SouthTrust SmartCheck^TM Service
Direct Mail + B2B = A Winning Formula

It’s a double-edged sword for today’s businesses: Check-related risks such as fraud and insufficient funds force merchants to consider ending personal check acceptance. Yet doing so can alienate customers. SouthTrust Bank found a solution to the conundrum with its SmartCheck service, which allows merchants to accept paper checks and turn them into electronic transactions at the point of sale.

A smart idea — but SouthTrust needed a way to get the word out to its business customers. And they needed to convince these merchants that the advantages of the service were well worth its cost and the learning curve required to implement the system. The bank hired CCG to help get merchants excited about SmartCheck — and get them on the phone scheduling appointments.

To showcase SmartCheck’s benefits and features, CCG created a to-the-point educational brochure with a dynamic feel. And, since our research showed that this audience was influenced by seeing how their peers had benefited from a specific product, we included testimonials from actual SmartCheck users.

It worked: As a lead generator, the mailing doubled SouthTrust’s expectations.