eBilling News: 2013

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Thursday, November 28, 2013

HTML5 is the devil

Don't get me wrong, I'm super excited about the potential and possibilities of HTML5 - I'm just not sure if we are ready to use it to send secure documents by email.

Phishing, malware, weak ciphers and limited payloads are all serious concerns regarding the use of HTML5 as it stands today - where using HTML5 as the carrier requires sending an HTML attachment.

HTML was used as a secure envelope for document delivery in the early days - this required Java script enabled browsers, which meant it didn't work for everyone and caused many frustrations.

The algorithms used in the encryption process were specifically chosen for their tiny footprint - rather than strength of security.

The industry quickly moved on...

Proprietary security envelopes were required to meet the banking level security requirements, (the Striata Reader is a perfect example of this technology).

The problem is this involves a once-off download that acts as a perceived inhibitor to customer adoption. In certain industries however, the extra security levels and configuration options are worth the extra customer experience requirement.

Sending encrypted documents by email quickly became standard at the point where Adobe PDF provided 256 bit AES encryption. Most consumers have the Adobe Reader installed on their devices (think desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones) which means that the encrypted PDFdocuments can be read on multiple devices without requiring different versions.

Bring on HTML5...

Bring on the Phishers...

Sending HTML attachments has been strictly avoided due to the twin evils of malware and phishing. HTML files can hide the true nature of their payload within a legitimate looking process. Most customers won't be able to tell the difference before it's too late.

Banks currently accept that sending a PDF is a secure process (Digitally signed and DMARC authenticated). Encouraging the use of HTML5 documents however will be a bridge too far for quite some time.

RED ALERT - Java script injections and malware

HTML5 enables dynamic statements with interactive elements, graphs and sorting (you can do most of these things in Flash in PDF anyway). I can see the value of HTML5 statements that are behind an Internet Banking firewall and login, but not when sent to the customer as an attachment - I see this almost as bad as sending a link to a customer, asking them to login.

RED ALERT - Phishing

Is there any value in HTML5?

The real value of HTML5 will be evident when you can embed this in a safe and secure envelope such as PDF or EMC.

You will need the sandbox ability of a proprietary program such as the Adobe Reader for PDF or the Striata Reader for EMC. The fact that these options are available across multiple devices means that 'send once and view multiple times' is a simple process.

That’s our stance, happy to open the debate!

Mike Wright
striata.com

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

If you build it (properly), they will come

Is it just me, or are there new loyalty programmes being launched each month into the already cluttered loyalty space? From my local petrol station to large retail chains to my local gym, everyone wants me to sign up for their loyalty programme.

While as a wily consumer, I’m always looking to be rewarded for my business, on closer inspection it seems that some of these so called 'loyalty programmes' aren’t actually building customer loyalty at all!

Companies need to know how to build a successful loyalty programme. This will not only save the reputation of their brand, but also ensure that their customers keep coming back...

4 Tips for building a winner loyalty programme

Know your audience
Understand your customer and send messages that are relevant and engaging. Don’t push products you want to sell, but rather what your customer wants to buy! If you can achieve true relevance, then your loyalty programme willstand out from the clutter. A ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn't work.

Acknowledge your VIP customers
Know your top customers and welcome them . . . in store, online or any place they interact with you. Your loyalty members need to feel special. Acknowledge, engage and show that you understand them. Do this well and your VIP customers will find a reason to spend their hard earned cash on your brand.

Enrich your members
'Discounts do not a loyalty programme make' (with a nod to the original proverb). You have to do more than just offer price discounts. Loyal customers are created on more than just price. In fact, loyal customers are most likely notto care about price but rather value personalised service, convenience, or a more pleasurable shopping experience.

Predict the future
Imagine if you could make your customer’s life even more amazing by knowing what they need before they even know it - that would be awesome!

Achieving this requires much thought and data analysis, but wouldn’t it feel great to be offered something you are going to need in the short to medium term future? An effective loyalty program will allow you to collect information on your customer’s buying behaviour, patterns and interests. This way you can pre-empt their need for a product or service.

