The synergy of Push and Pull communications

In my mind, building your brand and building customer loyalty are key to providing an excellent customer experience. There are many other factors: product, price, people, sales and marketing. But the primary factor that builds long term loyal customers is a consistent positive customer experience. 

In all communications with our clients, we can push information to them via email, and then pull them to the website / portal to enhance the experience.

The Push advantage

‘Push’ communication provides us with opportunities to send tailored, specific communications to the customer base. The advantages are immense: 

• Cater for each customer’s preference on channel, device, time of day/week and content.
• Can feature customer-specific details that enrich their own experience.
• Helps educate customers on further product offerings, and additional services.
• Can harness the power of transpromo marketing.
• Can include buttons and links to the website/portal.
• eDocuments can include a variety of additional services- such as payments, updating details and reminder setting.
• Various platforms could push customer-centric communication such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and WeChat.

The Pull advantage

The ‘Pull’ option provides a single, consolidated home for all the information. It also offers features that enhance the customer experience.

• All customer information is housed in one place.
• All historical documents can be securely stored and easily referenced.
• Customer preferences can be collected through polls and surveys and then used to tailor both the online experience and the email communications to specific needs.
• Easier to update and refresh the portal.

The ‘pushmi-pullyu’ beast

The great literary contribution of Hugh Lofting presents us with a perfect analogy of how the two communication types (push & pull) need to work together. The beast to which I am referring is the pushmi-pullyu (pronounced “push-me—pull-you”) that features in Dr Dolittle. 

This cross gazelle-unicorn has two heads which can either work in unison or against each other. If it tries to move, both heads go in opposite directions, meaning the beast gets nowhere. But if it assigns each head to a specific job (such as talking or eating), then the beast is able to function. 

Similarly, the combination of both push email communications and the pull to a website option should always work together, not against each other. This creates the harmonious synergy that results in a great customer experience.

Combining push & pull communications - pushmi-pullyu

Let’s consider how push and pull complement each other in the secure documentation space:

• Sending secure documents to customers via email encourages engagement because customers are comfortable with the document security . With no security concerns and the convenience of receivingdocuments via email, customers are easily encouraged to take advantage of various time saving self-service options available online.
• Combining push & pull gives customers alternative payment options (eBilling): Customers can choose to pay at the portal or via a payment form that is embedded in the email bill - which is protected and secure. Trusted links can also be included within the email bill to 'pull' customers to portals, where they can view their billing history, update their profile or manage an account - ultimately 'pulling' qualified traffic to your portal!
• Personalised marketing offers with trusted links can also be included in the secure document , once again allowing you to 'pull' qualified traffic to your portal!

And... combining 'push' messaging and portal 'pull' means that whenever your customers want to engage or source information, there is at least one avenue available to provide this service. Only one half sleeps at a time . . . the other always watching! 

It's clear to me that a combined push and pull communications strategy will enhance brand building and create great customer loyalty. 

Are you ready to adopt the pushmi-pullyu beast? We can introduce you...



Simon Johnston
striata.com

As I come across more and more questions about the use of HTML5 for interactive and dynamic email statements, it strikes me that this strategy has either been poorly delivered or highly misunderstood. I suspect it’s a combination of both. 

Can HTML 5 drive paperless suppression?

The reason I field questions regarding HTML5 is that businesses approaching me want to reduce paper, postage and other operational costs. Or at least that's the real business value proposition after technophiles stop being blinded by the puppy love of something fresh and new. 

One must never forget that the purpose behind ALL technology is to garner a rapid return on investment and to add value to the core business. With all of the frenzy over mobile apps and the like, I think this concept has been lost at times. So, HTML5 should be trying to convert people to paperless… right? It’s the number one value of the electronic statement that I’ve been able to determine thus far.

It’s still a question of PUSH vs PULL.

Unfortunately, HTML5 is perfect for one purpose: to be displayed on a webpage or browser. Somewhere along the road, it was assumed that it could be used  with PUSH, or Dynamic Email Statements, when in fact it just CANNOT DELIVER. 

