Using a human-centered communications program can help deepen engagement and change behavior.
The program focuses on the whole communications journey to let participants know what to expect from moment to moment – rather than flooding them with information at singular, isolated touchpoints.
The feeling of trust allows us to take action with confidence. Building trust should be the goal of every piece of communication with participants.
Every plan communication is an opportunity to address gaps that plan design may not reach and to reinforce the goals of the diversified investment menu. Here’s how you can tap into the full potential these communications hold.
Effective strategies combine behavioral finance and intuitive design to address barriers to decision-making. These core principles can be applied across a range of materials. Key elements of a behaviorally effective communications system are outlined below, and the following elements should be prioritized and designed for every communication.
Trust is perhaps the most important element. It drives engagement; it is the feeling that allows us to take action with confidence. Building trust should be the goal of every piece of communication.
This is achieved through:
Knowledge of, and empathy with, your audience strengthens all of your communications. Participants want education materials that are:
Provide a clear, easy path – and a goal – that participants will be able to follow. Pull the reader through a series of simple, consecutive and connected messages designed to help them picture the desired future – and how to achieve it. Show the clear path from decision to action.
Design the larger journey with a focus on delivering the right amount of information at the right time. Let participants know what to expect from moment to moment – rather than flooding the participant with information at singular, isolated touchpoints, such as enrollment. Doing so will help to create a more cohesive user experience that builds trust and engagement over time.
Purposefully contextualize educational information at critical moments to allow the information to be more effortlessly impactful and personally relevant. This approach is reliant on using the absolute minimum of text to explain concepts, so that each piece includes only the essential information needed to advance the reader’s knowledge so that they are able to make a specific decision.
Behavioral finance is a useful tool for understanding the psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors that influence participants’ financial decision-making. In other words, it attempts to explain the reasoning patterns, including the emotional processes, involved in making financial decisions. As such, it can be leveraged to remove cognitive barriers that impede effective decision-making.
A human-centered communications program consists of trust, empathy, guidance, whole journey, education, and behavioral finance.
Trust drives engagement by creating a sense of confidence that allows participants to take action. When participants trust the information and the source, they are more likely to engage with the content and follow through with the suggested actions.
It attempts to explain the reasoning patterns, including the emotional processes, involved in making financial decisions. By leveraging insights from behavioral finance, communication strategies can be designed to remove cognitive barriers that impede effective decision-making.
Blackrock’s core principles for meaningful in-plan retirement income offerings leverage a piece that already works well—target date products.
BlackRock worked with the Bipartisan Policy Center to lift the veil on how to optimize retirement income – and the role policymakers will have to play.
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