Riding the Whirlwind

Strategic Interactive Marketing for the Insurance Industry

Key Points:

Within some customer segments, the fax machine is as common as the answer machine.

5 .2 Fax

5.2.1 The fax machine has yet to become a consumer item, and may never do so, but it has increased in significant numbers in recent years. The self-employed and the more affluent are typical domestic owners. Those businesses whose market encompasses these people should consider the role of the fax machine.

5.2.2 Whilst many consider it impolite and possibly illegal to send unsolicited fax communications, it could support a range of agreed value-added services, especially where speed is of the essence:

• communicating changes in the price of stock or the value of personal portfolios.
• fax-back of account details, product information, etc.

Customers feel happier sending credit card information by fax.

5.2.3 In the reverse mode, many customers are wary of sending their credit card number over the Internet and prefer to send by fax. Using Java an Internet Web page could print an order form complete with bar codes for the credit card and order reference numbers. The customer then faxes this form and then software at the supplier's end matches fax to order.

5.2.4 With so many faxes now being generated and received by PCs, some fax software is being enhanced to recognise when it is communicating with similar software. It then transmits the information not as a slow series of dots but as high speed text. If such software becomes a standard it will greatly increase the practicalities of sending complex documents such as brochures by fax..

Most PCs now come with fax software and new services are exploiting this situation.

5.2.5 Generally speaking, commentators see the fax as an interim technology, but its demise requires not only a greater use of networked PCs, but also common standards for sending documents containing diagrams and different styles of text. The HTML document standard used by the World Wide Web is now being incorporated into e-mail software and may well become the standard.

It is currently the best electronic method of sending brochures and other illustrated documents.

GeoFax allows users to access their voice-mail, faxes, pager and e-mail messages via their e-mail in-box or any touch-tone phone.