Building an Effective Digital Loyalty Program in the Amazon Age [Free Webinar]
In this article
2 minutes
Did you know that you can boost your revenues by 95% if you increase customer loyalty by 5%?
In fact, it is seven times more costly to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one.
Companies like Amazon and Nordstrom know that investments in loyalty pay handsomely and have created outstanding rewards programs. These retailers have millions of subscribers and are market leaders in customer loyalty.
The importance of retail customer loyalty and retention is profound.
- 73% of ‘members’ will recommend brands with good loyalty programs
- 70% of consumers will spend more if they can be rewarded
Our webinar, featuring Robbie Kellman Baxter, best-selling author of “The Membership Economy,” shows how to apply the principles of the membership economy to the retail sector.
The webinar explains how to shift the retail paradigm from transactional, where a purchase is considered the finish line, to membership based, where the first transaction is the starting line.
Creating an effective loyalty or membership program is no simple task. Aside from discounts, what can we offer to encourage loyalty? Aside from purchases, what activities and behaviors should we reward?
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I'm Interested in Saving Time and MoneyThe transformation from the transactional economy to the membership economy is taking place along 4 key dimensions. And each dimension, alone, has recently been the source of disruptive innovation:
The structure of a loyalty program in the membership economy is just the beginning. The webinar also describes how to address the 4 characteristics of the most successful loyalty programs:
- They are aligned with the brand
- The program fulfills a customer need
- The program adds enjoyment to the customer experience
- Redemption is easy
And Manish Chowdhary, CEO of Pulse Commerce, provides additional examples of how companies can go the extra mile:
- Pick a creative name. For example, SoccerPro gives customers a ‘PROfile’
- Make points sound like treasure. For example, Pixi Beauty’s ‘Pixi Dust’
- Reward more than just purchases. For example, rewards for site visits and social shares.
- Offer more than just store discounts. For example, free gifts with purchase.
Our free, on-demand webinar demonstrates how your retail business can apply these strategies to improve retention and raise the lifetime value of your customers.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Why Online Retailers Must Offer Date-Certain Shipping This Holiday Season
In this article
6 minutes
- Act now to reduce your accessorial charges and return rates
- Deterministic shipping can help you improve customer service too
- Upgrade your customer experience and brand perception this holiday season
- Act fast and implement these strategies to claim your holiday gift early
- How to go about implementing these strategies and tactics
- An Order Management System (OMS) with robust integration can
We have come a long way on the journey from the Pony Express to Federal Express
From: “I wonder if the courier died?”![]() |
To: “FedEx received the Package”![]() |
FedEx, UPS, and even the US Postal Service, provide their customers with real-time shipment updates. They also give merchants access to many shipping service types – next day, 2-day, 3-day, ground, and more.
Similarly, online retailers can and should offer choices to their customers. For example, Amazon gives customers multiple date-certain delivery choices, also known as Date-Certain Shipping or Deterministic Shipping, leaving those who don’t at a competitive disadvantage.
Over 65 million Amazon Prime members are presented with these options, and an increasing number of fast followers are adopting similar strategies, leaving those who don’t at a competitive disadvantage.
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I'm Interested in Saving Time and MoneyAt Pulse Commerce, we believe that Amazon has made date-certain shipping an ecommerce imperative. Merchants who offer deterministic shipping, especially during the holidays, will enjoy higher conversion rates and sales than those who do not.
Given that Amazon spent $16.2 Billion on shipping expenses in 2016 alone, we can be certain that it has cracked the shopping cart conversion code better than anyone else, especially when it comes to shipping and fulfillment.
Let’s examine this shopping cart (see Figure 1), observe the tactics being used, and consider their impact on both consumers and the merchant:
- Choices increase conversion: This Amazon Prime customer is presented with four choices; including (1) receive tomorrow for an additional $5.99 and (2) receive in 2 days at no charge. According to a Metapack study, 61% of customers bought goods from one retailer over another because they provided more delivery options.
- Customer incentives reduce shipping expense: If a customer chooses option (3) FREE No-Rush Shipping, they receive $10 towards Amazon Restaurants. Amazon regularly offers its customers incentives to help cut down its massive $16.2B shipping expense. This offer is not random – it’s part of a broader strategy to attract new users to Amazon Restaurants. Take a trip to Amazon Restaurants, and here’s the first thing we see:

- Urgency increases conversion: Look at option (4) in the illustration above. The customer is guaranteed delivery by September 21 (2 days) if she purchases in the next 7 hours 27 minutes. As the customer is looking at their cart, that clock is ticking down, second-by-second, shouting “buy me now if you need me by Thursday!”
This simple cart message increases conversion by giving clear and specific choices and creating a sense of urgency. It also reduces shipping expenses for the merchant by rewarding customers who choose the least expensive shipping option.
