4 Ways You Can Offset Printing Costs and Build New Revenue Opportunities
With increased digital fatigue and demand of consumer preference by channel, how does your organization break through the noise?
Customers pay attention to their billing statements. Almost all (96%) customers open and read their statements, spending about five minutes, or longer reviewing them. Statements spend 17 days in the home before they’re discarded.
Are you taking full advantage of your billing statements? Not if you’re only using those statements to collect payments. Often bills get sent out with multiple pages and plenty of whitespace that could be used as real estate to promote, educate, and inform current customers. You could be using billing statements to upsell/cross-sell relevant products and services and generate revenue through third-party ad sales. You can include in-statement marketing messages, encouraging people to sign up for paperless billing, saving money on paper, printing and postage.
Paper prices have skyrocketed this year, and the industry continues to face complex demands with current economic pressures. To offset those higher costs, optimize your paper billing statement by using it to sell products and services while driving digital adoption. Turning your billing statement into a sales channel increases revenue opportunities:
- Up-sell and cross-sell your products and services
- Target and personalize your message, increasing the likelihood of purchase and response
- Meet customer preference across channels with strategic marketing techniques
- Retain customers by addressing common bill questions and resolving common bill issues
- Increase brand awareness and build brand loyalty
1. Use Your Statement to Bridge Print and Digital Channels
Compose and design your statements across channels to strengthen brand consistency and customer satisfaction using intuitive composition platforms. Leverage digital tactics like QR codes, SMS short codes, and paperless billing to drive digital adoption.
2. Cross-Sell and Upsell with Targeted and Personalized Offers
Include customized, personalized messages in your print and digital billing statements. This can include:
- Custom envelopes. Carrier envelopes are the first thing customers see when looking through their mail. They will see your message even if they don’t open the statement. Take advantage of postal weight that you have already paid for, without adding paper/weight.
- Inserts. Inserts are more than five times more cost effective than running a Direct Mail campaign. Customizable, full color inserts have maximum impact and are a great leave behind.
- Ad pages. Use customized, personalized ad pages to cross-sell/upsell products and services, onboard and educate customers, and launch new products.
Related Case Study: Cable Operator Uses Personalized Ad Pages to Triple Sales Lift
3. Generate Additional Revenue by Leveraging Ad Sales
Selling ads to other companies provides an easy monthly revenue stream that can fund new projects without having to source additional budget. Third party advertisers include their inserts in your billing statements, generating revenue without increasing postage costs. Just one advertiser can generate $10,000 per month in incremental revenue. You control what company’s ad runs in your statements and when.
4. Resolve Bill Confusion and Lower Call Center Volumes
Ask contact center agents to list the most common reasons customers call with a billing question, and they’ll likely place confusion about the statement at the top. That’s what we discovered in our interview with agents at various companies, including ADT. When ADT redesigned their bill, their inbound billing inquiries dropped by 20%. Consider implementing design best practices to not only reduce costs in the cost center but solve customer frustration and improvement engagement.
Quickly Turn Your Billing Statements into Incremental Revenue Today
Take advantage of the statement you’ve already paid for—and customers are already reading—to upsell/cross-sell and generate more revenue while improving your customer experience.
Contact CSG to start putting your billing statements to work.
