To produce marketing materials such as pitch books and presentations for its retirement products, the firm used to have 18 different static PowerPoint presentations that sales reps would customize for each client. “This was cumbersome,” notes Dan Thomas, assistant director - IT. “They could alter the PowerPoint, adding client images, logos and names and changing font sizes and colors, but it wasn’t necessarily pretty when it was done.” These do-it-yourself efforts also got in the way of The Principal’s efforts to maintain consistent branding and imaging.

The retirement investor services group sought a solution that would help it keep the same look and feel across all marketing materials and communications and yet allow the salespeople the ability to personalize as needed. It chose Exstream’s Dialogue document management software and now uses it to generate two million 401(k) statements per quarter, as well as reports and marketing materials.

“This eliminates lot of waste,” says Ed Hunt, senior IT application analyst. “As we developed new marketing messages, we’d have to recycle all our pre-printed materials,” he points out. Now the group just prints exactly the quantity it needs on 10 Kodak Nexpress 2500s and 2900s.

The firm creates customized, targeted messages within 401(k) statements for small groups of participants. “If they have a loan outstanding, we can put out a specific loan message about that,” Thomas says. “If they’re not deferring enough of their salary, we can build campaigns into the statements. It’s more high touch and personalized than the old statement.”

Sales reps can quickly customize PowerPoint presentations using a dialogue box, reorganizing the points made and deleting irrelevant points without affecting the brand imagery.