Act now to reduce your accessorial charges and return rates
By giving Date-Certain Shipping options, Amazon is reducing a few of their accessorial charges (surcharges imposed by the carriers) as well. Choosing a delivery date reduces the number of unsuccessful deliveries, which reduces Delivery Reattempt fees and expenses.
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Get My Free 3PL RFPWhen customers know when the package will arrive at the time of ordering, they know when to expect the package. They are not disappointed as long as the delivery date commitment is met. This minimizes the number of returns from the customer due to shipping related uncertainty.
Deterministic shipping can help you improve customer service too
Timely and accurate delivery status updates reduce Where is My Order (WISMO) customer service calls, especially during the holiday surge.
- Where Is My Order customer service requests can generate upwards of 70% of all customer inquiries during the holidays (source: getelastic).
- Frequent and easily available updates can cut WISMO calls by 50% or more.
- You can reduce overall customer inquiries by 10% to 30%, freeing up CSRs to respond to inquiries that require their expertise.
Upgrade your customer experience and brand perception this holiday season
If carriers can provide real-time status updates on their websites, then you can for your customers too – online, and via app notification, email and SMS.
- Provide a branded order tracking page and include links to it on all prominent pages
- Provide a link to online package tracking in your shipping notification emails
- Send an email to the customer when the order is in-transit, out for delivery and when it’s delivered
- Display a “where is my order” link on your customer service page
- Over-communicate delivery timeframes – include estimated delivery dates info on all relevant emails and web pages
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See Scale JourneyAct fast and implement these strategies to claim your holiday gift early
We’ve outlined several initiatives that can increase holiday conversions and customer satisfaction while reducing shipping costs. You must invest early to bring these initiatives to life, so you can maximize your ROI this holiday season.
- Provide date-certain shipping choices on product details and shopping cart pages (i.e. deterministic shipping) to increase conversion
- Create urgency to order now (to receive by specific date) to increase conversion
- Reward customers for choosing later delivery to reduce Shipping Expense
- Provide frequent and prominent order tracking updates on your website and through email to reduce WISMO calls, increase satisfaction, and lower customer service costs
How to go about implementing these strategies and tactics
The answer lies in technology. Modern order management software, like Pulse Commerce’s, that has deep real-time integration with shipping carriers like UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc. can easily enable date-certain shipping for merchants.
You might consider integrating directly using each carrier’s API. While shipment tracking information is crucial, that’s not all. You also need accurate, real-time information on:
- Item fulfillment (i.e. is the item in stock)
- Which warehouse or store will the item ship from
- The cut-off time for order processing by sales channel and fulfillment location before it’s picked, packed and scheduled for UPS or FedEx to pick up.
Most if not all this information typically resides in an order management system, which may also house the product catalog and inventory data.
An Order Management System (OMS) with robust integration can:
- Integrate with all popular shipping carriers and ecommerce platforms, reducing complexity.
- Track orders from source to customer’s doorstep, and provide proactive alerts on exceptions.
- Enable you to expose this information to customers through many formats: (1) automated email and SMS notifications; and (2) real-time branded tracking on website or mobile apps.
An OMS does much more, including intelligent order routing to turn orders around faster while optimizing inventory. You can learn more about the broad role that an OMS plays in the enterprise, by reading this article on Order Management Essentials.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Pulse Commerce CEO invited to speak at 2018 Ecommerce Operations Summit
Pulse Commerce’s CEO, Manish Chowdhary, has been selected to speak at the 2018 Ecommerce Operations Summit in Columbus, OH.
This year’s Summit is a 3-day event, laser focused on optimizing direct-to-consumer and omnichannel operations and fulfillment. Pulse Commerce’s platform enables mid-market B2C and B2B merchants to deliver superior omnichannel experiences across all channels. The Summit is an ideal audience for the Pulse Commerce message.
Many ecommerce retailers see a customer’s first purchase as the final step of the buyer journey. We work with smart merchants who see the first order as the beginning of a life long customer relationship. Thus they build operations to embrace the entirety of the customer experience – delivery, shipping updates, order modification, returns, ongoing connection and loyalty, and much more.
The Pulse Commerce platform, helps mid-market retailers manage their orders and inventory efficiently turn orders around faster, increase inventory turns, and improve cash flow. Through our work with clients, we’ve seen first hand how retailers deliver omnichannel post-sales experiences by maintaining a real-time view of all orders, inventory, products, and customer history across all ecommerce channels (website, marketplaces, drop-shipping) and fulfillment centers.
These insights inspired us to conduct a research study to quantify the impacts of exceptional post-sale ecommerce experiences.
