DARE to Succeed

2014 Year in Review Benchmarks for ecommerce Retailers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 20:29:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 22:16:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 17:48:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 15:53:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 17:20:00 +0000

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.

Overcomming Logistics Challenges for Small Business

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 13:19:00 +0000

Small business faces numerous challenges when starting up. If you sell a product, you will experience a huge learning curve on the logistics side of your business. As your business grows, volumes increase, complexity increases, so does the need for specialized knowledge and expertise. However, in the beginning it can be a "chicken or the egg" scenario where you just can't get to the next level without overcoming some basic logistics challenges.

Being able to deal with increasing complexity

If you're a business just starting out and shipping from your home, or small unit, as demand for your product increase, so does the complexity. Picking and packing becomes a full time job and dealing with multiple vendors and transportation providers eats up a significant amount of your time. Implementing systems to deal with this complexity also becomes a real time consuming task. As a small business owner, your time is the most precious thing. Work vs. family vs. personal time puts you in a scenario where you really have to consider every minute you spend. You have to ask yourself, should you be doing it yourself or outsourcing it? Outsourcing pick/pack operations can help you deal with the complexity of your growing business without having to invest time and effort in information and data systems to track it.

Matching service levels with your larger competitors

Being able to deliver next day, or internationally, is no small feat. It requires coordination between your pick/pack operation, your vendors and your transportation providers. This can be a daunting task for a small business owner to manage along with everything else they have to face. By partnering with a seasoned logistics provider they can help you set up shipping zones, international deliveries, as well as, being able to negotiate more favorable freight rates which they can pass along to you. This puts you on a level playing field with the big guys.

Keeping up with the latest data and information systems

To succeed in today's world, business needs to know their customers and the service levels that are being provided to them. Customers want to know "on demand" when their shipment will be delivered and when it shipped. Plus, you as a business owner will want to track type and frequency of orders by customer, geographic region, or by promotion. Implementing your own data systems to track all this can be complex and add another project to your already full plate. Another advantage of outsourcing your logistics and pick/pack operation is that these solutions come standard with many fulfillment companies. This saves you the time and aggravation of setting up your own systems.

Big Fluctuations in Demand

As a small business you rarely have the luxury of regular, steady business. I comes in big inflows and then periods of relative slow demand. It can be expensive to invest in systems, equipment and space to accommodate your busy periods vs. your slow periods. Outsourcing is a great way for small business reduce their costs when experiencing surges in demand. When outsourcing, you only pay for what you use, so peaks in demand are easily accommodated, and lulls in demand don't come with all that uncovered overhead.

Dare Marketing has Solutions for you

If you're considering outsourcing some or all of your fulfillment or logistics functions, it's worth your time to give Dare Marketing a call. Dare is an experienced fulfillment house for all your logistics needs.

CONTACT US

How a Fulfillment Center Works with Your eCommerce Website

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 20:02:00 +0000

http://www.daremarketing.com/index.php/fulfillment-services/ecommerce-fulfillment/

How to use Pay Per Click to Drive Traffic to your eCommerce Web Store

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 May 2014 17:27:00 +0000

If you've got an ecommerce store but are struggling with getting traffic and conversions, Dare Marketing has some tips for you in this easy to understand article on pay per click advertising.

What is Pay Per Click?

Pay Per Click or PPC advertising is a mechanism where you display an advertisement online and pay the advertiser every time someone clicks on your ad.

Benefits of PPC Advertising

You only pay when someone clicks!

No more wasting money. You only pay when someone clicks. In comparison to buying a magazine ad, you pay per view. Many people you are paying to view your ad have little or no interest in buying.

Better Quality Leads

Generally, you find you get better quality leads with PPC rather than any other type of advertising. If people search for "Nike Shoes" and then click on your ad, you're pretty much guaranteed that the person wants to buy "Nike Shoes".

Tracking and Optimization

With many forms of advertising it's hard to track who saw it, how many saw it, how many turned into customers and what was the ROI. With PPC this is easy. Most PPC advertisers give you the ability to track views, clicks, conversions and sales dollars. Making it easy t calculate ROI and invest in the best PPC ROI campaigns.

