Fulfillment Services 101: What You Expect from Your Fulfillment House

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Donna Kutter

Selecting a fulfillment house for your business can be a daunting task. You need to pick Fulfillment Company that provides a wide variety of services to meet your current and future needs. Here’s checklist of different services offered by fulfillment houses.

Storage and Warehousing

Most fulfillment companies offer this as their most basic service. Storage services usually have an “in/out” or “handling fee” plus a monthly storage fee. This is usually calculated by item, box or skid, whichever is most convenient for the size and scope of your products.

Pick & Pack

Pick and Pack are pretty standard services offered by most 3PL warehouses or fulfillment houses. Pick and Pack generally entails the fulfillment house picking an order from your stock and packing it and readying it for shipment. This is typically charged for by the item/case/box picked.

Shipping Services

Not all 3PL Warehouses will also provide shipping services in conjunction with warehousing and pick/pack. However, most fulfillment service providers do also provide services to arrange for shipping on your behalf. Fulfillment houses usually have preferred rates from shipping companies due to volume and can arrange for your shipment under their rate schedules, saving you money.

Order Tracking

If you’re just using a “general warehouse” for fulfilling orders, you probably won’t find this service offered. However, most warehouses that specialize in fulfillment services generally offer this. This is great for you or your customers to be able to log on to the internet and track the status of orders. This is a great customer service feature for your customers.

Drop Shipping Services

If you ship internationally, it can get expensive with customs processing fees. Many fulfillment services offer drop shipping for international orders. For example, if you sent 10 packages to the US from Canada, you could experience 10 brokerage fee charges from your customs broker. Plus, crossing the border can add extra days to your shipping time. With a drop shipping service, your fulfillment house combines all 10 orders into a single shipment and sends it to the US Postal service where they are sent out individually. This saves you on brokerage and also cuts transit time. If may also save you on lower US postal rates.

Kitting Services

Let’s say you sell shirts and ties, and you offer a “shirt and tie package”, where the customer gets a discount on purchasing a specific shirt and tie as a package. Your fulfillment house could pre-package shirts and ties together as kits. This generally lowers the fulfilment costs, allowing you to offer a discount, while increasing your revenue because more items will be sold. If this service could be of use to you, make sure you ask your fulfillment house about it.

Rebate Management

You may want to offer your clients a special rebate. Perhaps you offer clients $10 rebate if two are purchased, or you may offer a “free calculator with purchase”. Fulfillment houses that also offer rebate management can collect the rebate information for you, process eligible rebates and also send out the rebate cheques, making it a turn-key operation for you. Ask your fulfillment house about rebate management.

Reverse Logistics

Many people forget about returns. Some of your orders may get returned due to being defective, or perhaps the customer ordered the wrong product, or if you have a lax return policy, maybe your client just doesn’t want the product anymore. Returning a product to stock is different than picking and packing it. The product must be inspected and determined if it can be returned to stock or it needs to be scrapped. Not all fulfillment service providers will offer this service, so be sure to check.

Marketing Campaigns, Literature Fulfillment, etc.

You may have a need to send direct mail campaigns to your clients. Having your fulfillment services provider do this for you is ideal. They already have the data you need to target a marketing campaign, plus their familiar with your products.

Dare Marketing is a Great Choice

Here at Dare Marketing we’re experts in product and literature fulfillment, plus we can help you with any marketing mailing campaign. If you’d like a full service Fulfillment house, contact us for a review and free estimate for your required fulfillment services.

6 Predictions for the Future of eCommerce

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Donna Kutter

The retail industry has been drastically transformed in the last few years to incorporate the new technologies of electronic commerce in the social, mobile and at the user experience level. The new challenge that marketing and sales managers face is to detect digital trends to stay ahead of competition while boosting sales and providing customers with the best shopping experiences. While there are a lot of factors that will define the future of electronic commerce, here are 6 trends that one must not fail to consider to have a successful eCommerce business:

1. Presence on mobile devices

The adoption of mobile devices around the world continues to grow. In the coming years; that means that more people will access the Internet from other than a desktop. Therefore, the growth of commerce, or m-commerce (mobile commerce) will increase exponentially in the coming years; it’s even expected that it will be higher than sales done through desktop computers. It is for this reason that any person or company who decides to sell their products or services online should focus much of its efforts on having an e-commerce site available on all types of devices. Similarly, the shopping experience must be excellent on all available platforms. Just as the introduction of smartphones and tablets is changing the consumption behavior of users, the new wave of portable devices will have the same effect. Creativity to implement sales strategies in the new pieces of hardware, such as lenses, smart watches and bracelets, will be crucial for companies wishing to beat the competition.

