As postage and paper costs rise, the ROI of printed customer communications for many organizations is dropping significantly. The optimization and consolidation of your customer documents is key to improving the ROI of your print documents.

Optimizing your print documents doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, but there’s one thing you absolutely need to make it a reality.

DOCUMENT TEMPLATES.
Creating documents from scratch is a waste of time. Standardized document templates can help your business to increase brand consistency, save time on document creation, and easily incorporate personalized marketing messages into designated areas of the documents…

Today we’re sharing everything you need to know about utilizing document templates to optimize your documents for production, readability and marketing implementation.

HOW TO USE TEMPLATES TO OPTIMIZE DOCUMENTS FOR: PRODUCTION
The impact of poorly designed documents on your print operations is huge. Increased postage on heavy envelopes or documents that take up many pages, excessive paper consumption, and redundant postage costs accumulating by sending numerous documents to a single household, frequently arise as a result.

To combat this postage increase, you can create standardized workflow templates that allow you to utilize duplex printing to decrease page counts, use re-pagination to increase lines per page and control line spacing, eliminate wasted white space and practice “house holding,” which is the consolidation of numerous documents sending to the same house into a single envelope. All of these practices will lower production and postage costs and increase the efficiency of your operations.

HOW TO USE TEMPLATES TO OPTIMIZE DOCUMENTS FOR: READABILITY
Unfortunately, your print operations aren’t the only area suffering as a result of poor document design; there can be a lot of unexpected collateral damage that happens as well. From unnecessary customer service calls and low electronic adoption rates, to customer frustration and poor corporate image, the repercussions can trickle down to almost every element of your business.

You can use templates to provide documents with a consistent user-friendly design. By formatting your documents with tables, shading, summaries and bolded headers, you make documents easier to read and understand, increase customer satisfaction, and improve the overall impact of your documents.

HOW TO USE TEMPLATES TO OPTIMIZE DOCUMENTS FOR: MARKETING IMPLEMENTATION
Templates can also help to expedite the automated marketing process. First, start with a global document template. This template will be the standard format guide for all documents of a particular type. Next, insert branding and business information into certain areas on the template, and finally, through business rules and workflows, segment your customers based on specific criteria to insert personalized content into the remaining areas.

Templates make the entire document lifecycles easier and faster, and will significantly improve the ROI on your document processing operations. 

According to NFCC’s 2015 Financial Literacy Survey, roughly 1 in 4 U.S. adults do not always pay their bills on time. Depending on where your business falls on the priority scale of all the monthly bills your customers receive, it is inevitable that many of your customers will make late payments, or even skip payments altogether. Here are four steps to better billing that will encourage your customers to pay you on time, or even early:

1. Offer convenience. A recent Pew survey reported that nearly three in ten adults say the most common way to they take care of their regular monthly bills is by an online or electronic payment. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve has found that roughly one-third of consumers and three-quarters of businesses express willingness to pay a fee for payments that have faster availability to the payee. The best way to cater to this need is to implement an online invoicing and payment process. An automated billing system not only gives your customers easy access to their bills and the ability to pay, but can also be set to send your customers friendly email and SMS reminders. 

2. Communicate a clear and colorful call to action (CTA). Adding color to messages can increase engagement rates by up to 42%. Additionally, color can aid in improving your customers’ memory. Studies have proven that color can help people process and store images more efficiently than black and white. By adding color to your CTA, customers are far more likely to engage and pay their bills. Try orange or another bright color! According to QuickSprout, orange CTAs boost conversion rates by about 32.5%, and red CTAs boost conversion rates by about 21%.
 
The CTA should be eye-catching so your customers are compelled to read it and act. When you clearly state exactly what you want your customer to do, it eliminates guesswork and encourages action.
 
3. Be consistent. Consistency is key to your customers knowing exactly where to find their balance each time they receive their bills. Online and printed bills should be identical, making it easy for your customer to quickly scan their bill to find how much they owe and when they need to make their next payment.
 
