Issue: AXA's Soft Sell on Retirement

With MyRetirementShop.com, AXA chose to offer retirees and pre-retirees a portal focused on their lifestyle needs rather than product

Watch the Video…

Why would a financial services company whose ultimate goal is to sell products to customers devote 18 months and to developing a Web site that's about everything but the company's products? Under the guidance of Chief Innovation Officer Barbara Goodstein, AXA Equitable did just that when they set up MyRetirementShop.com to go after the ultracompetitive retiree market.

The site, which Goodstein describes as a "lifestyle portal targeted at retirees and pre-retirees," offers a wide variety of resources, tools, and information on everything from health, leisure, news, volunteering, travel, and money. You can research the best doctors, as rated by health-care researcher Castle, Connolly Medical. You can buy tickets to shows through the concierge service, find someone to do home repairs, or download course content from iTunes U. In fact, you can do just about everything on the site, except purchase AXA's products. (While there is a section of MyRetirement.com that focuses on financial articles and information, not all of it from AXA, there are only a few discreet links to AXA-Equitable.com.)

Customers First, Product Second

According to Goodstein, in conceiving MyRetirementShop.com the company made several important choices. The first was not to make a retirement site that was all about the company's financial services offerings. The second was not to make it all about finance and money, period. "There are plenty of places online to get information about all kind of financial services, including AXA's own site," she says. "Yet there wasn't anywhere what offered the breadth and depth of other information and services that's of interest to the market."

The research AXA has done into the market—which includes an annual global survey of some 18,000 customers each year—shows that pre-retirees and retirees alike were looking for information and guidance on a wide variety of subjects. "We identified all the things that that group was interested in, all the areas that they wanted to learn more about." Another key decision the company made was to pick partners that could supply critical information or tools, rather than to focus on associating all content with the AXA brand. For example, much of the personal finance information comes from Kiplingers.com, and MyRetirementShop sends you off to partner sites when appropriate, such as Amazon.com for shopping.

"Our CEO Kip Condron was immediately drawn to this idea of basically not pushing product first, but creating a customer-focused portal, and that included getting the right people to work with us," says Goodstein. "We all recognize that it's about the customer first, and AXA second."

Happy Customers Do More Business

Goodstein and other senior management at AXA think that by giving users of MyRetirementShop.com a good experience, they have a better shot at reaching new customers and serving current ones. "Our priority is to take care of our customers and to delight them," says Goodstein. "And we have concluded that a happy customer will stay with us longer and do more business with us. The way to make your customers happy is to address their needs," she says

"All of our research told us that they were looking for direction, support, and guidance about what to do during retirement," she continues. "We saw this as an opportunity to not only address their needs, but to deliver and package all the information they're looking for in a coherent fashion that they would be able to access easily." Easy access is especially important in reaching the retirees and baby boomers, many of whom aren't as Web-savvy as Gen Y or Gen X.

Ultimately, Goodstein sees MyRetirementShop.com as a model the company can continue to use. "As we start thinking about GenY, for example, we could use that same template of having a portal with lots of different areas that are relevant to our target audience, designed in an easily navigable way."