2. Personalized shopping experience

In order to provide an adequate experience for each person, the most important thing is to know what their preferences are. This is more difficult when there is no direct interaction with the customer. The owner of the online store cannot ignore if the user who is on the other side of the screen is male or female, or whether it’s a teenager or elderly person. Site owners must be aware of who the user is, their specific needs and wants and be able to serve up content that is specifically targeted to them. The only way to know the customer better is through information. With social media data now available and people sharing all kind of personal information online, gathering data is getting easier. Therefore, companies must integrate social media information and tailor their “marketing efforts” to their target market in a more precise way than before.

3. The importance of offline sales

Many people believe that the growth of electronic commerce will put an end to physical stores. This is not entirely true. While digital stores offer many advantages over physical stores; one of the most important is the convenience of not having to travel to a shopping center or facility to purchase a product. In most cases this is very convenient, but it is important to remember that many people still enjoy the “physical shopping” experience and enjoy trying or testing the product before buying it as well as look for that personalized help from another human being. That will not disappear, only the purchase dynamics will change. The online experience can be used as a determinant factor to make a purchase (for example sending an email announcing their biggest sale of the year and offering a coupon with extra discounts) or as a post-buy experience, for example after a purchase in the physical store to offer a coupon redeemable online store. The relationship between online and offline channels is very important and will certainly be in the future. Experts predict that future stores will operate more like exhibition spaces, better known as showrooms, where customers can try out products in person, experiment and carry out subsequent purchase online and receive it at your door.

4. Service and social networks

Some people think that price is the most important thing, others consider that promotion is the key, but in the end, the secret for creating brand loyalty and increasing sales continues to be the quality of service. It doesn’t matter if the company sells groceries or technology. Great service drives brand loyalty. Social networking has gained strength in recent years. The amount of information shared on Facebook and Twitter is vast and traveling at high speed, and is growing astronomically. Both positive and negative reviews spread exponentially. Therefore, it is important to have a strong presence in social networks, as well as to promote products and to meet difficult situations and provide excellent customer service.

5. The challenge of SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO for short) is one of the largest sources of traffic for online stores. Constantly, Google updates its search algorithm in order to show the most relevant content for your users. The same way that Marketing techniques evolve, SEO tactics do too. To be competitive in e-commerce, it is important to have attractive and quality content that helps the company stay current in the results of Google. Keywords are no longer enough. Efforts should focus on developing useful content and tailored to the target market. For example, creating blogs, videos and other media that are focused on a lifestyle, and encourage people to share and make them relevant.

6. Fulfillment Services

As ecommerce grows, fulfillment will play a bigger role in who wins customers. Getting a client to buy on line is a huge challenge, but ultimately, you have to deliver. If you can’t pick/pack/ship an order accurately, quickly and at a competitive price, you’ll lose customers in the long-run.
Here at Dare Marketing, we know eCommerce fulfillment and can help you fulfill your orders quickly, accurately and at a competitive price. We have delivery networks across Canada and the United States for small package fulfillment. Ask us about our Ship to USA Consolidation program. We consolidate orders to the USA and deliver them to U.S. Postal Service, allowing you to save on customs while taking advantage of low USPS rates.

The Future of eCommerce is Mobile

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Donna Kutter

According to a recent study by Google,

67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site.

You may have heard recently about “mobilegeddon”. Google recently took the mobile friendliness of your site into account as a ranking factor for your website. Sites that are not mobile friendly will now be penalized as a ranking factor.

Consumers Want Mobile Friendly Sites

In addition to 67% of users being more likely to buy, consumers showed a real preference for engaging with sites that are mobile friendly.
• 67% of users more likely to buy from a mobile site
• 61% would move to another site if it wasn’t mobile friendly
• 52% said that a bad experience on mobile would make them less likely to engage with the company.
• 74% say they are more likely to return to a mobile friendly site.

State of the Industry?

The industry in general is slow to respond. Only 9% of ecommerce sites are mobile responsive.

