Establishing, achieving, and maintaining digital adoption and paper suppression targets are complex and interdependent processes. Without paper suppression, companies cannot achieve a return on investment on the provision of digital services. Without investing in both a strategy and execution programs to attract customers to digital services, customers will continue to rely on paper.
Despite the potential business benefits, roughly 30% of companies lack a communication plan to inform customers of their digital services.1 For the remaining companies with a digital adoption strategy, the strategy is often lacking marketing sophistication or the company has not staffed to achieve execution proficiency, which can sabotage corporate adoption and paper suppression goals.
Key factors that undermine digital adoption efforts include:
- Inability to set realistic targets/goals for their industry and company
- Ignoring strategies that maximize the available marketing budget
- Lack of internal change management
- Misalignment of marketing messaging with the customer base
- Failure to measure and refine campaigns
- Ineffective execution approaches
- Lack of ongoing customer feedback relative to satisfaction with the digital services offered
At Broadridge, we leverage deep industry experience across technology, data analytics, process management, and customer engagement to help our clients achieve their digital adoption and paper suppression goals.
This whitepaper highlights the strategies our Digital Adoption Consulting Services experts recommend to minimize the key pitfalls.
Define a Digital Adoption Strategy with Realistic Goals
An organization without a clear, well-defined marketing and communication plan with achievable goals will never succeed in a digital adoption program.
Even though 79% of homes now have Internet access2 and 75% of consumers own smart phones,3 a high percentage of customers are still not informed about the digital delivery and payment options available to them. If there is no communication relative to the digital services available or the benefits they provide, adoption suffers. Without a focused marketing and communication plan, customers remain unaware and the goals established around digital adoption remain unfulfilled.
Consumers’ willingness to give up paper varies significantly by document type and by industry. Many organizations set goals and targets that are not achievable within their industry and their company. In general, companies have a tendency to be overly optimistic when setting paper suppression targets. Case in point, when asked about their paperless delivery rates and expectations by InfoTrends,4 business respondents across a variety of industries provided estimates that InfoTrends considers unrealistic unless businesses transform their approaches to driving adoption.
Establishing realistic goals requires a broad knowledge of the digital adoption landscape and key success factors. This knowledge base may not be available internally.
Each business must understand their own unique breakeven suppression levels, the percentage of their customer base that are potential adopters, and the number of touches for each customer segment that are necessary to drive adoption. An overall cost benefit analysis must consider not only the cost of an digital delivery solution but also the cost to continually and efficiently position that solution with the customer base. Adoption targets should be set in aggregate and for each customer strata; marketing plans should be similarly segregated.
Achievable goal percentages may be lower than those originally defined or desired by many organizations. However, print costs can be reduced as a result of achieving as little as 10 to 20% paper suppression, depending on the size of the company and the cost of the digital delivery platform. Keys to a lower breakeven level are efficient implementation and maintaining printing, mailing and digital solutions with the same supplier to achieve efficiencies.
Broadridge has enabled many organizations to take this first, most critical step to putting a plan in action. With knowledge of a myriad of industries, as well as the tools available to support our clients’ processes, we can assist in establishing realistic adoption goals and then tailoring a strategy specifically designed to meet those goals.
Define Strategies That Maximize Results for Dollars Spent
Most companies dedicate only 5 to 15% of their budget to digital channels5 and often this budget is wasted on marketing strategies, such as extravagant sweepstakes or bill inserts, that are both widely used and widely ineffective for this purpose.
Leveraging your existing print coupled with small incentives is the most economic and effective approach for driving results. Expensive sweepstakes to win a car, a trip, or an iPad®, etc., have not proven to be effective in driving customer action. According to InfoTrends,6 consumers cited cash incentives as the number one driver for giving up paper.
Incorporating strategic messaging on existing printed statements provides the opportunity to tailor the message to the recipient by focusing on issues that resonate with their age group or stage of customer lifecycle. Messages can be placed in various places on the statement at different times to highlight various features. Messages promoting the benefits of convenience, such as those outlined below, resonate with most groups:
- “All the records without the clutter. Go paperless and get two years of online statement storage for FREE.”
- “Looking for a particular transaction? Search easily with online statements.”
