Personalised pensions video helps win gold award for Royal London - and here's why

Personalised video helps Royal London take home the gold award in the ‘Member Communications’ category at the Benefits Guru 2022 Workplace Pensions Ratings. At VideoSmart, we are so thrilled to see personalised video drive such great results for our clients and their customers that we’ve decided to share with you a case study to help you understand why personalised video wins big, and how you can do the same.

The Who:

Royal London is the largest mutual life insurance, pensions and investment company in the United Kingdom and has been successfully serving pension and protection products for the past 150 years. As a purpose-driven mutual, Royal London’s mission is ‘Protecting today, investing in tomorrow. Together we are mutually responsible’ – a statement we believe that this personalised video pension campaign has truly delivered on from conception to launch, by keeping true to this ethos throughout every stage.

We are VideoSmart, an award-winning marketing agency specialising in personalised and interactive video and partners of Royal London in the delivery of this pilot pension campaign. We love to challenge our clients to rethink video in order to discover the value it can have when used effectively in their marketing and communications strategy, and this is a fantastic example of it doing just that!

The Challenge:

As the world is facing uncertain economic climates it is more important than ever for financial services companies to challenge the way they are serving their products and services to customers, and ask themselves – is this achieving what it needs to, to protect their financial futures? With a possible recession and the FCA’s new Consumer Duty on the horizon for 2023, firms are presented with the challenge of keeping their customers’ eyes on their future financial health – in other words, their retirement – no matter the crises they are being faced with today.

Furthermore, firms are also having to tackle an ever-changing and increasingly digital environment when it comes to customer communications. In turn, marketers are presented with a ‘sweet shop’ of channels, CRM systems, media and more to choose from; hoping to find the best one for their product or service, its audience and delivered at the right touchpoint in the customer journey.

The next challenge financial services marketers are faced with is that intrinsically, financial products and services are both more complex and of great importance to consumers’ lives. Where communications fail to effectively serve customers, the outcome can be of great detriment to both parties. Poor engagement can lead to everything from lost pensions to high customer churn rates, low customer satisfaction, improper financial planning for the future – and critically, non-compliance with the Financial Conduct Authority’s latest regulations.

The Solution:

Royal London chose personalised video to deliver their pension customers’ annual pension review. This campaign, delivered in partnership with VideoSmart, was deployed earlier this year as part of a pilot launch to 12-18,000 members. After the fantastic levels of engagement this campaign received, and helping towards the winning result at Benefits Guru, this personalised pension video is due to be deployed to more members over the coming months.

The Objectives:

Whilst combatting all the industry-wide challenges addressed above, Royal London also looked to deliver upon their purpose and strategy upheld as a business in relation to their pension products:

• Creating a positive social impact,

• Helping drive positive financial futures,

• And championing their customers to take action to build a better future.

They achieve this by keeping their customers at heart whilst delivering:

• Carefully crafted investments,

• Clear and simple communications,

• And flexible retirement options.

This personalised pension video campaign looked to:

• Inform customers about the key information in their yearly pension statement,

• Prompt members to log in to their online account,

• Drive members to download the Royal London App where they can view their full statement,

• And direct them to contact an Advisor if they need further support.

The Royal London Personalised Pension Video:

As per the Financial Conduct Authority’s new Consumer Duty, this video is a great example of using ‘signposting’ to highlight important financial data for the customer, including in this instance: an overview of the members’ total plan value, their investment fund name, the estimated plan value of their pot once in retirement, and what this translates into in terms of yearly income for the customer.

The video includes up to 15 points of personalisation in both text and audio – for accessibility for all audiences. The video is unique to every Royal London Pension Plan member and includes a variable scene that is subject to their contribution method so that recipients follow a narrative in the video that is only relevant to them.

Finally, no pensions campaign is complete without a call to action that incites recipients to take control of their retirement and actively participate in their financial futures. This video includes an in-video CTA button leading members to take the next step naturally and login to their online service to view their full pension statement and discover whether they are on track for the standard of living in retirement that they require.

The video itself is a fantastic combination of animation and personalisation, taking viewers through their pension statement at a comfortable pace, in a visual manner that demystifies what can often be a complex financial product. Ultimately, this personalised pension video provides a dynamic and engaging experience for Royal London’s Pension Plan members.

The User Journey:

This video campaign was deployed via email, driving users to a secure landing page where they could use 2-factor authentication to watch their personalised video, during which they could take the final step in their journey by clicking the in-video CTA to login to their online service.

The Result:

The results of this pilot campaign were:

• A 53% uplift on industry average email open rates.

• A 328% uplift in industry average email click rates.

• 98% of videos played were ended.

• And the video received an average rating of 4 stars from viewers.

Here’s what David Meliveo, Royal London’s Customer Life Stage Director said about their recent success:

“We’re delighted that the strength of our workplace pensions proposition, our auto-enrolment support and our member communications have all been recognised with Gold Medals from Benefits Guru. We continue to invest in our technology, our people, and our service to ensure we offer a modern, best value-for-money proposition that delivers a seamless and engaging experience for advisers, employers and our customers.”

You can read more on this from Royal London here.

What’s next?

VideoSmart is grateful to be a partner in Royal London’s endeavour to achieve good outcomes, with strong engagement for their members, and we love to watch personalised video become an integral part of this.

We are thrilled to see that personalised video is supporting our clients in receiving the recognition they deserve for the work they are doing in the retirement and pensions space. Clear and simple communication plays a key role in driving education and engagement in the finance sector, as it improves accessibility, contextualises complex data, and simplifies the steps needed for retirement members to take action.

We can’t wait to see what’s next as this campaign continues to be deployed to more Royal London Pension Plan members in the new year.

To discover what value personalised video can bring to your marketing and communications strategy in 2023, get in touch at hello@videosmart.com, and we would love to help you find out.