A strong brand for your business, who wouldn’t want that? The first thing you probably think of is having a reliable product and a dedicated customer care department. But think further. For the future, we expect that the tedious process of sending bills will be your differentiator in terms of building a brand.
This is billing 2020; the collective name for all the knowledge and expertise around digital bill payment. It obviously refers to the year 2020, as well as a clear vision. We don’t have a crystal ball that predicts the future, but we do expect that the number of paper bills will decrease quickly. The future is now and customers want their bills send to their mobile, tablet, desktop or smart watch. Via any platform - email, SMS, social media or chat apps. Within these various devices and channels, email will remain everywhere. Unlike what some thought leaders claim, email is more prevalent than ever and there are no signs that this will change soon. In 2015 85% of our population over the age of 12 uses email, 56% uses social media.
So email is here to stay. This is good news for companies that send out bills on a regular basis. Email is constantly changing, developing, and producing rich data. Email provides great segmentation, automation and personalization capabilities, and thus high open and click rates. Add to that the huge wealth of data that email produces (opens, clicks, bounces, etc.). All of this can help companies to optimize the collection process and reduce the amount of time and money spent to collect outstanding bills. It’s a fact that customers who receive transactional emails tend to pay on time. From a billers’ perspective this means less reminders and more working capital.
But back to having a strong brand reputation. The way mailbox providers are interacting with email is fundamentally changing. Not so long ago, the recipient decided which mails were arriving in his mailbox, probably with the help of a spam filter. But times are changing. To keep spammers out, mailbox providers are also the gatekeepers of your mailbox. They will increasingly rely on domainbased reputation to judge incoming mail. Senders will need to maintain a pristine reputation to pass their filters. Only emails that can be authenticated, personalized and have enough engagement, will stay in your inbox. This is the way Gmail works today. And other mail providers will follow. Did you know that 97 percent of people globally can’t correctly identify a sophisticated phishing email? Customers are 42 percent less likely to do business with you if you are being targeted by a phishing attack, regardless of whether or not they are actually getting tricked into giving up their information.
Companies with 2020 vision need to take an ambitious step. They need to give a higher priority on promoting and defending the brand image and experience. That means that the billing process is not only the CFOs concern. Also the CTO, CMO and newcomers CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) and CBO (Chief Brand Officer) are now involved. Where the competition is having their name dragged through the mud because of phishing attacks, companies with 2020 vision are protecting their customers and maintain customer trust. They do this by purchasing the right technology from the right partner, who respects the rules of email service providers (ESPs) and understand how spam filters and email server reputations work.