Inspired by the insight that people often take better care of their pets than they do their retirement, we worked closely with MassMutual to segment the audience by age, gender and geographical location, then develop a targeted, relevant pet-centric campaign to engage plan participants with their retirement plan.
During project scoping, our research told us that 62% of American households included at least one pet and collectively owned over 164 million pets, spending more than $50 billion on them.
Not only that, but the frequency and reach of pet-related articles shared on social media at the time was (and still is) vast – from the seemingly infinite personal photos, to the 25 billion YouTube views that over two million cat videos receive, harnessing this trend was a new way for MassMutual to engage with their audience.
By tapping into existing social media behaviours and trends, we believed that MassMutual could encourage people to think about and care for their retirement savings in the same way they look after their pets.
Flipping the very notion of retirement on its head by illustrating what someone’s “pet retirement” might look like, we created a campaign consisting of 81 variable, personalised direct mail and electronic direct mail touchpoints. Creative copy was used in order to weave the concept together and engage the audience with relevant pet and retirement analogies.
Each plan participant received a customised email or postcard encouraging them to act. Those who had not taken action, received a second touchpoint.
Each touchpoint was written with unique copy and imagery customised by the campaign category.