4. Utilize Incentives. Try positively incentivizing customers to pay you early. Incentives might include a 1 to 2 percent discount if payment is received within a specific timeframe. Early payment rewards work particularly well for companies you are billing that have a separate accounts payable department. In fact, they tend to cut checks first when they see incentives for early payments.
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To learn more about how to optimize your billing and increase the amount of on-time and early customer payments, contact Lanvera today.

​It is no secret that self-service is today’s preferred method of problem solving. In fact, Fast Company reports that 70% of consumers expect a company website to include a self-service tool.
 
While self-service applications are expected on all consumer-facing digital platforms, they are equally as necessary for your business’ use. Third party vendors with self-service portals can help you streamline routine tasks by giving you more control and drastically decreasing interaction with a representative.
 
A self-service customer communications portal will provide you with the opportunity to personalize marketing, reduce costs, increase efficiency, and be prepared for emergencies.

Personalize Marketing
Gone are the days of mass marketing! According to a recent report from Accenture, 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that recognizes them by name, recommends options based on past purchases and/or knows their purchase history.
 
 An intuitive self-service customer communications portal allows you the flexibility to utilize customer data for personalized and dynamic one-to-one marketing messages. As a result, you will increase customer buy-in on relevant additional products and services.
 
Reduce Costs and Increase Efficiency
With 24/7 remote access, you can make changes to your customer communications at any time and on your own timeline. Additionally, the ability to make turnkey changes on your own without all the red tape of having to communicate back and forth with your vendor (submitting a ticket, clarify necessary changes, etc.) will save you headaches, time and extra expenses.
 
Be Prepared for Emergencies
Unfortunately, we do not usually know ahead of time when an emergency will occur such as a natural disaster or power outage. A user friendly, self-service portal will give you remote access to quickly and easily upload and import customer files and messages to your digital platforms in order to keep customer communications intact.
 
Conclusion
A self-service customer communications portal can change your communications strategy from reactive to proactive by providing you the ability to change messaging at any time, on your own timeline and from anywhere.

​Contact us today to learn more about how Lanvera’s self-service customer communications portal can help you streamline efficiencies.

​“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”
– Seth Godin

Your brand is an important aspect of your company's identity as a whole. It is an image of your company's vision, mission and values. Repeatedly displaying a unified and cohesive image is the best way to communicate your message to your customers and build their trust, which will positively impact your bottom line.

Your business-critical and transactional communications are the perfect vehicle to visually boost your brand's identity. Here are three ways your document vendor can help you build brand loyalty:

1. COMPLEX & DYNAMIC BRAND MANAGEMENT
   A vendor with experience in complex and dynamic brand management will work with you to create brand standards and design documents that integrate your brand across all entities. Centralizing the data management of your business-critical communications is crucial to streamlining the process for companies that operate a parent/child structure and manage multiple brands under a single umbrella.
   
   
2. PERSONALIZATION
   In today’s world, personalization is no longer an option- it is an expectation. According to Forrester, 77% of consumers have chosen, recommended or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience.
   
   Personalized communications create a better user experience and are the difference between disruptive marketing content and useful material.  By personalizing your business-critical and transactional communications marketing, customers will see you as a trusted source for valuable and relevant information, thus enhancing your brand identity. An excellent document services vendor will have complex marketing capabilities that allow you to target and segment your customers with automated business rules for more impactful marketing.
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3. STANDARDIZED FORMATTING
   ​Standardized formatting for all same-type documents will ensure that your customers recognize your brand instantly, as well as know where to find their information easily. Consistently formatted documents contribute to a more user-friendly experience and, as an added bonus, will reduce customer service calls.
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Click here to contact Lanvera and learn how we can help you effectively communicate your brand’s message to customers.

Your loan profit margins are under constant pressure from borrowers, competition, regulation, inflation, and the economy. However, there are ways to offset these costs through strategically composed borrower communications. Here are five ways you can use borrower communications to increase loan profit margins:
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​1. Add Color. We don’t just mean a colored logo! A well-placed call-to-action in bright colors can do wonders in capturing your borrowers’ attention and influencing them to make their loan payments a top priority.
 
A good color scheme will have a significant impact on your digital and print document marketing response rates. This is proven to be true by a recent study conducted by the secretariat of the Seoul International Color Expo, which determined that 92.6% of those surveyed stressed the importance of color visuals. If you want to increase speed-to-pay, make sure your documents are full color.

