Retirement plan providers send millions of communications every year. Participants look at very few of them. The problem isn’t volume; it’s more likely format and relevance. Personalized video moved the needle on 401k participant engagement, meeting people at the specific moments when they’re most likely to act: enrollment, contribution changes, life events, SECURE 2.0 updates and more.
For many employees, the retirement planning experience looks something like this: a welcome email when they’re onboarded, a standard annual statement, maybe a link to a glossy PDF during open enrollment. The communication is well-intentioned, but when the message says the same thing to a 28-year-old just starting her career and a 62-year-old trying to max out super catch-up contributions, it creates a disconnect.
That gap between what participants receive and what actually motivates them to engage costs providers real outcomes: lower participation rates, higher contact center volume, and plan sponsors who wonder why their recordkeeper isn’t doing more to move the needle.
The numbers behind the disengagement problem
The scale of the 401k engagement challenge is significant. Plans with automatic enrollment reach a 94% participation rate, compared to just 64% for voluntary enrollment plans – a 30-point gap that reflects how much friction sits between employees and the plan they’re eligible for. Even among participants who are enrolled, engagement can remain shallow: contribution rates hover, participants don’t log in for months or years, and features like catch-up contributions go underutilized by the people who need them most.
401k engagement isn’t improving because the communication model hasn’t changed. Generic, infrequent outreach treats every participant the same, regardless of where they are in life or what their account actually looks like.
In recent years, SECURE 2.0 has added additional urgency to the problem. New provisions (from expanded auto-enrollment requirements to the super catch-up contribution window for participants ages 60-63) have required clear, individualized participant communication at the moments when employees are most in need of guidance.
401k engagement happens at specific moments, not on a broadcast schedule
One reason so much retirement plan communication falls short is structural: it treats engagement as a broadcast exercise rather than a relationship. Personalized video turns that model on its head by securely connecting each participant’s account details to a video that speaks directly to their situation, to be shared at the time they need that information most.
These are the moments that matter most for driving 401k participant engagement:
Enrollment and the first 90 days. Research from John Hancock Retirement confirms that participants are most receptive in the first three months after joining a plan. A personalized welcome video that shows a new participant their actual employer match formula, their contribution options, and a clear path to get started can eliminate the confusion that turns early interest into years of inertia.
Contribution change prompts. A participant who just received a raise has more take-home pay – and a window to increase their deferral without feeling the pinch. A video that says “Congratulations — here’s what a 2% increase would look like on your specific paycheck and projected balance” is a fundamentally different conversation than a reminder email that links to the plan portal.
Life event moments. Marriage, a new child, a job change, turning 50: these moments create a natural opening to revisit retirement strategy. Studies show that people experiencing change are already in a decision-making mindset. Personalized video can meet them there with context that feels genuinely relevant, not canned.
SECURE 2.0 feature education. Super catch-up contributions, expanded part-time employee eligibility, and Roth catch-up requirements for higher earners are exactly the kind of complex, consequential information that gets lost in a compliance document. A short personalized video that tells a participant what they’re now eligible for (with their specific numbers) is the difference between a feature that gets adopted and one that goes unnoticed until it’s too late.
Annual and quarterly check-ins. A “Your Year in Review” video that shows a participant exactly what they contributed, what their employer matched, and how far they are from their projected retirement income goal keeps the relationship alive between enrollment and retirement. It’s also when deferral rate changes are most likely to happen.
Watch now: SundaySky’s video platform for 401(k) providers
How personalized video improves 401k participant engagement
A leading 401(k) recordkeeper deployed personalized SundaySky videos for participant check-ins and retirement income projections. The results were measurable and consistent:
- participants who watched the personalized videos were twice as likely to increase their deferral rate compared to non-viewers.
- the same program drove a 550% increase in savings contribution among video viewers versus non-viewers
- 97% of participants who received a personalized retirement video reported that it was useful to them
Participants weren’t skipping through the content – they were watching. That level of attention reflects what happens when a video is actually about you: your balance, your goals, your priorities. It’s the kind of engagement that a well-crafted email campaign rarely achieves.
See how video personalization with SundaySky drives engagement for 401(k) providers and carriers.
How AI makes 401k participant engagement scalable at the enterprise level
The historical challenge with video personalization at scale wasn’t the concept, it was the production reality. Creating individualized video content for tens of thousands of participants sounded like a full-time creative team working year-round. AI has changed that equation.
SundaySky’s AI video capabilities let enterprise teams build personalized video templates once (with AI-generated voiceovers, dynamic data fields that pull securely from data sources, and brand-compliant visuals) and then render individual versions for every participant automatically. What would take months of production can be configured and deployed in a fraction of the time, with compliance guardrails built in.
For 401(k) providers managing millions of participants across complex plan designs, that scalability matters.
Closing the gap starts with the next logical moment
Better 401k engagement doesn’t require a total overhaul of how providers communicate. The goal is to identify the moments where participants are most likely to act and deliver something that feels like it was made for them.
The providers already seeing the strongest results started with one use case: a personalized enrollment video, or a check-in campaign tied to a specific participant milestone. The data connections, templates, and delivery infrastructure they built in that first program became the foundation for everything that followed.
Ready to see what personalized video can do for your 401(k) participant engagement strategy? Book a demo or take a platform tour.
Frequently asked questions
What is 401k participant engagement and why does it matter?
401k participant engagement refers to the level of active involvement participants have with their retirement plan: enrolling, making contribution decisions, updating elections, and using self-service tools. Higher engagement correlates directly with better retirement outcomes like increased deferral rates, stronger plan health, and reduced administrative burden for the recordkeeper and plan sponsor.
Why do traditional retirement plan communications fail to engage participants?
Most retirement plan communications are generic, infrequent, and disconnected from each participant’s personal account data. A broad email about open enrollment doesn’t necessarily tell a participant what they stand to gain by acting. Without relevance, participants tune out. Personalized communications that reflect each person’s actual balance, contribution rate, and proximity to retirement are far more likely to prompt action.
How does personalized video improve 401k engagement?
Personalized video connects each participant’s real account details (deferral rate, employer match, projected balance, retirement income gap) to a video experience built specifically for them. Because the content is directly relevant to their situation, participants watch longer and act more often. Documented outcomes include significant increases in deferral rate changes and employer match utilization among participants who received personalized video versus those who didn’t.
When are participants most receptive to retirement plan communication?
Participants are most engaged during high-stakes moments: the first 90 days of enrollment, when they receive a raise or change jobs, when they hit age-based milestones like turning 50 or 60, during open enrollment, and when regulatory changes like SECURE 2.0 provisions directly affect their options. Timing communication to these moments produces meaningfully better engagement outcomes.
Can personalized video be produced at scale for large participant populations?
Yes. Enterprise personalized video platforms like SundaySky connect securely to any data system to render individualized videos for every participant automatically. AI capabilities allow retirement plan providers to create a video program once and scale it across tens of thousands of participants without proportional increases in production time or cost.
