For the past decade, moving to paperless communications has been at the forefront of most organizations’ minds. Not only is electronic delivery a customer expectation, it also benefits your business’ bottom line. In fact, a recent study estimates that moving from paper to electronic delivery of certain documents could reduce costs of producing communications by 36 percent. While it is not a new concept, the challenge still exists in accelerating eAdoption. Here are three secrets to driving paperless customer communications:

1.Provide Consistency in Electronic Document Formatting
Many third party software packages generally provide a rudimentary print layout of a document for use electronic use, thus creating a stale, unfriendly document that does not match the printed, often legal, version.  This creates customer reluctance in moving to electronic delivery because the same document presented in different formats for print and electronic can be confusing.

A successful electronic conversion includes providing an exact replica electronically that is offered in print and mail. A very important reason to offer online statements in the same format as printed is to provide the institution’s customers with a true legal document online rather than a home banking transaction printout. Because most customers require a legal version of their documents in the event of a loan application or tax audit, offering the statement in the same format will encourage eAdoption.

2.Rethink Print Default
Many organizations still have print documents as the default option on new accounts. When customers are not made aware that they can make the switch to paperless, they assume print and mail is what will serve them best. For statements and other documents that aren’t necessarily required to be sent via snail mail, a good option is to set electronic delivery as the default option on new accounts.

“When we switched cores in 2009, we made a big push toward eAdoption on new accounts opened by setting the default statement option to electronic,” said Sandy Gaskamp, Operations Support Manager at University Federal Credit Union. “We now have an 86% eAdoption rate with over 205,000 members, and they all seem to be enjoying the advantages of going paperless.” This not only enhances the customer experience, but also saves on print production and postage costs. In order to meet regulatory stands, be sure to communicate the default option with new account holders so they can verify it as the option they desire.

3.Offer More Outside of Online Banking
Online banking has been widely implemented in financial institutions to provide customers with easier access to accounts in order to alleviate traditional in-person transactions and decrease print and mail costs. However, due to the lack of eAdoption, the ROI on online banking platforms alone has not been as high as originally anticipated. Typically, it is difficult to convert non-transactional customers to electronic documents due to the perception that they do not need to access online banking to manage a daily balance or transfer money. Translation: One cannot live by online banking alone.

Your business’ website coupled with a mobile-responsive ePresentment platform can work wonders for eAdoption rates. If an electronic document can be accessed and viewed securely from your website without going through online banking, the potential audience for eStatements and other electronic documents increases beyond online banking users because customers then do not have to remember a login or sign up for online banking in order to switch to digital document delivery. By providing a direct access point to electronic documents, the overall customer experience is heightened. Additionally, if you are being charged by your provider for each online banking user, the users who opt out of paper documents through ePresentment are less costly.

Customers also desire a central location to access all account documents including notices, loan coupons and tax forms. If your business can support electronic documents, including eStatements, eNotices, eLoan Coupons and eTax Forms, your customer  has the option to receive all communications electronically, which is a win-win scenario.

Conclusion
By giving your customers the opportunity to access more of their documents online, you can begin the conversion toward providing total comprehensive electronic services. It is important to remember that the customer is looking for at least as much value as they receive from a printed document.

To read more strategies on driving paperless communication, access our white paper.

According to the MBA’s 1st quarterly National Delinquency Survey, foreclosure starts and delinquency rates are at the lowest since Q2 of 2000. "The delinquency rate of 4.77 percent has returned to typical pre-recession levels and is lower than the historical average of 5.4 percent for the time period from 1979 to the first quarter of 2016,”said Marina Walsh, MBA'S Vice President of Industry Analysis.
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As the market changes to reflect the decrease in delinquencies and foreclosures, there are a couple of different strategies servicers are using to shift focus in order to maintain profits:
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1.Focus on Performing Loans
Some servicers are transitioning to more of a performing loan focus, thereby expanding their portfolios. As departments are thinning, servicers are given the choice of either downsizing or moving employees into different job roles. This is a viable option, requiring servicers to identify adaptable personnel to cross-train them for other positions within the organization.
 
However, the challenge still lies in the extra costs accrued through increased compliance operations, which, in turn, negatively impact loan margins.
 
2.Identify New Sources of Revenue
One strong option to the market changes is to identify new ways to generate more profit per loan on existing portfolios. If successful in maintaining or even increasing margins, servicers can place themselves in a better position to keep personnel and cross-train them rather than eliminate jobs. This is where identifying new sources of revenue through transactional document communications such as mortgage statements and letters is the answer. Servicers have the opportunity to utilize transactional documents to cross-sell and upsell services to performing loans, as well as utilize affiliate advertising to create new revenue streams.

To learn more about how transactional document communications can help you net more profit per loan, click here.

Virtually every financial institution loses some customers, but few ever measure or recognize how many of their customers become inactive. High turnover rates often occur when a bank or credit union invests an enormous amount of time, effort and expenses building the initial customer relationship, only to let that relationship go unattended. As a result, the customer becomes disengaged and more likely to walk away, leaving the bank in a position to spend another small fortune to replace them. In fact, according to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, it is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one.

