Marketing Opportunities
One of the key advantages of Striata's email electronic bill delivery solution is the personalized marketing opportunity that it provides.

Billing, as a customer touch point, has always been an important marketing channel. For many billers, the monthly bill or statement is their only interaction with the customer.

With paper bill stuffers becoming increasingly ineffective and cost prohibitive, and the marketing opportunity at customer portals often lost altogether, an eBill offers prime marketing 'real-estate' that is many times more effective than a paper bill stuffer.

Many email billers maximize the electronic billing process with targeted offers that drive well qualified customer website traffic. With the Striata Platform, these offers can be individually personalized and profile targeted, promising relevant, highly visible marketing messages.

Transactional promotions or "transpromo" marketing is a highly effective way of cross-selling and up-selling existing customers. Including transpromo messages in an interactive bill is even more likely to increase response rates, as the recipient can interact with the offer immediately within the same medium. Transpromo marketing is one of the most effective channels for customer retention strategies and loyalty programs, providing numerous up and cross sell opportunities.

The major advantage of utilizing the billing platform is that commercial messages such as eBills are expected anticipated and extremely unlikely to be deleted unread. Integrating promotions into the bill guarantees the customer's attention.

Striata maximises this advantage with an advanced profiling engine that enables billers to include relevant offers based on demographic, psychographic and usage information; Profile information can include length of relationship, age, gender, income bracket, purchase activity and customer enquiry behavior.

Marketing opportunities in the email billing process

There are numerous touch points throughout the email billing cycle that present new marketing opportunities.
Examples of marketing real-estate include:
  • The email main body: the email to which the ebill is attached is an excellent platform from which new products and services can be introduced or important information provided.
  • Bill inserts: targeted, personalized marketing offers can be included in various sections,within the actual eBill attachment; such as below the payment form, on the bill summary page or the self-service page.
  • Payment confirmation emails: once the customer has submitted payment using the proprietary 'in-email' payment form, they receive an email with a unique payment confirmation number. This is an ideal opportunity to up sell / cross sell products / services or display important announcements.
  • Splash pages and pop-up messages: important communication, aimed at certain customers, can be displayed immediately on opening the eBill, or at any point during the customer's interaction with the eBill.
  • Feedback Forms: can be included in the main email body, within the eBill attachment or once payment has been submitted, for a higher than normal response rate. The recipient can complete a quick survey, enter a competition or request additional information without the need to link to a website.
  • Reporting: tracking and reporting on customer interaction with the marketing insert, provides highly valuable (and traditionally unattainable) information back to the marketing teams.

Due to the flexibility of this billing medium, recipients can receive fully personalized, targeted and relevant messages, based on a set of pre-determined business rules. The rich reporting associated with 'push' email billing, makes marketing efforts more cost effective and promotes higher take-up rates.