Perhaps the best approach when it comes to loyalty programmes is to use them to get to know your customers …how much they spend, what kind of promotions they respond to and what they value most. This increases the likelihood of retaining them and ultimately capturing a greater share of their wallet.

Planning a loyalty programme? We have the expertise to know, acknowledge and enrich your customers through digital messaging. Once you’ve got that right, you’re well on your way to predicting their future needs!

Ross Sibbald
striata.com

Friday, November 8, 2013

What is customer service anyway? Your share of the wallet lies in making it ‘easy’

With the UK reporting economic ‘growth’ for the first time since the recession, the economy is still 3% smaller than it was before it. In times like these, consumers are less loyal than ever before because their lack of pocket money requires them to be opportunistic.

Time to drive price down?

The demise of the loyal customer has led all too many businesses into thinking that only low prices will provide a sustainable business model. On the contrary; customers report that good customer service and loyalty mechanisms such as rewards programmes are more important than ever in times like these.

According to LoyaltyLeaders.org:

Good customer service (34%) was the single aspect most likely to encourage people to spend more, followed by personalised rewards they felt were relevant to them (30%)

And before you think that’s only for those who are down and out:

Seventy percent of persons from higher-income households ($125,000 +) are more loyal to companies that offer rewards programs. (Maritz)

So price is not king. And yet, good customer service is not disassociated from price. Now, instead of a bank teller knowing my dog’s name or my butcher giving me an extra steak because he knows it’s my birthday, I want digital and automated channels to replace that personalisation and ease. I want them to make it easy to save money, easy to see what book I should buy next and easy to access information that will keep me in good financial stead.

Make it easy = good customer service

This is why the Customer Effort Score (CES) has largely replaced other tools like the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a way of assessing customer loyalty. In pedestrian terms, asking your customer how hard it was to do business (CES) vs. asking how likely they are to recommend your company (NPS) has proven to be more effective in preventing attrition.

3 Ways to make it easy with email...

Ease of Transaction: Push your communications. For example - push customers’ eBills and eStatements to their inboxes. This way, they don't have to fetch them and remember more usernames and passwords. Make it easy and offer one click payment from within a secure eBill.
Ease of Engagement: Don’t ask customers to stuff their wallets with yet another loyalty card or voucher. Push perks within an email and use barcodes and QR codes to allow use from their Smartphones. And use your data to send highly targeted offers as well.
Ease of Information: Using portals is a 'Customer Effort Score' no-no. Time and again customers report that passwords require too much effort. Push eStatements, eBills, ePolicies, Terms and Conditions, notifications… any and all high security documents can be attached directly to an email and set with a default password to open. These documents can be highly interactive and double as an engagement tool - allowing customers to update details, set payment reminders or even top up their phone credits!

If you are easy to do business with, your customers may not be loyal, but they will come back for more.

Chat to us if you are looking for ways to unlock the ‘easy’ of email.

Sarah Appleby
striata.com

Friday, November 1, 2013

Keeping tabs on Gmail Tabs

For the last few months I’ve been monitoring the online “chatter”, blogs and news articles around the Gmail tab changes and recently wrote an article on how to get your time critical messages into the primary Gmail inbox tab.

The online community’s response to these changes range from wide-eyed fear that marketing messages will not be read, to resignation that the tabs actually do work and do not affect open rates too dramatically.

For now, I’m sitting in the second group. After using the new tabs for a few months, I believe that the new interface candramatically improve the organisation of your mailbox. It certainly supports my aspiration to achieve the magical “inbox zero”.

What is Gmail's ultimate goal with tabs?

I’ve come across a few stories that support the theory that Gmail’s ultimate goal with tabs is to grow their ad serving strategy. After all, about 97% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising.

Although the guise of the launch is to improve usability and to help you organise your mailbox, I suspect this change is to support a corporate goal. With this in mind, I ask if the “engine” that applies the rules is mature enough for us to feel comfortable?

The Gmail test

For context, when we did our study (mentioned in my article), we tested a variety of emails and found dramatically inconsistent results.

