How Shipping Can Boost Your Holiday eCommerce Business

November 2015

Getting your holiday eCommerce ship in shape for the holiday season is crucial to satisfying customers and attaining business goals like:

– Building your brand– Streamlining your operations– Increasing revenues and customer loyalty– Acquiring new customers

All of which are benefits that will help your bottom line not only during the holiday season, but 365 days a year.

In 2014, Thanksgiving weekend spending accounted for 41.9% of the average holiday shopper’s budget.

Why is Holiday Shipping So Important?

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We recommend evaluating holiday-related initiatives in terms of their impact on Revenue, Cost, and Customer Experience. Here are the initiatives we’ll cover in this presentation:

How Can Shipping-Related Holiday Initiatives Help?

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Service levels provide shipping’s most direct potential impact on revenue due to online shoppers’ sensitivity to shipping cost. Having the right delivery timing options at the right price—or even free

—can make the difference between an abandoned cart and one with an extra item thrown in to meet a free shipping threshold. The holidays offer a good excuse to reconsider what cost and

delivery options you make available to your customers and which carriers and services you select to meet those delivery times and maintain your desired selling margins. Getting this mixture right will translate into more sales and higher margins for you, and an improved experience for your

customers—in other words, a merry season for both seller and buyer!

Shipping Service Levels: Why They Matter

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58% 85%

Source: UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper 2015

58% of customers abandoned their orders at checkout when

shipping cost made the total purchase cost more than expected

85% of customers are willing to tolerate a 5-day shipping timeframe

to get free shipping

Shipping Service Levels: Potential Goals and Actions

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If This is Your Goal: Take This Action:Increase revenue by increasing Average Order Value (AOV)

Consider offering thresholded free or flat rate shipping and setting the threshold just above current AOV—which will provide an incentive for customers to increase their order size.

Improve customer experience by reducing fulfillment times

Pack and ship orders on Saturday; offer free Saturday delivery (easy if you use USPS).

Increase revenue by increasing repeat purchases

Include free shipping on returns: According to a Shoprunner/Harris Interactive poll, free returns influence repeat purchases, with 81% of consumers unlikely to purchase again from retailers who charge for returns.

Improve customer experience by ensuring on-time delivery

Clearly articulate order-by/arrive-by cut-off dates on your website—see next slide.

Be sure to plan ahead—and clearly communicate to your customers—the order cut-off dates that are relevant considering the carriers that you use:

Shipping Service Levels: Holiday Shipping Cut-Off Dates

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Operations are the backbone of your shipping function—and therefore your entire eCommerce business. Optimizing your workspace layout, processes, inventory,

printing/packing materials, equipment, and staff  for the holiday season all can help lower costs, but beyond that, smooth-running shipping operations ensure your orders are accurate, your packages are packed efficiently and attractively, and that they arrive in your customers’

hands on time—all of which makes for a great customer experience as well. As an added bonus, well-planned operations will help your employees have a happy holiday!

Operations: Why They Matter

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Operations: Potential Goals and Actions

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If This is Your Goal: Take This Action:Improve customer experience by anticipating demand

Anticipate increased holiday demand by reviewing last year’s out-of-stock data, forecasting the impact of new shipping initiatives, and ensuring the required product volume availability from your suppliers.

Improve customer experience and manage costs by optimizing physical space, equipment, people, and workflow

Ensure adequate space for extra inventory, and plan for enough labor hours (e.g. by hiring or adding shifts or overtime) to process extra demand; consider adding equipment (e.g. an extra scale) and optimizing processes.

Reduce costs and improve customer experience by using technology to optimize shipping decisions

Configure your shipping solutions’ advanced options—shipping rules, predictive analytics and automation.

Reduce costs by optimizing carrier relationships

Talk to your carrier reps; increased sales may qualify you for better rates, more pick-ups, and/or free supplies.

The holiday season is the most marketing-intensive time of the year, but your shipping function gives you unique opportunities to target both existing and

prospective customers at the most crucial stage in their journey: when they put their hands on your product. 

Marketing: Why it Matters

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Marketing: Potential Goals and Actions

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If This is Your Goal: Take This Action:Increase revenue and improve customer experience by increasing your brand visibility

Advertise your brand on packaging, adhesive stickers, packing tape, and packing slips.

