There is nothing like a pissed off customer to help solidify a new strategy. David Maher, VP Fidelity Communications & Advertising, opened the Email Insider Summit today with a story about an affluent customer who was so annoyed at being sent stacks of snail mail (transaction reminders for his account) that he actually took his own picture (looking pretty glum and annoyed) next to a week's worth of packages from Fidelity and sent it in to the company. David talked about how this reality - both the huge cost and low benefit to customers of sending out hundreds of thousands of transactional packages every day -- led to the development of an on-demand online e-fulfillment system. The Fidelity system is sophisticated and well designed to allow customer service reps to instantly fulfill a myriad of e-kits to meet the needs of customer.

The results are impressive - not only are there enormous cost savings, but the fulfillment happens instantly - even while the customer is still on the line. So David talked about how a major shift had to occur for the reps -- the call to action with the customer changes significantly. The system allows reps to both navigate customers through the website, but also to close new business over the phone in one call.

David says the program has also dispelled the notion that rich people don't do email. In fact, the most affluent customers were happy to receive and interact online and through email.

The results are impressive - not just on cost savings on postal mail but on customer satisfaction and up selling. Email converts 100% higher than print fulfillment packages. Also interesting, is that when both a print and email message are sent to fulfill a request, conversion was lifted over both individual practices.