Press Release
Prudential Financial Inc. Partners with DeskNet to Deliver Personalized Customer Communications
Since the launch of its personalized education programs in early 2003, Prudential has differentiated itself from its competitors and established itself as a leader in personalized communications. The successful deployment of these campaigns has been a strong contributor to Prudential's recent success, securing numerous new accounts, both private and public, including its first statewide pension plan. Prudential Retirement selected DeskNet's technology because of its unmatched flexibility in design, content flow and its powerful personalization capabilities. DeskNet's technology also provided the flexibility to create ad-hoc campaigns while ensuring compliance standards for every one-to-one communication generated through the system.
Prudential and DeskNet teams began with the most challenging and complex personalized educational piece, the Retirement Planning Guide. The system was configured to assemble personalized one-to-one educational materials designed to communicate and educate participants at every level throughout their investment relationship with Prudential.
"We recognized early that education our clients in a highly personal manner over time using relevant information is the key to employee participation and customer retention. DeskNet's technology helped make this vision a reality for Prudential Retirement," says Paul Chong, Executive Vice President, Prudential Retirement.
The complexities and challenges of automating this next-generation of one-to-one educational materials is illustrated in the Retirement Planning Guide - the first campaign to roll-off DeskNet's automated assembly line. Each guide had to be customized at the plan level, while certain design elements had to be flexible, allowing for ad-hoc image selection and content submission. At the same time corporate brand rules had to be adhered to for each personalized kit. Fifteen unique demographics were established, encompassing participant status, age and other factors. Each individual's participant kit must contain personalized retirement projections, pre-filled forms and other personal information, all matched with educational information that speaks directly to the individual. Critical to the success of these campaigns was the technology's ability to manage the complex rules that govern content selection, design and business logic associated with the dynamic creation of every kit. The end result is a high quality color personalized Retirement Planning Guide tailored to every individual. The individual participant guides vary in length and are generated on-demand using the latest POD (Print on Demand) technologies, and then mailed to participant homes.
"DeskNet's technology has helped make it possible for Prudential to differentiate itself from its competitors. Based on the positive results we've experienced from these one-to-one campaigns, we realize that we have established a competitive edge in the Retirement Services sector," says John Corrieri, Vice President, Prudential Retirement.
"At DeskNet we measure success by the results our customers recognize through the use of our products. There is nothing more gratifying than to see Prudential achieve so many positive, tangible results by leveraging DeskNet's technology," says Mike Fitzsimons, CEO, DeskNet.
About the Product
ContentWelder enables financial companies to automate the assembly of high quality, personalized communications that are produced on-demand and delivered to customers via print and direct mail, call center fulfillment, self-service portals, Web, e-mail, and wireless devices. Communications campaigns of all kinds can be generated through the software, such as personalized wealth management kits, institutional monitors/reports, fund fact sheets, and all types of highly personalized educational materials from mass-market communications to regulatory reports. Binding together diverse content components via a powerful rules engine, ensures brand integrity, reduces operational costs, increases customer retention and satisfaction, and enables corporate-wide regulatory compliance.
About Prudential
Prudential Retirement provides defined contribution and benefits services for public, private and non-profit organizations, with a combination of investment management expertise, state-of-the-art record keeping, and comprehensive investment education programs. With over 75 years of retirement experience, Prudential Retirement meets the needs of 1.1 million defined contribution participants and 600,000 defined benefit annuitants, with over $70 billion in retirement account values as of December 31, 2003.
Prudential Financial companies, with approximately $432 billion in total assets under management as of December 31, 2003, serve individual and institutional customers worldwide and include The Prudential Insurance Company of America, one of the largest life insurance companies in the U.S. These companies offer a variety of products and services, including life insurance, property and casualty insurance, mutual funds, annuities, pension and retirement related services and administration, asset management, securities brokerage, banking and trust services, real estate brokerage franchises and relocation services. For more information, visit www.prudential.com. Prudential offers personalized education and enrollment materials to plans with $3 million or more in assets.
About DeskNet
DeskNet is the leading developer of automated enterprise Customer Communications products, serving the Financial Services Industry and Marketing/Communications departments to reduce costs, compress time to market, and provide a greater level of customer service through the creation of personalized, on-demand communication campaigns.
DeskNet is headquartered in New York City and has some of the largest Financial Services organization as its customers, including Prudential, T. Rowe Price, and JP Morgan Chase.