We will share our insights at the conference, with a presentation titled, “The Post-Purchase Retail Experience: Winning After the Delivery.”
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I'm Interested in Saving Time and MoneyOur study is designed to uncover the Impact of different service and customer experience programs on merchant growth rates and sales.
-
- Loyalty Programs and Reward Types
- Returns Window, Days to Refund and Return Shipping Costs
- Days to Shipment, Days to Delivery
- Emails, Physical Package and Packing Slip Branding and Marketing
- Returns Customer Service Experience
We hope you can join us at the event!

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

[Webinar] Prep for Holiday Fraud in Online Apparel and Accessories
There are two types of ecommerce businesses:
- Those that have been hit by fraud
- Those that will be hit by fraud
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Cut shipping expenses by 30% and boost profit with Cahoot's AI-optimized fulfillment services and modern tech —no overheads and no humans required!
I'm Interested in Saving Time and MoneyAttend this webinar for a 30-minute discussion about the trends, tactics and strategies online fashion and apparel merchants may see during the holiday season. Hear from merchants that have found success in fraud mitigation and prevention and other industry experts as we discuss:
- Ecommerce trends specific to online apparel and accessories merchants
- Techniques to accept more orders during the holidays
- How to reduce fraud losses without negatively affecting sales
- Managing the fraud and risk process with efficiency
Moderator

Derek Jones
Sales Executive, Kount
Panelists

Manish Chowdhary
CEO, Pulse Commerce

Tannis Anderson
Warehouse Manager, Soccerpro.com

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

7 Ways to Turn Post-Purchase Interactions into New Sales
Most retailers put a lot of time and effort into attracting new customers. It makes sense: you need customers to buy your products and sustain your business. However, generating more sales from existing customers is a more efficient, less expensive way to grow.
The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 percent to 70 percent, compared with the 5 percent to 20 percent chance of selling to a new customer, according to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs.
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Cut shipping expenses by 30% and boost profit with Cahoot's AI-optimized fulfillment services and modern tech —no overheads and no humans required!
I'm Interested in Saving Time and MoneyEvery dollar spent retaining or reselling goes further than one spent to attract new customers.
I invite you to reconsider the post-purchase customer as a prospect for continued, expanded business. In many ways, they’re an ideal prospect — you know what products they like, you know that they like your brand, and you have their trust.
Existing customers are also a great source of new prospects: 42 percent of online customers find recommendations from friends and family influential, and 23 percent are influenced by social media recommendations, according to BigCommerce’s Consumer Shopping Habits Study.
7 Ways to Turn Post-Purchase Interactions Into New Sales
The moment a customer completes a purchase, you should think of them as a new prospect, with opportunities for add-ons and additional sales on the horizon. Each interaction is an opportunity for more sales, more revenue per purchase, and more referrals.
1. Make good use of your order tracking page.
Between purchase and delivery, customers who track their orders visit the order tracking page an average of 3.1 times per order, according to the 2017 Narvar Post-Purchase Benchmark. They’re also three times more likely to click through a marketing asset on that page than a regular marketing email. Customers who visit the tracking page are excited about your products. Make good use of that prime real estate with targeted ads for products that would complement their recent purchase.
2. Answer their questions.
This might seem straightforward, but too many retailers are missing this crucial foundation. After purchase, customers expect you to be just as helpful as when you were trying to close the sale. At the simplest level, your website needs an easy-to-find FAQ about topics like shipping, refunds and exchanges.
Ideally, customers should be able to get an answer via any channel: phone, live chat, email, social media, or even in-store. According to Parature, 43 percent of customers cite being passed from agent to agent as a top aspect of bad customer service. Getting this right requires an an omnichannel order management system (OMS) that centralizes information for every agent. A customer standing in your store doesn’t want to hear that they have to call the 800 number, and now they won’t have to.
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Get My Free 3PL RFP3. Order modifications: anywhere, anytime.
With the advent of sophisticated order fulfillment software, customers expect you to locate and modify their order right up until the moment it ships. Order management software can solve this challenge, integrated with OMS so that service representatives don’t have to call the warehouse to make changes.
It’s a worthwhile investment. When customers can modify their order, they’re more likely to buy add-ons, knowing that their products will arrive together. You also save on refunds and exchanges by eliminating shipping products that customers don’t want. Finally, you enhance your relationship with customers, who trust you to get them exactly what they want.
4. Provide smooth and easy returns.
Returns are unavoidable. According to the marketing experts at Invesp, 30 percent of products purchased online are returned. A full 35 percent of those returns aren’t due to any error, but just because a customer decided not to keep the item. Turn this potentially negative situation into an opportunity by delivering an outstanding, frictionless experience.
