LKCS welcomes the following new statement processing clients beginning April 1, 2012!

• Century Heritage Federal Credit Union (Pittsburgh, PA)
• Iron Mountain Kingsford Community Federal Credit Union (Kingsford, MI)
• Wisconsin Medical Credit Union (Green Bay, WI)

All three clients will have their statements reformatted to make them easier for members to read and understand. Reformatting also gives these clients the ability to include graphical ads (also called statement onserts) directly on their monthly and quarterly account statements.

For more information about LKCS’ statement processing services, please contact us or visit http://www.lk-cs.com/statements/.

With Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM), direct mailers now have the ability to target specific areas for saturation mailings at reduced cost. To mail to all residents in a typical geographical area could cost as low as 14.5 cents in postage! That’s a substantial discount off even the losest standard rate postage rates.

For some of our clients, we’ve seen that we can mail larger quantities to everyone in an area at a LOWER COST than mailing a smaller quantity to a residential list.

So, if you are looking to spread your message to a wide audience, take a look at Every Door Direct Mail.

Need help? Contact LKCS and we can get you the details.

LKCS recently launched a new web site for one of our clients. We launch web sites routinely, but this one was just a little different. This particular customer seems to get it. It was very important to them to incorporate social media into the site. They put their blog front and center. They chose to incorporate a content management system and custom programmed control panels to ensure the site was easy to maintain on an ongoing basis. They’re even using the CMS to push content to custom Facebook pages. They also added a mobile site, realizing and taking advantage of the massive growth of mobile devices. There are now more mobile devices sold worldwide than PCs (and the PC category still includes iPads and other tablets which I would consider to be mobile devices). AND, the site was so important to their business goals that they pushed us to develop the site in less than 4 weeks.

Even up to a few years ago, I considered a web site to be an electronic brochure. There are too many sites that still remain just that. But the web is cool when customers embrace how the world has changed with the advent of “broadband anywhere” internet access, social media, and the joy of discovery.

There are two primary types of new reports, referred to as Service Organization Control (“SOC”) reports. A SOC1 report is the report to be used by clients and their auditors to plan and perform an audit or integrated audit of client’s financial statements. A SOC2 report is the report used by clients or stakeholders to gain confidence and place trust in a service organization’s systems.

Because LKCS does not process transactions impacting your financial statement assertions used for financial reporting, LKCS’ independent auditor performs a SOC2 report examination for us annually. The SOC2 report is intended to meet the needs of a broad range of users that need information and assurance about the controls at LKCS that affect the security, availability, and processing integrity of the systems that LKCS uses to process data and the confidentiality of the information processed by our systems.

LKCS management is confident that our SOC2 report adequately and accurately reflects the description of our data management and processing system, the suitability of our controls design, and the operating effectiveness of the controls associated with the data management and processing system.

Please contact us for more information about our SOC2 report or visit the AICPA web site at http://www.aicpa.org/soc.

This morning, on January 2nd, LKCS delivered loan leads to our credit alerting clients. We identified which of their account holders did, indeed, apply for home loans, auto loans and credit cards over the weekend. And, LKCS was able to send e-mail notifications to these account holders on behalf of our clients — sending pre-screened firm offers of credit while our customers’ institutions were closed. And we’re able to have direct mail letters ready to go tomorrow morning – ensuring that we reach every account holder that applied for credit at any other financial institution, mortgage company, car dealer, etc. Furthermore, we sent these leads to our clients – enabling their loan officers to follow up in person when they get back in the office – arming them with a list of account holders to call and close loans immediately.

Electronic marketing, web sites, and social media extend your reach and enable your account holders to conduct business 24/7/365. People expect instant gratification and will do business with whoever gives that to them. Make sure you have the tools in place, such as credit alerting, to ensure that your institution is positioned to capture business 24/7/365 — not just between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on business days.

LKCS recently launched a new web site for Crane Federal Credit Union (Odon, IN). The new site can be found at https://www.cranecu.org. The site was updated with a new design and enhanced functionality.

Bryan Myers, VP of Lending & Sales from Crane FCU, states “We were extremely excited about redesigning our website to simplify navigation, update the appearance, make content management easier and enhance the overall experience of our members and prospective members. This was an important, high-priority project for us and LKCS’s knowledgeable and creative staff were great to work with. I would highly recommend their web design services to anyone looking to create a website or improve their existing one.”

LKCS will be closed on Thursday, December 15th for a planned power shutdown to install our new building-wide power generator and automatic transfer switch.

This equipment will enable our entire facility to run uninterrupted through extended power outages ensuring that we will be able to meet our customers’ expectations for all of our services.

We apologize for any inconvenience but we believe that this equipment will greatly improve the availability of all of our services for many years into the future.

The same study found that:

• 25% of consumers found direct mail to be more trustworthy than e-mail.
• 60% said they enjoy checking their physical mailboxes.
• There is an “emotional connection” to postal mail.
• 75% of U.S. consumers say they get more email than they can read.

Interestingly, the survey points out that marketers are actually being hurt by an over-reliance on e-mail marketing. The survey quoted a decline in the perception that reading e-mail is faster than reading postal mail. According to Warren Storey, VP of Product Marketing and Insight at ICOM, a division of Epsilon Targeting, “There is definitely a growing trend that email inboxes are getting more and more full. Over the last three years, we’ve seen an increase in the percentage of consumers saying, yeah, they like getting email but they get far too many.”

According to the report, the ideal way to reach consumers is to use a combination of media including direct mail. This is not surprising to LKCS. We’ve been touting the benefits of multi-channel marketing campaigns for years. Use the new e-marketing tools to reach half of consumers who want to hear from you via e-mail, SMS, and social networks. And use traditional marketing methods such as direct mail, newspapers and TV to reach the other half.

GOOD NEWS: The second ounce will be FREE for First Class Presort mail pieces weighing between one and two ounces. This could result in a HUGE savings for many of your monthly and quarterly statements. Currently, if any of your mail pieces are over one ounce, you are paying about 22 cents per piece for that 2nd ounce.

With this announcement from the USPS, it is clear that the postal service recognizes the value of including marketing campaigns with your statements and notices. In fact, according to Paul Vogel, USPS President and Chief Marketing/Sales Officer, “This gives companies expanded opportunities to advertise new services and products to their customers as part of bill and statement mailings.”

Well said.

And with transpromo variable data printing capabilities, you can incorporate these marketing messages and ads directly on your statements. You don’t need to include additional stuffers, buck slips, brochures or newsletters.  Add personalized letters to your statements – make these statement letters the first page of your statement and transform your statements into effective direct mail campaigns. Print targeted onserts directly on the statements, cross-selling relevant products and services to your account holders by looking at their relationships, balances, demographics, and even their real-time credit data.

LKCS can get your statements to generate revenue for your financial institution. And now we can make it even easier to add targeted marketing without increasing postage.