As a consumer, what’s your first thought when you find a credit offer in your stack of snail-mail? Do you open it? Do you wonder why you’re receiving it? Let’s be realistic. Despite creative packaging, inventive offers and a shuffling of the target list, a lot of these credit offers go unnoticed.

So, if snail mail offers aren’t meeting your conversion targets, you may want to pivot to email to drive engagement. While you’re reading this article, your email is probably open on another screen — or at least readily accessible to you. Email is with you all day. (In fact, some people travel to exotic or remote areas just to escape it!)

Therefore, credit marketers need to consider extending their campaigns to email. It’s less expensive, easier to test and provides a quicker response. In fact, consumers may be so used to getting (and ignoring) credit offers in the mail that they may be surprised by a custom offer in their inbox.

How Firm Offers of Credit Are Sent Via Email

But how can this digital credit marketing work? Can FCRA-compliant firm offers of credit or insurance be sent to Prescreen prospects via email? The answer is “yes.” And the process doesn’t have to be complex.

• First, Prescreen lists are matched to email addresses based on well-developed match logic.
• Then, email addresses are appended, and a multi-step hygiene process is applied to optimize email deliverability.
• Finally, the email list is ready for execution.

Extending firm offers to your Prescreen audience via email can reinforce your direct mail efforts. Or, you can save money by sending direct mail to a portion of your Prescreen list and email to the rest. Another option is to skip expensive direct mail entirely and reallocate your budget toward reaching a targeted Prescreen audience only via email.

Squeaky-Clean Email Hygiene

Let’s come back to hygiene. It’s the most critical part of the process for ensuring your emails reach the right inbox.

The multi-scrub hygiene process guarantees 99% deliverability. Here’s how it works:

• Initial scrub: This step screens out the most common email deliverability issues, such as invalid email formats, misspellings and spam trap suppressions.
• Secondary scrub: Now we go a little deeper by examining toxic or undesirable emails, applying DMA “Do Not Email” requests, and checking FCC wireless domains.
• Prescreen Permission Pass: For Prescreen firm offers of credit or insurance, this final step filters out opt-out requests and guarantees that 99%* of the final email addresses on the first marketing mailing are valid and deliverable.

The expense of direct-mail may only offer you one chance to make an impression. But with Prescreen emails, you have 60 days to test, optimize and resend. That’s 60 days to check open rates, change time of day, update email design and re-present offers.

If you’re seeking a cost-effective method for engaging and converting more consumers, then email should be part of your digital credit marketing strategy. Or if you’re struggling with deliverability for your Prescreen email campaigns, then try Equifax’s triple-scrub hygiene process.

Source: Hankins, Lyra. (2018, December) Digital Credit Marketing: 99% Email Deliverability…Really [Web Article]. Retrieved from https://insight.equifax.com/digital-credit-marketing-99-email-deliverability-really/?intcmp=article__recommended