Customers want to return or exchange a product via any channel, not just the one where it was purchased. If they bring a sweater they purchased online into their local store, a store employee should be able to process the exchange, then delight the customer by offering the replacement item for pickup or quick shipment. An OMS makes this possible by centralizing all orders, inventory, fulfillment and returns.
5. Make it personal.
Once a customer purchases from your brand, you suddenly have an enormous marketing advantage: you know what they like. Fifty-nine percent of shoppers want personalized marketing online, including special offers, exclusive coupons or advertising for products they’re interested in, according to the Accenture Personalization Survey. Use what you know to market related products via email, direct mail, social media and other channels, and start soon after purchase while your brand is top of mind.
6. Don’t forget the packaging.
Let’s say that 20 percent of your customers open each of your marketing emails — pretty good! How many open the package that contains their order? More like 100 percent. Packing materials are an excellent marketing asset, and not to be overlooked.
Beyond the baseline — delivering the order on-time, complete and undamaged — you can delight customers with enclosed free samples or discount offers. Then make it easy for them to follow up. Set up a special short URL for the offer so they can place their order quickly while they’ve got it on their mind.
7. Get the most out of happy customers.
Loyal customers don’t only bring additional revenue, they can also bring in new customers. Consider implementing NPS, the simple survey that asks customers, “How likely are you to recommend this company to a friend?” Identify happy customers, then follow through: offer referral perks or encourage them to share their favorite products on social media.
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See Scale JourneyLoyalty programs are another great option, although they can be complex to administer. According to Accenture, members of loyalty programs generate 12 percent to 18 percent more revenue than customers who aren’t members. Loyalty programs keep customers actively engaged and drive repeat purchases, social media buzz and new referrals.
Conclusion
Getting the most out of your post-purchase customer interactions has two major parts: a well-designed and well-executed marketing strategy, and an omnichannel delivery and service commitment. Both pieces are necessary to drive higher customer retention, loyalty and referrals, and overall revenue. Businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies achieve over 90 percent greater year-over-year customer retention rates compared to those that don’t.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

7 Ways Retailers Can Make Free Shipping Profitable
One of the most important and potentially expensive decisions that an online retailer can make is whether or not to offer free shipping. Over 2 million Google searches each month in the United States include the phrase “free shipping.” Most online merchants have at least considered offering it. It’s a tough decision because shipping is expensive — Amazon’s shipping expense was $16.2 billion in 2016, over 17 percent of its total order value.
How can a retailer afford an additional 15 to 20 percent expense?
The good news is that you can.
Begin with a simple A/B test, in which a random sample of shoppers — 10 to 50 percent — is offered free shipping. Compare the control group with the test group to see the change.
Then, track three outcomes to determine the real cost of offering free shipping.
- Change in conversion rate. For example, a change from 5 percent to 6 percent is a 20 percent increase, or 1.2 expressed as a decimal. In the equation below, it’s variable A.
- Change in average order value. An AOV improvement from $50 to $51 is a 2 percent increase, or 1.02 expressed as a decimal — variable B, below.
- Change in gross margins. If the control group gross margin is 50 percent, and the test group gross margin is 35 percent, then the gross margin decrease is 30 percent: -15% ÷ 50% = -30%.This is -0.3 expressed as a decimal. It’s variable C, below.
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I'm Interested in Saving Time and MoneyNext, compute the percentage change in profit from offering free shipping, as follows.
% Change in profit (x) = [(A * B * (1+ C)) – 1] * 100
x = [(1.2 * 1.02 * (1 + (-0.3))) – 1] * 100
x = -14.3%
The change in profit from free shipping in this case is -14.3 percent.
What follows are seven strategies and tactics to turn free shipping from a -14.3 percent cost center into a profit increase.
7 Ways to Profit from Free Shipping
Set minimum order value. By adding a minimum threshold for free shipping, you can increase AOV because shoppers will have an incentive to increase basket size. You can also reduce the negative impact on margins because free shipping will be offered on fewer orders, and thus reduce situations where shipping cost represents more than 20 percent of the total order value.
Step 1: Choose a threshold. A good starting point is to add 10 to 15 percent to your current AOV. For example, if AOV is $50, offer free shipping on orders over $55
Step 2: Run the A/B test again. Your results could look like this:
- Conversion rate increased from 5 percent to 5.5 percent — 1.1, variable A.
- AOV increased from $50 to $57.50 — 1.15, variable B.
- Gross margin declined from 50 percent to 43 percent — -.14, variable C.
Now, the change in profit from free shipping is +8.8 percent:
% Change in profit (x) = [(A * B * (1+ C)) – 1] * 100
x = [(1.1 * 1.15 * (1 + (-0.14))) – 1] *100
x = 8.8%
Step 3: Supersize it. Adding a minimum of $55 for free shipping increases profit by 8.8 percent. Thus, we should heavily promote it. Here are three ideas.
