Seven years ago, a few forward-thinking consumers - the "early adopters" - began paying their bills online. "They didn't need a whole lot of encouragement to get started," says
Judy Wicks, VP of communications for CheckFree, one of the major software providers behind online bill payment. Once the early adopters numbered about 3 million, however, the
industry plateaued.
"At CheckFree, we're a very metrics-driven company," Wicks says. "Everybody here has peak performance goals." Wicks' goal is not so much to brand CheckFree or to generate more
articles that mention her company name. Instead, she aims to raise awareness and usage for online bill-paying among consumers, meaning she must understand the behaviors and
motivations of the millions of consumers who could potentially be the next online bill-payers. Wicks and her internal market research department have an ongoing relationship with
Harris Interactive to conduct polls to evaluate the consumer landscape on issues of bill-paying adoption and other topics of interest to CheckFree.
The company launched a major consumer awareness program in 2001, and evaluated the results through a survey of 2,000 Internet users conducted by Harris. The survey looked at
increase in awareness and message penetration, and also gave CheckFree added background on its key consumers.
PRN: What has your polling showed you about consumers and online bill-paying?
J.W.: We're in a consumer adoption situation. When you go to college and study marketing and PR, you study big behavior change models, but it's very rare that you actually get
to work on something like this!
When you reach the point where you even out, you're not going to get into the early masses, much less the mainstream, unless you change your strategy. We picked 23 markets that
were wired, had big PC penetration and had a lot of our lead [early adopter] customers. CheckFree is usually behind the scenes, so we can promote the category.
We deluged those markets. We know that when you move into the next group after the early adopters, you need an opinion leader. We identified opinion leaders, for example, Terry
Savage [personal finance columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times, TV personality and author]. We would go into markets, and she'd do seminars, she'd go on the TV and the radio for two
days and do every station and every drive-time show to expose the whole market.
A year and a half ago, we were at 72 percent awareness that you could pay your bills online. Today we're at 99 percent.
PRN: Once you've generated that much awareness, where does measurement lead you?
J.W.: Even though we're at 99 percent awareness, our job is not done. You can see a 30-second ad and buy a new brand of toothpaste, but for someone from the mainstream to go
pay their bills online, they need more. Your sister-in-law or your banker needs to tell you about it.
We found that of the 99 percent who are familiar, 25 percent are already doing it, and another 25 percent were considering enrolling. We called these people "compelled."
We needed to make sure the messages were going to resonate with these consumers. Our research showed a shift: The early adopters didn't worry as much about security and privacy
as the next group. So we shifted our message to control - you're protected against fraud, you're guaranteed to be paid on time - all the ways not to lose control.
There's a larger group we're watching called "online transactors." They may buy books or music, then they start feeling a little better [about making transactions on the Web].
The next thing would be to trade stocks. The ideal consumer for us has had success transacting online.
PRN: Obviously, understanding your target consumers and the nuances of their behavior has a huge impact on how you develop the right PR strategy to reach them. Are there other
ways you make use of your survey data?
J.W.: We give the stats to the reporters and analysts who follow this industry. We continually update white papers that give reporters exactly what they need to deliver the
benefits of paying online and overcome [consumers'] objections.
PRN: Are there other measurement tools you use for increasing your understanding of consumer behavior?
J.W. We work very closely with industry analysts like Jupiter and Gartner and Forrester, and we look at them for things we don't know from other studies. Forrester has 100,000
households they regularly study.
Company
CheckFree
HQ: Norcross, GA, 678/375-3000
URL: http://www.CheckFree.com
Measurement Vendors: Harris Interactive
Even Anthrax Couldn't Sway Them
Wicks knows her consumers well enough to know what might persuade them to pay bills online - and it wasn't anthrax. Many reporters assumed that when anthrax spores began
cropping up in postal mail, the online bill-paying industry would see a boost. "That story has subsided, thank goodness," Wicks says. "Reporters were calling during the anthrax
scare saying, 'Won't this be great for online bill paying.' We knew [from our research] that that alone wouldn't change behavior."
Instead, consumers continued to want reassurances from trusted sources (not necessarily "the experts") that online bill-paying wouldn't mean a loss of control over timeliness
of payment and security. And if they had to risk life and limb to continue to pay their bills in the old-fashioned way until they were sure, they were willing to do it.
(Contact: Judy Wicks, 678/375-3000)