An electronic statement may not be as in-your-face as an outdoor billboard or as flashy as a TV ad, but it offers many qualities that make it an ideal place to practice some real one-to-one marketing.
Regular, expected, accepted, interactive . . . all of these add up to one thing: captive audience.
You know the recipient is going to look at the eBill (there’s money involved, isn’t there?) so why not use the package as a means to excite and engage your customer? Get the content and navigation right, and you could turn your eBill into an interactive, measurable, sales machine.
Let’s talk practicalities. There are a number of locations on the eBill which offer a marketing opportunity.
The email to which the eBill is attached has one key task – to deliver the attachment. Why not put it to use to cross- or up-sell? Not only are you assured that your recipient will at least glance in that direction, but you can also measure your marketing efforts by tracking click-through rates to identify what works in that space.
I’m sure all marketing gurus wish they had that kind of feedback capability on outdoor advertising. Imagine we could measure how many eyeballs noticed a banner . . . oh but wait, you can’t interact with a banner!
Then there’s the eBill landing page: the first page the customer sees on opening the encrypted attachment. Its primary job is navigation, but there’s no reason it can’t be used to pull traffic to your latest website offering.
Standard web navigation rules apply: top right hand corner is most noticed and definitely don’t expect response to any marketing that is placed below the fold. Also don’t be tempted to make your marketing messages ‘optional’. Additional navigation choices in the eBill such as a ‘Promotions’ tab, will not pull traffic unless there is a hook, and a good one at that.
But wait, there’s more . . . remember this is a one-on-one communication so if you have the right information about your customer you can tailor the marketing messages in the eBill to promote what is relevant to that customer. Brainwave!
So what’s the drawback? Well . . . there isn’t one really. You’re already sending the eBill, adding marketing content is not going to increase the costs, and all your efforts are immediately measurable, so you can adjust your strategy as you go along.
Okay, there might be SOME people who are worried about direct marketing rules and whether the right to refuse marketing extends to the right to refuse marketing messages in an operational communication. But that’s a different discussion for another time.
Alison Treadaway
Managing Director, Striata Africa
www.striata.com
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