- “You almost qualify.” When shoppers add an item to the cart, inform them how much more they need to spend to qualify for free shipping
- “Take advantage of your free shipping.” Once free shipping is earned, remind shoppers that they can take advantage of the free shipping to buy more.
- “Look how much you saved!” Remind shoppers at checkout how much money they are saving with free shipping
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Get My Free 3PL RFPUse only ground shipping. Change the equation by offering free shipping only via your least expensive shipping option, such as USPS Flat Rate Boxes or UPS Mail Innovations. The promotion for this could be: “Free economy shipping on orders of $55 or more.”
According to 2017 survey by Internet Retailer and Bizrate Insights, nearly 90 percent of online shoppers say they are willing to wait longer for delivery of an order in exchange for free shipping. Most shoppers are likely to choose the free shipping option.
By using only ground shipping, you could cut your free shipping expense by more than half.
Offer low flat-rate shipping. Offer a flat-rate shipping charge on all orders. Amazon Prime Pantry does this well by leveraging consumer psychology to drive basket sizes up.
This approach has many advantages. Customers cover shipping expense on smaller, lower margin orders. Shoppers are incented to buy more, since additional items ship for free. As the order size increases, overall gross margin goes up, covering the incremental shipping cost.
Include shipping costs in product prices. Consider the effect on conversion rates from these two offers:
- Option 1: $30 + $5 shipping charge.
- Option 2: $35 with free shipping.
Bill D’Alessandro, of Rebel CEO, a consulting firm, ran this very test for a skincare product. The conversion rate for option 2 was twice that of option 1. This approach can work well for items that are unique and hard to price shop across multiple sites.
How do you include shipping costs in item prices? One approach is to change the pricing of items below the free shipping threshold to include a portion of expected shipping cost.
Say a merchant offers free shipping for orders of $75 or more. For a $25 item, add 33 percent ($25/$75) of the shipping cost to the item price. For a $10 item, add 13 percent ($10/$75) of the shipping cost to the item price.
The $25 item would now be offered at $28. The $10 item now has a price of $11.30. You still offer free shipping, but you’ll recoup a portion of the costs. Customers may prefer to pay $11.30 with free shipping versus $10 with $1.30 shipping.
Exclude items from free shipping. Reduce the negative margin impact of free shipping by:
- Offering free shipping only on high volume items with low shipping costs.
- Excluding low margin items from free shipping altogether.
- Excluding heavy and bulky items with high shipping costs from free shipping.
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See Scale JourneySubstitute service types. If you are offering free ground shipping, and charging an additional fee for expedited 2-day shipping, avoid displaying on your website the carrier name and specific service type that you intend to use.
In many cases, you’ll be able to use economical ground shipping to meet even the 2-day shipping requirements for expedited orders. For deliveries in close proximity to your distribution centers and drop shippers, for example, you can ship using the cheapest ground option and still meet the delivery window for some of your expedited 2-day orders and pocket the savings.
Sell via Amazon Prime and FBA. Gain access to over half of U.S. households by offering select products through Amazon Prime while using Fulfillment by Amazon to cut fulfillment costs. While FBA is certainly not free for merchants, some find that the efficiencies and volume gained through Amazon Prime and FBA can cover the cost of free shipping.
Not a Cash Sink
In short, free shipping doesn’t have to be a cash sink. Smart retailers of all sizes use free shipping as a lever to increase conversions and average order values while minimizing its negative impact on profits.
Moreover, free shipping can also reduce customer service costs for returns. Customers often request to be reimbursed for shipping when returning an item. But there’s nothing to reimburse on free shipping!
For more than 40 ways to reduce your shipping costs and be profitable, check out this ultimate guide to profitable free shipping.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

5 Ways to Improve the Parcel Delivery Experience
“The last mile” is now the Holy Grail of ecommerce shipping. A merchant can do an amazing job of selling and provide an outstanding shopping experience, yet if the package is late or damaged, a customer may complain on social media, even if the carrier is to blame.
You can’t directly control the last mile — i.e., the distance from a local transportation hub to the final destination — but you can improve the communication with your customer to provide excellent service, even when things go wrong.
Here are a few ways that merchants can provide an outstanding delivery experience and produce a positive brand impression.
5 Ways to Improve the Parcel Delivery Experience
1. Avoid porch pirates. Porch pirates are thieves that steal parcels from recipients’ porches. Many articles have been written about how to prevent this type of theft. Ideas include security cameras, lockers, and services like Package Guard, which notifies a recipient when a package is delivered.
