagery and messaging of these landmarks were incorporated in each of the email tactics.

The client was thrilled when the campaign was pitched and providing her unwavering support. After the campaign was deployed to participants, the result was very favorable and far exceeded the industry average with an average open rate of 25% and average click rate of 10% across all emails.