Electronic or Printed Delivery? That Is the Question

BY Joe Czyszczewski, InfoPrint Solutions Company

This article brought to you by OutputLinks' European Media Partner 4IT Group.

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Is virtual communication killing the printing of documents? Can the Internet ever meet the needs of everyone? Here is a picture of the market.

When I meet people and tell them what I do, I often hear comments like, "Isn't everyone moving to the Web" or, "I thought printed statements were all being phased out.”

This article looks at what I believe is actually happening in the market, and what it could mean for document professionals.

It's all going electronic
There's certainly been a massive growth in use of the Internet for transaction documents. The latest European research from InfoTrends states that 42 percent of consumers expected to use electronic presentment by 2013 (c. 15 percent today). And, according to APACs, in the UK, online banking is growing steadily – from 3.5 million online bank users in 2000 to 21 million in 2007.

However, that's not the full picture. Many people (including me!) bank online and receive printed statements. What's more, even in the UK – one of the world's wealthiest countries – some 11 million people don't have access to Internet.

So can the Internet ever meet the needs of everyone? 

It's an age thing

A very popular view is that anyone under the age of 25 will conduct all of their business online in the future. Interestingly, the latest research from Royal Mail says that this target group actually responds well to printed communication. If my son is anything to go by, he lives his life on his mobile phone - and he never uses e-mail (and he still receives printed statements --- which are never opened, judging by the growing pile of them in my house).

It's really all about choice

What most surveys --- as well as intuition --- tell us is that people like their options. They don't want electronic or paper: often, they want both. Increasingly they want communications to smart phones as well. According to Royal Mail research, direct mail and online advertising works positively in conjunction with one another because “Consumers want to engage with direct mail and online --- they have specific attributes and affordances that mean that they go especially well together”.

So, for the document professional, this means their customer communications works best when delivered in a multi-channel, integrated fashion.

It’s all about effectiveness

The big issue for printed communications is cost. According to InfoTrends, as much of 70 percent of the cost of each transaction document is actually the postage or delivery cost. However, electronic delivery --- whether it’s via e-mail, smart phone, SMS --- has a cost, too.

Electronic delivery may be cheaper than printed, but is it more effective? When you compare the effectiveness of printed communications versus electronic then printed should win hands down for two reasons: deliverability and trust.

• Deliverability - Printed communications are much more likely to reach the customer. In contrast, e-mail deliverability is a major issue; get just one character wrong and your message doesn't get through, and then you have to get through spam filters and the like before you reach the inbox. 

• Trust - Then there's the issue of trust. Printed communications is a trusted medium; there's a formality about print that you just don't get with electronic communications. That's why, according to DMA, 86 percent of people open printed direct mail (and 95 percent plus read transaction documents). In contrast with all the issues over spam, viruses and phishing, electronic communications is an untrusted medium. No wonder that, according to Andy Owen of Andy Owen & Associates, “Opening rates of e-mail are now at an all-time low. And they are still falling. Down to 11.9 percent at the last count.”   

So, here's an interesting question: If the costs of delivering a printed document were the same as electronic, would anyone even question the future of printed communications?

Conclusion: it’s all about reducing your delivery costs
If you accept my argument that you need a multi-channel strategy for delivery of your transactions documents, then you will need to look very carefully at your delivery costs. Here are some things to consider:

• Clean your database: amazingly in the UK, according to The Read Group, out of 1 billion items of B2B direct mail sent every year, 184 million of which is being sent to companies that have moved or ceased trading.  By cleaning their database, they could save 20% of their Delivery costs.

• Redesign your documents to combine messages. For instance, some businesses in the U.K. whose offers include the “notice of sums in Arrears,” required by the Consumer Credit Act 2006, on their statement, would be better suited to combine that message with another one, alleviating the need for two communications.

• Mail sorting – Royal Mail offer discounts in return for the time savings you make on its behalf by doing some of the work involved in sorting and processing your mail. For instance, Tariff discounts from two percent to 4.7 percent are available on bulk direct mail that adheres to a range of green criteria.

In conclusion, if you can cost-reduce your delivery of printed transaction documents then you can enhance and develop your documents to make them more targeted, better integrated and other communication channels, and last but not least more effective.

Joe Czyszczewski is the chief sustainability officer at InfoPrint Solutions Company.