Common Misconceptions about PPC Advertising

My competitor will click on the ads and use up my budget.

This is a very common question that PPC advertisers have. If this was possible it would make PPC pretty much useless. That's why PPC advertisers have the ability to filter out unwanted clicks. Everyone connects to the internet through an IP address. The PPC advertiser is able to determine the IP address of the person who clicked. If you get 10 clicks from a single IP address, most PPC advertisers will not charge you for the clicks.

What do I have to do to get top listing?

While in organic Google searches being in the top 3 is what you're going for, in PCC it's not really that important. Depending on your strategy, most people want to reduce their cost per click. It's expensive to be listed in the top 3 and you will pay more for your bids. As long as you're getting traffic, why do you care whether you're on the top or #8? If you can get 10 clicks at $1.00 in the top 3 or 20 clicks at $0.50, being in the 8th position, what would you rather have? Traffic at the lowest cost!

Wow, $15.00 per click is expensive!

Most pay per click is an auction. Other advertisers bid to have their ad shown instead of yours. I've seen some cost per click as high as $30! Keep in mind it's not the cost per click, but the ROI that's important. Let's take the example of a locksmith. Cost per click is $15. You might think that's outrageous, but let's look more closely. Let's say out of 10 clicks the locksmith gets 1 service call. So that's $150 cost per sale. People are generally not Googling for locksmiths to do research, they look for locksmiths when they are locked out of their car or home. So a $150 investment gets you a $300 service call. Doubling your money! Now how many $15 clicks do you want to buy?

Best Practise in PPC Advertising

Pick longtail keywords to bid on

For example "plumber" is pretty general and could searched for a number of reasons not leading to a sale. Now consider "24-hour plumber". Someone searching for "24-hour plumber" has an emergency and needs a plumber! You would want to bid higher for these types of keywords as they will convert better.

Don't send people to your home page

I see so many PPC advertisers sending the clicks to their home page. This is not best practise. If you are a shoe store selling red shoes, when someone clicks on your ad for red shoes, you want to send them to the "red shoes" category page in your ecommerce web store, not your home page. You'll get better conversions that way.

Marketing 101 still applies

Just because your advertising online doesn't mean you throw out everything you know about marketing.

Your ads and landing pages still have to incorporate:
1. Offer
2. Call to action
3. Reply device

Track Everything

To get the most out of PPC, track everything. Try to link the click on the ad to the sale. You'll be able to tell what's working and what's not. This way you'll be able to invest in the PPC advertising that has the highest ROI. This is easily done through your ecommerce software, or simply sending the completed sale, contact form, or reply device to a "thank-you" page and tracking that.

Dare Marketing Can Help

If you're an ecommerce retailer Dare Marketing has solutions for you from consulting to software and fulfillment services. We have a complete suite of solutions from end to end that will help you sell more online and improve your profitability. Contact us today for a free consultation.

How to Reduce Inventory and Increase Cash flow for your eCommerce Business

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 19:49:00 +0000

Every business is concerned with cash flow. Inventory is always an expensive proposition and ties up a lot of capital and cash flow. This article explores how to manage that investment.

The 80-20 Rule

The 80-20 rule is rule of thumb that applies to many processes, it is also known as the Pareto Principal. Pareto noticed that 80% of the wealth was controlled by 20% of the people. Since then, this rule has been applied to many processes including inventory control. It is typically true that 20% of your inventory items will account for 80% of your inventory cost. We can use this assumption to our benefit by being able to tightly manage a small portion of our inventory and get the greatest return on our time invested.

The A-B-C’s of Inventory Control

One of the simplest ways to begin to manage your inventory is to divide your inventory into “A- Items”, “B-Items” and “C-Items”.

A-Items

A items are the top 20% of items by value that you inventory.

C- Items

C-Items are the bottom 50% or so of items that account for less than 5% of inventory value.

B-Items

B items are the rest in between the top 20% and the bottom 5% of SKU’s (Stocking Units).

How to determine ABC’s

An item’s inventory value can be calculated by multiplying:

Annual Quantity Sales X item cost = Annual Inventory Value

The best way to accomplish this analysis is to put your SKU’s in a spreadsheet with the variables: Quantity, Item Cost and Annual inventory Value. You simply multiply the columns and then use the spreadsheet’s sorting capability to sort the table on annual inventory value.

