By Garrick Sun, VP of Sales, CTP Solutions
Many pest control companies today don’t pay much attention to their billing processes because they are focused on the work they are doing in the field. However, there are some amazing new features available in today’s printing technologies that can act as a one-to-one marketing/communications vehicle and produce increased sales. One example of this is “Onsert Marketing.” Different from “insert marketing” which is cumbersome and not cost effective, particularly if your program changes, Onsert Marketing allows messaging to be printed right on your bill capturing the attention of your customers at no additional cost.
One of the benefits of using Onsert Marketing is that you can selectively market down to a singular individual based on variables such as: one’s geographic region, common pests known in these markets, seasonal pests, and any other concerns your particular demographic of client is facing. For instance, in May customers in Louisiana are typically dealing with buck moths which are a regional pest that causes intense pain from its sting and can actually be deadly if one’s immune system is already compromised. They are also known for destroying crops when in the larvae stage, so for that region, your messaging might focus on solutions to alleviate this pest while also acting as an educational tool.
Whereas in the past, a company may have spent a few thousand dollars to produce a billing insert to communicate with their customers, Onsert Marketing can provide messaging right on the bill, itself, alleviating the need for a separate document to be printed, folded and stuffed into envelopes. By using the “campaign composer” technology, companies can design their own marketing campaigns for a small, monthly cost — regardless of how many variations of messaging they produce each month.
In addition to providing a means to target market different demographics of customer, it provides the added ability to upsell existing customers on additional services. Another use of Onsert Marketing is educational in nature: your customers will appreciate your safety tips and value your know-how about any potential risks they may face.
Still another avenue you can explore with Onsert Marketing is the capability of promoting your company and your employees’ accomplishments, involvement in community service, or participation or receipt of honors and awards. You can announce a special anniversary, invite your customers to an event, or hold a contest in which you ask them to suggest ideas for future promotions – and then reward a winner with a special prize. All in all, Onsert Marketing is capable of being a sales, marketing and public relations tool when you choose to utilize it for those needs.
Now that you know about how Onsert Marketing can help your company generate more business, here’s a tip on how it can also increase productivity.
One capability that companies have been asking for, but which has not previously been available, is the ability to combine work orders with invoices. Customers like to see the specific tasks that they are paying for and invoicing has never been set up to provide this type of functionality in the past. With Onsert Marketing, that’s about to change.
Onsert Marketing has an imaging function built into it that allows companies to attach a PDF copy of each work order to their customers’ invoices, thus providing supported documentation all in one place. In the past, if a customer had a question about a work order, the employee at your company would have had to make the customer wait until that document could be located to provide the information on the specific job. Then they would have needed to scan and e-mail or mail the work order to the customer, which was non-productive/non-billable time costing the company in downtime.
With Onsert Marketing, employees will be handling fewer (if any) of these types of calls because the bill will have the work order detail imprinted or attached to the bill.
Research indicates that the more information a customer has, the faster the bill gets paid. We want to see our customers making a profit while also making their job easier. Technology is always evolving and CTP Solutions is continually seeking ways to bring more efficiency and economy to its clients in the Pest Control industry.
For more information on the new Onsert Marketing technology, please contact Garrick Sun, CTP Solutions’ vice president of sales at: (818) 483-0313 (direct line) or via email: [email protected].
About CTP Solutions:
CTP Solutions is a leading Business Process Optimization solutions provider. Our innovative solutions reduce cost, improve control and raise operational efficiency which enables our clients to improve profitability while utilizing a mixture of experience and improved processing through technology and strategic partnerships.
Our clients look to us for guidance in three distinct but connected ways:
- We are their primary source of new processes and technology. Our team is constantly out in the field, on the lookout for innovative technologies that can benefit our clients.
- We understand how to implement these technologies in a business setting in a practical way. It’s the experience of 30 years in the trenches that allows us to deliver workflow solutions that work.
- We make heroes out of our customers by reducing overhead, streamlining processes and delivering more to the bottom line by helping them see what opportunities lie ahead.
Whether it’s creating workflow processes in billing, document and label management, payables, human resources or marketing logistics, we deliver efficiencies to critical document processing. For more information, please visit our website: www.ctpsolutions.com.