Your budget has been slashed, but the marketing department is still looking for ways to communicate with the customer. Want to be the hero? Suggest bill-based branding campaigns!

Regardless of your print technology - color or monochrome - you can bring the bills, invoices, packing slips, and any other paper-based touch point into the customer communication strategy.

Start with the basics... gather all of the pieces of paper a customer might receive from your company. Bills, solicitations, direct marketing offers, regulatory notices, welcome kits, packing slips, rate change notices... try to find them all. Lay them on a table and take a close look at the story they tell.

1. Is the branding consistent?
2. Is the logo correct?
3. Is the typography consistent?

Often, as you look at all of the pieces together, it becomes clear that you are sending a muddy message to your customers. While each piece likely has a different owner, this is a great time to get those owners together, show them the inconsistencies, and devise a plan to at least get the outbound branding consistent.

Once you have that plan in play, what can you do to the most boring customer communications to add some pizzazz? Bills and statements might be due for an information make over that brings information about the customer relationship to the document in the form of charts and graphs to help the customer make better decisions. Packing slips might point out the websites available for support and make an offer for accessories. Even regulatory notices can have a personalized URL that guides the customer to a web page with educational and promotional content.

The idea is to think outside of the box. What can you do for "almost no money" and what can you do by attaching incremental customer communication improvements to existing projects dictated by regulatory and legal changes?

Have questions? Drop me a line! I have lots of examples!

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