In our small test, we sent a sample of emails across financial services senders to see what would happen in Gmail. The objective was to see if there were obvious steps a sender should take to ensure their message is delivered to the Primary tab.

More detail on the methodology:

We sent the mails from various environments to check if the servers would influence the delivery statuses (i.e. if you send a majority of marketing messages from a server, would Gmail consider your mail more likely to be a marketing message?)
We checked content for obvious copy like “statement, newsletter or promotion”, however some mails that landed in the Primary tab for one person, landed in the Promotions tab for another. There were no obvious differences in the setup of these mailboxes (starred messages, previous conversations or saved contact details, among others) to indicate why the mails were being treated differently.
We made assumptions that if the mail contained copy like ‘promotion’ or ‘statement’ they would be automatically moved to the updates or promotions tabs as per those tabs definitions – Theseassumptions proved fruitless as messages were not treated consistently.

Our small test revealed no conclusive ‘rules’ that we could determine would assist in getting an email into the Primary tab. The same email landed in different tabs for different recipients with no obvious difference in mailbox setup.

The results of the tests we conducted only led me to ask more questions:

As the current solution stands, with no consistency in the results, how can you as a marketer/billing sender guarantee that your messages will land in the tab that you require? (See my previous article for some helpful tips)
Will Gmail users adapt their behaviour to treat the folders in the way they were intended – as a filter device, not simply ignore or delay viewing emails that don’t land in Primary? (I have found that I check my Primary tab regularly and only look at the other tabs occasionally and briefly. If I find anything of interest in those tabs I immediately move them to my Primary tab)
Is Gmail starting off lenient and aiming to get stricter with the classification of inbound emails into tabs? Will the algorithm change?

It's evident that Gmail is evolving - ensure your emails don't get left behind. Talk to us about how to increase the chances of your email messages landing in the right tab.

Michelle van den Berg
striata.com

Thursday, October 24, 2013

eBilling Legislation - 6 ways Striata can keep you on the right side of the Law...

Ireland’s Communications Regulator has just introduced the world’s first Consumer Protection for Bills and Billing Mediums. It’s been a long time coming, particularly when you consider the number of lawsuits that have been sparked off by ill-conceived eBilling strategies around the world!

But now that regulation has arrived, it's worth having a look at what the Irish Telco regulator thinks are the main areas of concern with eBilling, as I’m sure other regulators will follow suit.

And it’s a bit of a mixed bag! Here's a quick summary:

Post-paid bills – both paper and electronic – must be provided free of charge, including fully itemised bills if that’s the customer’s preference.
Pre-paid customers can ask for a “transaction history” (basically an itemised statement of usage) free of charge.
Customers who are “forced” to change from paper to electronic can break their contract with no penalties.
Service providers must ensure and verify that customers can access the alternative electronic media before migrating them from paper.
Where bills are made available on the service provider’s portal (Pull eBilling), alerts (SMS or email) must be sent during sociable hours, and an opt-out for alerts must be available.

What does it mean for Service Providers?

Forcing customers to switch to eBilling by charging for paper bills is a no-no! Hardly surprising as this has been the reason for a number of class-action lawsuits from the USA to Australia over the years. But how else are these companies going to encourage customers to go paperless?

Allowing customers to break their contract if they are forced to go electronic is even more interesting – just how many will take this option, even if it is a case of 'cutting off your nose to spite your face' People don’t like being told what to do, and will often go to great lengths to make a point if they feel they’ve been pushed into a corner.

A couple of the other regulations offer opportunities and create challenges for the service providers.

Ensuring and verifying that customers can access the electronic bill before you turn off their paper bill requires detailed tracking and more. For example, the fact that the customer opened the email doesn’t mean they can view the PDF eBill; you need to track that this was opened too, which requires some tricky interactive PDF development.

Whilst providing pre-paid customers with a transaction history when they ask for one may sound like an inconvenient additional cost, what if you could incorporate useful, targeted marketing into this document? Or even provide the facility for the pre-paid customer to re-charge at a preferential rate from within the transaction history?

