Super funds selling a good news story

With super funds delivering members their best returns in years, there’s a good news story to sell – and savvy funds have not been slow to spruik it. But it doesn’t stop there, Damon Taylor reports.

In the wake of investment market volatility and continuous legislative change, Australian super funds’ constant message to members seems to be one of reassurance.  

Clearly, with even more variables now affecting members’ retirement savings, increasing member confidence is paramount and for Deanne Stewart, general manager, super, marketing and direct for BT, it all starts with engagement. 

“We’re certainly still focused on reassurance but I think our focus has shifted towards getting some of the good messages about superannuation out there as well,” she said. 

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“So a lot of our communication at the moment, heading into Stronger Super, is going to be around what those reforms are and why we’re doing what we’re doing and trying to get people as engaged as possible. 

“But the other thing that we’re communicating is actually how well superannuation is doing at the moment,” Stewart continued.

“So most super funds have delivered returns of around 15 to 16 per cent over the last year and are now performing well above pre-global financial crisis levels. 

“So, yes I think part of our message to members is reassurance but it’s also that long-term message, that superannuation is a long-term game that the industry is ultimately succeeding at.” 

Outlining a similar goal, Chris Davies, executive manager, member and employer solutions for UniSuper, said that the broad focus of all member communications at UniSuper was engagement not just at retirement but throughout a member’s entire working life. 

“We’ve got a large fund of 400,000 members and quite a diverse membership but our focus has been on what we’ve called a lifetime engagement strategy,” he said.

“So its moved from reassurance during the GFC to a more proactive engagement strategy, however the key principle of that engagement has been to engage members at their own particular life stage with topics and with methodologies that are interesting to them.” 

“We’ve done a lot of work on segmentation and we communicate to each segment slightly differently, always doing our best to make sure that our messages are as relevant and engaging as possible.” 

Yet while member communication strategies may adhere to a broad theme, members are the recipients of any number of more specific, targeted campaigns as well. 

In fact, while engagement may be the foundation of member communications, Geoff Brooks, executive officer, strategic marketing and communications for Equipsuper, said that the aim of funds’ more specific campaigns was invariably prompting member action. 

“There are two things we’ve been doing lately,” he said. “One has been to look at the members who are contributing to the fund and trying to get them to consolidate their super. 

“We haven’t been going out with a message about ‘save on fees,’ because that may or may not be true depending on where they’re rolling in from,” Brooks continued.

“Instead, we’re trying to increase their sense of confidence and ownership with respect to super. 

“The question we’re asking is ‘can you really manage your super well if it’s all over the place?’ Consolidate it, get into one place where you can monitor and manage how it’s going.” 

And according to Brooks, the logical follow-up to such a question was communications around member reactivation. 

“This isn’t so much about confidence and security,” he said. “It’s about contacting some of those members who’ve been non-contributors for a long period of time and convincing them to reassess their options. 

“It’s a retention activity more than anything else because if we can convince that member to be active, then the reality is that they tend to be more sticky to the brand.” 

On the retail side of the equation, Stewart pointed out the communication advantages that came from being part of the broader Westpac Group, but said that BT too had been focusing on account consolidation. 

“Because we have that foundation, some of the things we’ve been focusing on are part of broader messages being delivered by the Westpac group whilst others are more specifically about our own member base,” she said. 

“At the moment, for example, a lot of what we’re focusing on with our members is getting people to consider whether they have two, three or four funds just sitting there lying idle, and whether it might be time to consider rolling those accounts over and consolidating them. 

“But as part of the broader Westpac group, what we’ve actually been doing is a ‘Lost Super’ campaign,” Stewart added. “We’re trying to make as many Australians as possible aware of the fact that there’s $18.1 billion out there in lost super. 

“That’s money that could belong to them, money that they could be claiming and taking advantage of.” 

Stewart said that in conjunction with its parent, the Westpac Group, BT had also been advertising a ‘one-click’ approach to superannuation. 

“These are messages that you wouldn’t necessarily see out in the external arena, but for our customers we’ve created what we call ‘one-click,’” she explained.

“We’ve used technology integrated with our banking systems to enable our customers to combine their superannuation accounts and find their lost super literally in a couple of clicks. 

