Many consumers are open to receiving more than just rands and cents-based transactional communications from their favourite brands. While transmitting secure statements at scale via email and mobile is indeed a sure-fire way to cut costs, the electronic delivery of transactional documents can also be used to create new customer touchpoints.
The proper balance, however, must be struck between necessary ROI (Return on Investment) imperatives and overarching CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategy.
Multichannel digital document presentment has emerged as such an effective cost-saver compared to paper-based equivalents that the electronic transmission of statements has historically been housed within Accounting as Marketing looked on with envy at the many lost opportunities to engage attentive customers.
It’s now time to keep enjoying the ROI benefits of secure financial document delivery while recognising the CRM potential of doing statements better. Fortunately, cloud-based outsourced solutions exist to help organisations transform legacy digital delivery environments into true centres for the creation of brand new client touchpoints.
Making the leap from transactional communications concerned only with the bottom line means marketers taking ownership of digital transmission environments where open rates can be as high as 40%. By properly embedding slick personalised promotional offers within regular transactional messages that organisations are obliged to send – and transmitting these across email, SMS and Whatsapp – a 360 degrees true customer relationship approach starts making an appearance within multichannel digital document presentment.
In effect, simple presentment focused on ROI transforms into a CRM strategy. Touchpoints off transactional communications don’t have to be all about promotion. In practice, the ability to communicate directly with the customer using preferred email and mobile platforms means being able to kick the softer side of customer interaction into overdrive. Personalised information about loyalty programmes, points balances, product recommendations, self service portals, feedback opportunities and content subscriptions can be regularly pushed to receptive clients using touch points like statement footers that don’t feel like a hard sell.
In the final analysis, getting the balance right between ROI-focused and CRM-focused transactional communications means successfully creating a digital document presentment environment where customers stay engaged and incentivised, gaps in engagement are identified and plugged, and customers spread the word of their positive post-purchase journey. Not getting it right means increased customer churn, onboarding drop-offs and increased reputational risk.
The fact that companies are obliged to send monthly statements to their customers can no longer remain a missed marketing opportunity. Seamless touchpoints that induce purchasing can be incorporated into statements when they are not viewed as a separate accounts department workstream.
Statements are just one type of transactional message that can be transformed into a secondary campaign asset. The appeal of statements, in particular, as a customer touchpoint is obvious from the ease with which promotional messages can be incorporated in the message footer, for example. However, every time a customer completes any type of transactional action that requires a subsequent response from the organisation represents an opportunity to engage a consumer that has already granted permission and is in a receptive state to boot
To summarise, turning digital transformation into a valuable marketing opportunity depends on marketers taking the lead on digital document presentment and doing so in partnership with specialists well-versed in a multilayered, CRM-based approach to digital document delivery. Done well, electronic transactional communications can add a positive element to what could be the mundane parts of a customer journey.
- Carl Karusseit, Commercial Executive: Product at Grapevine Interactive (Pty) Ltd