2 B2B Tips on Marketing Employee ‘Financial Wellness’

FinServ marketing to corporations just took a new B2B twist. Financial services marketers can advise their clients on how to market “financial wellness” programs to their employees.

That will help the brands retain their talent and help the financial services marketers with their B2B loyalty with the clients. This is the gist of what Lauren Dixon writes in an April 10 article on Workforce.

The article says:

“Given the lengthy hours spent at work, and with medical insurance and retirement savings being mainstays in corporate life, the prevalence of financial wellness programs is another example of employers becoming the financial home of employees, said Jeff Oldham, [SVP] of global and institutional markets at Benefitfocus, a benefits management software provider.”

Marketing Financial Wellness Programs

Even if the main objective for FinServ marketers isn’t about offering corporate clients financial wellness programs for their employees, doing so could aid in creating client loyalty that assists with the main marketing goals.

Convincing brands that financial wellness programs can help with their bottom lines follow some surprising logical threads that are similar to overall marketing concepts of lifetime value and ROI.

Dixon starts her article with the tale of an employee who got injured in a car wreck. She hadn’t joined her company because of its wellness program, but the company stepped up and requested $1 from each of its other employees. After giving her an unexpected gift of $800 and a personal note as she recovered, the employee said that that wellness program positively impacted her work performance and her loyalty to the company. So brands have a quick example of a no-cost way to retain a valuable employee, courtesy of FinServ marketers.

In a similar way, FinServ marketers can demonstrate the cost to brands of not creating and internally marketing financial wellness programs to employees. They need to see the lifetime value of helping employees.

Dixon writes:

“One-third of all employees get distracted by their situation, causing 46 percent of them to spend at least three hours per week at work thinking about or handling finances, according to PwC’s ‘2017 Employee Financial Wellness Survey.’ Additionally, those who are stressed by their financial situations cite health problems from said stress at a rate 15 percent higher than those who are not stressed. Finally, employees with financial stress are more likely to delay retirement, the survey said.

“One result from this is that people work long after they want to in order to pay bills, said David Stedman, CEO of BrightDime, a financial wellness software provider based in Charlotte, [N.C.] While there is value for older workers in the office, they tend to carry higher costs in terms of health care and wages than young employees. It’s a win-win for both employers and employees if people retire when they are ready, rather than when forced to, Stedman said.”

Marketing Content Advice to Corporations

One of the first rules of financial wellness content marketing is for clients to understand their own biases. Dixon says finances aren’t all about math; they’re also about emotion and motivation. For instance, six-figure earners may be living beyond their means. Lower wage earners may be budgeting well, but not saving. She cites the example of McDonald’s creating a budget for employees that didn’t include “groceries, child care, realistic health care costs, clothing and more.”

It’s important to understand the audience, even though it’s their own employees.

Also, employees may not want to discuss their finances with their employers. Dixon writes that FinServ marketers should counsel clients to offer options, because “wherever employees feel safe learning about these topics is fine, whether that’s through their banks, employers or anonymous online forums; people simply need to know they won’t be shamed when asking questions, as money is a vulnerable topic.”

That said, financial wellness programs can include everything from assistance with student loans to identity theft insurance.

Dixon’s tips to brands about financial wellness programs shows what FinServ marketing options there are regarding providing advice to clients:

• Make Sure Advice Is Holistic and Personalized. “It’s tough to provide pinpoint advice, unless you know the holistic picture of a person’s financial situation,” Stedman said.
• Ensure There Is Continued Engagement. Financial wellness needs to be a lifestyle in order to have long-term effects. If engagement is low, companies need to improve communication and marketing of their offerings.
• Measure and show data on the effects of initiatives and third-party providers.
• Keep the Information Aggregate. Privacy is important, so there should never be information about individual employees.
• Don’t Pitch Other Products and Services. Marketers need to ensure there are no hidden agendas in the financial wellness programs, such as wanting to sell other products. This will impact engagement among employees.

What do you think, marketers?

Please respond in the comments section below.