Next, add a column “Cumulative inventory cost” where you sum up the total cost of items one a time plus the items above it in the list. When you get down to 80% of the total inventory cost, these are your A items. Do the same process from the bottom of the list where 95-100% of the cumulative cost is. These are your C items. The rest are B items.

Putting the ABC’s into practice.

Now that you have categorized your inventory, you can begin to apply rules to each category. In last month’s article we talked about Economic Order Quantity, stocking levels and safety stock. For your A items, you may want to really reduce the safety stock and say that you’ll try to fill 80% of orders from stock for A items. In contrast, you can stock a whole year’s worth of C items with little impact on your overall inventory value.

Spend your time managing the A items tightly and try and minimize re-orders on the C items.

This is a great strategy to get your inventory under control and start increasing your cash flow and increasing your ROI on inventory investment.

We Can Help!

Dare Marketing provides order fulfillment solutions to ecommerce retailers. We’ve got the experience and the systems to help you take, fill and ship orders to your customers. Plus, we can help you do it cost effectively. For a review of your current fulfillment practices, or inquires about new ecommerce fulfilment project, please contact us.

Basic Inventory Management for Your eCommerce Fulfillment Center

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 14:26:00 +0000

So you've decided to outsource your eCommerce Fulfillment for your on-line store. Now you have to decide how much inventory to send to your fulfillment center, how much to order, when to re-order, and in general how to manage your stock levels and what the annual cost will be.

Simple Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) for your eCommerce Fulfillment Center

The first question you may ask yourself is: how much should I order from my supplier every time I place a replenishment order? Thankfully, there is a tried and true method for calculating this.

Where:

D = Estimated annual demand

Ct = transaction costs per order (receiving costs, order processing costs, transaction costs)

Ci = annual inventory cost per unit per year. (This includes obsolescence)

Example:

Let’s say you expect to sell 1000 widgets per year. Inventory costs are $5 per unit per year. And transaction costs are $12 per order receipt.

=69.28 = 69 units.

When should I reorder and what Should my Reorder Point be for my eCommerce Fulfillment Center?

Reorder level for your inventory is easily calculated.

Reorder Level = average lead time demand + safety stock.

Let’s say lead time is 4 weeks, and you want to have a minimum of 25 units in stock. Going back to the above example of selling 1000 units per year that equals (1000/52 X 4) = 77 units demand during the reorder lead time. So, your reorder level is 77+25 = 102 units.

You should order 69 units every time your inventory falls below 102 units.

** note there are ways to calculate what your optimal safety stock should be based on average demand and the standard deviation of demand and the service level you want to achieve i.e.: 99% of orders filled from stock. This is a little bit more complicated than the rest of the calculation in this article. You might want to just look at your demand and pick the largest weekly order you have and keep an extra week.

How much will carrying cost be for the Inventory I store at an eCommerce fulfillment center

Let’s use what we’ve already calculated from the above two examples. Your total annual variable cost of inventory can be calculated as follows:

Where ss = safety stock.

So, in the example we calculated 5*69/2 +12*1000/69 +5*25

=172.5 +173.9 + 125

= Your annual inventory costs for this item under this plan would be $471.40

Practical Implementation of These Calculations

Most on-line stores sell more than one item. Doing this calculation for hundreds or thousands of items can be very time consuming and impractical in the real world. The use of a spreadsheet where you can calculate one item per line and copy the calculation down the spreadsheet gives you an easy way to manage your inventory re-order points, order size and estimated annual cost of carrying your inventory.

Dare Marketing has solutions to help you manage your inventory and fulfill your ecommerce orders from our fulfillment center. We've got over 20 years of expertise and modern systems to help manage, pick, pack and ship your orders. Contact us! We’re here to help.

The Value of Outsourcing Rebate Management

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:26:00 +0000

The entire cycle of rebate management is a critical operation that impacts profitability and revenue generation of an organization. Besides creating as winning promotion and rebate program, the next best way to increase your ROI on your rebate management marketing campaign is to reduce your fulfillment and administrative cost associated with the campaign. Consequently, it is crucial to employ up-to-date technologies and leverage economies of scale in rebate fulfillment.

