Dallas, TX, July 2018 - Ser Technology (Ser Tech) and Lanvera announced a strategic partnership that will combine service offerings in a single package for financial institutions. Banks and Credit Unions will now be able to integrate Ser Tech Flitter and Fetch content into any document delivered by Lanvera. This partnership means that more consumers now have easy access to current FICO® scores, financial education and targeted pre-approved loan offers based on analysis of an individual’s credit file.

Flitter is a platform that delivers FICO® Scores and credit education to consumers in multiple delivery channels, such as online banking, mobile banking, and statements.  Ser Tech works closely with the financial institution and FICO to support and certify compliance with the FICO® Score Open Access program. The Fetch Marketing platform analyzes consumer credit history to target pre-approved credit offers to a financial institution’s customers.  Coupled with Lanvera’s delivery of business-critical documents, the partnership will increase visibility and read rates by incorporating FICO® Scores and pre-approved loan offers directly into consumer monthly statements, letters and notices.

“We have a unique opportunity to provide data driven credit tools to clients, driving education and convenience.  Our partnership with Lanvera allows us to reach a broader audience and increase offer views, all while delivering via a brand the consumer knows.” said Shana Richardson, Ser Technology Corporation CEO.

Consumers demand real information to make financial decisions.  By providing the authentic FICO® scores (used in determining loan terms) and pre-approved offers on their bank statements and other documents, financial institutions benefit from increased brand familiarity, loyalty and action.  Consumers benefit from access to critical credit information and immediate access to capital.
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Michael Scheevel, VP of Sales and Marketing at Lanvera was quoted “we feel this partnership is a really positive step in increasing our offering solutions that strengthen our clients’ relationships with their customers.”
 
About Lanvera
Lanvera is a leading national outsource provider specializing in technology that drives customer communications in both electronic and print formats. Focusing on a digital document strategy, Lanvera’s software solutions allow clients to improve customer experiences, drive electronic communications and enable effective targeted marketing.
 
About Ser Technology
Ser Technology Corporation (Ser Tech) is a financial technology services company that leverages credit data to help clients target consumers to generate new loans, provide actual FICO® Scores and credit education for consumers, and identify, measure and manage portfolio risk and opportunity through comprehensive loan management. Ser Tech is headquartered in Dallas, serving more than 3,000 credit unions since 1994.

Member data security is one of the most important elements of your business. It keeps your business compliant, and it allows your members to trust you with some of their most confidential information. So how can you be sure that your company, or the company you trust to manage your member's documents, provides adequate data security?

Here’s a brief rundown of the 4 primary elements that any business responsible for keeping data secure should provide:

1. SECURE FACILITY

Any Credit Union that houses member information must undergo audits to ensure information is kept secure. These third party audits are necessary to ensure that there are stringent controls in place to guarantee the security of your data and documents. Additionally, you must have facility-wide physical-security measures in place, including employee access cards, door alarms and internal and external security cameras.

2. DOCUMENT INTEGRITY 

Your software and processes must be designed to allow for 100% document integrity. The utilization of intelligent barcodes ensures that each page is matched and envelope contents are correct, and can embed logic for intelligent insertion and special handling.

Output envelope scanning guarantees that every single document that hits the mail stream, provides an archive for audit purposes, and guarantees all envelopes are tracked so that no run is released without 100% verification.  

3. COMPLIANCE

All document privacy laws must continually be met. This includes the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, HIPAA and FACTA. Additionally, it’s important that the document management platform accommodate easy change management so that as regulations and requirements are updated, documents can remain compliant.           

4. BUSINESS CONTINUITY

In the event of a natural disaster or unexpected power outage, data must be accessible from a secure remote back up facility to enable business processes to continue. Data must be comprehensively backed up at a secure location that features total redundancy of all online systems, databases, communications, power, form inventories and print and mail facilities.

The benefits of using personalized marketing in your customer’s print documents are huge. It offsets production costs, increases value in targeted marketing messages, and creates a better customer experience by delivering content unique to an individual’s specific needs… all at no additional cost to you, as your customer documents are already being delivered.

Did you know that electronic documents offer more significant marketing capabilities than print because they provide added interactivity and instant access? You can make the most of your electronic documents by using them to enhance your marketing and yield bigger benefits than print alone.

