How Vesting Finance uses marketing automation for online payments

Depayment of debts online more often

Vesting Finance also takes over debts of companies, where they take over the collection process. Often these are small amounts where it is not very interesting to put a lot of effort and costs into it, except for an annual letter to prevent the debt from becoming time-barred. With Ternair Marketing Cloud, Vesting Finance was able to campaign on this more actively and frequently. "This group of people gets used to our emails. That habituation helps with payment behavior, as does the payment link. By optimizing this process, we were able to increase the number of online payments in campaigns from 15% to 35% of all payments. That saves a lot of work for our back office. The number of people paying has also grown, giving more people a debt-free future," Doornheim outlines.

The volume of emails sent and conversions are still increasing. "We also started texting. Our department with calling colleagues has stopped growing; we were really calling a lot. Currently we send e-mail in addition to our weekly flow of letters. It's always still and/and. We want to eventually send fewer letters, of course." Doornheim sees increasing ease of payment as the biggest success factor. "We are now exploring aborting payment. That means that someone wants to pay but for some reason it fails. We then quickly send another e-mail."

"With the Ternair Marketing Cloud, we have been able to increase the number of online payments in campaigns from 15% to 35% of all payments."

Prediction without bias

The use of prediction models can go much further. "We know very little about our target audience. For example, we are not allowed to retrieve information from a municipality's basic records database (GBA). But the presence of correct contact information such as an e-mail address already tells us that we are more likely to get the debt paid. Beyond that, we mainly look at the historical behavior of similar scenarios. And because we are not allowed to track or store things like background, religion or sexual preference, bias does not come into play."

"We ran a test in which we procured the psychographic background of a selection through a market research firm. In it, each person was given a simple classification, such as outgoing or status-oriented. Someone who is outgoing is better to call to offer personal help to pay off a debt. In contrast, someone who is more status-oriented is better off sending an anonymous e-mail." Still, Doornheim is cautious. "We won't do this very quickly. Such a process requires an investment in terms of data enrichment and analysis, and the people on the shop floor also need targeted training. If you do it, you have to do it well."

Better contact strategy starts with convenience

With the expansion to e-mail and the fine-tuning of the channels deployed, Vesting Finance is increasingly learning payment behavior. If you know the behavior of someone who pays well, you can look for the same kind of people in other files. "It's Pareto's well-known 20/80 rule. That 20% you want to approach as well as possible, and that 80% you want to recognize so you put less effort into it," Doornheim states.

"This is digital transformation for us. And that sounds nice and all, but you also have to have the organization along and have the IT resources to implement it. There are so many snags, and that's because of the complexity. As a result, we also keep sending letters. That's why we focus on increasing the ease of payment; that's what makes payment most likely. It's all about facilitating the end customer optimally towards a debt-free future."

About Vesting Finance

Vesting Finance, part of Arrow Global, is a market leader in Credit management and Financial servicing. The company ensures the financial vitality and growth of companies and is a specialist in the prevention and reduction of late payments.