If your Collections department doesn’t have the time or resources to send out those gentle reminders to late payers, you may have success with these tactics.
Here are two painless — but effective — ways to get late customers paying sooner:
1. Sync your e-mail with late-payers. With this move, you’ll be able to pull info from the A/R system and personalize an e-mail message once a customer hits a certain late mark.
2. Hit ’em early. The sooner you remind customers, the better. Try sending the e-mail out around 5-7 days after the customer is past due.
The late-payer e-mail strategy worked wonders for one Virginia-based credit union. The company started sending e-mail reminders to customers that were five days past due.
Result: 2,257 notifications got the company a 72% payment rate.
One caution: This strategy probably won’t be effective with extremely late customers. In these cases, you’ll likely have to opt for a more personal approach.