But the most foolproof way to avoid theft is to ensure that the customer is home when the parcel arrives. Retailers can schedule delivery times and provide frequent delivery notifications (see 3., below), so consumers know when to be home. Saturday delivery options provide even more opportunities to stop package theft.
2. Provide delivery windows, with options. Customers expect tight delivery windows — ideally, 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on a specific day, with notification an hour or so before delivery. Provide the ability for your customers to choose a delivery date and, if possible, a time.
Even better, empower them with different ways to receive packages. For example, Jet.com is installing Latch, a sophisticated access system, in 1,000 New York City apartment buildings for easier deliveries. Residents can use their phone as a key, grant access to guests without walking downstairs, and get packages delivered safely without being home.
Also, Amazon Locker is available to merchants using Fulfillment by Amazon. It is similar to a post office box, but only for Amazon deliveries. Customers get an email as soon as the package arrives at the locker and they have three days to pick it up. Similar services include FedEx Ship&Get, USPS Gopost, and UPS Access Point lockers.
Amazon is also testing delivering directly to customers’ car trunks, while Walmart is testing deliveries straight to customers’ refrigerators. Commitment to improving the last mile experience is immense. Independent merchants should not be too far behind.
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I'm Interested in Saving Time and Money3. Send frequent delivery notifications via preferred mediums. Customers have their own preferred forms of communication. The more choices they have, the more likely they are to receive and read your updates. The top three consumer choices for communication are typically email, text message, and a company order-tracking page. As a start, offer all three.
Customers appreciate being notified when an order is going to ship, when it has shipped, where the item is currently located, and ongoing updates about the expected delivery date and time.
There are plenty of exceptions to these typical notices. You’ll earn loyalty points with your customers if you handle them well, and proactively. Examples include:
- Attempted delivery by the carrier, without success.
- Available for pickup at a carrier location, after too many attempted deliveries.
- Cannot schedule a delivery appointment, and the carrier is unable to reach the customer.
- Consignee refused delivery, usually because it was delivered to the wrong address.
- Other exceptions, including expected delays, package held at terminal, and incorrect address.
4. Provide a branded tracking page. A branded delivery-tracking page is a must have. Customers become increasingly engaged with your brand during the period between the purchase and delivery. According to the 2017 “Post-Purchase Benchmark Report” from Navar, a customer loyalty and retention platform:
- Those who track orders visit the tracking page 3.1 times per order.
- The click rate on marketing assets that appear on a branded order-tracking page is 3-times higher than for marketing emails
A branded tracking page will curtail “Where is my order?” customer-service queries. It will also provide your marketing team with better opportunities to cross sell, up sell, and boost engagement.
5. Offer branded and eco-friendly packaging. Branded packaging is a effective way to advertise. It’s similar to a mobile billboard. Remember the first time you saw a package from Jet.com? Or the ubiquitous Echo and Prime advertisements on every Amazon box? The more eye-catching your packaging is, the more your customers and their neighbors will remember it.
Eco-friendly packaging is becoming more important, especially for millennials. One recent study found that more than 50 percent of shoppers would pay more for environmentally friendly packaging.
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Get My Free 3PL RFPExecution Is Key
Parcel delivery strategies are easy to articulate, but hard to execute well. Managing delivery in the last mile requires infrastructure for order and fulfillment that can track real-time package status from origin to the customer’s doorstep and everywhere in between. That information must sync with numerous platforms — website, customer support, email, text messages — and accommodate order and delivery modifications. Get it all right and you’ll have an unfair competitive advantage.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Pulse Commerce Wins Customer Service of the Year Stevie Award
March 5, 2018 – Bridgeport, CT – Pulse Commerce, the leading cloud platform for Order & Inventory Management, announced today that it won a prestigious Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year. The company was awarded Stevie’s 2018 Silver Award in recognition of the innovations added to its client services department over the last year, and for its continuous commitment to provide best in industry customer service.
Pulse Commerce earned a Silver this year through a number of customer service innovations:
- Support process overhaul – Rebuilt the entire support process from scratch, with automatic ticket prioritization based on issue severity and SLA due date (service level agreement). With automated ticket prioritization, agents avoid constant review and re-review of open tickets to determine which one to resolve next. Efficiency and productivity have improved dramatically, virtually eliminating ‘stale tickets’ that accidentally stay open too long.
- All new Help Center – launched a completely redesigned multi-media Help Center with a modern and streamlined experience, faster navigation and easier discoverability. Pulse Commerce more than doubled the size of its online knowledgebase, which now includes over 250 fresh articles and videos. Pulse Commerce also introduced a mechanism for accepting new Help article and video tutorial requests from clients, ensuring that the most relevant content is being added to the new Help Center.
