Electronic bill presentment and payment service bureau billserv.com Inc., San Antonio, and Verbind Inc., Boston, an analytical marketing application vendor, announced a joint partnership this week designed to allow billers the opportunity to present their customers with electronic bills and statements with targeted marketing messages.
Verbind’s LifeTime application will enable billserv.com customers, such as utilities, cable television, telecommunications and financial services companies to analyze both historical and real-time customer transaction data before supplying customers with timely offers that they can pay via front-end systems such as CheckFree and Transpoint.
“We believe LifeTime can add one-to-one marketing value to many of our customers as they begin deploying their EBPP systems this year,” said David Jones, co-founder and executive vice president of billserv.com, which allows billers to outsource their entire EBPP services and have the company manage their billing systems, customer relationships and the delivery of information.
It appears utilities are positioned to take advantage of a variety of Internet-based value-added customer services this year. A recent study by Chartwell Inc., Atlanta, for example, found that while only 10 percent of utility companies offer EBPP services now, more than half are planning to launch some type this year.
The study also found that these utilities are becoming more interested in online inserts – or advertising its additional products and services on the Web pages where their customers pay their bills electronically In the future, utilities are planning to personalize these pages on an individual or geographic basis.