Competitive Advantage

Based on the fact that few online retailers and ecommerce sites are currently mobile responsive and the strong preference consumers have for mobile friendly sites, you can gain a real competitive advantage on your competition by being first to mobile responsiveness in your market.

What is Mobile Responsiveness?

Mobile responsiveness is made up of many factors, primarily how user friendly your site is when viewed on small screen sizes like mobile and tablet. Your site may look great on your 24” monitor on your desktop but terrible on a smaller screen. Some key factors for a mobile site are:

Fast loading times. A mobile browser doesn’t have the speed of your desktop, so load times should be optimized.
Mobile Friendly Layout. Your visitor should not have to zoom and scroll. This annoys visitors. Your sit should “morph” into a new configuration that fits easily on screen.
Take advantage of mobile technology. Users should be able to use touch and swipe in order to navigate your site. If not, your user experience will suffer.

Don’t Forget about Fulfillment

Having a great site is just half the battle. Customers expect to be serviced promptly, accurately and cost effectively. Fulfillment of orders is key in the ongoing success of your ecommerce business. Here at Dare Marketing, we know ecommerce and we know fulfillment. For a free consultation about how you could improve the speed, accuracy or cost effectiveness of your ecommerce fulfillment system, please contact us.

Grow Your Business with Unaddressed Admail: How to Guide

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Donna Kutter

Have you ever wanted your marketing to reach a specific group of consumers by age, income level or cultural background? It’s easy with unaddressed Admail.

What is unaddressed Admail?

Unaddressed Admail is a service offered by Canada Post. You can target houses or businesses in a specific postal code area; that may be as small as a few blocks. You can easily blanket an entire area with your marketing message for just pennies per contact. It’s an awesome service if used correctly.

How do I know where to send Unaddressed Admail?

This is where Unaddressed Admail really shines. Because Statistics Canada collects data by postal code, it’s easy to pick the best areas in your local community to send Unaddressed Admail to. Let’s say you’re looking for consumers between the ages of 40-50 with a average household income of over $100,000. You just go through the Statistics Canada data and pick the most suitable area by postal code. Now you know exactly where you want to send your mailing to. Canada Post even makes it easy, you can use their precision targeting tool to target the demography and geography that you want. They give you counts and the postal codes to send your mailing to.

What are some considerations I need to have in an Unaddressed Admail campaign?

Budget

Make sure your select the most targeted areas that you can afford. Let’s say in Mississauga, Ontario there are 30,000 delivery addresses that meet your target. However, you can only afford to design print and mail 10,000. You can go through the postal codes and pick the ones that most closely match your demographic to meet your mailing targeted budget.

Size

Size matters with mailings. The bigger your piece, the more expensive it is to mail. There’s always a struggle between creative and cost, but if you want to minimize cost, then try and keep the design of your mailing within the limits of a standard letter. Here are Canada Post’s guidelines.

Weight

Weight Matters, keep your mailing under 30 grams to get the lowest cost mailing.

Design

You want your mailing to stand out. Try to have a clear message that’s an offer and a call to action that’s easy to read and understand in a few seconds of looking at the mailing. This is marketing, not a creative art project. Function always trumps creativity when it comes to direct mail. Avoid fancy pictures or images that take away from your message. We’ve all seen the advertising with “we bend over backwards for our clients”….picture of guy bending over backwards. Don’t let this be you. Nothing kills conversions like this type of design. To make your add successful, make it clear what your offering, make it clear what you want them to do to take advantage of your offer.

Timing

Consider what day you want your mailing delivered on. There is a very definite time schedule from date of delivery to Canada Post do delivery of your mailing to the public. Maybe your offer is more suitable to be seen on the weekend, you could time your mailing for a Friday. If midweek works better, you can do that too.

You can save money with Dare Marketing

Dare Marketing is a certified Canada Post Expert, which means not only can you leverage Dare Marketing’s expertise with a mailing campaign, but they can offer you discounts off postal rates. If you’d like an expert to handle your mailing project for you so you can focus on your core business, give Dare Marketing a call.

Which eCommerce Platform Should You Choose?

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Donna Kutter

When people decide to start an online business, one of the first questions they ask themselves is what eCommerce platform is right for their business. There are a wide range of options, and business owners are often confused on which way to go. Plus, it’s a big decision. Once a direction is chosen, it’s difficult, if not impossible to change later. This article explores some of the different options to help you decide what’s right for your business.

