Bill Esler

Bank statements are endlessly interesting
July 13, 2007

Customers pay more attention to printed bills and statements
than they do to online presentations. That’s what Pitney Bowes found out when it’s Group 1 Software unit commissioned a study on the subject.

Who’s the president; you know, that Texas guy?
In fact, people spend more time looking at their bank statement than they do looking at their tax assessments, and other government messages.

Lets use red ink“Evidently [government] communications are not sufficiently clear or compelling,” Andrew Greenyer, a marketing VP at Group 1 notes. “This could be something of a wake-up call for government to start using some of the attention-grabbing techniques of the commercial world.”

Revenue opportunitiesWeb statements receive significantly less attention than printed equivalents. So banks, credit card issuers, mobile telecoms companies and utilities may not want to actively migrate customers to Web self-service. Instead they couild concentrate on generating additional income through advertising on printed bills and statements—whether through additional cross-sales, or through charging an affinity partner.

“There has been much debate . . . about the demise of print with the rise of new media,” says Greyner. “And yet a great deal of attention is paid to monthly statements, especially financial and mobile telecoms. This means that any such organisation that is not using this ‘touchpoint’ as a means of putting targeted marketing offers in front of the customer is simply wasting valuable sales opportunities.”

He suggests monetizing the attention that recipients pay to statements. Affinity partners may be allowed, for a fee, to occupy the advertising slot on a statement or insert a leaflet. If such partners are also required to develop offers exclusive to the statement issuer, then the issuer can also gain brand value and customer retention benefits.

Time typically spent looking at bills, statements, official correspondence & direct mail

Direct mail remains firmly ahead of cold email in terms of the recipient attention it can command. Given the universal reach of direct mail, plus its relative lack of legislative restriction compared with email, it is likely that the medium will retain its key place iamong marketers.

Time typically spent looking at bills, statements, official correspondence & direct mail:

Over 1,000 consumers were interviewed via web survey in each of the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United States, during May/June 2007. Respondents were asked to estimate the typical amount of time that they spent looking at a range of documents, from their monthly bank statement to the direct mail they received.

For more information or a copy of the management summary, please contact John Tilbrook

Posted by Bill Esler on July 13, 2007 | Comments (0)