2. Go Digital. According to ACI Universal Payments, Americans pay more than half of their bills online. Create a unique and memorable borrower experience by providing applications that allow for easy online and mobile payments, as well as offering opt-in push notifications and SMS alerts. Offering these applications provides borrowers with multiple ways to make payments.

3. Segment Your Audience. Not all borrowers are the same, which means standard marketing will not produce the same response rate as segmented marketing. Incorporate targeted and personalized messaging in your documents by using business rules and workflows, and you will significantly improve your marketing ROI.

4. Utilize Dynamic Messaging. Dynamic messaging allows you to present strategic, real-time messaging to specific borrower groups by using your document ‘white space’ to market products and services that align best with each borrower’s needs. There are many ways to incorporate dynamic communications on specific borrower criteria, including zip code, gender and marital status, to name a few.

5. Implement Affiliate Marketing. Form partnerships with outside businesses to utilize advertising space on your borrower documents. This is an appealing opportunity to prospective advertisers because personalized borrower communications tend to have much higher open, view and read rates than other print and electronic communications.
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The Bottom Line
Strategic borrower communications can be used to improve your loan profit margins. By adding color, going digital, segmenting your audiences, utilizing dynamic messaging, and implementing affiliate advertising, you can put more money in your pocket.
Learn more about how Lanvera’s solutions can help you increase profit margins by clicking here to contact us.

Business-critical documents are an important component of your customer communications.
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As face-to-face customer interactions decline, documents such as statements and bills are quickly becoming the primary line of communication between your business and your customers. If designed and delivered properly, they have the ability to influence customer behavior, drive sales efforts and increase brand loyalty. That said, here are three common problems that may be hindering your business-critical documents:

Problem: Poor Document Design
Delivering poorly designed documents can damage your bottom line. Some examples of this damage include unnecessary customer service calls, low electronic adoption rates, customer frustration, lost marketing opportunities and poor corporate image.

Solution: Optimize for Readability and Production
By designing documents that are optimized for readability and print production, you remedy many of these issues, create easier to understand documents, and increase customer satisfaction. Formatting with tables, summaries and bolded headers makes documents easier to read and understand; and utilizing duplex printing, eliminating white space and consolidating numerous documents into a single envelope will lower production costs.

Problem: Codes and Jargon                                                               
Including codes, jargon and information that is confusing for the general public is a common customer communications mistake. When documents are optimized for the average person, as opposed to a processing machine or insurance company, document readability and customer satisfaction will significantly increase. 

Solution: Simplify and Eliminate 
Try using simple sentences and common words, while eliminating codes and industry jargon. A good way to benchmark if your statement has been simplified is to ask if the information serves a purpose, helps a customer reach a conclusion, or requires a direct action. Everything else can be eliminated.

Problem: Black and White
According to CCICOLOR - Institute for Color Research, the average person makes a subconscious judgement about a product, another person, or the environment within 90 seconds. Between 62% and 90% of that judgement is based on color alone.   Based on those statistics, it’s fair to say color is a key factor in marketing. However, there are many organizations that still do not leverage color in all branded materials- namely business-critical documents.

Solution: Full Color Print
A consistent set of colors expresses thoughts without words and influences audiences. If you want to up the ante on your brand’s document marketing and watch your ROI increase, start incorporating more color into your documents.
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For more information on how you can improve your business-critical documents by incorporating optimized document design, click here to contact us.

Optimizing your business critical communications doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive.  A best practice is to implement standardized document templates that can help your business improve brand consistency, eliminate unnecessary costs, reduce errors, and incorporate personalized marketing messages into designated areas of the documents.
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Utilizing templates for all your customer-facing communications can improve your ROI by:

1. Eliminating Unnecessary Costs
​The impact of poorly designed documents on your print operations is much larger than you may think. Increased postage on heavy envelopes or documents that take up many pages, excessive paper consumption, and redundant postage costs accumulating by sending numerous documents to a single household, frequently arise as a result.
 