Two types of eCommerce Platforms

There are two basic types of eCommerce platforms. One is a hosted solution. The other is a self hosted solution. There are pros and cons to each and you need to decide what is right for you.

Hosted Solutions

Hosted solutions are where an eCommerce software provider basically gives you the keys to an already functioning store and you pay a monthly fee for the service. They typically do the set up, provide the payment solution and the software runs on their servers.

Pros of Hosted Solutions

• Low start up costs
• Little experience required
• It mostly just works
• You don’t have to worry about technical stuff like site speed, security, updates, etc.

Cons of Hosted Solutions

• You don’t really “own” the site.
• Support is not normally great. When you have a problem, their “Guru” service sends you a link to a “how to” article.
• You have little control over the setup. Many advanced SEO strategies are just not possible within their systems.
• Can be more expensive long-term

Examples of Hosted Solutions

Some of the more popular hosted solutions are: Volusion, Shopify, and Big Commerce. Most of the hosted solutions make up only a small portion of the web. For example, Shopify is one of the biggest hosted solutions making up only 5.2% of the top 1 million websites according to Alexa. In contrast, the top self hosted solution, Magento, makes up 26.2% of the market.

Self Hosted eCommerce Solutions

Self hosted solutions are where you purchase the software, or use a free open source solution, then set it up yourself, arrange for a host and pretty much do it all yourself.

Pros of Self-Hosted Solutions

• Complete control of the implementation.
• You build it, you own it.
• Once it’s built, ongoing costs are minimal.
• It’s yours; you can pretty much do anything you want.
• You can customize checkout and SEO however you want.

Cons of Self-Hosted Solutions

• Big upfront development costs.
• Takes a degree of technical expertise, or you have to hire a consultant.
• You are responsible for security, performance and upgrades.

Examples of Self Hosted eCommerce Platforms

The two biggest self hosted eCommerce platforms are Magento and Woocommerce. Magento makes up 26.2% of Alexa”s top 1 million eCommerce websites, while Woocommerce makes up 21.7%. These two platforms make up almost half of all eCommerce sites in the Alexa 1 million. You can see by the numbers that self-hosted solutions are definitely more popular.

What Platform is right for you?

Generally, if you’re a small business just starting out with little technical expertise, then a hosted solution like Shopify is probably right for you. You pay minimal set up fees, plus a small monthly fee and you’re up and running without having to worry about the technical details of running an eCommerce site.
On the other hand, if you plan to be a large on-line retailer. A self hosted platform is probably the best choice for you. There will be a significant investment up front, but once it’s built, it’s yours. Plus, you’ll be able to customize it exactly to your business needs and have greater control over checkout solutions.

An Easy choice:

Once you build your eCommerce store online, you have to think about fulfillment and how to get your products delivered to your clients. Dare Marketing is an easy choice. We’re eCommerce fulfillment experts who know your business and can help you grow and serve your customers. Contact us for more details and a free consultation on fulfillment options.

2014 Year in Review Benchmarks for ecommerce Retailers

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Donna Kutter

Where your traffic comes from:

• 65% from PC’s, 16% from Tablets, and 17% from Smartphones (source: monetate)
• 22% of traffic comes from organic search (source: custora)
• 17% of traffic comes from paid CPC (source: custora)
• 18% of traffic comes from email marketing (source: custora)
• 25% of traffic is direct (ie: enter your web address directly) (source: custora)

What this means for you:

The majority of traffic still comes from PC’s. Not that you should overlook tablets and smartphones, but by far most people do their shopping at home sitting in front of their PC’s. The other insight here is that your ecommerce website has 4 major sources of traffic, organic search, CPC and email marketing, in addition to people who type in your address directly. To maximize your traffic you need to work on all 4 sources of traffic. Some businesses seem to over focus their efforts on organic search and reaching that all important #1 spot on Google. However, this is just one of the channels traffic comes to your site on. Many businesses overlook the importance of email marketing, mainly because it’s a lot of work to come up with creative emails on a regular basis.
Direct traffic is generally returning customers and customers who arrived on your site by traditional marketing methods like direct mail, word of mouth, media advertising, etc. Don’t discount traditional advertising as it can be effective and account for 25% of your traffic!

Where your money comes from:

• $135.17 average order size on PC (source: monetate)
• $121.30 average order size on Tablet (source: monetate)
• $100.27 average order size on Smartphone (source: monetate)

What this means for you:

People are making bigger purchases on PC vs. other mediums. If you are debating about rich content with photos and videos and how it might impact the mobile experience, keep in mind your sweet spot is PC users.

