In my mind, building your brand and building customer loyalty are key to providing an excellent customer experience. There are many other factors: product, price, people, sales and marketing. But the primary factor that builds long term loyal customers is a consistent positive customer experience.

In all communications with our clients, we can push information to them via email, and then pull them to the website / portal to enhance the experience.

The Push advantage

‘Push’ communication provides us with opportunities to send tailored, specific communications to the customer base. The advantages are immense:

• Cater for each customer’s preference on channel, device, time of day/week and content.
• Can feature customer-specific details that enrich their own experience.
• Helps educate customers on further product offerings, and additional services.
• Can harness the power of transpromo marketing.
• Can include buttons and links to the website/portal.
• eDocuments can include a variety of additional services- such as payments, updating details and reminder setting.
• Various platforms could push customer-centric communication such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and WeChat.

The Pull advantage

The ‘Pull’ option provides a single, consolidated home for all the information. It also offers features that enhance the customer experience.

• All customer information is housed in one place.
• All documents can be securely, efficiently, stored and easily referenced.
• Customer preferences can be collected through polls and surveys and then used to tailor both the online experience and the email communications to specific needs.
• Easier to update and refresh the portal.

The ‘pushmi-pullyu’ beast

The great literary contribution of Hugh Lofting presents us with a perfect analogy of how the two communication types (push & pull) work together. The beast to which I am referring is the pushmi-pullyu (pronounced “push-me—pull-you”) that features in Dr Dolittle.

This cross gazelle-unicorn has two heads which can either work in unison or against each other. If it tries to move, both heads go in opposite directions, meaning the beast gets nowhere. But if it assigns each head to a specific job (such as talking or eating), then the beast is able to function.

Similarly, the combination of both push email communications and the pull to a website option should always work together, not against each other. This creates the harmonious synergy that results in a great customer experience.

Combining push & pull communications – pushmi-pullyu

Let’s consider how push and pull complement each other in the secure documentation space:

• Sending secure documents to customers via email encourages engagement because customers are comfortable with the document security . With no security concerns and the convenience of receiving documents via email, customers are easily encouraged to take advantage of various time saving self-service options available online.
• Hosting the secure documents online for retrieval by the customer provides the modern customer with options that they nowadays demand. The same emailed documents can be hosted and accessed via the secure portal; or if preferred the customer can opt to just be notified that their latest documents are now available online
• Combining push & pull gives customers alternative payment options (eBilling): Customers can choose to pay at the portal or via a payment form that is embedded in the email bill – which is protected and secure. Trusted links can also be included within the email bill to ‘pull’ customers to portals, where they can view their billing history, update their profile or manage an account – ultimately ‘pulling’ qualified traffic to your portal!
• Personalised marketing offers with trusted links can also be included in the secure document , once again allowing you to ‘pull’ qualified traffic to your portal!

And… combining ‘push’ messaging and portal ‘pull’ means that whenever your customers want to engage or source information, there is at least one avenue available to provide this service. Only one half sleeps at a time . . . the other always watching!

It’s clear to me that a combined push and pull communications strategy will enhance brand building and create great customer loyalty.