Direct mail: have you automated letter printing and mailing for your bank or other financial institution?
For some things, electronic messaging is just not sufficient. And nothing beats receiving a good old-fashioned letter in the mailbox. When it comes to sending critical documents or letters, sometimes it’s important to have physical copies on hand. But just because the document is not in electronic format, doesn’t mean that you can’t automate the sending process.
Welcome to Automated Direct Mail.
You send your document in electronic format, and it gets printed, enveloped, stamped, and on its way to your recipient. All you do is click send. ?
Automated Direct Mail is super easy with ClickSend.
A lot of businesses, especially financial institutions, still have their business post printed internally then manually folded, stuffed into envelopes, run through an expensive franking machine, and either taken down to their local post office/mail house or get it picked up for distribution.
There is a lot of time, effort, and resources involved in all of that.
With ClickSend Automated Direct Mail all you do is either upload your document within the ClickSend dashboard or use the print-to-mail driver, click send, and everything after that happens automatically.
After over a year of intermittent lockdowns and social distancing, savvy businesses turn to automated letter mailing for their critical business letters.
Banks and other financial institutions are massive users of physical mail across the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, NZ, Singapore, and many other nations today. Whether used for marketing purposes or transactional messaging, snail mail is most certainly alive and thriving.
As many as two-thirds of financial service providers continue to use direct mail marketing; their investment in this is growing. For example, US banks including Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and American Express favor snail mail for its high return on investment.
Who Benefits from Direct Mail Automation?
Direct mail automation can benefit:
- Banks
- Creditors
- Mortgage and Non-Bank Lenders
- Small Businesses
- Financial Advisors
- Accountants
- Investment Agencies
- Hedge Fund Operators
- Superannuation/Retirement Funds
- Insurance Companies
- Angel Investors
- ...and many more
The average ROI for random direct mail marketing campaigns is 0.5-2% (Postgrid.com) but this is significantly higher for personalized, targeted, custom financial mailings – as high as 30%. Most consumers do not find personalized physical mail to be an annoyance, and in terms of bank statements and personal mail, letters and documents sent via snail mail are preferred by most consumers from Gen Z to Seniors.
How Do Banks Use Direct Mail?
Even though 94% of consumers use online baking regularly, banks continue to achieve fantastic results with more traditional communication channels. Almost two-thirds of consumers prefer offline channels when it comes to primary contact with their financial institution and for evaluating their bank. Up to 75% of consumers also prefer traditional channels for relationship building with their chosen bank.
Direct mail elicits high response rates and is highly personalized.
Financial direct mail may come in several forms. These include (but are not limited to):
1. Bank Statements and Transaction Records
2. Debt Collection Letters
3. Credit History and Adverse Action Notices
4. Notices of Privacy Updates
5. Notice of Changes to Financial Product Terms and Conditions
6. PIN and Security Advice
Why Outsource Physical Mail Delivery?
1. Financial mail requires uncompromised levels of accuracy, security, and deliverability. This includes bank statements, invoices, financial reporting, loan documents, collection letters, PIN advice, adverse action letters, and much more. Most financial institutions outsource their direct mail delivery to third-party providers like ClickSend to ensure compliance and enhance their products further with automation.
2. Financial mail is deadline-specific and time-sensitive – prompt and exceedingly accurate delivery is imperative.
3. Save time and money. By outsourcing your mail printing and dispatch, you need not be concerned with manual mail handling, maintaining in-office printing equipment maintenance, or shipping mail – all of this will be taken care of on your behalf in a cost-efficient way.
4. The right direct mail vendor will offer advanced automation for mail delivery. Your bank or other financial institution can connect its mail with the database to automate customized mail to print and deliver statements and other documents automatically at the end of each monthly (or other) cycle.
Why Automate Direct Mail?
While in-house financial printing and letter dispatch is an option, a more favorable alternative is to outsource to a third-party direct mail delivery vendor. You can delegate all of your mailing responsibilities to a vendor like ClickSend for unrivaled service and quality while saving on time, resources, and money.
The benefits of automation for physical financial mail include:
i. Track all mail outs and deliveries
ii. Minimise human error
iii. Enhance customer data privacy
iv. Maximise efficiency
v. Assess ROI for competitive advantage
1. Direct mail automation is an effective means of customizing your products and services. By segmenting mailing lists, you can identify customer groups and better meet their needs and expectations for personal or business banking.
2. Automation is great to maintain consistent branding across all of your communications and marketing channels. By implementing messaging foundation templates, you can further save time and money.
3. Synchronise your physical marketing mail delivery with your email marketing, social media marketing, and web-based marketing efforts.
Work with ClickSend!
ClickSend is your premier automated direct mail partner and **virtual mail**room. We work across a wide pool of industries worldwide, including banks and other financial institutions. Our platform gives you access to a real cloud printer to send snail mail documents faster for delivery globally. Letters can be printed, folded, enveloped, stamped, and posted from any web-enabled computer, and our direct mail offerings include:
i. Online Post
ii. Email to Post
iii. Post API
iv. Print to Post Driver
Our direct mail service is your most environmentally friendly option and is perfect for automated statements, invoices, concealed PIN letters, bulk mail marketing, and much more.
With ClickSend, you can keep your costs down and your efficiency up! Our quality control and monitoring practices are stringent and providing we have accurate recipient address details we guarantee your mail is delivered promptly.