Suddenly, this additional cost could become an important customer touch-point and revenue generation channel.

Regulation and Striata's eBilling Best Practice

From Striata’s perspective, this regulation doesn’t come as a surprise and wouldn’t cause any issues for our clients should this type of regulation become more widespread.

Basically, it’s a very “common sense” approach to eBilling and fits in well with what we’ve been promoting for the past 12 years...

6 ways Striata can keep you on the right side of the Law:

Don’t penalise customers for wanting to stick with paper – encourage them to switch to eBilling by highlighting theadded features and functions.
Provide a compelling eBilling alternative that is more convenient than paper and customers won’t turn to another service provider when asked to change.
Bring eBilling customers on-board with adoption processes that verify they are receiving emails and confirm they can open the PDF documents. Let them see how good your eBilling is before you ask them to give up paper.
Use transactional eDocuments as regular customer touch-points to reinforce the relationship and cross-sell and up-sell new services, especially where there is no other regular communications channel (like pre-paid telephony).
Time the sending of email communications to maximise open rates and effectiveness. The same message sent on a Tuesday morning or Saturday evening will perform very differently.
Always provide an easy unsubscribe link for customers wanting to go back to paper. It won’t get used often if your eBills are more convenient than your paper bills, but always give your customers the choice.

Keen to self-regulate your eBilling efforts before your regulator comes in and does it for you? Get in touch with Striata and we’ll keep you on the right side of the law!

Keith Russell
striata.com

Friday, October 18, 2013

Integrating Email and Social Media

It’s that time of year again when we must shift our focus to ensure that our email campaigns are given an extra boost during the festive season. Focus on factors like standing out in a crowded inbox and making the festive retail experience easier and more convenient for customers.

For me, the key during this time of year is to effectively nudge your customers further down the purchase path. Although this path may be different for everyone, there is a common thread - word-of-mouth, a friend’s recommendation or a thumbs up from an influencer are trust factors that can provide that extra boost and email is a great channel to encourage that.

According to a study from Nielsen, 92% of consumers around the world say that they trust word-of-mouth, as well as friend and family recommendations above all other forms of advertising.

That being said, we can’t ignore the benefits of integrating social media and email for festive campaigns.

6 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media

Pin this graphic:

1. Follow and Like

Encourage your email subscribers to join your social communities. Subscribers are already engaging with your products online via email, so they really are a valuable group from which you can grow your community.
Placing social icons and call to actions on promotional emails, newsletters and welcome triggers is a great first step to integration. It’s also a good idea to A/B test the placement of the icons to see what works best.
Another way to grow your social community is using adhoc email campaigns where the product, competition or sale is only available on social media. This way all the great but ‘spammy’ competition and discount sale jargon that would usually get the email stopped by spam filters, is on the Facebook campaign page. You don’t have to add it to your email copy. Here is an example from Bon Appétit

2. Share Content

Adding Share functionality gives your customer the ability to share certain or all content onto their preferred social networks. It facilitates the dissemination of key content from the email onto social media networks in a manner relevant to the network chosen. This ultimately extends the life of your content. Just be sure to only add share functionality to content that is actually shareworthy.
Make use of share copy that includes hashtags or @ signs to allow your customers' followers to easily join the conversation or view the festive promotion. But remember to consider the overall social media content strategy or have your social media community manager write the share copy.
Tracking and measuring the extended reach of share functionality is very important.

In this recent eBucks example, they used share functionality to spread the word about travel deals.

3. Pinterest

Allow customers to pin great looking images from your email, especially if you have a high volume of female subscribers. This way your branded content will live in the customer’s digital space. According to Media Bistro, 80% of pins are re-pins, and 21% of users have purchased an item that they found on the site says PriceGrabber.
An image that is supported by alt text, well placed and properly coded can be worth a thousand words.

4. Pre-seeding Announce upcoming email campaigns using a twitter update or Facebook post. Create a teaser tweet about a daily deal, and then post the sign-up link.

This tactic can result in increased open rates and convert followers into subscribers.