- Faster and more convenient ticket management – added a brand-new Ticket Manager directly within the Pulse Commerce Admin Panel. Merchants now manage all Support Requests from a single online dashboard, where they can search their organization’s tickets, view status, and update ticket content.
- After-hours service improvements – Pulse Commerce’s customer service department integrated Slack for teams, enabling faster and more reliable after-hours priority incident resolution. In concert with the 8×8 Voice Over IP system, the team is empowered to take calls from anywhere, using any device. The combination of these technologies working seamlessly together enables full-time emergency customer support, living up to the company’s promise of providing exceptional customer support at all times.
More than 2,500 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were evaluated in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide in seven specialized judging committees.
I’m very proud of our client services team, led by Jeremy Stewart. Thanks to the team’s relentless customer focus and innovative solutions, our clients have enjoyed marked improvements in their experience. Average daily new ticket creation was reduced by 40% and our customer satisfaction rating is now at 98%.
~Manish Chowdhary
CEO, Pulse Commerce
All of our Stevie Award winners should be proud of their achievements. Independent professionals around the world have agreed that their accomplishments are worthy of our public recognition.
~Michael Gallagher
President, Stevie Awards
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About Pulse Commerce
Pulse Commerce is the leading cloud platform for enterprise order & inventory management, empowering retail leaders with unprecedented visibility and control of inventory, orders and customers. Retailers rely on Pulse Commerce to improve order turnaround, increase customer satisfaction, and optimize inventory control and fulfillment costs.
About the Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in seven programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 10,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 60 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at www.StevieAwards.com.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Retailers Need a 360-degree Customer View to Win: Turning Today’s Smart Shoppers into Loyal Customers
Why Retailers Need a 360-degree Customer View to Win in the Omnichannel Age
Introduction
When you ring up a sale with a brand new customer, whether online or in a store, is that the end of the relationship? Or is it just the beginning? In her best-selling book “The Membership Economy,” Robbie Kellman Baxter makes a clear case for the latter. The economics are profound, as it costs 7x more to acquire a new customer than to earn a repeat visit.
Brand loyalty is the key to growth for almost all retail categories.
Whether your business relies heavily on repeat visits (e.g. sports apparel stores) or on low frequency purchases (e.g. a wedding reception decorations retailer), brand loyalty matters. You’d love for that soccer aficionado to shop every season. And you’d love for a recent bride to recommend your store, whether online or brick & mortar, to her friends when the time comes.
You build loyalty through great shopping experiences and customer touch points.
One hundred years ago, those experiences began in stores, through interactions with store associates. And they continued with ongoing personal relationships. People’s lives centered on relatively small geographic areas, and retailers learned about their customers in person. Today, we are a mobile society. Store associates aren’t lifetime employees, and loyal shoppers visit multiple locations of their favorite retailers, including online.
The proliferation of customer touch points during the past 20 years has been immense.
Meanwhile, your ability to truly know your customers, and how they interact with you, has become near impossible. Consider a shopper who just walked into one of your stores. Imagine if store associates knew the answers to all of these questions:
- Did she do any research before walking in? What products was she browsing?
- Has he shopped here previously? What did he buy and what brands does he like most?
- How happy was she with her last purchase here? Has she returned anything?
- Has he purchased from us online? Was it from our site? Or from a marketplace?
- Does she talk about our category, or about us, on social media?
- Have we interacted with him after the sale? Live chat? Contact Center? Chat bots?
Your customer is capable of remembering all of it. And increasingly, as shoppers, they expect you to remember too — to know them across all the touch points they’ve experienced with you. And while technology is the driver behind channel proliferation, technology has not kept up with your need to know about all of those new types of interactions as your customers move from your site, to your store, to the telephone contact center. And back to the store again.
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Cut weeks off your selection process. Avoid pitfalls. Get the only 3PL RFP checklist built for ecommerce brands, absolutely free.
Get My Free 3PL RFPIn this whitepaper, we will explore the challenges that retailers face in delivering omnichannel customer satisfaction as well as the solutions.

Turn Returns Into New Revenue

Turning Today’s Smart Shoppers into Loyal Customers
When you ring up a sale with a brand new customer, whether online or in a store, is that the end of the relationship? Or is it just the beginning? In her best-selling book “The Membership Economy,” Robbie Kellman Baxter makes a clear case for the latter. The economics are profound, as it costs 7x more to acquire a new customer than to earn a repeat visit.
Brand loyalty is the key to growth for almost all retail categories. Whether your business relies heavily on repeat visits (e.g. sports apparel stores) or on low frequency purchases (e.g. a wedding reception decorations retailer), brand loyalty matters. You’d love for that soccer aficionado to shop every season. And you’d love for a recent bride to recommend your store, whether online or brick & mortar, to her friends when the time comes.
