Financial

 

To appeal to the fast-growing, but previously untapped market of young, high net worth parents, we positioned NeubergerBerman Mangement as the “expert” on investing for their children’s future college tuition. Recognizing the steep and steady rates at which tuition costs were rising nationally, we created the web’s first “college cost calculator,” in which parents could calculate the expected tuition and necessary monthly investment to have their child ready for freshman year. At the same time, we trained a group of customer service staff in the call center how to “counsel” parents in how to prepare for this major investment, and potentially, turn them into Neuberger customers.

 

To create interest in the issue, and drive potential investors to the Neuberger site, we generated a survey of the target audience and learned that most had underestimated the cost of their children’s future college costs by more than 50 percent and that the vast majority had not even begun to invest or save for college. These surprising facts were reported in dozens of personal finance columns as well as on TV news.

 

In the months following, the call center staff saw steady gains in the volume of queries specific to college investing, with spikes on days when there was news coverage. The staff reported that they were able to convert between 10-15 percent of the callers into Neuberger customers. Visitors to the main Neuberger site increased significantly over the year, with most of the visitors tracked as coming directly from the cost calculator pages.