HTML5 in secure form is a PULL solution, as it would be plagued with delivery problems preventing companies from PUSHing their statements. With 17% of legitimate email not making it to the inbox already, HTML5 stands no chance of being an email solution as it would be blocked by most SPAM filters and rightfully so. Unlike PDF, which is a ubiquitously accepted attachment, it just wouldn’t consistently reach the customer’s inbox.

McAfee’s 2013 Threats Predications stated that ‘With HTML5 the threats landscape will shift and broaden… HTML5 will offer other opportunities for attackers because the additional functionality will create a larger attack surface.’So, if HTML5 is only viable in a highly secure PULL environment, what paperless turnoff rate will it deliver? Will more people turn off paper statements just because their statement now displays more beautifully within the portal? 

As a consumer, it’s still about convenience for me. So when I say HTML5 cannot deliver, it’s two-fold: HTML5 attachments cannot be delivered to the email inbox and I highly doubt they can deliver a quick ROI in today’s landscape. On the whole, consumers still do not want to log on to portals with multiple usernames and passwords just to see their statements. And, let’s face it. Getting beyond the password as a security mechanism isn’t cheap and still lies very much in the pipeline rather than being commercially viable today. 

Sounds like the HTML5 Statement has a lot more work ahead if it's going to enter the paper turn-off game.

Dynamic HTML5 Statement vs the Dynamic Email Statement

Let’s not confuse the purpose of the Dynamic HTML5 Statement and the Dynamic Email Statement. 

Email Statements delivered via PDF has been around for 14 years and they continue to deliver quick ROIs by way of converting millions of customers to paperless every day. As for HTML5, I agree that prettier and more interactive PDF documents will add aesthetic value, but I just don’t see where it is looking to enter the email market?

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. PDF still remains the most reliable mechanism to propel customers into the digital world. 

Your thoughts?

Sarah Appleby
striata.com

Gmail image changes - what this means for you…

In mid-December Google made a fundamental change to the way it serves images to users in Gmail - images will now be downloaded by default, however, browser / operating system information won’t be available and location based tracking won’t work. 

The nitty gritty

Instead of allowing the browser to fetch the image from the hosting web server itself and display within the email, Gmail is now pre-loading (as well as caching) the image. 

The image you see in an email is more than likely hosted on a web server, so the same image is thus displayed to many different recipients, e.g. a company logo or banner, etc. 

Now, by caching a copy of this email on its own server, Google can display the same image to multiple recipients without the need for each customer’s browser to make a query to the hosted web server. 

This will relieve the strain experienced by web servers that host images, after large email campaigns. 

The result: faster loading emails for end customers. 

The downside

Unfortunately we wouldn’t really be talking about this if there wasn’t a downside to it. 

Open tracking of emails relies on a small image, 1 pixel by 1 pixel in size. This creates a “beacon” which can record that the email has been opened, along with any other information that is normally associated with a web connection, namely, IP address and browser identifications (we’ll come back to this). 

How does this affect open tracking?

While there has been some concern that open tracking would be affected (either unique or total opens, or both) since all users would be viewing the same image, we have shown through thorough testing that this isn’t the case. 

Striata’s tracking continues to work and all total opens of an email are captured accurately. 

The method used by Google to pre-load images unfortunately means that we won’t be able to tell what device or operating system customers are using. Instead, ESPs will start seeing an increased number of Google IPs with a generic browser/device string. This also has an effect, especially for marketing emails, where location based services are useful. 

The upswing

There is a silver-lining and a compromise of sorts. Google has also decided to turn on images by default, instead of relying on each recipient to enable images within the email. 

While this option can be turned off in Gmail settings, we expect that most users will keep the default setting - resulting in a better customer experience. This also means that open tracking rates are expected to climb - initially. 