To combat this postage increase, you can create standardized workflow templates that allow you to utilize duplex printing to decrease page counts, use re-pagination to increase lines per page and control line spacing, eliminate wasted white space, and practice householding, which is the consolidation of numerous documents meant  for one residency into a single envelope. All of these practices will lower production and postage costs and increase efficiency.

2. Reducing Errors
Before a template is released to the production process, it goes through several tests in different platforms and conditions in order to eliminate programming bugs. By utilizing standardized templates, for all customer communications, the potential for errors is significantly decreased.

3. Improving Readability
Without the use of standardized templates, unexpected collateral damage can occur. From unnecessary customer service calls and low electronic adoption rates to customer frustration and poor corporate image, the repercussions can trickle down to almost every element of your business.

Standardized templates can provide documents with a consistent user-friendly design. By formatting your documents with tables, shading, summaries and bolded headers, you make documents easier to read and understand, increase customer satisfaction, and improve the overall impact of your documents.

Templates make the entire document lifecycles easier and faster, and will significantly improve the ROI on your document processing operations. Contact us today to find out about our document creation templates and how Lanvera can help you optimize your documents for production, readability and marketing.

2017 is a year of big changes. While there may be some uncertainty on what this year holds for regulations and market behavior, one thing remains the same- you still have to communicate with your customers whether in the form of a statement, letter or marketing campaign. That said, here are some communications trends and predictions to keep in mind while looking for ways to utilize your business-critical data delivery to improve your margins and strengthen customer relationships:

1. Social messaging is taking over
Sixty-two percent of millennials are more loyal to brands that engage them via Over-the-Top (OTT) and SMS messaging. Millennials, as well as other generations, want and expect the personal touch and collaboration that one-on-one communication allows.

​Many businesses are already placing ads on social media networks and other websites, allowing users to click and instantaneously be directed to a chat window with the brand. With your business-critical communications, you can implement a few strategies to capitalize on this movement, such as live chat features between customers and your organization, as well as providing direct links to popular social media platforms to enable quick sharing of information.
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2. Mobile functionality is required
Mobile functionality is no longer optional in today’s world as consumers use smartphones for shopping and online research. This means mobile responsive websites and communications are necessary in order to meet consumer expectations.
 
Leading organizations in the retail and other industries are already implementing location-based offers and sales messaging through mobile devices. Take advantage of this trend by selling affiliate advertising or offering your own deals on your ePresentment platform. If your customer communications vendor is up-to-date on the latest technology, they can help you implement these important location-based offers and sales messaging to your customer base.
 
3. Customization and personalization are expected
Seventy-three percent of consumers prefer to do business with brands that use personal information to make their shopping experiences more relevant, according to Digital Trends. When done correctly, using personalized marketing in your digital and print business-critical documents can help you effectively reach your customers and yield a high ROI. In addition to revenue opportunities, personalized document marketing can help create a better customer experience by delivering content unique to an individual’s specific needs. The best part? There are no additional costs because your customer documents are already being delivered. 

4. Self-service is necessary
Organizations should ensure that customers are able to find answers to their questions using an assortment of self-service options, as fifty percent of customers think it is important to solve product or service issues themselves and 70% expect a company’s website to include a self-service application. Make the most of your customer communications by adding self-service website links to both print and electronic customer facing documents. This will not remove the need for a call center, but it will reduce call volumes AND make your customers happier because they can find answers on their own.
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Interested in learning more about how to maximize your business-critical communications in 2017? Click here to contact us.

Dynamic brand management can be challenging, specifically as it relates to customer communications and documents. Uniformity across all documents cultivates your brand identity and how your overarching brand is perceived by current and future customers.

However, most parent-child organizations are faced with the need to individualize each brand while maintaining a consistent global message. Take a look at your various branded statements and documents.  Are you struggling with creating an overarching brand identity while simultaneously crafting individually branded messaging? Creating unique brand identities that are still consistently connected with a parent brand is not an easy undertaking, especially with a brand that prints and delivers high volumes of documents and needs each document to convey that similarity, yet uniqueness.

