Jon Black looked up from the market research reports on his desk and turned to the window, watching the Chattahoochee River flow by his Atlanta office. It was March 2009, and Black, the senior VP of marketing and product for Fiserv, faced an exciting but potentially difficult challenge. In five day he was supposed to deliver key recommendation to his manager, e-commerce division EVP Lori Adams, about how Fiserv could make strides in electronic bill presentment, or “e-billing.” In the coming year, Fiserv was planning to make recommendations to it e-billing partners regarding how to increase e-billing adoption among its consumers, and Black was in charge of deciding what those recommendations should be.
Later that afternoon, Black was meeting with Dr. Michelle Johnston, a Fiserv consumer research scientist, to discuss potential strategies. Black and Johnston were no strangers to developing marketing strategies for online financial services. Under Adam’s Championship, the pair had recently helped increase consumer adoption of a related product: electronic bill payment. Using strong segmentation, targeting, and positioning – plus key product enhancement based on consumer needs-Black and Johnston helped drive electronic bill payment into the mainstream, which in turn helped establish Fiserv’s position as a marker leader.