Supplement your print document marketing by utilizing the following 3 electronic marketing opportunities:

1. PUSH MARKETING TECHNOLOGY -

Present a marketing page to customers as they sign on to access their home banking account. This can include marketing promotions, inserts or any document you want to ensure the account holder views as they sign in, allowing you to ensure your messages are being seen!

2. DIGITAL ONSERTS -

Utilize workflows and business rules to segment your electronic customers and target groups with particular offers that will be most beneficial to the individual. Digital onserts are clickable, which provides instant access to promotions for the customer, and a faster way to drive customer behavior for your business.

3. MULTICHANNEL EXPANDED HYPERLINKS -

Include links to webpages and offers from directly within eDocuments, and route them to any device: desktop, mobile phone or tablet. The interactive links provide your electronic customers easy and instant access to the promotional content in the messages.

The benefits of personalized marketing in electronic documents are enormous to both customers, and your business. Maximize the capabilities of your document marketing on your electronic platform and you’ll start seeing a significantly improved ROI and higher e-Adoption rates.

Download our document marketing guide today for a more comprehensive view of how you can maximize the potential of your customer documents by turning them into free and personalized marketing.

According to “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner, it can cost approximately 6 times more to attract a new member than to keep an existing one. Furthermore, Bain & Company reports that a 5% increase in member retention can increase profits up to 125%. These numbers alone reveal the necessity of a strong member retention program. Focusing on member retention will provide you with the engagement rates you desire, as well as a more favorable bottom line. Here are some tips to help you get started on increasing member engagement through cross-selling and upselling:
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1. Utilize dynamic messaging to align communications with each member’s behaviors, needs and wants.
Dynamic messaging allows you to present strategic, real-time messages to specific target groups within your member base. From there, member-facing marketing space on digital and print statements, letters, notices, etc. is optimized to target account holders with products and services that best fit their needs. There are many ways to incorporate dynamic communications on specific customer 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, so why not not use it to increase member retention rates and your bottom line?

2. Paint a picture that emphasizes benefits rather than features.
Consider this: You are planning a trip to a tropical destination and looking for airline travel. Would you rather see messaging about the seat you will be sitting in, the seatbelt and the fact that you can recline during the flight? Or would you rather see messaging about being transported comfortably and safely to your tropical destination where you will be sitting on the beach and soaking up the sun with a beverage in your hand? I’ll take the latter with the benefits, please!
 
While this is Sales 101, I see credit unions (and other businesses, for that matter) get caught up in the functionality of their products and services rather than painting a picture that communicates the actual benefits to members.  When formulating messaging, keep this quote in mind: “People don’t want to buy a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole,” -Theodore Levitt. Features do have a place in the sales cycle, but need to only be mentioned as differentiators once a member shows interest in a product or service.
 
For more tips on cross-selling and upselling, call our team at (972) 488-6400 or send an email to lanverainfo@lanvera.com

​Effective customer communication is critical in the success of any organization.  Without it, you can expect to lose business, revenue and wallet share.

Organizations that utilize high volumes of customer communications – like banks and credit unions – are at a unique advantage and can leverage business-critical documents to connect with and drive customers to a specific goal.  In order to effectively reach your customers, it is essential to give them information they want, when they want it, and the way they want it. Here are the top 5 features customers expect from your business-critical communications:

1. Consistency
Zendesk says 87% of customers think brands should put more effort into providing a consistent customer communication experience. This is especially true in the way people receive their financial communications. When customers view information, they want it to be the same as it was last time, and the same as it will be next time, so they aren’t constantly searching for the information they’re looking for.
To accomplish this, format your documents using a template that includes designated space for branding, summary tables and transactional information. Documents with consistent formatting not only increase readability, by placing logos and branding in the same area will increase brand recognition.

2. Accessibility 
To make the customer experience truly exceptional, make things as easy as possible.  Customers know how they want to receive and access information.  Your ePresentment should be mobile responsive, user friendly and functional, with all documents available through a single platform, easily logged into from any interface. Take the guess work out of finding information and your customers will thank you!

3. Unique Engagement
62% of millennials report that brand engagement is more likely to make them a loyal customer, according to USC Dornsife. Customers want an experience that is unique to their individual preferences. To maximize engagement, make sure your your documents are consistently formatted and optimized for readability, easily accessible through any platform or channel, and personalized to each individual. 