Conversion Rates

• Global average conversion rate is 2.37% (source: monetate)

What this means for you:

This is a great benchmark to use for your site. While it is an “average”, which by definition means some will be lower and some will be higher, if your conversion rate is significantly lower you should consider taking a hard look at your site, your pricing and your checkout to see if you can improve your conversion rate.

Year Over Year

• Ecommerce revenue is up 13.5% over 2013 and forecasted to grow by 25% by 2016!

Find more statistics at Statista

What this means for you:

The market is growing. There are lots of opportunities for you to sell your goods and services online!
Dare Marketing is here to help. We know ecommerce fulfillment. We can help you fill your orders timely and efficiently so that you can spend your time selling and marketing your products and improving your conversion rates. Don’t get left behind.

Contact us today for a free evaluation of how outsourcing your fulfillment operation could save you time and money, while allowing you to focus on growing your business. Contact us!

How “not” to design a Mailing Campaign

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Donna Kutter

I recently received a mailing from a client, who shall remain nameless, and realized they made every mistake in the book in regard to a direct mailing campaign. While I’ve written on direct mailing campaigns in the past, I thought I’d try a different spin on “what not to do” and it might help you avoid making some common mistakes that will cost you in conversions and sales in the future.

No, or inconspicuous call to action

The whole purpose of a mailing campaign is to generate orders or leads. If you don’t tell the recipient exactly what you want them to do, they probably won’t. In this particular case, the client had a catalogue of Christmas specials. On the very back page of the flyer in the middle of a whole bunch of other text is “place order online at www…..” A much more effective call to action would have been placed in plain sight on the cover “Visit our Online Store for Special Deals and Discounts on…”

No, or weak offer

The number one (after the quality of the mailing list) factors that effects the success of your mailing campaign is the strength of the offer. “Free estimate” doesn’t cut it! In this particular case, the client “had 10% off with this promo code” as the offer. However, it was buried on the back page not really highlighted. The offer could have been “Visit us online and save 10% on….” Now you’ve got both a call to action and an offer in one!

Huge Logo

I don’t know how many times I see this in mailers and websites. I know clients put a lot of thought and effort and money into the design of their logo, and it is absolutely important for branding. However, a logo alone doesn’t sell anything! Having your logo take up 25% of the space on the page is a complete waste of space. Your special offer should take up 25% of the space on the first page!

Not Considering the Delivery

If you’re planning to mail your marketing piece you’re first consideration, even before the flyer should be the envelope. What size envelope are you going to put it in? There are standard postage sizes, each have different costs. You need to choose a format that works and then design your mailer around the envelope. Not the other way around! Plus, your envelope is the first thing people see.
This particular mailer was mailed in a plain brown envelope and the mailer didn’t even fit! The client had to fold the bottom 2 inches to fit in the envelope.

Poor Choice of Images

You’re images should reflect the offer and what you’re selling. Too often people go for “cleverness” or a beautiful looking picture that has nothing to do with what they are selling. In this example, the client put a beautiful picture of a Christmas ornament on the front cover. Great if you’re selling Christmas ornaments. Not so great if you’re selling Christmas baskets.

Giant Disclaimers

If you really need to put a disclaimer or special offer conditions, do it in small print at the bottom of the page. You can always do an asterix and it will cover your but legally. There is no need for a giant heading “Disclaimer” right below your offer. Not only does it look out of place, but this is prime real estate you’re taking up with a huge negative!

Lots of Dramatic Fonts

While the creative use of fonts can be a real eye catcher, too much fancy script, different colour fonts and the over use of bold and italic makes nothing stand out. The purpose of using a different font, size, colour or bold should be to make key benefits or offers stand out from the rest of the text. Use Ariel or Helvetica for the rest, they’re great simple fonts that are easy to read.

Hire a Professional Designer

Many people are choosing to use services like “Vista Print” for their marketing materials. If you’re a skilled designer, or already have the artwork, these services can be a low cost printing alternative. However, when you factor in the cost of the envelopes, postage, printing, web design and all the other costs into a promotion, it just seems wrong not to have a professional designer do the artwork for a few hundred dollars. While the overall look of a mailer isn’t as important as the list, the offer, and the call to action, having poor design can take away from all the good work you did getting the right list and constructing calls to action and offers.