Increase revenue by targeting new customer acquisition

Consider marketing to your customers’ gift recipients by sending them promotions and social media invitations on your packing slips; a good shipping solution will support creation of a customizable holiday packing slip for this purpose.

Increase revenue and improve customer experience by meeting delivery dates and taking advantage of delivery-related communications

Encourage repeat purchases and loyalty by sending purchasers and/or recipients frequent status updates and post-order follow-ups with promotions.

Increase revenue and improve customer experience by turning returns into opportunities

When customers return a product, incent them to re-purchase by running win-back campaigns or issuing credit to the customer equal to the amount he or she paid in return shipping as a reason to come back.

Did you know that the thrill of opening a holiday gift may have originated in 200 BC? If your eCommerce business isn’t tapping into this ancient human practice, it’s time to

start! There are enormous opportunities to benefit both customer experience and your business associated with providing gift wrapping throughout the year—but especially at

this time of year. 

Gifting Capabilities: Why They Matter

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Gifting Capabilities: Potential Goals and Actions

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If This is Your Goal: Take This Action:Improve customer experience and increase revenue by offering gift notes and wrapping options

At a minimum offer gift notes to identify the gift-giver to the recipient; beyond this, determine the operational implications—Including cost, materials, software updates, timing, training, and pricing—of offering wrapping options as a threshold purchase incentive or a for-cost option.

Improve customer experience and increase revenue by offering multiple shipping addresses and gift options for a single order

Increase your conversion rates and average order value by allowing purchasers to choose multiple shipping addresses and different gift options for each address; be sure your selling platform can accommodate.

Increase revenue and improve customer experience by utilizing gift-recipient information

Consider new-customer-acquisition campaigns targeting gift recipients based on what you can learn about them from the gifts they receive, when the receive them, and where they live; you can even look at the gift-giver’s history for potential clues about the gift recipient’s persona.

Improve customer experience by customizing packing slips

Customize gift recipients’ packing slips to exclude pricing and include gift notes; you will need to map gift note data—entered by the customer into the selling platform—to the proper field in your shipping platform so it can be printed on the packing slip.

Traditionally retailers consider the bookends of holiday shopping to be Black Friday and Christmas Eve. No doubt Thanksgiving weekend kicks off the shopping season with 42% of

an average shopper’s budget spent over that period, according to the National Retail Federation. However, Christmas no longer marks the end of the season. Last

year, PricewaterhouseCoopers expected about 8% of holiday spending to happen after Christmas day.  

Online retailers should fight to capture the post-Christmas buying, which is now entrenched in shopping patterns.

Post-Christmas: Why it Matters

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Post-Christmas: Potential Goals and Actions

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If This is Your Goal: Take This Action:Improve customer experience and increase revenue by determining the right day for your holiday initiatives to “end”

Consider the changing patterns of holiday shopping when deciding how long you’ll hold your temporary holiday services, packaging or pricing. Think, for example, about customers who celebrate alternative year-transition holidays like Kwanzaa, which runs through January 1 of the new year.

Increase revenue and improve customer experience by determining which holiday-related changes should be made permanent

Based on the ROI you see from holiday initiatives after holiday purchasing behavior peaks, determine which changes—shipping service level/cost, operations, marketing, and gifting—you should make permanent; consider setting up a monitoring plan going forward to ensure changes remain a net positive.

Increase revenue and improve customer experience by taking advantage of post-holiday purchasing behaviors

Create promotions and campaigns that target gift-card recipients, consumers looking for post-holiday “deals”, personal wish list keepers who may not have gotten everything they wanted, shoppers who viewed but didn’t buy, and shoppers seeking the latest “new season” merchandize.

Want to learn more?

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This comprehensive guide digs into the details of the preparations you must make and the specific actions you must take in order to achieve the goals discussed in

this presentation.

Download it here: http://shippingeasy.com/holiday-shipping-guide/

Download the ShippingEasy Guide to Holiday Shipping for eCommerce

ShippingEasy provides the simplest online shipping app for online sellers. Its cloud-based shipping solution offers discounted USPS postage rates and the ability to plug in existing UPS and FedEx accounts. ShippingEasy integrates with leading

marketplaces, shopping carts, and eCommerce platforms to allow order fulfillment and tracking data to populate in real time across all systems. ShippingEasy

appreciates the complexities of the physical environment and offers rules and automation to eliminate errors and minimize time spent shipping.

Learn more at http://www.shippingeasy.com/.

About ShippingEasy

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