- “Need all of your statements for a mortgage application? They’re waiting for you online.”
Additionally, personalized on-statement messaging is less expensive and more targeted than inserts. On average, across all major vertical markets and marketing applications, relevance can deliver more than four times the response of static, same-to-all messaging.7 Static messages can be effective, however, when placed on the outside of the envelope, such as a “Hot Note.”
“We not only achieved our goal, but we exceeded it. We also achieved our other initiatives, which included cost savings for our company as a whole and reduction in paper consumption as a part of our green efforts.”- Vice President at a financial services company and Broadridge client
A Hot Note, a product Broadridge offers, is a die-cut area built into the envelope wall that is easily removed and adheres like a sticky note. Customers can peel the Hot Note from the envelope and stick it to their statements or any surface as a reminder. Hot Notes have proven results, more than doubling digital adoption within two months for one of our clients.
Broadridge takes a holistic view of all promotional avenues available, through both print and digital channels, to define a strategy designed to optimize client-specific digital adoption budgets and success.
Leverage a Change Management Plan to Drive Internal Awareness and Support
Many organizations that have a communication plan focus strictly on external promotions. They never drive the change management efforts necessary to make their internal teams aware of the new digital offerings available.
To drive success, customer-facing personnel must understand the benefits of the digital services—for both the customer and their company. Customers trust technology recommendations when they come from an individual, such as an employee of the company, versus a promotion generated from a digital source, like banner ads. Prepare customer-facing personnel to encourage customers to go paperless with every customer interaction by providing specific scripting and tools that highlight the benefits of digital services. Track digital adoption progress and make it visible to the team, so they can see how their efforts are paying off.
Broadridge focuses on getting all stakeholders engaged in achieving common goals and offers assistance with messaging and support for infrastructure development to foster ongoing, two-way communication.
Execute Digital Adoption Campaigns Aligned With Your Customer Base
A key step in defining a marketing and communication strategy is stratification of the customer base to understand demographics. This stratification is critical to devising the messaging, approach, and communication tools for a specific audience. Clearly articulating the customer benefits through all communication channels, as well as addressing any concerns about digital adoption or paper suppression the customer might have, is imperative.
Since perceived benefits or concerns relative to digital adoption differ depending on the customer’s age, gender, and geographic location (among other factors), no single message or strategy is the silver bullet. Targeted messaging helps to promote advantages and alleviate the concerns specific to that customer.
The top three benefits of receiving bills and statements digitally are speed of delivery (36%), convenience (36%) and the ability to easily access and manage (30%).8 Yet, most companies only use “green” messaging for their digital adoption communications and never vary that theme. Contrast the type of messaging being used most aggressively with customer perception of key benefits of going paperless and it is clear why “green” does not mean “go” in digital adoption marketing.
Employing a strategy that leverages and rotates different messages offers the best opportunity to maximize paper suppression goals.
In addition to defining compelling benefits to the customer base, messaging that combats concerns relative to eliminating paper is important to the strategy. The number one deterrent to digital adoption was security and privacy risks as reported by over 26% of the participants of the 2013 Madison Advisors Multi-Channel Delivery Market Study. To avoid these deterrents to paper suppression, messaging needs to incorporate language that explains how the digital delivery platform protects consumer’s personal information.
Targeted messaging campaigns should also focus on encouraging and reminding existing online customers to suppress paper. Distribute messaging to this targeted customer base through a variety of media on a periodic basis that explains how to “turn off” paper and the benefits of doing so.
Broadridge helps its clients develop a baseline understanding of current digital adoption percentages to assess where the greatest penetration currently exists and then develops strategies to replicate that success with other customers of the same demographic. For clients who are new to digital services, we analyze the customer base to identify segments with the highest propensity to adopt and accelerate adoption by focusing campaign execution on the most likely candidates first.
“Person-to-person “marketing” through internal personnel has shown to pack twice as much punch as other communication channels – particularly with those customers who are more reluctant to adopt.” - The Financial Brand, March 2015
“Customer-to-customer recommendations are one of the most effective marketing tools. 90% of customers trust peer recommendations while only 14% trust advertisements.” - Socialnomics 2014
“Many consumers still want their paper, citing the top three benefits of paper bills and statements as recordkeeping (41%), as a reminder to make a payment (33%) and security precautions (20%).” - Keypoint Intelligence-InfoTrends Annual State of Transactional Communications Consumer Survey, 2018
Which Channels do Your Providers Use That Deliver The Most Impressive Communications?