At Dare Marketing we’re here to help with Your Direct Mailing Campaign

Here at Dare Marketing we have over 20 years experience with direct mailing campaigns. We can help you develop and deliver a campaign that works. We’ll:

Help you construct and offer
Help you design and print your mailing
select and purchase a mailing list
Variable Data Print the addresses on the envelopes
Prepare the postage and mailing

Contact us today and we’ll give your mailing campaign idea an expert review, plus show you how it can be cost effective to outsource your mailing to Dare Marketing.

As an eCommerce Retailer, What is my Core Competency?

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Donna Kutter

What do I spend my time doing as an eCommerce retailer?

If you’re like many eCommerce retailers managing an on-line store, you’re filling orders, packing, shipping and responding to customers. This comprises most of your day. You may think that this is what differentiates you from the competition and that providing service to your customers is your core competency. Maybe if you are Amazon, this is true. However, for most eCommerce retailers, better, faster, cheaper service can be outsourced. eCommerce fulfillment houses specialize in fulfillment. This is their core competency. They have money invested in people, training and systems to be the best at fulfillment.

What would you do with yourself if you didn’t spend so much time fulfilling your orders?

Here are 20 things you could be doing to grow your eCommerce business.

Growing your business! Think of all the improvements to your eCommerce website that you just never seem to be able to make. Analyzing buyer behavior, improving your check out process and coming up with new and special offers for you returning customers are all things you could (and should!) be doing. Your core competency as an eCommerce retailer is MARKETING. Here are some suggestions:

Analyzing the keywords customers find you on and targeting your pages better for search engines.
Writing blogs and content targeted at your potential customers.
Doing an email campaign with a special offer to former customers.
Tracking cart abandonment (people who create a cart but don’t complete the order).
Finding ways to reduce cart abandonment and/or re-targeting cart abandoners.
Coordinating the messaging on social media.
Writing guest blogs aimed at your target audience on other people’s blogs.
Setting up/managing your Google Adwords campaign to drive more traffic or lower cost per acquisition.
Improving pictures, videos and descriptions of your products to increase conversions.
Finding and adding new and better products to your store.
Write “how to” articles and videos that helps your clients decide what to buy and how to use your products.
Set up a Google Shopping campaign (product display ads).
Add your site to “shopbot” or similar shopping sites.
Set up a Google Re-marketing campaign to display ads to previous website visitors.
Explore traditional advertising media channels: magazine ads, direct mail.
Set up a facebook advertising campaign.
Getting links back to your website from relevant web directories to help with your search ranking.
Joining on-line forums that are related to the products you sell and becoming an expert there. This is sure to drive traffic and sales to your site as well as, build connections.
Review your Google Webmaster Tools to make sure you have no crawl errors or missing pages on your site.
Use a service like SEM Rush to compare how you are doing in search vs. your competitors and what the best keywords are.

Dare Marketing Can Help

Dare Marketing is an expert fulfillment house based in the Toronto Area in Canada. We specialize not only in intra-Canada fulfillment but cross-border fulfillment into the US from Canada. If you’d like to free up more of your time to grow your business and are considering outsourcing. Contact Dare Marketing today for a free consultation.

So, you have an ecommerce website, now what?

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Donna Kutter

So you’ve built an ecommerce website and worked out what products you are selling. You just got your first order. Now what? You have to fulfill the order and there are some options you have in the way you structure your business.

Fulfill the order yourself

Many companies start here. If your volume is small and the pick/pack process and shipping methods are relatively easy this may be a good option for you. However, there are some key disadvantages to doing it yourself. If you’re up against larger competitors you will struggle to get some of the benefits they have due to volume if you do it yourself.

Pros of Self Fulfillment

Cons of Self Fulfillment

If you have small quantities, a place to store and lots of time on your hands doing it yourself avoids any hard costs.

High overhead, need warehouse, staff and computer systems if you have volume.
You may be inexperienced and there is a learning curve.
You lose any freight advantages a fulfillment house may have due to volume.
Inventory handling costs ie: counting, shrinkage, etc. Becomes your problem.
You’ll struggle with the information systems you need to provide your clients with up to the minute order status without a significant investment in information systems. You’ll need tracking numbers and detailed information about what is in every box to avoid short ship claims.