Below are our top 3 strategies that can help your business manage individual brand identities and create customer documents that keep your overarching brand image consistent.
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1. Use Standardized Templates
Ensure brand consistency and increase document efficiency by utilizing templates that are customizable through the ability to change graphics and specific information. Templates significantly reduce the time it takes to develop and optimize individual statements and invoices while simplifying the process of creating new documents.

Automated business rules enhance this process by replacing the manual steps involved in the changing of individual brand logos within templates, offering huge benefits for parent companies that manage multiple brands. Simply set rules and requirements for changes, and automated software will render the correct logo and contact information while maintaining the overarching brand’s information.

2. Implement a User-Friendly Change Management Process
A platform that allows for quick and easy change management is beneficial to any company, particularly ones that manage multiple brands.  Whether processing a statement, notice, invoice or letter, self-service change management that provides the ability to change specific elements within a document is critical.  

3. Streamline Operations
To achieve the lowest production and delivery costs and create a highly reliable production environment, total automation is essential. Automated processes eliminate human touch points and dramatically reduce chances of error.

An intelligent processing operation allows for consolidation of files into one large database that are then parsed, segmented and produced in one print process. This system is perfect for parent-child organizations because it significantly lowers costs, reduces production time and eliminates the need for individual print facilities for each brand.

These 3 strategies will help your business differentiate statements across multiple brands and better optimize operations while keeping your brand consistent with your overarching identity. If you’re not sure how to bring these techniques to life, we’re more than happy to help! Contact us today to learn more about how Lanvera’s capabilities can help you better manage separate brand identities.

Spotify’s multicontinental out-of-home (OOH) advertising campaign rollout this week is both hilarious and creative. The worldwide music services conglomerate utilized aggregate and individual listener data from 2016 to create personalized and segmented messages for display in high traffic areas across the world. Here are a couple of messages that made us laugh:

“Dear 3,949 people who streamed ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know it’ the day of the Brexit vote, hang in there.”
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“Dear person who played ‘Sorry’ 42 times on Valentine’s Day, What did you do?”

“To the person in NoLIta who started listening to holiday music way back in June, you really jingle all the way, huh?”

According to an interview between Creativity-online.com and Spotify CMO Seth Farbman, the idea for the data-driven campaign originated with 2015’s end-of-the-year “Year in Music” campaign, which revealed that data from listeners in different geographical areas reflected culture through listener behavior.

“There has been some debate about whether big data is muting creativity in marketing, but we have turned that on its head,” Farbman said. “For us, data inspires and gives an insight into the emotion that people are expressing.”

While many OOH advertising campaigns are successful in driving new business, they can be pricey.  The good news is that you can take a page out of Spotify’s book and combine it with outreach efforts to your current customer base without breaking the bank. The end result? Deeper customer relationships and higher margins.

Enter statement advertising. Customers receive print and/or electronic statements each month, which gives you the chance to connect with them on a whole new level. Based on what we have seen with the quick success of Spotify’s campaign and our own statement advertising expertise, here are a couple of tips to help you effectively advertise on monthly customer statements:

1. Put customer data to use. Sixty-four percent of marketing executives “strongly agree” that data-driven marketing is crucial to success in a hypercompetitive global economy. Spotify did an excellent job of using both aggregate and individual data to create their campaign. Not all customers are created equal, and data will reflect that. You have a much better chance of standing apart from all of the usual communications your customer receives on a daily basis by presenting them with messaging that is targeted specifically to their needs.  

2. Be creative. You’ve gotten a customer’s attention- now it’s time to keep it. Spotify combined quick, witty text with colorful billboards. Simple, yet extremely effective. In a statement advertisement, the use of color combined with the right words and a strong call to action can do wonders.
 
3. Connect with your customers on an emotional level. Spotify definitely hit the nail on the head and mainly focused on humor in their campaign. From a psychological perspective, when humans feel something, they think, “What can I make of this, what can I do about this?” Those responses have dominance and lead us to a certain behavior – like clicking through to a mortgage application or sharing low auto loan rates on social media.
 
Data-driven communications are the future of advertising and marketing. Like Spotify, if you utilize data to personalize, be creative and connect emotionally, you will forge stronger customer relationships, increase retention rates and improve margins.