4. Solutions to problems
Customers wanting solutions to their problems is the driving force that has made Google into what it is today: The #1 search engine for people looking for answers.

Providing solutions in transactional documents and customer communications is actually much easier than it sounds. You can use customer transactional data to target them with specific offers compatible with services they already utilize. Sending personalized marketing (in the form of affiliate ads or cross-selling and upselling) to individuals who, based on previous habits, will have an interest in or need for that particular service provides them with answers to their questions, and solutions to their problems.

3. Self-service
​Organizations should ensure that customers are able to find answers to their questions using an assortment of self-service options, as 50% 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 documents. This will not negate the need for customer service calls, but it will reduce call center volumes AND make your customers happier because they satisfy their need to find answers to their questions on their own.

Contact us today to discover how transactional document solutions can strengthen your customer-base, discover new revenue and cut operating costs.

The electronic marketing world is constantly evolving. Ten to fifteen years ago, electronic marketing could be equated to the wild-west frontier. Opportunities were abundant, and the presence of constant white noise surrounding consumers was nowhere near the volume it is now. According to Statistic Brain, the average human attention span is 8.25 seconds, meaning it has become increasingly difficult to effectively reach customers. It’s safe to say that the game has changed drastically as many businesses have upped their electronic marketing efforts in hopes of cutting through the clutter.
 
This is where personalized marketing comes into play. 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 offsetting production costs, 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. 
 
Before we discuss electronic document marketing applications, let’s talk about print for a minute. We know you have probably seen the Internet argument over whether or not print is dying, and while digital has taken precedence in reaching consumers, it is wise to not underestimate the power of print. Not only are print documents still required for compliance reasons in finance and billing, but many consumers opt to receive all of their documents in both print and electronic formats. According to a recent survey, more than six in 10 consumers say they would not choose a provider that does not offer paper bills and statements, and 88% want to be able to switch between electronic and paper bills without difficulty or cost.
 
With the right capabilities and tools such as inline inserts and dynamic messaging, you can effectively personalize and segment marketing on print documents, and even make changes right before a production run. The one-two punch comes in when you maximize your electronic document marketing to complement the print version.
 
Electronic documents offer more real-time marketing capabilities than print because they provide added interactivity and instant access. Here are three applications to enhance your personalized and segmented electronic document marketing:

1.  Push marketing technology – Present a marketing page to customers as they sign on to access their home banking account. This can include promotions, inserts or any document you want to ensure the account holder views as they sign in.
2. Digital onserts - Utilize workflows and business rules to segment your electronic customers and target groups with particular offers that will be most beneficial to the individual. Digital onserts are clickable, which provides instant access to promotions for the customer, and a faster way to drive customer behavior for your business.
3.   Multichannel expanded hyperlinks - Include links to webpages and offers from directly within eDocuments, and route them to any device: desktop, mobile phone, or tablet. The interactive links provide your electronic customers easy and instant access to the promotional content in the messages.
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The benefits of personalized marketing on electronic documents are enormous to both customers and your business. Maximize the capabilities of your electronic document marketing in tangent to print documents, and you’ll start seeing a significantly improved ROI.

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.

When most people hear the term “cutting costs” it may make them cringe a little. Often it requires hard decisions and giving up things they're accustomed to having, and may even NEED.

What if we told you that reducing costs isn’t actually a direct result of CUTTING Costs? 

Cutting costs implies cut backs, cutting corners, and cutting features that may be important and useful to your organization. That’s the last thing you want to do.

REDUCING COSTS IS ALL ABOUT ROI.

Today we’re sharing the top 4 ways to increase the ROI of your document processing operations, thus reducing your overall costs and increasing the value of your business processes.

1. SAVE TIME:

We’re sure you’ve heard the expression “time is money,” and guess what? It’s true. You need a document processing partner that takes on the lion-share of operational tasks and thus, saves your business money as well. 

-Fast Change Management- Making changes to your customer documents is a painful process. Compliance and regulatory requirements can change fast, so you need to be able to make document changes fast as well. When choosing a document outsourcing partner, or evaluating your in-house operation, fast change management should be one of the top factors influencing your decision.

