To an outsider, the transactional documents your business sends out daily probably seem like one of the most boring elements of your business.

THIS IS A COMMON MISCONCEPTION.

In reality, customer documents are one of the most critical components of your business. As face-to-face interaction declines, documents are quickly becoming the primary line of communication between your business and your customers, and if done properly, they have the ability to influence customer behavior, drive sales efforts, and increase brand loyalty.

It may sound silly to think that a document would be able to accomplish all these things, but it’s true… but only if you’re doing them right. Here’s how:

1.    INFLUENCE CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR:
New Service Adoption- By including marketing messages that are targeted based on habit and need, your documents can easily provide a platform for you to encourage customers to adopt new services.

Accelerated Payments- Offering documents that are designed for easy readability and delivered fast and efficiently will make customers more apt to make their payments on time, if not ahead of schedule

2.    DRIVE SALES EFFORTS:
Cross Sell and Up Sell- In-document marketing can grow your business through the use of transactional information to cross sell to customers who need your additional services
Affiliate Marketing- Increase revenues by selling affiliate ad space to businesses who offer services similar to or compatible with your customer's needs

3.    INCREASE BRAND LOYALTY:
Optimized Documents- Customers like documents that are consistently formatted for ease and readability. Utilizing templates and design software will increase brand loyalty by ensuring you always provide your customers with the most user-friendly documents possible

So stop viewing your customer documents as merely the medium for delivering transactional information. They can do so much more than that! Contact us today to find out how Lanvera can help your business start getting more out of your business critical documents.

Previously, we  focused on the importance of color in your documents, the necessity for optimized document design, the benefits of personalized marketing and how to combine these three areas to improve the ROI of your print documents.

Today we’re sharing two specific ways you can leverage color in your customer documents to increase the impact of your documents and improve your customer’s experiences.

LOGO COLORS
Studies indicate that leveraging the colors in your brand’s logo and imagery can positively influence brand recognition and perception by up to 80%! Through incorporating color into even just the logo on your customer documents, you will help your customers to associate more positive branding with your company.

Take the time to study what the colors of your logo represent (you can use this article), and the feelings evoked by them, and think about how you can leverage that in your customer documents. Your branding will improve, and you corporate image will soar.

COLOR MARKETING
Did you know that adding color to marketing messages can increase engagement rates up to 42%? And not only that, the addition of color can actually help to improve your customers’ memory?

Incorporating full color into your transpromo marketing is a great way to not only grab, but hold the attention span of your customers. Research has shown that consumers make subconscious choices about people and products within 90 seconds of contact or interaction, and between 62 and 90% of that initial assessment is based on color alone.

Your print documents are not something that are likely to go away simply because more and more often customers are converting to electronic presentment. Color has long been perceived as too costly an investment, with little return, but if partnered with the right vendor, it doesn’t have to be… and the impact and results you’ll achieve will be so worth it.

The customer experience is changing dramatically and rapidly. Everything is digital. And with more digital capabilities, comes less face-to-face interaction. Your customers are now able to do anything from transferring money, to depositing checks, and even opening new accounts remotely via mobile apps and home banking systems. Things that used to require an in person visit, now simply do not.

As face-to-face interaction drops, and digital experiences rise, your member’s documents are becoming more important than ever to help your business maintain a personal connection with customers, drive brand awareness and market your products and services.

Unfortunately,  generalized statement stuffers are no longer effective. 

The good news?

In-document marketing has the potential to offset print and production costs, and provide added value to your customers by containing targeted and personalized material, which will increase the quality of marketing content, and create a better member experience as a whole.

And the best part?

The cost is essentially free... Because documents are already being delivered, there are no added delivery charges to include marketing content.

By implementing personalized marketing in your documents you can maximize them as not only a way to deliver transactional information, but a marketing vehicle and an opportunity to deliver content personalized to individual’s specific needs.

So how do you do it?

Here are 3 tips to help you get started with incorporating personalization in your document marketing:

1. USE DOCUMENT TEMPLATES

Document templates are essential. Templates give you the ability to easily optimize documents for production by automatically reducing extra white space, including headers and summary tables, and improving the consistency of your branding through designated branding windows.

Though templates, you can also globally allocate specific areas for marketing messages across all your documents… making implementing personalization in your customer documents significantly easier. Which brings us to our next tip…

2. MASTER BUSINESS RULES

A business rule is programmed logic that replaces manual steps. They are the lifeblood of personalized marketing and are what allows you to automatically include specific messages for only certain individuals, without manually choosing who gets which message. You can create business rules to segment your members based on specific criteria, and then dynamically insert the personalized content into the designated marketing spaces in your templates.

3. ADOPT A SELF-SERVICE MARKETING MANAGEMENT PORTAL 

A secure marketing management portal is what will allow you to create business rules to segment customers and dynamically incorporate the personalized content into documents. It is key to implementing personalized marketing. By utilizing a self-service system that provides 24X7 online access, marketing teams can easily and quickly make changes to documents, manage marketing messages and execute campaigns.

Brand consistency is an important factor in the design of your customer communications as well as your company’s identity as a whole. Your brand is who you are: your vision, your mission and your values. Repeatedly displaying a unified and cohesive image is the best way to prove these things to your customers, and build their trust.

Conveying your brand identity in your customer documents is critical. Here are 4 ways document outsourcing can help your brand solidify brand identity:

1. COMPLEX & DYNAMIC BRAND MANAGEMENT-

Companies that operate a parent/child structure and manage multiple brands under a singular umbrella may have trouble conveying a unified brand, while still recognizing the individual images of the smaller organizations. Document outsourcing is a great way to streamline processing for these complex business relationships by centralizing data management to provide consistent formatting and branding across all member communications.

2. PERSONALIZATION-

People like to feel recognized and known, and personalizing their documents is a great way to let customers know that your business recognizes people, not numbers. Personalization in documents creates a better user experience and is the difference between disruptive marketing content, and useful material.  By personalizing your in-document marketing, customers can begin to see your business as someone who helps them by providing valuable information, thus enhancing your brand identity. A good document outsourcing partner will have complex marketing capabilities that allow you to target and segment your customers with automated business rules for more impactful marketing.

3. STANDARDIZED FORMATTING-

Keeping a standard format for all same-type documents will ensure that your customers know where to find their information. Consistently formatted documents contribute to a more user-friendly experience and, as an added bonus, will reduce customer service calls. Document outsourcing partners provide design tools and formatting templates so that all your customer communications meet your branding standards.

While the standardized look and feel is important, it’s equally as important to have the ability to easily change documents if needed. Regulations and requirements change rapidly, therefore document reformatting and changes need to have the ability to be easily changed], in bulk or based on specific criteria. An outsourcing partner will provide the software and technology that accommodate fast and easy change management to all your customer documents.

Contact us today to find out all about Lanvera’s marketing capabilities and how we can help your business increase the impact of your branding.