“We’ve done that because we’ve learned in talking with our members that the main reason they don’t do rollovers is that it just takes so much effort,” Stewart added.

“And so by actually reaching out and communicating with our members, we’re letting them know that literally within a couple of clicks, they can consolidate their super, find their lost super and that we’ll do all the work for them.” 

“That’s been a key focus of ours, this whole theme of ‘one click’ action when it comes to superannuation.” 

Of course, if anything warrants more specific campaigns and explanation, it is MySuper. But with a start date of 1 January 2014 already on the industry’s doorstep, Stewart pointed out that these were changes affecting not just fund members but employers as well. 

“We really feel that a lot of employers have been lost in this,” she said.

“People are really concentrating on advisers or really concentrating on the end member but what we’ve actually found is that a lot of employers have missed out on a voice. 

“With that in mind, we’ve divided our communications to really educate and engage on three different dimensions,” Stewart continued.

“So for employers specifically, if you think about being inside something like the Westpac Group, we’ve divided that into how can we help the big, giant corporates really understand what their Stronger Super obligations are. 

“We’ve been working now with a number of our commercial clients on that, as well as the smaller and medium-sized businesses, because what we’re finding is that around eight out of 10 employers we talk to don’t actually know what’s coming and what is going on.” 

According to Stewart, BT’s second Stronger Super communications focus was undoubtedly fund members, but she explained that finding the right balance between education and confusion had proven difficult. 

“The challenge is striking the right balance between really educating them about what MySuper is all about but not adding to the confusion,” she said.

“So if you think about everything you get in the mail and you’ll often look at it and say yes, it’s all very interesting but it still goes straight into the bin. 

“How do you make the messages really simple? You let them know, really reassure them that what we’re doing actually is a really strong, long-term solution for them so that they actually feel reassured,” Stewart explained.

“Then the third category has really been our advisers because, as we’re all aware, there are lots of changes going on from an advice perspective and probably a fair degree of uncertainty, knowing that there are all sorts of changes around in commissions and grandfathering and that side of things. 

“So it’s about trying to keep a really open dialogue with all those different groups and it’s no small feat to get that right.” 

Offering a similar perspective, Brooks said that education, whether it addressed MySuper or co-contributions or anything else, was now a core capability of Australian superannuation funds. 

“Apart from investment returns, all those things are, in many respects, converging in the business,” he said.

“And within the superannuation marketplace, it’s getting harder and harder, as the business gets bigger, to differentiate purely on the basis of the actual investment returns and the fees being charged. 

“Just about everyone’s within an ant’s breath of each other so differentiation for us is about our relationship with the members and making those relationships as personal as they can be and as relevant as they can be.” 

Yet the advent of MySuper prompts an interesting question for super fund executives in and of itself. 

Indeed, as a product, many feel it is targeted towards the disengaged member, and so it begs the question – do funds focus on the disengaged member where take-up is limited or do they concentrate on the engaged member to better initiate a response? 

However, for Tim Anderson, head of marketing and communications for UniSuper, the engagement question is not so simplistic. 

“At UniSuper, we have what we call a member engagement scorecard which looks at a whole range of factors that will give us an indication as to whether a member is engaged or not,” he said.

“And I think one of the dangers many funds potentially have is if somebody’s sitting in their default balanced fund, which will be their MySuper option, you can then infer from that that perhaps they’re disengaged. 

“But as we know, that’s not necessarily the case; a member could very well choose to be invest within your balanced fund and still be engaged,” Anderson continued.

“So we look at a whole raft of other engagement metrics; whether they’ve registered for member online, whether they’ve made an investment choice, whether they’ve made an insurance choice, whether they’ve rolled superannuation over into the fund, attended a seminar and so on. 

“We then use all of that combined information as the basis for doing further development work with both the engaged and disengaged member.” 

According to Anderson, it is not that one group of members is more important than the other; it is that the strategies for each group are necessarily quite different. 

Yet for Stewart, irrespective of the strategies employed, engagement was set to be a hot topic for super funds moving forward. 

“For us, engagement is a bit multi-layered,” she said. “But I think what you’ll find is that a lot of super funds will really rev up their engagement efforts quite significantly in the future. 

“However from a BT perspective, there are a great many things that we both do already and still want to do to an even greater degree,” Stewart continued.

