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:

1. Put an eBill consolidator INSIDE of Internet Banking
2. 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?

1. They’ll get 100% of the payment processing.
2. They’ll open up a new revenue stream: paper suppression.
3. Their digital marketing opportunities will improve.
4. Customers will use Internet banking for managing all their documents and eBills.
5. Deep links within the email could open their mobile banking app for added convenience.
6. 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: 

1. The consumer can view their eBill on any device, easily and quickly.
2. They can pay it with just one click.
3. 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

Mojibake, and other ways to show your customers you just don’t care…

Who would have thought that there’s a word for that annoying issue we’ve all seen in emails and online, where punctuation and other characters are mangled into unreadable text? But there is a word, and that word is mojibake. It’s Japanese for “transformed characters”. I like it! (the word, not the mangled text.)

I’m sure you’ve all seen it before, but here’s an example: æ–‡å—化ã . That’s the Japanese characters for mojibake (文字化け) displayed in software configured to expect Western encoding. 

But mojibake doesn’t just crop up when using Japanese or Chinese characters. I’m surprised at how often I see this in emails from companies that should know better. I recently received an invite to a major conference in Singapore, and the email had superscript numbers instead of quotes, and Euro symbols (€) instead of bullet points… 

Email: Get the basics right or lose customers

Surely when using email as a critical marketing channel, you should be able to get the basics right? Maybe I’m being harsh, but I feel that if a company can’t be bothered checking if their emails are readable, they probably can’t be bothered with many other tasks. It really turns me off. 

And that’s not the only thing that upsets me. My provident fund provider here in Hong Kong (HK) constantly sends me emails in Chinese, with an English translation down at the bottom. Now I know I live in Hong Kong, but I reckon my name surely indicates that I don’t want to receive communications in Chinese! Yet they clearly don’t care enough tosegment their customer base and send separate English and Chinese communications - even though HK is a bilingual country. 

I never read down to the English, and I never visit their website to view my statements. I probably should though; I’m upset at them now because I feel they don’t know me even after 10 years. And I’ll be even more upset when my pension disappears because I never checked how it was doing! 

But until this happens, this provider is losing the opportunity to up-sell or cross-sell me other products. I really have no relationship with them at all beyond that initial product set up over 10 years ago that was done by my employer at the time. But do they care? Because it doesn't seem so! 

Know your customer and send relevant offers

Just as many companies send me eMarketing messages promoting products and services that are of no interest to me. I’m not talking about serious spam here, but emails from companies that I have dealt with in the past and that should know me enough to know what I’ll be interested in - Here’s a pretty obvious example: I’m a guy so stop sending me recommendations for girly stuff! Amazon and eBay are pretty good at this, but most other companies need to do more to understand and cultivate the customer relationship. 

Check out this article: If you're not segmenting, don't bother advertising. 

Remember to test!

Test your emails to make sure everything displays correctly – they should render well on all devices, and even some very basic demographic segmentation of your customer base will really change the way your customer views your email. 

Need advice on how to rejuvenate and enhance your customer relationships? Drop us a line and we’ll take care of you…



Keith Russell
striata.com

Collections departments have it hard. The high cost of communicating with delinquent customers vs. the law of diminishing returns that reduces the value of the recovery, it’s no wonder low value debt is “being written off as a cost of doing business” [1]. And customers are just not responding to traditional methods of collections anymore. 

Across the UK; Utility, Telco, Finance and Insurance collections departments are turning to the digital world in hopes of finding a suitable low cost channel to attain significant customer contact, drive faster payments and decrease operational costs. But, whilst there has been initial success with text messaging (SMS) and self service portals, sustained return on investment is tough to achieve. 

It’s all about segmenting and communicating the right message to the right customer at the right time – through the most appropriate channel.

Which channel FIRST?

In a recent channel preferences survey, ExactTarget found that email is almost seven times more popular for financial alerts over traditional direct mail and nearly four times more popular over text messaging.

An email benchmark report of Jan-Jun 2012 by Communicator Corp also highlighted the effectiveness of the email channel in various market sectors, naming the utility sector as the greatest benefactors of email. 

What do these recent independent studies tell us? That email is the customers' number one choice and so, it's time to start communicating via this preferred channel first. 

