Shipfusion eCommerce fulfillment services: Part Three
Choosing the right partner can make or break your company’s logistics, customer service, and repeat purchases. Using a fulfillment center like Shipfusion frees you from navigating the eCommerce fulfillment landscape with zero stress. Below are some insights on how Shipfusion can take your business to the next level.
Every eCommerce company wants to have a record-breaking amount of sales during the busy shopping season, whether it’s back to school, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day or a highly-anticipated new product launch. The reality is after you have made the sales, fulfillment and shipping is needed for every order. Not to worry, Shipfusion is here to help!
Here is your bible on everything you need to create exceptional shipping and receiving processes during the busy time, ensuring customer satisfaction.
Holiday Dates:
- Canadian Thanksgiving: October 12
- American Thanksgiving: November 26
- Black Friday: November 27
- Small Business Saturday: November 28
- Cyber Monday: November 30
- Free Shipping Day: December 14 (offer free shipping on all orders, with promised delivery by Christmas Eve)
- Super Saturday: December 19 (the last Saturday before Christmas, typically a big shopping day for brick-and-mortar retailers)
- Christmas: December 25
Understand your customers unboxing experience
Now that you have done all the groundwork for gearing up for a successful holiday shipping experience. It’s now time to think about providing a great unboxing experience.
Packaging Tricks
Remember that the very first thing your customer lays eyes on has the power to immediately wow them. Packaging and boxes are the first and most crucial packaging element to a brand. Not only do boxes protect the product, but they are also a first impression that can turn an otherwise mundane box-opening into a branded experience. Our exclusive partners over at Premiere Packaging can create custom, branded boxes for you.
Boxes
The traditional cardboard box is ideal for most products that need space and sturdiness. Remember, most fulfillment companies base pricing around the box dimensions and weight, so make sure to select a box that is just the right size for your product. Durability is a big concern; you can choose a double-walled box to help protect fragile items. The great thing about boxes is the reusability factor and how common they are. Boxes come in many shapes and sizes for all kinds of applications, providing strong protection against outside factors. Small items can cause a disadvantage for shipping boxes as you end up paying for the extra space. Boxes are also not ideal for oddly shaped items like long pipes.
- Cost-effective
- Many sizes available
- Hold large items
- Reuseable
Soft pack
Soft packs are a great way to ship smaller products like jewelry or small food products. Bubble envelopes come in a wide range of sizes to easily fit into mailboxes, allowing the customers to receive the delivery to their door without a post office pick-up. Bubble mailers have layers of plastic coating and bubble wrap padding built-in to help protect from liquids, therefore, reducing the damage that outside factors could allow. The plastic filter is designed to be wrapped around fragile items and taped up to prevent collision damages. The air-filled bubble pockets provide extreme security without adding considerable weight to the overall package equalling a reduced shipping cost. The downside to bubble envelopes or bubble mailers is that they can be punctured with heavy objects when in transit. Soft packs can include a padded envelope, bubble mailer, or plastic (Tyvek or Poly) sleeve.
- Helps protect small products
- Come in a wide size range
- Bubble wrap padding for protection
- Cost-effective
Protective Materials
Tissue paper, bubble wrap, and styrofoam peanuts, as well as the very tape keeping everything together, are fair game to customize. Consider adding your business’ colors to each. For tape specifically, you may want to apply your logo or business name to it.
Packing Peanuts
Styrofoam packing peanuts are great as both filler and protection to help fragile products from shifting during transportation. They are a good value and an inexpensive option to fill a package quickly. The protection from impact and prevent the product from losing its original shape. The downside to packing peanuts is that they are not eco-friendly. They cause much waste and tend to end up all over your floor and make for a messy experience. Some consumers might consider them cheap and take away from the quality of the product you are shipping. Additional packaging materials include; Air pillow bags, shipping tape, gel packs/cold packs for temperature control, plastic liner bags, kraft paper filler, tissue and crinkle paper, bubble wrap.
- Inexpensive
- Protective
- Lightweight
- Not eco-friendly
- Can seem cheap
Customer Interaction
Social Shares: A great way to do this is through branded packaging, custom notes, adding gifts or creating call-to-actions asking customers to share their unboxing experience. Asking for your customer to give social shares is a great way to get some user-generated content to help cover your social feeds.
Repeat Business: If you want to drive repeat business, consider adding samples of your other products. A great way to do this is to reach out to companies like Sampler. You could also include a coupon code in your product order that encourages repeat orders, like free shipping on their next purchase or 15% off if they buy again. Another great idea is to add two coupons—one for the gift-giver, and one for the recipient—as a way to potentially get two customers for the price of one.
Make an Impression: If you want to make a strong impression during major sales seasons, remind your customers that they’re supporting real people with real jobs, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. You could do this by adding in a hand-written thank you note to each order.
Shipping Success at Anytime
Remember to get a piece of the holiday sales action, it’s essential to get your logistics on point well ahead of the busy shopping season (meaning you should start NOW!. Not only will it create a great customer experience, but it will help you make a smoother experience for anyone involved in helping you get those orders out the door.
Shipfusion sets your business on autopilot and combines flexible, reliable eCommerce fulfillment with powerful, real-time technology. Shipfusion has multiple fulfillment centers across the US and Canada– making it easy to manage your eCommerce business. For more information on how to set your business on autopilot, contact one of our eCommerce fulfillment specialists today.
