Taking on the Triple Assault – Simple Steps to Beat the Increase and Communicate More Effectively with Your Customers
Increasing Postage Rates…Mail Volume Cutbacks…Growing Demand for Electronic Communications
Today’s economy and competitive landscape presents challenges never before faced by today’s business professionals. Decreased demand means increased pressure to improve sales, advance productivity and reduce costs – often with a shrinking budget.
However, many leading organizations are taking these challenges, head on, with innovative, cost-effective methods for communicating and building lasting relationships with their customers.
Consider the current branding, marketing, learning and development, and general cost reduction strategies you may be engaged in as we address these market concerns and provide simple solutions to overcome them.
Increasing Postage Rates
With postage expenses continually on the rise, firms are feeling the effects of increased postage expenses required for building and maintaining customer relationships, and in response are exploring different strategies for communicating with customers and attracting new ones.
Increasing postal rates and a challenging economy have forced many marketers to test new strategies in search of innovative ways to communicate with customers and decrease their mail volume. The rate increases represent an opportunity to take a fresh look at the entire mail stream process, identifying opportunities to minimize the costs and maximize the effectiveness of customer communications.
For example, reformatting your mail piece through creative design/kitting/folding/inserting services could actually create an opportunity for savings, all based on your organization’s marketing objectives and budgetary considerations. What’s more, strong financial incentive also exists for combining multiple communications into a single envelope. By adding inserts or “cross-selling” materials into regularly-distributed materials, you could increase mail piece productivity.
In today’s highly regulated environment, and with postal rates continuing to rise, keep in mind that in addition to postage savings, operational savings abound. Outsourcing the production and distribution of your customer communications not only frees up valuable company resources, but also provides an added layer of disaster-recovery protection and eliminates fixed costs associated with equipment.
Mail Volume Cutbacks
Based on mail volume data from Mintel Comperemedia, direct mail volume has experienced a 12.1 percent decrease over the last year and is expected to suffer greater losses in the months ahead.
Two factors have forced this change: more people are paying bills and making other transactions online instead of with a traditional envelope and stamp, and as the economy has slumped, so has the number of packages and other mail being sent.
However, as postage rates continue to rise, targeted marketing programs can result in significant savings by allowing you to mail fewer pieces, with better results. By making your mail piece relevant and custom-tailored to your customer, you’ll have a much better chance of catching the recipients’ attention.
Furthermore, companies are expanding beyond traditional print and direct mail channels, leveraging other nimble technologies such as e-mail marketing and personalized URLs as an alternative method for communication with customers and employees, helping to contribute to cost savings.
Growing Demand for Electronic Communications
The days of mass mailings are over and companies are looking for more cost effective ways to communicate with their prospective audiences in real time.
In moving from printed to online communications, you have the opportunity to substantially reduce costs, broaden your marketing reach and improve the experience for the growing number of customers, investors and employees who prefer receiving their communications electronically.
Case in Point
With an ever-changing customer base, Atlanta-based telecommunications service provider EarthLink was in need of a secure and cost-effective approach to the daily distribution of invoices, past-due notices and termination letters. The collaborative effort between EarthLink and Standard Register led to an invoicing process tailored to the client's needs, complete with value-added capabilities such as invoice design, selective inserting and electronic invoice presentment. Producing approximately 26,000 EarthLink customer invoices daily is no small job, but one that Standard Register now handles with ease. By streamlining the daily generation and delivery of invoices, we’ve helped Earthlink reduce printing costs by nearly 35%. Furthermore, with the selective inserting capabilities EarthLink can now drive customer awareness of current offers that fit their needs.
However, there’s no avoiding the fact that documents are at the heart of every business process. No matter the market or the industry, documents drive the business functions of every organization. Since documents can be expensive, wasteful, and a drain on the time and resources of any organization, it’s critical that printed communications be highly-effective when necessary – from training and educational materials, to marketing materials and more.
Targeted, personalized communications have a powerful impact on potential and existing customers, increasing response rates by 34 percent and repeat business by 48 percent, according to industry analyst, InfoTrends, while personalized training materials are made more relevant to participants and become an invaluable reference for trainees.
Whether your goal is to improve customer service, enhance your existing customer relationships or grow your customer base, you need to be certain your customer communications will prompt the recipient to open and read, and most importantly – take action.
To learn more about tools and best practices for overcoming the market trends discussed above, contact Standard Register today.