NAGDCA-Art Caple President’s Award Winners

Virginia Retirement System and MissionSquare Retirement Awarded for 2021 Participant Engagement Campaign

The 2022 NAGDCA-Art Caple President’s Award was presented to the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) and its industry partner MissionSquare Retirement during the Annual Conference on September 21.  Specifically, the award acknowledges the plan for its 2021 participant engagement campaign “SmartStep Auto-Increase Awareness.” The plan’s campaign also received NAGDCA Leadership Awards in both the Participant Education & Communication and COVID-19 Response categories.

To help accomplish VRS’ goals, MissionSquare developed an engaging, action-oriented superhero (Captain Save-It) to inspire participants to take initiative and use the SmartStep auto-increase feature. SmartStep allows participants to be a savings superhero by arranging for yearly automatic increases in their contribution amounts. The multichannel campaign drove traffic to the Contributions webpage that included details about the SmartStep feature, and resulted in a 30% increase in page views over the same period in 2020.

Click here to learn more about the award-winning campaign.

The City of Los Angeles, with industry partner Voya, awarded  for its 2020 National Retirement Security Month campaign

The 2021 NAGDCA-Art Caple President’s Award was presented to the City of Los Angeles Deferred Compensation Plan (DCP) and its industry partner Voya.  Specifically, the award acknowledges the plan for its 2020 National Retirement Security Month (NRSM) campaign “LA’s The Place!” The City was also named as the President’s Award winner in 2020 for its 2019 NRSM campaign.

On October 1, 2020, the City of Los Angeles DCP staff, in partnership with their Third-Party Administrator (TPA), Voya, launched their annual campaign for NRSM. The City’s NRSM campaign was entitled, “LA’s The Place!” The LA’s The Place! quiz used a gamified tour of City of Los Angeles landmarks to simultaneously promote participation, increased saving, and greater awareness of DCP services and features (including blogs as well as virtual group and individual meetings). An interactive quiz was accompanied by a weekly raffle of prizes. This fun, engaging approach garnered the City’s highest ever campaign participation – more than doubling their campaign participation numbers from last year’s campaign. The campaign was published on the LA457.com website and included the interactive quiz. The interactive quiz centered around eight City landmarks.

For more details about the award-winning campaign, please click here.

The City of Los Angeles, with industry partner Voya, awarded  for its 2019 National Retirement Security Week campaign

The 2020 NAGDCA-Art Caple President’s Award was presented to the City of Los Angeles Deferred Compensation Plan and its industry partner Voya. Specifically, the award acknowledges the Plan for its 2019 National Retirement Security Week (NRSW) campaign “The Best Plans are with your Friends.”

The concept for the DCP’s 2019 NRSW campaign derived from the observation that peers and colleagues—trusted messengers—appear to be the most effective influencers of employee engagement with the DCP and retirement success. The campaign revolved around an interactive exercise—“Be a Friend Challenge”—with five suggested steps for each of the DCP’s audiences (active participants, retired participants, and non-participating eligible employees) to complete and re-engage with the plan for each of the DCP’s. The DCP’s 2019 NRSW campaign spurred a 50% increase in account logins and a 57% increase in enrollments compared with its 2018 campaign. Additionally, the campaign spurred a 122% increase in the DCP’s Facebook followers and a 346% increase in its Instagram followers.

“The Best Plans are with your Friends” campaign was one of 13 winners from 39 submissions for the 2020 NAGDCA Leadership Awards. The winner of the Art Caple President’s Award is selected by a task force of NAGDCA past presidents from the four highest-scoring winners in the four categories of the annual NAGDCA Leadership Awards.

Click below to view a message from Steven Montagna, Executive Director-Deferred Compensation Plan, City of Los Angeles.

For more details about the award-winning campaign, please click here.

Online Enrollment Solution Launch Campaign

The 2019 NAGDCA-Art Caple President’s Award was presented to New York State Deferred Compensation Plan (“the Plan”) and its industry partner, Nationwide, during NAGDCA’s annual conference, on Wednesday, September 11 in New Orleans, LA. The Plan is a state-sponsored voluntary retirement savings plan that is offered to State employees and more than 1,900 local government jurisdictions (“employers”) that have adopted the Plan. Its mission is to help state and local public employees achieve their retirement savings goals by providing high quality, cost effective investment products, investment educational programs and related services.

NAGDCA awarded the Plan for its Online Enrollment Solution Launch campaign. The online enrollment solution was implemented in September 2018 and has continued to drive results for the Plan in 2019. The solution was developed in partnership with Nationwide to deliver a positive employee experience through structuring a system that allows employees to locate their employer entity with ease and delivering an online experience that is mobile optimized for convenience.

The campaign results surpassed goals, bringing in 239 online enrollments in the first two weeks of launch. In addition, Plan employers communicated how easy and convenient the experience was for employees to enroll, in appreciation of the print-to-digital capabilities with the QR code promotions and mobile optimization. Prior to the launch of online enrollment, there were more than 232,000 participants in the Plan with $20 billion in assets. Today, there are almost 240,000 participants in the Plan with more than $24 billion in assets. Results specific to the online enrollment solution include the Plan receiving 2,337 enrollments the first full month of the launch, a 78% increase over the 1,312 enrollments received the same month the prior year, indicating that the Online Enrollment and mobile solution is driving new interest in and access to the Plan. For the first full quarter average, enrollments were up nearly 20% over the prior year.

For more details about the award and winning campaign, please click here.