We all know marketing communications are going digital. In the rush to embrace new technology, marketers have ignored other, more traditional means of reaching audiences. Transactional documents are one of those channels marketers often overlook. These are important touch points and not leveraging their potential is a missed opportunity.
Thankfully, that’s changing. In recent years transactional documents have revived as effective marketing tools. Driven by new data analysis technology, marketers are leveraging communications via transactional documents to create meaningful customer interactions. Often referred to as transpromo – a combination of transaction and promotional content – documents such as bank statements, bills, health or insurance statements, and others, are excellent vehicles to upsell, cross sell, and engage.
First, a few basics.
- Transactional documents can be deployed in print, electronically, or both.
- You can include a marketing message directly on the statement, or as full-color marketing pages added to the document, such as a special offer or other promotion.
- You can incorporate action triggers that direct audiences to your website, a personalized URL, or other digital touch points.
- You can integrate other technologies into printed pieces, such as augmented reality and QR codes. If your document is in digital format, you can add active links.
- You can use transactional documents as a standalone delivery strategy or incorporate them into cross media campaigns that include several touch points.
- Transpromo isn’t just for marketing messages. Organizations are using the same techniques to deliver targeted informational and educational content to their customers via their regular monthly transactional documents.
The Benefits of Transpromo
During a time of email backlash, and messages on other platforms that often miss more than hit, transactional documents offer several advantages that make them standout marketing tools. Let’s look at some of them.
- Transactional documents get seen almost 100% of the time. Social media posts can be sporadic, and emails have a pallid open rate of about 20% or less. But transactional documents are opened nearly always because they contain information your audiences need to see. This is true of both online and printed documents.
- Consumers also keep transactional documents for longer periods so your message will receive extended viewing or repeat viewings.
- These documents feature a built-in trust factor that others lack. People may not enjoy receiving bills, but they trust banks, insurers, or other entities with whom they have business relationships with their private information. That trust extends to the promotional messages you include on the statements. No other platform delivers in this way.
- A transactional document delivers a double punch: the actual account information for the client and your message. That makes it an extremely cost-effective delivery mechanism. You’ll incur no extra print charges, no added mailing expenses, no inventory, and no extra paper to add transpromo content to your existing documents.
- With today’s production inkjet presses, you also get high-quality print that elevates your message with great color reproduction and total variability in one pass. You can print exactly what you need with no overruns and no need to stock pre-printed forms or inserts.
- With transpromo, you control targeting and personalization. You can make offers, or craft messages, based on any number of criteria, from shopping habits, to complaints received, to geographic location, age, and so on. The more data you collect, the more you can create messages that resonate with your audiences. This degree of personalization isn’t possible with pre-printed inserts stuffed into transactional document envelopes.
- Marketers sometimes criticize print because it doesn’t have the trackability of digital platforms. But when you integrate other technologies, such as links, QR codes, or PURLs, you can turn your printed document into a very trackable piece and use that information accordingly.
A key to triggering the benefits of transactional documents is the ability to mine and manipulate data. Today’s print service providers offer data assistance in addition to printing. Ask our experts how you can leverage the power of transactional documents by adding data-driven messaging to material you’re already sending to your customers.