Boost your festive season promotions by integrating your #email & #socialmedia campaigns! Look out for our... http://t.co/6QNeeu5OPH
— eBilling, eMarketing (@Striata) October 15, 2013

5. Grow your subscriber database Social media platforms offer an opportunity to grow your email subscriber database. Whether it is a sign up from on your Facebook tab or just a link to your preference centre on twitter.

You should then tailor your emails based on where the customer signed up.

6. Content Curation Include content from social media to email campaigns. Have a ‘what’s hot & trending’ section. The festive season is a great time to add customer testimonials to your promotional emails.

Customer compliments and recommendations, even a tally of Facebook ‘likes’ placed on a daily deal during November and December can increase sales, because we know that customers trust peer recommendations.

Attract customers with short, enticing messages on your social media platforms, and then use email to paint a picture or promote products with great visuals or demo videos.

To learn more about Striata Share and Social Media integration, you can follow and send a Direct Message to @Striataor @sl_collins

Sheryl-Lynn Collins
striata.com

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Can Bank of America dominate Digital Mailboxes?

In a previous blog post I said that there was little to no chance of a consolidator succeeding in the USA.

After watching this space very carefully for the past 36 months, I now feel there may be a solution that could work. It needs a large bank, internet banking and a push delivery model.

Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Chase are the US’ largest banks; BOA alone has close to 60 million customers.

Let’s use Bank of America as an example of a potentially successful consolidator model.

The bank should implement 2 fundamental parts:

Put an eBill consolidator INSIDE of Internet Banking
Add ‘push’ electronic document delivery

The ideal customer experience would look something like this:

Gaining paperless consent:

Banks have been struggling to get customers to turn off paper statements and bills for almost a decade. The vast majority of consumers just don’t see Internet banking as a convenient alternative to paper. Here’s how we fix that:

Bank of America sends a very personalized email to their Internet banking customer letting them know that they can now receive their bills and statements as email attachments.
Attached to that email is a sample document.
From within the email body itself, the customer can agree to go paperless with just one click. No link to Internet banking or login required.

Receiving the electronic bill/document:

The customer receives an email from Bank of America letting them know that they have a new bill from their utility waiting in their Digital Mailbox within Bank of America Internet banking.
Attached to this email is an encrypted PDF copy of the bill.
This PDF can be opened on any device by simply entering a ‘shared secret’. This means that no app or software download is required.
The customer can also make a payment directly from within the PDF (which is of course handled by Bank of America) OR they can wait to make multiple payments to billers from within Internet banking.
There is no need for the customer to keep a copy of the email, as they know the document is waiting in their Digital Mailbox.

Why would the top three banks want to do this?

They’ll get 100% of the payment processing.
They’ll open up a new revenue stream: paper suppression.
Their digital marketing opportunities will improve.
Customers will use Internet banking for managing all their documents and eBills.
Deep links within the email could open their mobile banking app for added convenience.
They can use this channel to suppress all their own documents and achieve massive cost savings.

Why is this better for the consumer?

This is far better than simply including a link that ‘pulls’ them back to Internet banking:

The consumer can view their eBill on any device, easily and quickly.
They can pay it with just one click.
The biller or bank can intelligently insert relevant and personalized marketing.

We think this is the ultimate in customer convenience. What do you think?

Garin Toren
striata.com

About Striata

Striata’s Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets that deliver a rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and an enhanced customer experience.

Striata revolutionizes the way bills, statements, policies, collection notices, letters, paystubs and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid. Registration requirements are eliminated by emailing feature rich, interactive, encrypted documents directly to the inbox and enabling innovative 1-click electronic payment from within the document itself.

Direct email delivery of bills and statements dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic documents, paper turn off and ePayments. This enables Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI; complement their existing self-service and e-communication strategies; significantly reduce paper output and to meet
their carbon footprint/environmental impact targets.

As a leading international provider of electronic messaging since 1999 with more than 200 blue chip customers, Striata has operations in New York, London, Sydney, Johannesburg, Hong Kong and partners in North, Central & South America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

eBilling News