“As with all super funds, we do things such as member statements, letters and so on, but we’ve actually launched a whole super health check as well. 

“Because as much as we want them to find their lost super and consolidate, we want them to actually 

recognise how much they need for an adequate retirement as well.” 

However, Stewart said that some of the newer things BT had been doing in its efforts towards greater member engagement were largely in the social media space. 

“The newer things that we’ve been doing that I think are really taking hold is actually communicating with different mediums,” she said.

“So we’ve been doing a lot over the last year around social media, we’ve put out an entire ‘Prepare’ series of all different moments to help you prepare – and a lot of them are superannuation moments – to the point where we’ve gone from zero to over 220,000 YouTube views. 

“What we’re trying to do is help our members and our customers feel far more engaged with their superannuation and their insurance,” Stewart added.

“So that’s been quite staggering, to go from 0 to 220,000 within essentially six months and that’s a completely different medium that we’ve been using. 

“Between that and Twitter and Facebook, we’ve gone a lot further down the social media path and I think we’re probably one of the strongest players in the digital space now, starting from what was  standing start at the beginning of last year.” 

Indeed, if member engagement and member communications is built on anything, it is technology.  

Of late, service providers to the super industry have been talking about the concept of ‘big data,’ the idea that analytics, together with the volume of information that is now collected about members, can allow more targeted communications. 

And for Anderson, such services have become invaluable. 

“We’ve been running, I guess, something similar to the big data concept now for about five or six years,” he said.

“We have what we call a marketing data warehouse that’s had every single communication, every campaign, every marketing initiative running through that it for five years now. 

“So we have a very good understanding as to which members have received what communication, what their response mechanisms were etc etc,” Anderson continued.

“And I think it’s fair to say that without that, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re able to do now. 

“And certainly, like all communications and campaigns, measuring what you’re actually doing is paramount to making sure we’re using our marketing dollars wisely.” 

Similarly, Brooks said that when building its own data analytics capability, Equipsuper had focused on what technology could deliver and not technology in and of itself. 

“We actually installed a data analytics platform some time ago,” he said. “And while it’s important not to get obsessed with the technology, there’s no doubt that if you get a handle on your data, it certainly highlights new opportunities within your membership. 

“These are things that you simply won’t have seen before,” Brooks added. “So what you can do with analytics is identify opportunities but then, post campaign, you can deliver even more targeted communications.” 

But the key advantage, according to Brooks, was the ability to tag the responses of individual members back to each campaign. 

“So the next conversation with that particular member might be ‘okay, you’ve rolled in’. We’ll then develop a conversation about something else – what’s the next thing you can do to make the most of your super?” he explained. 

“We don’t want to be constantly going back to the same member and asking them to roll in money when they’ve already rolled in all they’ve got. 

“That’s what makes it so important to track the results back to the data and attach it to the member record, because then what you actually end up with is a cascading type communication where your communications to individuals become based on what they’ve done previously,” Brooks continued. 

“We think that sort of approach makes a lot more sense than just a rough cut of them by age or investment option or account balance. 

“That’s the power of the data analytics – it’s not just being able to grab it and have this big bunch of data and not see the wood for the trees, it’s realising how we can use this system intelligently to make our conversations as personal as we can.” 

In fact, it seems it is the sum of those conversations that best characterises successful member communications. And so funds’ constant goal, according to Anderson, must be to continually build on that relationship. 

“When we talk about a relationship, I think its important to consider what a relationship actually means,” he said. “So as a fund, we’ve spent a bit of time trying to understand what does a relationship mean to each of our segments. 

“And what it means for a younger segment versus a segment moving into retirement is quite different,” Anderson continued.

“But that comes back to tailoring our communications and our channels and our programs to meet the needs of those segments.” 

In a superannuation environment in which finding a competitive edge is vital, Brooks said that the relationship between a fund and its members could even be a point of differentiation. 

“I mean, if you make a mess of the investment returns or you’re charging exorbitant fees, your members are going to be turned off,” he said.

“But all things being around equal, the only differentiator between one fund and another is the relationship we have with that member. 

“The only difference is what that member’s perception of you is,” Brooks continued. “It’s how well that member believes you know about their personal circumstances and to what level the member believes you can assist them to make the most of their circumstance. 

“It is all about relationship.”