In summary, for Gmail users: 

• Email open tracking will continue to function
• All images will be turned on by default
• Geo-location and browser/operating system information will cease to function

I am keen to know your thoughts on this topic - please share them in the comments section below

Alex Papadopulos
striata.com

Top 5 eBilling Blog Posts of 2013

Phishing alerts, password fatigue, digital mailboxes that aren’t getting lift off and more... Here are the 5 most popular Striata eBilling blog posts of 2013.

Why Australia Post CEO is Dead Wrong said Keith Russell following a press release by AusPost CEO, Ahmed Fahour, regarding the upcoming launch of the Australia Post Digital MailBox.  Ahmed said that Australia Post believes email is “on the way down”.  

Red alert! Phishing, malware, weak ciphers and limited payloads are all serious concerns regarding the use of HTML5 as it stands today. Thought provoking stuff from Michael Wright who blogged that HTML5 is the devil 

No More Postal Service? What’s your eDocument delivery strategy? Chad Somodi shows that without any additional work, a customer can go paperless via a process that actually mirrors what the USPS does on a daily basis - by delivering exact replicas of documents directly to the customer's inbox. No registration, no username / password, and no inconvenience.

This was a great follow on from Garin Toren’s  post usernames and passwords: everybody hates them. "Many Americans would rather clean toilets than try to come up with a new username or password for sites requiring online logins." 

Lastly, I illustrated that sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words! Infographic: Why email wins for paperless billing - hands down

We look forward to visiting your inbox again in 2014, thank YOU for being a loyal subscriber!  

Tell us what you want to read about. Leave a comment below or if you would prefer to chat, then get in touch with us…

Tamara Hanley

striata.com

Top Striata eMarketing Blog Posts of 2013

Our eMarketing experts did some quality blogging this year.  We pulled the analytics, dug out the archives and here is a quick digest of the posts that 'rocked your boat' this year…  Simon Johnston chased after online shoppers that dropped their basket before proceeding to the checkout (not literally!) Email picks up the dropped basket looks at why the email channel is the perfect vehicle to re-engage these customers with relevant, targeted content -  inspiring them to pick up their dropped online basket and pay for their goods. 

Eeny meeny miny mo… a nursery rhyme?  Yes, except in this case it's all about deciding on which mobile OS is the best option.  Michelle van den Berg's rendition goes like this: 'eeny meeny miny mo which mobile os should you go'highlighting 5 things to consider when planning a mobile development strategy. 

Lights! Camera! Action! It's all about bringing your email campaigns to life by including video. Grant Shortridge proposed - video in email - bring your campaigns to life! With exciting new technology available, it’s possible to successfully create small, media rich emails that don’t require recipients to download plug-ins, yet enables full video playback - directly from their email. Tres cool. 

"Functionality is king!" according to James Cacchioni - Email: 4 Important User Experience techniques is full of great tips on how to structure emails to ensure they are functional and designed to maximize response.  Be sure to 'Pin' the great infographic James included! 

If you build it (properly) they will come, includes 4 great tips for building a winner loyalty program. Ross Sibbald said that building a successful loyalty programme, will not only save the reputation of your brand, but also ensure that your customers keep coming back.   

Lastly, a rather topical post by Sheryl-Lynn Collins - integrating email and social media, highlighting the importance of giving email campaigns an extra boost this festive season. Do this by attracting customers with short, enticing messages on social media platforms, and then making use of email to paint a picture or promote products with great visuals or demo videos.  'Tis the season... 

Thank you to our expert bloggers for a year of insight and inspiration but more than that – thank YOU for being a loyal subscriber!  

Tell us what you want to read about. Leave a comment below or if you would prefer to chat, then get in touch with us... 

 

Tamara Hanley
striata.com

Happy Holidays from all at Striata!

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

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

1. 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.


2. 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.


3. 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.


4. 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

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...

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

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

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:

1. Don’t penalise customers for wanting to stick with paper – encourage them to switch to eBilling by highlighting theadded features and functions.
2. Provide a compelling eBilling alternative that is more convenient than paper and customers won’t turn to another service provider when asked to change.
3. 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.
4. 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).
5. 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.
6. 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