Based on these facts, the easiest way to grow is to focus on retaining current customers while increasing incremental product spend. Once you decrease turnover rates, it’s often possible to significantly increase your growth rate because you’re no longer forced to make up lost ground just to stand still.

Increasing customer retention often starts with consistent communication, branding and personalization.

1. Provide Proactive Support
Usually, customers who have problems with products and services will not communicate the issue. According to Lee Resources International, for every customer who complains about an issue, there are 26 who stay silent. Instead, they take their business elsewhere. 
 
A best practice for “breaking the silence” and providing proactive support is to utilize the space on digital and print documents to request feedback and encourage open dialogue.  

2. Value Proposition Reinforcement
Value propositions are a clear statement that should:

• explain services and how each service improves the customers' situation (relevancy),
• deliver specific benefits (quantified value),
• highlight competitive advantages that drive customers to stay with the orgianzation (unique differentiation).

A cost-efficient, yet effective way to reinforce value proposition is through ePresentment of transactional documents. As customers log in to view documents, they are easily reminded of the company value by simply displaying personalized messages on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
 
3. Add a Personal Touch
As technology continues to evolve, customers are expecting more personalized communications that align with behaviors, needs and wants. According to “The Cost of Poor Customer Service” by Genesys Global Survey, 38% of consumers say personalization is important to the customer experience.

Marketing space on digital and print statements, letters, notices, etc. can be optimized to target customers with products and services that best fit specific needs. A best practice is to utilize existing customer data to identify specific criteria, including account balance, zip code, and spending habits, to name a few. From there, leveraging dynamic communications on all digital and print documents creates a timely, effective customer experience.

While it’s next to impossible to have a 100% retention rate, financial institutions can drastically decrease turnover by proactively approaching and maintaining current customer relationships. 

​To learn more about customer retention through transactional documents, contact us at lanverainfo@lanvera.com or click here.

Loan servicing professionals are perpetually experiencing regulatory changes while trying to balance portfolios. The “do more with less” mentality in the industry has sent loan servicers on the search for ways to increase their profit per loan.
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​Here are two ways to expand the value of your portfolio this year:

1. SEGMENT MARKETING
In segment marketing, a borrower base is divided into groups of individuals that are similar in specific ways relevant to customer attributes such as age, gender, interests, spending habits, etc. According to MailChimp, segmented email campaigns receive 14.72% more opens and 62.84% more clicks than non-segmented campaigns. What does this mean for your portfolio? Borrowers are more receptive to information that is specific to them.

Lanvera helps increase revenues by providing the ability for our clients to sell affiliate marketing space to businesses that offer services similar to borrowers’ needs. Segment affiliate marketing in borrower-critical document delivery can be applied multiple ways:

• Present a marketing page to borrowers as they sign on to access their statements. Information such as marketing promotions or inserts can be utilized for maximum exposure and increased calls to action.
• Utilize digital onserts to optimize workflows and segment borrowers groups with particular offers most beneficial to the individual. Digital onserts are clickable, providing instant access to landing page promotions and a faster way to drive intended borrower behavior.
• Capitalize on multichannel expanded hyperlinks by including links to webpages and offers from directly within individual electronic documents. Interactive links provide borrowers easy and instant access promotional content.

The benefits of personalized marketing are enormous to both borrowers and servicers and can impact profit per loan significantly. As a partner, Lanvera helps to maximize borrower communications through segment marketing, resulting in improved ROI and higher eAdoption rates. 

2. DYNAMIC MESSAGING
Dynamic Messaging allows you to present strategic messaging to all borrowers or a specific target group and use consumer-facing marketing space by targeting account holders with products and services that best fit their needs.  There are many ways to incorporate dynamic communications on specific borrower criteria, including account balance, zip code, gender, or marital status, to name a few. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel in compiling data because you already have it. Why not use it to increase your bottom line?
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Here are some tips on harnessing the power of dynamic messaging on borrower-facing digital and print communications:

• Target to individuals, not groups. Not all borrowers are created equal, so personalization is key! In a recent survey, only 21% of individuals reported that marketing messages they receive are “usually relevant.” This low percentage provides you with an opportunity to stand apart from all of the usual communications your borrower receives on a daily basis by presenting them with messaging that is targeted specifically to their needs. 

• Always Be Changing. A colleague of mine once told me, “A static website shows your audience that your organization is static.” The same principle applies to all other borrower communications. If your borrowers don’t see you moving forward with the times, they will be less likely to respond to your brand’s communications. A good practice is to re-evaluate messaging on a quarterly basis to encourage high engagement rates.
• Timing is everything. This ties both of the above points together. Say a borrower has JUST opened up a savings account with your institution. Would it be wise to send them a document the following month containing an ad with the messaging, “Open a savings account with us?” No. Instead, maybe it’s time to start sending them ads about an auto or home loan.  