Create Measurements and Monitor Results Regularly to Sustain Success
There is no “one size fits all” strategy. A single incentive program or marketing campaign across a diverse audience is not going to work for achieving digital adoption goals. Success requires continued management and monitoring of results. Specific measurements should be developed to identify the need for new campaigns and guide refinement of existing campaigns.
Key Measures include:
- Adoption progress (or decline) for each customer strata
- Assessment of delivery methods and messaging driving greatest (or least) results
- Percent of customers reverting back to print and the reason why
It is important to review adoption measurements at least monthly. The review process should include root cause analysis to understand drivers for both positive and negative results. The results of the review should drive associated refinements to the adoption strategy for sustained success. For example, understanding the erosion of digital adoption percentages being driven by customers reverting back to print can drive messaging changes that combat those root causes.
The top three reasons customers still want to receive paper versions of their transactional communications is they use them as reminders to pay (38%), they are free (30%) and they use them for archival purposes (27%).9 By understanding these key drivers, campaign messaging can be amended to combat this concern. For example, incorporating messaging into the next adoption campaign that promotes the fact that a digital “filing cabinet” is an innate part of the digital platform through a digital archive service could help to reduce this impact going forward. Analysis of this data could also provide insight into potential gaps in digital offerings (e.g. the current digital suite does not support archive or payment reminders).
Broadridge provides recommendations for a detailed measurement framework aligned with customer-specific business operations and adoption goals. This includes guidance on how to leverage that information to refine the digital adoption program over time.
Refine Your Execution Approach
The traditional marketing “Rule of Seven” states that customers need at least 7 “touches” in order to respond to an offer. In recent years, that average has increased to 13 touches. To ensure neither the messaging nor the approach become stale, attention should be drawn to messages through the use of color, font size, and type style to prevent customers from “reading over” a call to action.
Varying delivery methods is just as important as creating variability in messaging. Different media appeal to different customer segments. Incorporating multiple methods of delivery into the marketing and communication strategy is essential to driving the highest digital adoption and paper suppression results.
For example, following a statement message with a text alert for “Gen Y” customers saying “Text ‘GO PAPERLESS’ to this number for online service” is a fast, easy way to get this group to opt-in. Consumers have different preferences for learning about digital services but the top channels are email, statement messaging, and special letters10 specifically describing the digital services.
Leveraging different channels is also an excellent way to demonstrate how online statements work. For example:
- Adding augmented reality services to statements lets customers visualize online information and can take them directly to the online site from their phone or the webcam on their PC.
- A secure email can demonstrate the security of online statements.
- Using a special letter to say “Was this left outside your door? That would never happen with an online statement” further underscores digital delivery security benefits.
Combining the information relative to customer stratification, preferences, and available touchpoints can allow resources to be used most effectively. Marketing and related expenses can be minimized for those least likely to be receptive to digital services and, instead, focus on those most likely to adopt.
Another execution conundrum is the relative value of carrots (offering incentives) and sticks (charging penalties) in driving digital adoption and paper suppression results. As noted previously, consumers cited cash incentives as the number one “carrot” for giving up paper.
Assessing penalties for receiving paper may seem appropriate to some companies, but “the stick” should be used with caution. While the InfoTrends report shows that 23% of customers felt that charging to receive a paper statement would be an effective method of getting them to convert, this is down significantly from the 2013 results of 64%. Additionally, 60% of those responding to the Madison Advisors Multi-Channel Delivery Market Study 2013 indicated that using fees to discourage print would result in customers looking for another provider.
