Marketing for (and by) Accountants

Last Updated on Thursday, 21 January 2010 12:03 Written by Kevin Wednesday, 20 January 2010 12:38

Stage one – The Simple Stuff

The next wave of marketing will originate from your accounts department. Better, more effective use of statements and invoices and inserts are coming to help market products and services to your customers – And it’s not just throwing in more promotional inserts in with the bill. Although for many companies, this is often a great place to start. For a mailhouse, it’s a simple job to not just printout the statements quickly and efficiently, but with automated machinery to insert an additional marketing or information flyer adds negligible cost, yet the impact to long terms sales can be significant.

Below is an audio interview with Mark Stevens, author of the best seller ‘Your Marketing Sucks.’ (Order here). Mark provides a typical example of how it works and the business benefits. Click on the audio icon.

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Stage two – Transpromotional

We can do better than inserts and start including marketing material and offers within the invoices or statements themselves – And in a highly targeted and effective manner.

Introducing TransPromo, short for Transaction – Promotion marketing. Transpromo allows different companies and sectors to accomplish many different things such as increasing revenue, improving customer retention rates, education, or simply reducing mailing or customer service costs.

Of course, the more you personalise communications and expand customer touch points, especially across multiple channels like print, email, the web and mobile, the more you reinforce your brand and maintain competitive differentiation.

The use of transpromo documents in the direct mail channel is very attractive, and works well for thousands of companies worldwide. There’s costs savings and response rate can improve dramatically over time.

However today customers want a choice. It can also work in email channel, with the documents delivered electronically to ‘opted in clients’ as PDF attachments.

This is particularly attractive from a client cost saving perspective, and still largely untapped. Today we’ve better, smarter tools that can generate highly targeted cross-channel promotions with much less in the way of IT development or running costs.

Seasoned marketers also know that timing is everything.  Marketers are also looking for a simpler, more cost-effective way to increase revenue and retain customers, especially in view of regular postal changes and cost increases.

TransPromo does affect content and appearance in a positive way. In addition, consumers appreciate personalized communications, prefer to receive sensitive information in paper form, and expect loyalty programs in which they can participate.

Why does TransPromo work?

There are several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that people are more likely to read the bill than normal direct mailers. The other often-overlooked reason of why transpromo works, is that because it is a transactional document largely driven from an accounting system, it holds current (and perhaps previous) details of the individuals purchases or service provided. We know that persons buying pattern and dollar spend. Much can now be presented in charts or graphs, as well as figures, making it easier to interpret. What all this means is the marketer can creatively use data to dramatically increase the success of any promotion since it can be tailored to the specific individuals needs, not just a broad demographic.  (Rafi told us this trick).

For example, if the offer was to an electrician, then you’d include an offer on electrical goods at their local wholesaler. If to a household, perhaps a food or local event promotion, (especially since we know their suburb). To a hair salon, specialist beauty or hair products. If you knew a special event, like a persons birthday, this could automatically trigger a unique offer based upon their profile.

Because the offer is tightly targeted, the response rate is normally very high and therefore can be charged accordingly if that ‘ad space’ is expertly sold to say, an outside industry partner or supplier. Some companies have be very successful with transpromo, using them to make their bills generate significant revenue, not be a monthly overhead cost.

Here’s a summary of the top opportunities I’ve identified:

• Turn a cost center into a profit center –  Any invoice ‘white space’ can be sold as an additional revenue stream.
• Increase revenue through customer spending when they respond to targeted offers that cross-sell or up-sell services and products. This can be the company, or complementary third party products or services supplied by industry partners.
• Support loyalty programs. A big opportunity here, but expert data mining with creative input is essential. 
• Better designed and more graphical bills reduce dollar costs related to inserts, postage, preprinted forms, handling and especially to call centers that handle customer inquiries or complaints.
• Selective use of traditional inserts vs transpromo documents, since the bill payer or company decision-maker isn’t always the person opening the bill! (Some cunning tracks can be used to overcome this issue).
• Increase customer touch points and selling opportunities via multi-channel marketing (leverage TransPromo across e-mail, mail, Web and customer service, for example).
• Reduce accounts receivable cycle, by integrating relevant information, colour and smart e-channel options.

It’s far less expensive to market to existing bill-paying customers, a captive audience, than it is to attract and win new customers.

A final reminder that more consumers open transactional documents and read them than direct mail pieces with multiple inserts, or those mass market letterbox flyers. Each bill typically gets several minutes attention, being ten to fifty times more than any expensive TV promotion, magazine ad or flyer.

To learn more about the exciting world of Transpromo, contact Kevin 027 244 4884