CASSCOMM’s paperless push saves trees and much more
“I would tell anyone interested in pushing paperless billing to go for it.”
This advice comes from Casey French, Director of Marketing and PR for Illinois-based CASSCOMM. He led a recent paperless push at his company to increase paperless billing adoption to above 20 percent and save the company more than $11,000 per year in postage costs.
The secret to the campaign’s success was a $5 one-time bill credit and consistently pushing the paperless billing message.
“The $5 may seem like a large credit, but we looked at the money it will save us in the long run through postage savings,” Casey said.
CASSCOMM’s paperless push started in July of 2018. At the time, only six percent of CASSCOMM’s accounts were paperless. The industry average for paperless adoption is 24 percent. After crunching some numbers with MACC’s Creative Services Team, Casey recognized the opportunity and a plan was put into place to enable CASSCOMM to boost its paperless billing adoption to the industry average and beyond.
The $5 bill credit was a great start, but getting the word out to customers was crucial. To advertise paperless billing, he said the company used bill inserts, a custom message on the outside of their billing envelopes, and a website landing page. CASSCOMM’s front office team was also heavily involved in the campaign and made sure it was discussed during customer contacts.
Understanding consistency is key, Casey said the company continues to use these methods to educate customers to keep the paperless adoption rate climbing.
“Try to hit all of the marketing aspects MACC offers,” he said. “There are so many ways to reach customers.”
So how does paperless billing work? MACC gives clients the ability to offer paperless billing through our eBill system, sending statements in PDF format directly to customer e-mail accounts, and a combination of both distribution methods. The different billing methods are controlled through Customer Master.
At CASSCOMM, Casey said the company’s customer service representatives confirm the e-mail address is correct and an electronic payment method is in place before turning the paper off and applying the $5 credit.
Besides the postage savings, paperless billing has other benefits. Customers receive their statements faster and have the opportunity to make a quicker payment. There is also no paper statement to be lost or accidentally discarded by the customer. As the payments are made electronically, there are fewer payments to manually process as paperless adoption rises. Finally, we can’t forget about the trees saved as paper use is reduced!
Now is a great time to start a paperless push at your company. A paperless adoption campaign is one of the MACC Challenge opportunities. If you contact us for help with a campaign prior to this year’s MACC Billing and Technology Conference (MBTC) in September, your company will be entered into a drawing for some awesome prizes.
As Casey mentioned, MACC has a wide variety of ways to help push your customers to go paperless. To get started, complete the form on the MACC Challenge page or contact your MACC representative for details.
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