How to Best Personalize Plan Communications

It has never been more important for people to take charge of their retirement savings, but plan sponsor messaging may not be connecting with all employees. Personalizing communication should help plan sponsors successfully reach participants with those messages, particularly plan information and financial literacy, according to Marc Fowler, director of retirement education at Human Interest.

Fowler says a spring survey from Human Interest showed that employees trust their plan sponsor’s financial literacy tools, and 87% of employees say they are more likely to stay with an employer that offered these resources.

According to retirement plan experts, the depth of personalized messaging will vary depending on company size, how much an organization understands its participants’ needs and how much a plan sponsor engages with plan advisers and recordkeepers.

No Matter the Plan, Engagement Matters Most

Smaller plans, such as those with assets of less than $20 million, generally do not have dedicated contacts at their recordkeeper, so customized communications usually come from the plan’s adviser, who often chooses the topic and the communication method, such as emails, webinars, handouts or in-person meetings, says Renn Williams, a retirement plan adviser at Advo(k)ate Advisors.

Human resources staff at small plans often juggle their work on the retirement plan with other duties and are more likely to lean on advisers. At larger companies, with bigger HR teams, staff may be more familiar with retirement plans and could be open to using unique ways to engage with plan participants, says Christopher Dall, a managing director of defined contribution retirement solutions at PNC Bank.

Regardless of plan size, a sponsor’s engagement level matters most, Williams says, as sponsors deliver the message about the plan’s offering to employees: “They are the conduit, more often than not, to the participants.”

Knowing Employees’ Needs

Kim Dunwoody, vice president of member experience at benefits administrative technology company Businessolver, says plan sponsors who want to personalize communications should consider how their employees can best receive information and the type of material that is relevant.

She says Businessolver partners with some energy companies at which employees work both in an office and in the field, so sponsors vary their message length and the medium, depending on how they anticipate an employee viewing the communication—either on a computer or on a phone. Additionally, she says plan sponsors should understand their employees’ level of financial literacy. Sponsors may want to conduct benefit and financial literacy surveys to create useful educational campaigns.

“If you start, for example, messaging about investment accounts or using investment language with people who don’t understand that language … maybe they’ll open the message, but they’re not going to act on that message,” she says.

Personalized messaging often starts with cohorts, such as reaching out to employees who have not contributed enough to their plan to get the employer match or telling those who have just turned 50 to take advantage of catch-up contributions. There can then be opportunities to send individualized messages to people who respond to cohort messages.

An example of a successful education campaign is one designed to get employees to add beneficiaries to their workplace plans. Michelle Cannan, managing director and head of company retirement plan services for Modern Wealth Management, says she worked with a trades company which employed about 200 workers. The company made retirement contributions for each employee, whether or not the employee was contributing to the plan; however, 41% of workers had not listed a beneficiary.

Together they created personalized outreach to employees, including targeted monthly meetings. Not only did the company lower the missing-beneficiary rate to 8%, but employees also set up website logins, downloaded mobile apps and had retirement planning conversations.

“It was more impactful than simply adding beneficiary information,” she says.

Persistence Matters

It can be a struggle to get employees to engage with their retirement plan, so experts recommend that companies try different communication methods and be persistent. Dall says most of PNC Bank’s clients send four to six communications per year, including emails, and update messages viewable on a human resources webpage or in a location where employees go to log work hours.

“There’s a lot of little places like that where you can put the communication in that it’s not invasive … but it is something that is there if you’d like to engage with it,” he says.

Dall says PNC Bank finds success by encouraging sponsors to enlist plan advocates, such as managers and supervisors, who can speak broadly about retirement benefits to their team. Giving them key information to pass on—such as explaining who the recordkeeper is, where employees can log in to see their account and the rate at which the company matches employee contributions—can help.

Incentivizing the workforce can also drive positive behavior, such as offering a raffle to win gift cards, Williams says.

“All of a sudden, you’re not doing the communication; you’re arming your participants with an incentive for them to tell their friends,” he says. “They create the buzz, and all of a sudden, they’re talking about it. It’s much more effective than sending out an email saying, ‘Please do this.’”

Dunwoody says the personalization nudges are worth it. Businessolver’s 2025 Benefits Insights Report showed an 18% increase in benefits activation when employees get personalized nudges and reminders about their benefits.

Improving plan communications will soon take on added importance. Fowler says with the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022’s requirement to include automatic enrollment in new workplace retirement plans, employers need to explain the plan to employees and make clear how it benefits them. Sharing this information will hopefully avoid leaving employees to be surprised when they see that money has been deducted from their paychecks.

“One of the things we do see is if you give people the opportunity to understand the plan, upon either initiation of the plan or them becoming eligible for it, and they have the opportunity to ask questions, we see increased participation rates in those moments,” Fowler says.

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