Power up email to drive your collections

The beauty of email is the simplicity of its arrival – isn’t it? Press send and it’s in the customer's inbox? Not quite. The real beauty of email is that it replicates the convenience of receiving a paper document, with the same possibility of personalisation - there are however a few hurdles to clear... 

In your search for the right partner to introduce eCollections, what should you look out for?

• Best in breed inbox penetration (not simply ‘delivered’ reports)
• In-email payment functionality which is device agnostic
• Security of confidential customer data
• Interactive eDocuments to encourage customer engagement and retention throughout the collections process

Email success for big brands

Not convinced yet? Some of our own clients have implemented the aforementioned collections strategies. Through Striata’s ‘push’ email communications they have experienced a significant increase in earlier payments and improved customer retention. All this, while enjoying the benefits of a low cost communication channel.

• Dell Collections: push email billing has resulted in 1.8% increase in payment rate on one down accounts as well as 4.3% improvement in collection calls per account
• GE Capital: 1.5% decrease in roll rate on 3 due accounts using the push email paperless delivery solution
• United Water: 43% of customers paying through the email bill paid in 0-3 days

Push your collections message

Place your customer at the center of the process, and push the right message at the right time via their channel of choice. 

Email is a powerful communication channel that delivers the ultimate in customer convenience, by enabling one-click payment from within the collection notice, while streamlining processes for businesses. It’s a low cost channel with significant rewards. 

We can help you get it right with email - get in touch!

References:
[1] Mike Smith, Feb 6, 2013, Beating bad debt: Yes, you can - An instalment of the Analytics Leadership Series

Sarah Appleby
striata.com

Email: 4 Important User Experience techniques

User Experience (UX) is not a design, or how the design is laid out, or even the colour pallet used. It is neither content nor interactivity. UX is a marriage of all these aspects in such a manner that translates into positive user engagement - giving the user a positive experience with the product. It will always require a collaborative team effort to achieve great user experiences.

The one thing that I am always trying to get across is that we are ALL UX professionals. We all have a perception of what looks good, what feels good, what works for us as individuals and what we would like to improve in our day-to-day lives. 

When designing your emails, ensure you adhere to the guidelines and frameworks that are both functional and designed to maximize response. Ultimately serving up a fantastic user experience! 

4 Important UX techniques you should employ

1. Content flow should…. Flow
   How many times have you received an email that has a very confusing flow to it? Not just because of too many elements or too much copy, but also in the way that you are being guided through it. If there is navigation within the email, it should be intuitive and easy to interact with. If the content of the mail has multiple sections, each section should ideally have supporting headings so that the audience can easily identify them.
2. Avoid design clutter
   Many emails are victims of 'over design' with a myriad of big images, content dividers, sidebars and other colourful distractions. While the email design itself might look good inside Photoshop, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will look good in an email client. Various email clients are cluttered and busy, so a minimalistic approach to the design is best - highlighting the goals of the email and making it easy for the user to action.
3. Prevent content clutter
   An email saturated with text poses much the same problem as one that is over designed. If your email is lengthy and very text-heavy, think about giving each paragraph and section room to breathe. This can be done by leaving relatively large spaces between copy and sections, which helps split the email into easy to read chunks and avoids overwhelming your audience with text.
4. Call to arms… or an action! Make it clear
   “If I can’t see it, I’ll never know that I wanted it!” A rather basic, yet very often over-looked element of your email is the call to action. Why are you sending this email out? Do you want your audience to sign up for new services? Buy products? Perhaps you want them to know about a great new service that you’re offering? Whatever the aim, let your recipients take action in an easy way! People generally won’t scroll down a long email before seeing a call to action. Highlight your call to action - make it stand out and make it easy to take action.

Functionality trumps all, always.

These 4 basic, yet very important tips will help ensure your emails are functional and designed to maximize response. Remember, when it comes to emails, functionality is king! 

Are your emails delivering a great user experience? Take the test: 

		The designs do not interfere with your desired message
		All key messages and call to action references are clear and easy to action
		The designs have mobile device compatibility in mind

If you aren't getting the desired response from your emails, and need further advice from an email marketing specialist,then get in touch!

James Cacchioni
striata.com