Outsource to an ecommerce fulfillment house

Outsourcing to an ecommerce fulfillment house is a good option for many online retailers. You keep your costs and overhead down due to the scale of the fulfillment house, plus you can take advantage of many shipping benefits that a fulfillment house may have.

Pros of outsourcing ecommerce fulfillment

Cons of outsourcing ecommerce fulfillment

No overhead or fixed costs.
Freight advantages from the fulfillment house’s volume
Low costs per transaction
No investment in a warehouse required
No need to hire and train staff
You can concentrate on marketing instead of fulfilling.
Access to fulfillment house’s advanced technology for pick/pack and trace shipments.
Inventory control (counting and shrinkage) is handled by your fulfillment house.
Frees up your time.
A fulfillment house will have tracking numbers and detailed information about what is in every box to avoid short ship claims.

When your business gets very large, there is a break-even point where the transactional cost of outsourcing can be reduced by an investment in your own warehouse operation.
If you choose the wrong fulfillment house it can have negative consequences to your business and ability to provide customer service.

Drop shipping your orders

Drop shipping can be an option for some products and generally good if you have only a few manufacturers that you deal with. The idea is that you ship your order directly from your manufacturer to your customer and avoid having to do any kind of warehousing or fulfillment at all. While this sounds like the perfect solution this is often difficult to set up. Manufacturers don’t want to undertake this task unless you can prove you have enough volume to make it worth their while. Plus, as a “non-stocking distributor” you won’t get good discounts so your margins will be low. Finally, there are some real hurdles around logistics and paperwork to ensure you customer doesn’t find out you shipped it from the manufacturer.

Pros of Drop Shipping

Cons of Drop Shipping

No cost of fulfillment
Easy, take order, send it to manufacturer

Manufacturer knows all your clients, what do they need you for?
Unless shipping and customs paperwork is handled carefully, your customers will know where you got the items. What do they need you for?
Dependent upon manufacturer, less control over what’s in stock.
Lower margins

So what should you do?

If you’ve read this article and still don’t know what option is best for you, call Dare Marketing. One of our Order Fulfillment Consultants will help you decide what’s right for you. Plus, if your choice is to outsource your ecommerce fulfillment, Dare will leverage their years of experience to help you.

What is a Fulfillment House?

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Donna Kutter

We’re often asked, “What is a fulfillment house?” Dare Marketing is a fulfillment house and is celebrating 20 years in business this year. Here are some of the things we’ve done for our clients over the last 20 years and how we earned the title of “Fulfillment House”.

Direct Mailing Campaigns

Dare Marketing, is typical of most fulfillment houses and started to offer direct mail fulfillment. This service involves obtaining a mailing list, cleansing the data, preparing and mailing and addressing the mailing campaign with variable data printing. This was one of the first services offered by Dare Marketing early on as a start-up.

Rebate Management

Right along with direct mail campaigns, customers began asking for a way to handle rebate fulfillment. This meant collecting rebate returns and either fulfilling them with a monetary rebate or a premium item. Almost immediately, Dare Marketing recognized the need for putting this service online. One of the key benefits of being online is allowing consumers to track their own rebate status as well as, the end client to track the overall success of the campaign.

Warehousing & Pick & Pack

With the demand for rebate fulfillment of premium items came the need for storage space to inventory premium items as well as, prepare them for shipment as part of the rebate process. Dare Marketing opened a fully functional warehouse and distribution center to handle rebate fulfillment of premium items.

Literature Fulfillment

Hand and hand with rebate management and direct mail campaigns, came the need of our clients for a place to store, organize and mail literature on an “on demand” basis. Dare Marketing added literature fulfillment to our services to meet the needs of our clients who run busy marketing departments and were looking for simple solutions to outsource a time consuming task.

eCommerce Fulfillment

The boom in online shopping and the tremendous growth of the internet and online web stores, Dare Marketing recognized the demand for an outsourced solution to warehouse, inventory, pick, pack and ship goods for online retailers. Dare Marketing offers complete ecommerce fulfillment solutions for our clients, including easy to use online tracking and data exchange.

A history of solutions

You can see from our history Dare Marketing has a strong ability to recognize customer needs and provide outsourced solutions that save our clients time and money. Check out what our customers have said about us by reading our testimonials, or if you have fulfillment problem that needs a solution, visit us at our website and book a consultation. It’s free and will make you more productive, while providing quality, cost-effective fulfillment solutions to your clients.