Getting customers to go paperless is a focus for many companies. It’s easy to ask customers to switch off their paper documents and receive electronic versions instead, but where is the best place to start?
Companies today spend a lot of time and money developing eDocument solutions to reach their end customers. However, for all of the effort that is put into developing the solution, a somewhat unequal amount of time is spent collecting customer email addresses.
Your paperless solution can be great, but if you do not have a clean, current database of customer email addresses, your project will fail. Maintaining a clean, updated email database is a critical strategy in continuously increasing your paperless adoption rate.
The two most important strategies to consider when dealing with email collection are:
1. Develop a solid email collection plan
2. Leverage every customer touch point
Develop a solid email collection plan:
A little bit of planning and effort to develop a cohesive email collection strategy goes a long way. Companies that have successful email collection strategies have a couple of things in common: they always put their plan into writing and get internal ‘buy-in’ at all levels within their organization.
A solid email collection plan should include the following steps:
- Appoint a project champion. Someone (or team) within your organization must drive this initiative.
- Develop targets, milestones and responsibilities.You constantly gain new customers, so collecting email addresses is a continuous project.
- Segment your customer/member base. Divide them into workable groups and approach each one differently.
- Understand how and where email addresses will be saved. Create a platform for storing email addresses and preference management.
- Educate all levels of staff about the value of collecting emails.
- Incentivize email collection within the organization, wherever possible.
Leverage every customer touch point:
At one point or another, every one of your customers has interacted with you – either when they first become a customer, update their information, or seek out answers regarding their service.
There are both proactive and reactive ways to reach out to your customers, but the most important thing to remember is not to lose an opportunity to acquire their email addresses.
Here are some of the best touch-points for email collection:
Call centers
Using the call center is probably your most productive method of gathering email addresses (outside of new customers). Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) are often the most frequent customer touch points. Train CSRs as soon as possible on the benefits of email collection and make it part of their routine.
Website / portal
If a customer proactively visits your website for any reason, you have already won half the battle. Even if you do not need the customer to create a profile on your website, having a page with eBilling information and a simple location where they can enter an email address and an account number will help grow your email database.
In-store (where applicable)
If you have a store, office, walk-in payment center, etc. make sure to collect email addresses at all face-to-face points.
Online payments
When customers pay online, you can ask them to provide an email address for payment confirmation.
Social media
Use social media to gather email address. Post links on social media to the pages on your website where they can provide an email address.
New customers
If possible, default new customers to paperless communications. At the minimum, make the email address field mandatory.
Print communication
Bill stuffers/envelope messages are an effective way to gather email addresses, as it is a proactive strategy that can reach every customer.
Text for email campaigns
Texting the customer and asking for an email address is a highly effective strategy but does require a mobile number to be captured in the database. There are partnerships available where texts can be sent and received from the customers at no cost to them.
Remember that email collection is a process that should always be top of mind if you have an electronic communication plan with your customers. This is never a “once and done” strategy.
Constant improvements and tweaks to your strategy will be required to meet the needs of a growing customer base that interacts with you in different ways.
We can help you develop effective email collection strategies that could mean the difference between mediocre and successful paperless adoption rates.
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