Meeting collections goals is more difficult in the new normal as businesses react to the economic recession by stretching accounts payable to conserve cash. To make matters worse there are seemingly simple, every day roadblocks which can add to collection difficulties.

It is important to recognize and address these barriers so that you can meet your collections goals. Here are 4 common barriers to collections success.

SPAM Filters

SPAM filters are the second most common reason that emails never reach a customer’s inbox. If a customer doesn’t recognize that an email is coming from a legitimate source, they might think that it’s just another spam email asking for money.

  • Clean up email lists: If you are mailing to a large number of addresses that appear to be nearing abandonment, that is a red flag to spam filters. Clean up your email lists!
  • Avoid using spam trigger words and contexts.
  • Trigger words such as: act now, call now, do it today, cash, and credit
  • Trigger contexts that sound: shady, far-fetched, needy, and manipulative, to name a few, are red flags.

Clogged Email Inboxes

Professionals on average have more than 200 emails in their inbox and receive 120 new ones each day, but respond to only 25% of them. This digs a hole that most people never get out of, and greatly reduces the likelihood that your email will ever be read, or read in time to still be relevant and actionable. If you want to increase the odds that you’re your email will be read, you need to be very careful with how you phrase the email subject line, and craft the message.

Manual Emails

If you write manual collections emails, it can be a losing battle trying to keep up. It takes 3 minutes on average to write a collections email. Multiply that by the number of follow ups and reminders that you need to send in a month, and you’ll see that it is virtually impossible to keep your head above water with manual emails.

Generic Email Automation

Automating emails can help increase your collection success if they are not generic. If your emails lack the account information customers need to make a payment, they will probably be ignored. Automated emails should be tailored to clearly display – invoice numbers, amount due, days past due and other relevant collections information.

Overcoming collections barriers reduces time available for the customer contact needed to increase collections and cash flow. Automated credit and collections solutions can help overcome collections barriers, and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your collections.

Lockstep Collect, a leader in cloud-based credit and collection platforms, provides automated solutions for managing credit and collections. Lockstep Collect is an experienced software partner that can help you maximize your collections in the new normal.

If you would like to learn more about how you can benefit from automated credit and collections solutions, please contact Lockstep Collect at www.lockstep.io.