Increase in advisor appointments YoY
Increase in webinar registrations YoY
Increase in attendees (includes on-demand views)
Increase in new clients using Edelman Financial Engines’ services
Employees: ~1400
Product: ON24 Webcast Elite
Use Cases: Demand Generation, Member Enrollment
Industry: Financial Services
Edelman Financial Engines was founded on the belief that all American investors — not just the wealthy — deserve access to personalized, comprehensive financial planning and investment advice. Today, Edelman Financial Engines is America’s top independent financial planning and investment advisor, with 180+ planner offices across the country and entrusted by more than 1.1 million clients to manage more than $200 billion in assets. The company’s unique approach to serving clients combines advanced methodology and proprietary technology with the attention of a dedicated personal financial planner. Every client’s situation and goals are unique, and the powerful fusion of high-tech and high-touch allows Edelman Financial Engines to deliver the personal plan and financial confidence that everyone deserves.
The financial world is complex. And, when it comes to retirement savings plans, most organizations are simply not equipped with the financial expertise needed to advise and educate employees and help explain all the nuances of different options. This creates confusion for employees and can even undermine their participation in a retirement savings program.
Edelman Financial Engines fills this financial information gap by providing ongoing guidance about retirement savings to employees through interactive, data-rich webinar series. With one-third of Americans not saving for retirement, this education is invaluable for empowering employees with financial knowledge, workforce management for the employer and most importantly, improving employee satisfaction and helping them plan for their long-term financial goals.
In an effort to educate as many people as possible about retirement savings, Edelman Financial Engines hosts webinars and live events for their enterprise clients’ employees. These programs are mutually beneficial for Edelman Financial Engines and the organizations they serve — employers are able to provide their workforce with access to retirement advice, and Edelman Financial Engines is able to reach and impact the employees with their retirement advice offerings. After comparing a year’s worth of results between webinars and in-person events, Edelman Financial Engines found webinars to have the highest ROI.
Webinars quickly became a key component for how Edelman Financial Engines gets in front of employee audiences. While cost-effective, Edelman Financial Engines knew that their webinars had to do more than just deliver a PowerPoint presentation, they needed to inform, involve and influence their audience. And, this influence could not be limited to the webinar experience itself, the Edelman Financial Engines team needed behavioral intelligence about their audience to know who to follow up with and book an additional financial advisor meeting.
Boosting audience engagement was Edelman Financial Engines’ number one priority for their webinar program. That’s why the company switched to ON24® — it is the only platform that deepened engagement from end-to-end, offering the audience an interactive, compelling experience while delivering attendee insights to help the marketing team qualify leads and determine the next step. By adopting an engagement-driven webinar platform, Edelman Financial Engines believed their retirement savings education programs would make a greater impact for their clients and drive client growth.
Unparalleled Interactivity
Edelman Financial Engines knows that adults learn best when they are active participants in their education rather than passive recipients of a lecture. The interactivity features within ON24 webinars, such as polls, surveys, Q&A, and more, are an ideal way to put the audience in charge of their own experience. Edelman Financial Engines’ viewers now feel like are having an online conversation with a financial professional that’s more personalized for their needs and on their terms. Simultaneously, Edelman Financial Engines uses interactivity tools to embed calls-to-action throughout the webinar experience, such as integrating an appointment scheduler directly inside the webinar, to gain immediate results out of every event.
Efficient Scalability
Through ON24 simulive capabilities, the Edelman Financial Engines team can easily produce a larger number of webinars in a shorter amount of time, and still reach a bigger audience. Edelman Financial Engines pre-records several webinars all at once, producing a cohesive series that can be replayed with many audiences. This maximizes internal resources for Edelman Financial Engines and streamlines the presenter and production time. Once a set of webinars is complete, Edelman Financial Engines is able to reuse the same webinar content across their client base at schedule events at a time most convenient for each audience.
Because simulive enables Edelman Financial Engines to maintain the real-time interactivity of a live webinar, engagement remains high and the audience gets the same level of participation. And with each simulive event, Edelman Financial Engines can adjust the look and feel of the webinar, the CTAs and offerings for different audiences.
Content Re-generation
In addition to improving the engagement of its live webinars, ON24 also helps Edelman Financial Engines repurpose its webinars for additional campaigns. With ON24, the team takes a single, hour-long webinar and breaks it into several 7 – 10-minute videos. These learning vignettes break meaty financial services topics into digestible chunks and help enterprise clients offer ongoing financial services education as a benefit to their employees. These same vignettes are used by the Edelman Financial Engines’ sales team to engage new prospects and demonstrate their company’s services.
Customized Branding
ON24 lets Edelman Financial Engines customize the console with its own company branding. Iconography is an important element within Edelman Financial Engines’ branding strategy and ON24 allows it to seamlessly incorporate its own designs. This makes the presentation, widgets and console background one cohesive image of the Edelman Financial Engines company and brand.
Edelman Financial Engines’ switch to ON24 was a significant contributor to achieving results beyond the company’s expectations. By improving the promotion, content and quality of their webinars, the company attracts 75% more webinar registrations. This dramatic uptick in webinar attendance broadens Edelman Financial Engines’ reach creating the opportunity to educate and serve more people.
Then, by providing higher-quality engagement within every webinar, the conversion rate of attendees taking advisor appointments increased by 65%. The positive results continue to multiply downstream — Edelman Financial Engines increased its new client base by 48%, ultimately boosting its assets under management while helping more people achieve their most important financial goals.
