Connect Notes

We don’t know exactly when the first companies sending bills and statements to their customers started including bill stuffers and inserts in their mail, but it probably didn’t take long. These small pre-printed communications have been an easy and inexpensive way to promote products and services or inform customers for quite a while.

Unfortunately, bill stuffers don’t meet today’s standards for customer communications.

We’ve all heard stories of customers shaking the loose contents of their billing envelopes directly into the trash without ever looking at them. Companies waste time and expense to create the pieces, get them printed, and stuff the inserts into billing envelopes if customers aren’t viewing the content.

Inserts are a “one to many” message, or at best “one to some”. Billers typically deliver messages to many recipients for whom the content is irrelevant or poorly targeted. Over the years, customers receiving low-value bill stuffers have learned to ignore them. Today, consumers are accustomed to communications from companies that seem to know exactly what their customers want and when they want it. In comparison, bill stuffers clearly meant for bulk distribution don’t impress the customers.

Fortunately, technology has advanced. It is no longer necessary to rely on pre-printed inserts to educate, inform, or market to customers as they receive their monthly bills and statements. We can now use compiled customer information to craft personalized or accurately targeted promotional and informational content integrated with the main documents.

Intelligent document composition systems allow marketers to control custom text and graphics printed on the paper documents or included in electronic versions. Every customer can receive a different combination of messages in their bills, all based on criteria such as their status as a customer, renewal dates, income levels, account balances, and more. Any data that distinguishes customers can produce meaningful on-statement messages and ads.

High performing companies have discontinued generic message distribution. Issuers of transactional documents enjoy benefits from integrated dynamic messaging, or onserts, traditional bill stuffers cannot provide.

Here are some reasons to consider replacing pre-printed inserts with customized onserts:

1. Personalize the messages to make them stand out.
   Mention the customer’s name, their last purchase, their status level, or other data that tells the recipient the communication is meant just for them. Include personal URL’s that send customers to additional personalized online content.
2. Cut waste.
   With pre-printed inserts, marketers must over-order to account for spoilage. Onserts are printed along with the transactional material, resulting in zero waste.
3. Forget about obsolescence.
   No more throwing out unused material because it has gone out of date.
4. Economies of scale.
   Businesses with small mail volumes pay higher rates for printing and inserting when their print/mail service providers run the jobs independently. Switching to onserts allows providers to combine jobs into more efficient units of work, keeping costs low.
5. Cost-effective segmentation.
   Besides the operational hurdles involved in matching pre-printed inserts with the proper bills, ordering small quantities of pre-printed bill stuffers is expensive. With onserts, marketers can segment as finely as they wish with no increases in production or materials cost.
6. Electronic archive accuracy.
   Bill stuffers aren’t usually included in the transactional document images customer service representatives access to answer customer questions. Because onserts are part of the printed statements, CSR’s can answer questions about offers or notices included in the transactional documents.
7. Flexible design.
   Improve message effectiveness by using more space, up to an entire page. The US Postal Service has raised weight limits on First Class letter mail. Extra pages in transactional documents for promotional, regulatory, or informational purposes no longer increase postage costs for mail weighing up to 3.5 ounces.
8. Customer experience.
   Customers prefer to receive personalized communications even if they are ads. They want to feel unique, appreciated, and understood.
9. Take advantage of high read rates.
   Studies have shown consumers open transactional documents and spend more time with them than almost any other mail. Put promotional messages in places where customers will see them.
10. Better coverage.
    When using bill stuffers, an unexpected shortage of material due to excess spoilage, shipping delays, or print ordering mistakes can cause mailers to send documents without the intended inserts. With onserts, shortages are never a problem.

While pre-printed inserts continue to be appropriate for some communications such as regulatory notices or annual privacy policy distribution, they are a poor choice for marketing content or actionable information. Put the capabilities of modern document composition and printing technologies to work and switch to highly personalized and targeted onserts instead.