When looking to optimize and improve your customer documents, color is something you shouldn’t overlook. Color has been played an integral role in the natural progression throughout history. Televisions... Cell phones…MP3 players... Even babies are born seeing black and white with color developing as they age!

Incorporating color is a natural part of nature and a turning point when it comes to technology, and there’s a good reason for that. Studies have proven that the inclusion of color plays a pivotal role in all of our visual experiences: from the way we interpret and view marketing and advertising, to the way we engage and identify with brands, to even our memory and information retention!

COLOR IS A GAME CHANGER.

You may think that while incorporating color into your print documents would be amazing in theory, in reality it could be too costly an investment with little to no return.  This post is dedicated to exactly why color is so important for your customer documents, and where you need to be sure you’re taking advantage of it.

COLOR AND MARKETING

Color has a significant impact on your print document marketing. A study conducted by the secretariat of the Seoul International Color Expo determined that 92.6% of those surveyed stressed the importance of visuals when purchasing products, and 84.7% believe that color accounts for more than half of the various factors important to consumers when choosing which products they purchase.

Additionally, 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.

Given these statistics, you can imagine the impact a color banner advertisement or statement stuffer would have, as opposed to black and white, when trying to cross-sell products to your customers. Technology today allows you to easily incorporate color into your document advertisements, and marketers can and should leverage that capability to their advantage.

COLOR AND CORPORATE BRANDING

Poor corporate image is an issue facing lots of organizations today. It isn’t necessarily because people’s perception of the company is bad, but rather because people don’t have any perception of the company at all… This can happen as a result of inconsistent branding, changing customer expectations and target markets, or new executive management leading to a change in the overarching vision for the company. Whatever the cause may be, color can be a great way to counter and combat the issue.

Studies have shown that leveraging the colors in your brand’s logo and imagery can increase brand recognition by up to 80%! By incorporating color into even just the logo on your customer documents, you will help your customers to associate more positive branding with your company and, when combined with full color marketing, you can significantly increase the impact of your print documents as a whole.

COLOR AND CUSTOMER RETENTION & ENGAGEMENT

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!

Studies have proven that color can help people process and store images more efficiently than black and white, so by adding color to marketing, customers are far more likely to not only read, but retain the messaging. This is important to note because as with all marketing, the ultimate goal is either awareness or conversions. Color is proven to help you reach those goals.

The results of incorporating color are demonstrated over and over throughout history, and guaranteed to increase the impact of your print communications. Stop wasting time and money on black and white messaging and graphics. Color is the future of document marketing.

Your current statement stuffers just aren’t cutting it anymore.  They are:

• Expensive- they have to be printed at a separate location from the rest of your documents and shipped to your in-house production facility or vendor
• Time consuming- they require a separate inserting machine, slowing down the entire production process
• Often problematic- high gloss buck slips and poor formatting can lead to operational errors or equipment malfunction
• Require significant planning- they have to be ordered and shipped well in advance to ensure they make it to your customers as scheduled
• Generalized- they typically go to all your customers, regardless of whether or not the offer or promotion is applicable 

Any of that sound familiar? Unfortunately, the list could go on… It’s frustrating because when you decided to market within your customer statements, it was meant to be a “high impact, low cost” opportunity. Using buck slips and statement stuffers, however, are often expensive, time consuming and seemingly, well… pointless.

You could sit back and silently suffer about the current state of your pricey and poorly performing document marketing. Prices will continue to rise. Mistakes will continue to be made. Your customers will continue to ignore your attempt at upselling your services…. Or, you could fix it.

The solution to all of your document marketing woes? Inline inserts.

THE FUTURE OF DOCUMENT MARKETING: INLINE INSERTS

Inline inserts are statement stuffers which are printed in-line, in full color with the rest of your documents.

That may not sound that earth shattering at first, but here’s why it matters, and why it should matter to you too: They are:

• Affordable- they print right in line with the rest of your print process. They don’t have to be printed at a separate location from the rest of your documents and shipped to your in-house production facility or vendor, which eliminates the separate charges for printing and then shipping.
• Fast- as they print side by side with the documents themselves, inline inserts don’t require a separate inserting machine. They print, fold and insert quickly and easily in one process…  expediting production.
• Effortless- they eliminate the operational errors and equipment malfunction potentially caused by buck slips and high gloss inserts
• Require little planning- because they don’t have to be ordered and shipped and are managed online with the rest of your files, they can be created easily and quickly, changed on the spot and still make it into the print process and to your customers on schedule
• Personalized- Again, because they are managed online with the rest of your files, you can easily set up rules and workflows to determine who gets what message based on whether or not the offer or promotion is applicable. You save money by only sending marketing messages to those who will find them useful, and drive revenue by introducing customers to products and services unique to their needs.

And they provide these additional benefits:

• Drive customer engagement and action
• Increase customer retention
• Full color capabilities
• Complete automation
• Easy and fast change management 

Inline inserts are the future of document marketing, and the remedy to all of your current issues with statement stuffers.

then Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, USPS mail service was suspended for weeks across several states. It was critical for business to reach their customers to deliver their documents, but their typical delivery strategy had come to a screeching halt. 

Natural disasters can cause unexpected interruptions that wreck business operations for weeks or months, and while you can ensure that your data is secure, and your own operations are backed-up, the threat of external organizations lacking preparation is an element beyond your control… to an extent.

A key element of preparedness is having the ability to quickly and easily adapt to unexpected changes, whether or not they’re something you could have anticipated. Backing up mail delivery with e-Presentment is a great way to ensure the ability to communicate with customers despite external limitations beyond your control.

After the hurricane, we at Lanvera were able to help several companies move quickly to electronic presentment with email communication so that relocated customers could access their documents online.

ADAPTABILITY IS CRITICAL.
There are 3 things you need to ensure a smooth transition and a quick implementation to effectively take advantage of ePresentment as a form of back up mail:

DATA SECURITY
Data security is the most important factor allowing for a smooth transition to ePresentment, as it ensures your customer data itself remains intact despite disaster. Data security includes ongoing data audits, regulatory compliance maintenance, and redundant data centers. 

RESPONSIVE THIRD-PARTY VENDOR

Partnering with a vendor to provide your data security is incredibly important. Not only do document outsourcing partners allow you to house and back up your data at off-site locations, they’re experts in workflow design and have years of experience to leverage in reacting quickly and fluidly to change, helping businesses to easily and successfully transition to ePresentment if necessary. 

USER FRIENDLY, SELF-SERVICE INTERFACE
A user friendly, self service portal interface will allow businesses facing disaster to quickly and easily upload and import their files for fast implementation and production. The ability to quickly move customers to electronic presentment with email communication is essential to give customers easy and fast online access, and supplement any delay in printing and processing operations, and the ability to have complete control over the document creation and transition process is a huge benefit.

These three elements will help any business ensure a smooth transition to electronic presentment if necessary, but preparation is key.

To really take control of this type of disaster before it strikes, work toward transitioning your customers to electronic adoption early.
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