Graph: Annual State of Transactional Communications Consumer Survey, Keypoint Intelligence-InfoTrends, 2018
“An objective third-party review of an established program within a large telecommunications provider uncovered that stale email addresses were eroding digital adoption results. After putting a formalized measurement and monitoring process in place to identify this issue and receiving guidance on targeted messaging tactics to accelerate results, adoption increased from 23% to 30% within a six-month timeframe.” - Transformation Management Consulting, LLC, 2012
Of course there is a third approach: automatic shut off. This option is most often applied to those consumers already receiving digital statements while also receiving paper. “Double dippers” can receive a series of online and statement messages, requiring them to opt-in to continue receiving paper. This can be followed by paper suppression. Automatic shut off has the best results and the lowest potential backlash when performed as part of online enrollment.
Broadridge provides a thorough analysis of your business, current adoption rates, future goals, and customer demographics to build a targeted, executable, ongoing plan for engaging your customer base and driving digital adoption results.
Success Brings More Success
Making customers a part of your program is a great way to keep them from reverting back to paper and keeping your digital services fresh and relevant. It is also an effective way to make sure that the scope of services and available channels continue to meet customer needs. While digital channels are more cost effective for companies, if that efficiency comes at the cost of the customer experience, it can become expensive very quickly.
Periodic surveys and call center scripts can be used to gauge customer satisfaction with digital services and to gather testimonials for furthering adoption efforts. Customer-to-customer recommendations are one of the most effective marketing tools.
Broadridge helps clients ensure that digital services are meeting customer needs on an ongoing basis through analysis of customer behavior and development of surveys, focus groups, user-group forums, and marketing and observational studies, as well as predictive modeling.
Enhancing Your Digital Adaption Strategy
To avoid the digital adoption and ROI pitfalls that many organizations have encountered, a clear plan of action needs to be established. Below are key elements to consider:
- For companies with existing digital solutions, begin by developing a baseline understanding of current adoption and paper suppression percentages by customer strata.
- Stratify the overall customer base by age group, gender, geographic location, economic status, etc. to identify and prioritize customers for digital adoption based on propensity to adopt.
- Develop specific, tailored messaging and communication approaches based on different customer stratifications. Marketing messages should also be varied as a customer moves through the lifecycle of their relationship with the organization.
- Align messaging and delivery channels to customer strata to foster further growth in those demographic areas where strong adoption already exists and to enhance penetration into other customer segments.
- Balance campaign execution strategies with a mix of existing print, carrots, and sticks to minimize the overall cost of your digital offer.
- Establish measurements to understand the true Marketing Return on Investment (MROI) for each channel used: statement marketing, envelopes, email, web, direct mail, etc. Balance the cost and effectiveness of the messaging and channels used.
- Dedicate resources to support execution of the marketing plan and to define key measures of success. Ongoing messaging does not happen without ongoing support and that includes the support of senior management.
- Measure the results achieved on a monthly basis and modify the campaign strategy based on what has been effective historically and in recent campaigns. Preferences shift and your marketing must shift with them.
- Reach out to customers for testimonials on the value and convenience of digital services.
- Measure satisfaction with digital solutions to ensure hardwon adopters aren’t lost due to service issues.
However insightful and well-crafted a digital adoption marketing and communication strategy may be, the technology that supports the program must meet all of the customers’ needs to be successful. In addition to establishing a digital adoption program, it is important to ensure the digital delivery platform supports key customer requirements.
Much like marketing messages need to be flexible to meet different customers’ needs, the platform needs to offer that same level of flexibility. Customers want options relative to selecting the documents they want to receive digitally and those they want to remain in paper. The ability to specify communication preferences for notification of statement availability, such as email vs. receiving text alerts via a mobile phone, is another key component to dispelling concerns relative to paper suppression. In the Madison Advisors Multi-Channel Delivery Market Study 2013, 80% of the respondents indicated that receiving an email with a PDF download was the preferred method of receiving their statement versus an online view only. The retention period for availability of online statements is another key factor that impacts digital adoption.
In conclusion, a successful digital adoption strategy requires a well-crafted digital adoption marketing and communication strategy that is tailored to the company’s demographics. However, no marketing efforts can compensate for an inadequate digital delivery platform. Ensure the technology platform being promoted delivers the benefits highlighted within the marketing campaigns and eliminates concerns that may create barriers to digital adoption.
Capitalizing on Broadridge’s recommendation to draw further attention to the “call to action,” a financial services company was able to increase adoption by 30%.