You build loyalty through great shopping experiences and customer touch points. One hundred years ago, those experiences began in stores, through interactions with store associates. And they continued with ongoing personal relationships. People’s lives centered on relatively small geographic areas, and retailers learned about their customers in person. Today, we are a mobile society. Store associates aren’t lifetime employees, and loyal shoppers visit multiple locations of their favorite retailers, including online.
The proliferation of customer touch points during the past 20 years has been immense. Meanwhile, your ability to truly know your customers, and how they interact with you, has become near impossible. Consider a shopper who just walked into one of your stores. Imagine if store associates knew the answers to all of these questions:
- Did she do any research before walking in? What products was she browsing?
- Has he shopped here previously? What did he buy and what brands does he like most?
- How happy was she with her last purchase here? Has she returned anything?
- Has he purchased from us online? Was it from our site? Or from a marketplace?
- Does she talk about our category, or about us, on social media?
- Have we interacted with him after the sale? Live chat? Contact Center? Chat bots?
Slash Your Fulfillment Costs by Up to 30%
Cut shipping expenses by 30% and boost profit with Cahoot's AI-optimized fulfillment services and modern tech —no overheads and no humans required!
I'm Interested in Saving Time and MoneyYour customer is capable of remembering all of it. And increasingly, as shoppers, they expect you to remember too — to know them across all the touch points they’ve experienced with you. And while technology is the driver behind channel proliferation, technology has not kept up with your need to know about all of those new types of interactions as your customers move from your site, to your store, to the telephone contact center. And back to the store again.
In this whitepaper, we will explore the challenges that retailers face in delivering omnichannel customer satisfaction as well as the solutions.
We will follow customers along the buyer journey.
How can you treat individual customers consistently, as if your brand truly knows them, regardless of whether they are on social media, buying on a marketplace, or in your store? And given that we can’t possibly know every single touch point, how can we, at a minimum, intelligently ensure that every interaction that customers have will be positive.
We will also, for many of the touchpoints within each step, cover the foundational capabilities you need in place, as well as those that will help you achieve omnichannel excellence.
Customer Loyalty Building Blocks
Intuitively, if you’re a retailer, you know that loyalty begins with the basics. Customers have needs, and they come to you to buy the products that will satisfy those needs.
- “I’m having a wedding, and I need party favors.”
- “Soccer season begins in 3 weeks, and I need practice gear.”
- “We’re headed to Mexico for the winter holiday, and I need SPF 30 swimwear.”
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Get My Free 3PL RFPThe Basics
As a retailer, you help shoppers find the products that will make them happy, and you make the purchase process as easy as possible. You deliver where and when you promised you would. And, if your new customer has questions, or wants to return or exchange a product, you answer their questions quickly and make returns and exchanges simple too. You might even go a step further, with a basic loyalty program that rewards purchases.
Except, the basics aren’t simple anymore, because at every step of the buyer journey, customers are not just changing lanes on the highway, they’re switching from planes, to trains to automobiles… to SpaceX (see figure 1).
Shopping and Research
To serve your well-informed customers better, you need to know what they know. Before entering the store, what did they learn from google searches, reviews, twitter and your Facebook page? How does pricing and return policy vary between your ecommerce site, marketplaces, and your stores? Are your contact centers giving the same answers to the same questions as your live chat operators and your store associates?
Support, Returns & Exchanges
Return and exchange policy and execution are two of the most important factors consumers consider when choosing a retailer – whether buying online or in stores. In fact, according to the UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper™ study, 66% of shoppers review a retailer’s return policy before making a purchase. At a minimum, this must be a simple process. More advanced retailers are enabling customers to buy, modify an order, return and exchange across multiple contact channels. The easier we make it for customers, the more likely they are to return.
- Are each of your channels providing great support?
- Are they able to interact with a customer the same across all channels?
- Or is your company treating one customer like three:(1) the store customer, (2) the website customer, and(3) the call center customer?
Lifetime Loyalty
Loyalty programs are everywhere we turn. From buy 10, get 1 free punch cards, to rewards points, to discounts off the next purchase, retailers are in an arms race to keep customers coming back. And loyalty programs help you get to know your customers better too. Are you keeping your customers engaged with your brand after they walk out with their first purchase?
Scaling Made Easy: Calis Books’ Fulfillment Journey
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See Scale JourneyThe Basics Matter
While there are a myriad of initiatives within each loyalty driver that we can enhance, retailers ignore the basics at their peril:
- 89% of customers have stopped buying from online stores after they’ve experienced poor service (source: Right Now)
- A 5% reduction in customer abandonment rate can increase profitability by 25% – 125%. (Source: “Leading on the Edge ofChaos,” Murphy & Murphy)

Turn Returns Into New Revenue
