E-Bills Become Marketing Tools, Too

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January 26, 2001 (7:57 AM EST)

By L. Scott Tillett,

The online bill -- just like a paper bill in an envelope stuffed with promotions -- is increasingly being viewed by e-tailers as an opportunity to improve the customer relationship. And new software tools are emerging to help them do exactly that.

BoldFish Inc. next week will release a $25,000 developers' tool kit that lets e-business IT managers integrate e-mail functions into electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) systems. This would let an e-business send personalized offers to customers in e-mails that also alert them to the availability of their online bill.

At Saks Inc., which uses EBPP software from edocs.com, company officials last week began working toward a similar goal. Mike Rodgers, senior vice president of credit for Saks, said his company will use the edocs software to determine which customer segment a customer falls into -- based on the online bill -- and offer tailored promotions based on that information. For each segment, Saks will serve up a banner ad promoting a relevant product.

"It is all about using the content of the billing invoice to create a customer conversation and an ongoing relationship," said Darryl Dobin, executive vice president for customer operations at Avolent, an EBPP software vendor.

At Saks, the EBPP-meets-CRM approach should create new selling opportunities but should also keep visitors coming back to the site, according to Rodgers. The service should be rolled out to the public in March. Right now, Saks is testing it with its credit-card-holding employees. After the full public rollout, Saks will focus on adding more CRM functionality to online billing.

"We're going the slow approach," Rodgers said. "This is the first step." He also said the biggest challenge will be winning customers over to the idea of online billing. Saks has 12 million credit-card holders and processes about 3 million statements per month.

Jeetu Patel, executive vice president at technology-research firm Doculabs, said the union between EBPP and CRM has implications for other industries. For example, telecommunications companies might instantly generate online offers for an international calling plan if a customer's bill one month includes more international than domestic calls.

And although vendors such as BoldFish, edocs, and Avolent are stepping forward with offerings that add CRM to EBPP, the future remains a bit cloudy.

"What's not established right now is how quickly companies are adopting this technology," Patel said. So far only about 5 percent of the 15 billion bills generated in the United States each year are viewed and paid electronically, said Patel. Cheaper Internet access and new CRM functionality tied to EBPP software should draw more EBPP users in the next three years, he said.

And still, the trick is to make online bill-paying easier than writing a check, according to Patel, who said consumers haven't really reached the "pain point," where writing a check becomes an aggravation. In addition Patel said IT organizations will have to figure out which CRM applications they can marry with new EBPP apps.