Ricoh customers set for digital mail option with Zumbox
US digital postal mail company Zumbox has struck an important partnership with Ricoh, the electronics giant and major provider of customer relationship management (CRM) systems. The move will allow Ricoh clients the option of switching their physical mail to digital postal mail for their customers who have signed up to use the Zumbox digital mail system -without having to change their mailing equipment.
For Los Angeles-based Zumbox, that potentially means some very large mailers adopting its “paperless” technology.
Ricoh provides large print-to-mail systems including its Infoprint Automated Document Factory (ADF) that can be tailored to specific client needs, and the addition of Zumbox can be added as a software update.
It will mean a Ricoh client can immediately begin sending a portion of their mail to any of their customers already signed up to use Zumbox, with the paperless form offering a per-piece cost savings of “that can exceed 50%”.
It will also allow billing companies to connect with their customers on a two-way basis, including the use of online payment systems.
Enrico Parodi, vice president of software and professional services for Ricoh Production Print Solutions, said: “Today’s customers need vendor partners that can provide flexibility and a wide portfolio of integrated technology options to address these needs. Our digital mail work with Zumbox, the only company today providing such a solution, is a testament to our dedication to our customers.”
John Payne, the Zumbox CEO, said teaming up with technology providers was a “key priority” for Zumbox in spreading the adoption of digital mail by high-volume mailers.
The company has already allied with the likes of Crawford Technologies and DST Output, but Payne said Ricoh was a particularly big success for the strategy, although he could not give figures on expected numbers of customer adoptions.
“They have very high quality software solutions that are widely deployed in very large customers, so this becomes a very rapid way for a very large customer to deploy digital postal mail without any changes to their existing infrastructure,” Payne told Post&Parcel.
Consumer choice
Expectations are that around 15% of consumers in the US will choose to receive their household bills and statements through digital mail this year.
Because the Zumbox digital mailbox is based on a consumer’s physical street address, mail can continue to be sent physically alongside a digital version until a consumer decides to switch off the paper version.
“We believe very strongly that giving people a couple of cycles of billing experience, and then allowing them to turn off their paper is really the path to increased use of paperless,” said John Payne, the Zumbox CEO.
So far, Zumbox has found that 36% of its users request paperless mail immediately, and that this average goes up to 46% after two billing cycles.
Payne told Post&Parcel that for mailers looking to switch to digital mail, giving their customers the choice of receiving bills digitally, physically or both is important in long-term success.
If a Zumbox customer does choose to continue receiving physical versions of bills while also receiving the electronic version for easy archiving, a mailer is not charged by Zumbox.
Payne said Ricoh had been “very smart” in making use of the Zumbox system, because the mail box network is based on street addresses, the switchover to paperless mail can be an incremental change – it is not a replacement channel for physical mail, leaving mailers and consumers to choose to make the switch.
He said: “We think that anyone who tries to force a consumer to make one unilateral decision about being paperless for all of their mail or paperless for none of their mail – they don’t understand the consumer.”