The opportunities to speak to your borrowers on a personalized level without any human touch points involved are endless.  As borrower communications continue to shift, the importance of dynamic communications will continue to increase. To learn more about how you can net more profit per loan in 2018, click here.

Let’s face it, delinquent payments are a problem for most businesses. Oftentimes, a customer will make an honest mistake and simply miss a payment. Other times, they will actively avoid you. Managing the revenue cycle can also prove difficult when you are competing with multiple other monthly bills customers receive electronically and via USPS.

While there are plenty of good strategies for collecting the money your business is owed, it doesn’t have to come to that. Here are Seven Ways to Get Paid Faster through the use of your business-critical communications:

1. Have a clear call to action (CTA): Show your customers exactly where they need to go to pay their balance. The CTA should be eye-catching so the customer not only sees it, but is compelled to read and act. When you clearly state exactly what you want your customer to do, it takes out the guess work and encourages an action on their part.

2. Use color:  Adding color to marketing messages can increase engagement rates by up to 42%. And not only that, the addition of color can actually aid in improving 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 your messaging and be more inclined to act upon it.
 
3. Make it convenient: According to a recent Federal Reserve survey, roughly one-third of consumers and three-quarters of businesses expressed willingness to pay a fee for payments that have faster availability to the payee. Offer an online invoicing process with the ability to pay online. An automated billing system will "ping" your customers until it shows the invoice has been paid. There is something to be said for having an automated process performing the follow-up for you! 
 
4. Be polite with your language: While it may seem unimportant, adding lines such as "Thank you for your business" and "We appreciate your timely payment" positively reinforces the relationship you have with a customer. Be nice, and they just may return the favor. In fact, a recent study found that a simple "please" or "thank you" can increase your chances of getting paid by 5%.
 
5. Specify payment timelines: If a bill needs to be paid within 14 days, be sure to list this on the document. Also list if there will be a charge for late payment and how much the charge will be. Give your customers and clients as much information as humanly possible.
 
6. Utilize incentives: Beyond motivating payment with late fees, try positively incentivizing customers to pay you early. Incentives might include a 1 to 2 percent discount if payment is received within a specific “early” time frame. Consider offering future discounts, credits, gift certificates or merchandise as possible incentives. In the end, you’re saying thank you for making that payment a priority. It’s rewarding your customers for their business, increasing their loyalty, and helping you get paid.
 
7. Keep open lines of communication with customers: Oftentimes, when people have not paid, they do not realize it. Sending a simple automated email reminder to customers can go a long way. Part of the value of an email reminder is that it reinforces your relationship with the customer and provides an opportunity to engage. Use the email reminder to create an open dialogue with clients, providing them with a sense of security and comfort.
 
Interested in using your transactional documents to influence speed-to-pay? Click here to learn more or contact us for a demo. 

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.

 Organizations that send transactional and business-critical documents should track their outgoing customer mail to ensure the intended documents reach the mailstream accurately and on time.  However, many do not realize their mail is being tracked improperly. Every day mail is improperly tracked, if at all, organizations are risking noncompliance, data breaches and collateral damage.
 
Noncompliance Risks
Government regulatory bodies such as the CFPB and OCC mandate specific times, dates and content for financial communications. Additionally, they require proof of mailing. Failure to comply or be prepared for audits can result in unforeseen regulatory fees.
 
If your document services vendor is properly tracking your mail, you will be better prepared for compliance audits.  Alternatively, if your document services vendor falls short on mail tracking, you will not able to adequately provide information on if and when a customer receives a document, as well as the content of that document. As a result, you would be putting your business at  risk for fines, legal fees and customer litigation.
 
Data Breaches
According to the Federal Trade Commission, 40% of identity theft victims cited stolen USPS mail as the source of personal information taken. Thieves and scammers take advantage of an organization’s inability to properly track mail over a length of time, taking possession of personal data and mail offers. One of the most common scams mentioned, change-of-address fraud, involves an identity thief asking a financial institution to send a replacement debit or credit card to a “recently changed” address. What happens next? The customer’s account is depleted by the thief, resulting in an unhappy customer and a hard hit to the organization’s bottom line.
 
Benefits of Mail Tracking 
Mail Tracking serves as the audit point for outgoing business-critical documents.

• Increase speed-to-pay
• Identify when documents are sent
• Reduce phone calls to customers about their payments
• Improve customer relationships
• Save time and money on return mail efforts
• Improve cash flow management
• Decrease litigation and attorney fees
• Minimize risk of fraud and identity theft
• Improve supply chain management

The Solution: Follow Every Mailpiece from Insertion to Delivery
Lanvera’s Mail Tracking provides visibility into each business-critical mailing as it enters the mail stream.

• Integrates with the USPS Intelligent Mail® barcode
• Presorts mail and provides full visibility on letters and flat envelopes during their inbound and outbound flow through our processing
• Combines all pertinent data into a single barcode for 100% accuracy
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Interested in learning more about mail tracking? Click here to contact us.

​“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.