-Reduce Customer Service Calls- Calls regarding difficult to understand statements and bills can be factor eating up a major portion of your customer service representative’s time. Make sure your operational system has capabilities that accommodate optimized document design for easy readability, and result in less customer calls for help. 

2. ADD VALUE:

Selective marketing in your member communications is something most businesses today implement, but is it dynamic and personalized? If you’re currently offering only static, un-personalized marketing messages, you’re missing the opportunity to speak directly to your customers on a one-to-one basis. 

3. ELECTRONIC DELIVERY:

Most businesses today have an electronic delivery platform, but to really save money, customers need to be using it, and not receiving print communications at all. To find out the top ways to increase electronic adoption rates, download our eBook to learn about our step-by-step electronic onboarding plan, and start increasing your eAdoption rates today.

4. PARTNER UP:

Outsourcing document production is the complete solution and best way to increase your ROI. Here’s how:

Eliminate physical document processing costs – Through document outsourcing you can completely eliminate the need to have dedicated print and mail resources.

Better marketing capabilities – Offset production costs and create additional revenue streams through new, dynamic marketing opportunities.

Increase electronic onboarding – Reduce paper, print and postage costs by providing solutions that help increase electronic adoption rates.

Postage Discounts – Take advantage of any postage and presort discounts that an outsourced partner may provide

A great document outsourcing partner’s sole focus is creating custom solutions that drive customer development, save time and effort, and increase the value of their documents. The best solution may not be the cheapest on paper, but real cost savings happen over time and are achieved by adding value, not cutting corners. 

Contact us today to find out more about Lanvera’s custom solutions and how we can help you increase the value in your member documents.

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. 

The invoices, notices, statements and other business-critical documents your organization sends represent not only a substantial allocation of funds, but also a key vehicle for communicating with your customers, and thus one of the most critical components of your business. That said, these documents should not be overlooked as a simple operational formality.

There are four important facts every executive should know about customer documents and why they are one of the most important elements of any business:

1. Between 50-70% of total indirect spend in the financial services industry is on I.T. and technology infrastructure.  Part of this percentage includes the equipment, software and maintenance costs necessary for document processing and production, as well as costs needed to ensure compliance with changing regulations, data security and management and overall operational improvements. Having the infrastructure necessary to keep up with demands is essential, but it is costly. Additionally, expenses tend to be on the higher end of the overall percentage if all production operations are kept in-house.
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2. A decline in branch visits and increase in digital and mobile banking has made business-critical documents a major contributor to the customer experience.  Last year saw the highest level of bank and credit union branch closures in U.S. history, according to FDIC data. This solidifies the fact that financial institutions must improve the customer experience in other ways to account for this drop in face-to-face interaction. Customer documents, both print and electronic, are more important than ever for enhancing the customer experience and driving behavior.

Here are ways you can use transactional documents to enhance the customer experience:
-Offer user-friendly eStatement hosting on your Home Banking
-Utilize mobile applications that provide capabilities such as opening a new account, fund transfers and direct check deposit 
-Print documents that are designed and optimized to be easily understood, personalized and fully branded

3. Documents can serve as a Powerful Marketing Tool. Given the drop in branch visits, both print and electronic customer documents can supplement for the loss of face-to-face interaction and serve as an essential and profitable marketing tool. Access to transactional data gives the financial industry the unique ability to personalize documents and provide their customers with timely, applicable marketing messages through transpromo marketing in the form of personalized affiliate ads, as well as cross selling and upselling.

4. Document outsourcing is the best way to simplify processes, reduce costs and manage risk while increasing value. While the need to reduce costs and conserve resources is a prominent one, it’s important to remember to cut the RIGHT costs and allocate your expenses to elements that will work tangent to your business goals while increasing overall efficiency. Document outsourcing is an excellent way to mitigate some of the IT spend while continuing to achieve the technological advancements that customers require.  

A great document outsourcing partner will serve as a single-source extension of your business, offering a comprehensive combination of equipment, security, delivery vehicles and software. In addition to controlling operational costs and reducing capital expenditure needs, outsourcing can provide added value through enhanced marketing opportunities and assured quality control, which ultimately allows you to devote your time to your core competency.

For a free consultation, click here.