Cary's review of the InfoTrends TransPromo Summit had me digging through all my recent statements and transactional documents looking for prime examples of the application.
As I hunted through my filing cabinet looking for TransPromo documents, I received a marketing email from from Chase Bank detailing the environmental benefits of going paperless.
According to the email, I could help protect the environment by switching over to electronic statements:
When it comes to protecting the environment, every effort can add up. It's easy to help conserve with Chase Paperless Statements. Going paperless makes managing your credit card statements easier, and contributes to the effort to conserve paper. With the help of our customers, over 94 million sheets of paper were conserved last year alone.
The email didn't just play off my concern for the environment. It also promoted the organizational and privacy benefits of paperless statements:
With Paperless Statements you can:
View up to 6 years of statements online. Don't get buried in paper - your account information can be available to you when you need it, from any computer with internet access.
Receive e-mail notifications when your monthly statement is ready.
Decrease your exposure to identity theft. With paperless statements, there's no monthly statement to get lost in the mail or discovered by others. Reviewing your statements online is easy, safe and secure.
Will the paperless statement movement hamper the growth of TransPromo documents? Or are the perceived benefits TransPromo documents bring enough to make marketers continue to use paper?
Discussion
By Thomas D. Greer on Sep 05, 2007
Most electronic statements go through the same process to create a document as paper statements, with only one change near the end of the process: print, or PDF?
When you need to review your electronic statement, what do you do? Print it.
By Noel Ward on Sep 06, 2007
Well maybe you print it. Depends on the need, I think. If I just need to look it over the screen is fine. If I have to check a lot of things or do taxes, I print it. But I sure don't print my statements (cards, utils, phones, etc) anywhere near 12X a year for every one of them. I maintain this will be age or generational driven. People under 30 don't print much. I'm a helluva lot older than that and I buy toner for my desktop laser once a year. And FWIW, my 19 year-old daughter didn't take a printer back to college with her this year. She just goes to the print center or submits docs online when it's time to print. That thinking is going to spread to lots of types of printed materials.
By Michael Josefowic z on Sep 06, 2007
I think Noel has it right with a generational issue and Tom is correct in saying that lots of people still want to print it. Just three points 1. If people print at home that's good for the folks who make printers, but does little for the print manufacturers. 2.For at least for the next 15 years or so, there will be enough folks who want statements in print to support alot of printers. As far as I can tell, transpromo is just beginning to penetrate the market. And I know very few printers who are working with a 15 year time horizon. 3. In the world of government,education and health where it is mandated to reach everyone, not just best customers, transpromo, which is essentially "google ads in print" is, in my opinion, a sustainable part of the emerging print/info infrastructure.
By David Locke on Sep 11, 2007
If we go paperless, there will be little or no need to conserve forests. When the value of paper goes to zero, so does the value of the resource extraction, and the resource. There is no environmental purpose for going paperless. If you go paperless, go paperless. If you go paperless to save trees, make sure the trees are actually saved.