The eBilling 'Push' Advantage

Get your customers to switch to eBilling, give them the 'Push'!


For billers, being in control of customer adoption would result in the optimum decrease in operational costs through paper turn off. Likewise, for customers, the ideal eBilling adoption campaign would be a simple one click to opt-in or out. A survey shows that customers want to receive their eBill without having to do anything! - Cathy Graeber, Forrester Research 2008

Today, various eBilling options exist, but adoption remains low


With less than 10% adoption, Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) has not achieved the anticipated, nor desired results. In comparison, email delivery of bills and statements - dramatically increases customer adoption of paperless documents and electronic payments.
The 'Push' eBilling process
This traditional 'Pull' process is convenient for the biller - but cumbersome and inconvenient for many customers. Billers 'deliver' their bills electronically by posting them on a website and sending an email notification to their customers.

Striata's 'Push' email delivery solution dramatically increases customer adoption of paperless documents and electronic payments:


For an in depth understanding of Striata's 'Push' eBilling solution, go to 'How does 'push' eBilling work'

'Push' email delivery increases customer activity. The key differentiators of 'Push' email delivery are as follows:

Factors which inhibit online billing penetration:
 		Striata's eBilling Solution, in comparison:
25% of Americans are still using dial-up for internet access, at a speed of 56bps or less. (This figure is much higher in rural areas.) To register and use a secure EBPP website at modem speed is just not feasible. Doesn't require permanent, high speed internet access. Customers download their bills along with the rest of their emails.
Marketers are having difficulty effectively communicating the benefits to the consumer. The benefits to the consumer are more obvious, as their bills continue to be delivered to them as before - but as electronic documents instead of paper.
Email continues to be the communication medium of choice, yet most billers only offer internet website presentment. High comfort level by consumers of all ages in accessing and opening email.
Enticing the customer to go online and register is expensive and generally yields poor results. Expecting your customers to proactively collect their bills, when traditionally, they are used to having them delivered, you can be rest assured that the majority of them will be reluctant to do so. Increase customer activity. Unlike an online bill pay portal where customers must proactively follow a lengthy process to enroll, with Striata driven eBilling, customers just click an enroll button to join.
Customers regularly forget their usernames and passwords, resulting in expensive phone calls to the customer service center. Authentication relies on a shared secret of known information and doesn't require customers to remember or use usernames and passwords.
The drill down to search for and download a typical online bill takes between 7 and 24 clicks, requiring customers to work very hard to benefit from  this 'convenience'. Secure EBPP can be experienced in as few as two clicks - one to view and one to pay.
Security fears, such as phishing, are still hindering online payment. Bypasses consumer security fears. Unlike a website, encrypted eBills are unphishable.

For billers; 'Push' eBilling is quicker to implement and achieves exponentially higher adoption, due to customer convenience.

eBilling Sample

Combination offerings are optimal


The two offerings – 'Push' (encrypted bills delivered via email) and 'Pull' (bills posted on a secure website) provide both overlapping and unique benefits, sometimes to different customer segments. The optimal approach offers customers a hybrid model to either receive and pay their bills from within their inbox or access them online. To read more about this, visit this page 'Push' and 'Pull' Billing


    A view of the current market:

  • 75% of US adults from all demographics have internet access - Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking surveys (March 2000 - Dec 2007)
  • 90% of email users send and receive email every day, and 44% are on email constantly - DoubleClick's 6th Annual consumer Study (2005)
  • 91% of US Internet users have gone online and sent or read email, and 56% do this routinely - Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking surveys (March 2000 - Dec 2007)
  • Email users totalled 1.2 billion in 2007, expected to rise to 1.6 billion by 2011 - The Radicati Group (October 2007)
  • 92.4% percent of households pay at least one bill by mail - US Postal Service Household Diary Survey (2007)
  • 76% of consumers would prefer to receive bills via email than having to visit a website - Bank Technology News Research (April 2002)

Striata clients achieve dramatically higher adoption rates:


  • North American utility, Whitby Hydro achieved 8% paper turn-off in the first 12 months
  • Georgia based Plant Telecommunications achieved over 15% adoption in the first 7 months and saves an average of $2 per eBill
  • Although Time Warner Cable had over 40% of all customer email addresses, the company turned to Striata because Time Warner's web-based solution achieved less than 5% adoption over the past 3 years. Today, having partnered with Striata, TWC has achieved adoption rates ranging from 46.5% to 87.79% across all its regions
  • Denver Water is in the final stages of implementing its PUSH eBilling solution following disappointing results with its online solution. To date, it has achieved 14.7% adoption

The result is higher adoption and higher paper turn off rates


The 'Push' email billing solution results in higher customer adoption because it is convenient, easy to use and requires no effort by the customer. This high level of convenience has achieved high rates of paper turn off, resulting in savings on operational costs and ROI.