The Road is Wide Open with Opportunities
Are you planning a redesign of your marketing collateral in the near future? How about your
statements and invoices? If so, this is a perfect opportunity to incorporate new elements, such as customization, segmentation and
1:1 personalization to increase the effectiveness of these documents. You’ll also gain other bottom-line benefits, such as increasing
customer loyalty, reducing calls to calls centers and speeding up payments.
Take the example of First Market Bank. This Virginia-based
bank decided to redesign its customer loyalty notifications to make better use of its white space. It decided to add personalized
messaging and fill this space with 1:1 cross-sells and upsells based on customers’ purchase history. The impact was immediate. First
Market Bank Market Share members averaged one more store visit per week than regular loyalty program customers and spent 11% to 17%
more per week than those in the regular program.
Streamline for Success
In addition to adding cross-selling and upselling opportunities,
redesigns are also a good time to eliminate redundant or irrelevant material. Why spend money printing big bulky packages that your
customers just throw in the trash because they can’t read or understand them?
This was the motivation behind Ameriprise Financial’s
financial statement redesign. It eliminated its bulky, static mailers and replaced them with streamlined, personalized statements
that contain only information relevant to each recipient. Although Ameriprise chose not to release its results, it did report that
the slimmer, personalized statements did the trick—customers had a much easier time understanding them. Ameriprise incorporated additional
cross-sell and upsell messaging as well.
Another successful redesign came from the State of California Franchise Tax Board (FTB). Like
Ameriprise, the FTB wanted to make its tax statements easier to understand, but it took a different approach. Its format remained
pretty much the same, but it added highlight color and personalized messaging to explain to individual taxpayers why they were receiving
the notice, how late their payments were and the due date. Within the first month of the redesign, the FTB saw a tenfold improvement
in response time. Payments came in about three days earlier, resulting in $5 million in additional interest income. Clearer information
also reduced the number of inquiries to the FTB’s call center, resulting in $100,000 in savings. And that was just the first month.
Plan
Your Course by Asking Yourself These Questions
So what could a redesign do for you? Even if you are not already considering a redesign,
you might ask yourself the following questions:
Redesigns are a perfect time to take stock of your marketing effectiveness and evaluate new techniques. Sure, a redesign might not be high on the priority list right now, but after taking a closer look, that just might change.
Accelerate to Success with a Redesign
Improve
your marketing materials by streamlining the package, targeting messages and adding color highlights to key points.