Statement inserts: low cost, high return.

• Author: Turner, Jim
• Position: Direct Mail Essentials

Statement inserts may be the most unappreciated advertising medium available to banks. Financial institutions send thousands of statements each month, or, in some cases, every day. These inserts offer the opportunity to give yet one more inexpensive advertising impression to the customer.

Statement inserts are underutilized at many financial institutions for several reasons: They don't offer the ability to reach a new customer. Yet they reach the readers who are I most likely to buy ... your own customer. Many bankers feel they are not read. And, that's partly true ... not all customers read all inserts. But some portion of your audience will read them, perhaps a higher percentage than those who read noncustomer direct mail.

Inserts have their unique place in a marketing plan: They are relatively inexpensive to produce. They are relatively inexpensive to distribute. They support other mass media. There's no clutter of other institutions competing for your reader's attention as with other media.

With only 12 monthly statements in the year, you can either use the inserts as a way to cover many products, each one monthly, which otherwise might not receive much support; or, you can focus for several months each on high-margin products, perhaps tying them to your other promotional campaign, if appropriate.

For example, you might create a plan of four topics used three months each, or six topics for two months each. Either approach could allow you to print the entire year's inventory in one press run, saving money and time. However, if you use time-sensitive offers, you likely will print smaller runs for the immediate campaign.

Another approach is to inventory "stock" inserts with a generic message, perhaps promoting mortgages, etc., so they can fill in between major campaigns.

The goals in your marketing plan should dictate what products your inserts sell. Frequent candidates are higher margin products such as home equity loans, mortgages, trust or investment services...