Outsourcing or In-House Rebate Management?

Increased recognition of rebate programs as a key sales and marketing tool puts pressure on an organization to cost effectively execute a rebate program. Rebate programs can be both expensive and administratively complex to execute in house. That’s where outsourcing comes in. Outsourcing rebate fulfillment processing improves the convenience and expediency of the practice and may add some data gathering that was previously unavailable. The advent of modern technology has prompted business owners to rethink their idea of rebate processing. Outsourcing of rebate management can help customers realize substantial cost savings as well as reduction in labor cost and better data collection by leveraging a rebate management specialist.

Benefits of Rebate Management Outsourcing

Multiple practices

When it comes to rebate processing, a professional rebate management company has the capacity and experience of implementing full-service rebate management processes. The process incorporates multiple levels of service delivery involving scanning, generating and issuing checks, and partial or full online processing with automated rebate optimizer software. If done in house, this can be a tough burden on management time and process control.

Data Collection

Outsourcing enables single source database creation that allows for detailed analysis of new and existing rebate agreements, analysis of profitability, impact of rebates on different deals before negotiations, creation of elaborate rebate programs. Access to a central database of this information will speed up the decision making process and approvals for new offers and marketing programs.

Accuracy in Pricing

Thorough processing of a rebate form requires as much as time as processing an invoice! Outsourcing can reduce this administrative burden while collecting market prices for your competitive database. Accurate market pricing information is important to remain competitive in the marketplace.

• Cost Reduction
• Reduction in costs of order processing
• Conversion of fixed cost operational models into variable cost
• Online access to forms for seamless collaboration
• Call center cost decrease
• Reduced program cycle cost

Significant cost optimization is possible as companies that carry out huge volumes of rebate processing already have the infrastructure and the economies of scale in processing. Depending on the specific outsourcing solution, anticipated cost reduction can vary anywhere between 20% and 40% or more as compared to processing in house.

Efficient pricing strategies combined with rebate management outsourcing helps reduce cost while improving the effectiveness of your promotions. Both these factors lead to improved ROI.

To see how you can improve the ROI of your next rebate management project, please contact Dare Marketing where we have solutions to execute a winning rebate management program.

Have you considered a USPS Consolidator & Drop Shipping in your ecommerce supply chain?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:12:00 +0000

If your ecommerce retail store or catalogue business ships internationally, then you could save time and money by using a USPS consolidator to employ consolidation & dropshipping your orders.

How Dropshipping works

If you’re in Canada trying to ship to the US, it’s both expensive and time consuming to send your packages individually. If you employ the use of a consolidator and dropshipper, you can send all your orders to the consolidator, who will pack and ready them for mail to the US. They’ll send all your shipments to the USPS as one consolidated shipment. This saves both time and cost when shipping to the US.

Key Advantages of Consolidating & Drop Shipping to USPS

Flat Rate Shipping –makes it easy to calculate your costs and include it in your billing to your customer.
On-Line Track and Trace –allows your customers to trace their own shipments, giving them piece of mind and saving you time manually tracing their shipments when they have questions.
Fast Delivery Service – the USPS network is both fast and efficient getting your deliveries out to your customers quickly and economically.
Ship to International Destinations – Routing through the USPS allows you to ship to international destinations other than the US. A one-stop solution for your entire fulfillment needs will save you time.

Who Can Help Me with Dropshipping?

Dare Marketing has 20 Years experience in order fulfillment, logistics and parcel dropshipping to the USPS. Contact Dare Marketing for more information.

How to Generate Sales for Your eCommerce Business Using Direct Mail

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 21:56:00 +0000

If you have an eCommerce website where you sell products or services, this blog article is for you. This article will give you a marketing plan designed to generate more sales from your existing customer list.

So, you've been in business a while and have developed a good list of clients. What are you doing with this list? Many on-line businesses are so focused on generating new traffic for their websites through on-line marketing and Google Adwords, they forget about the goldmine they have in their previous customer list. Have you considered direct mail? It's a great way to capitalize on the loyalty of your past customers to generate more sales.

According to a recent survey conducted by Target Marketing Magazine, the channel that delivered the strongest ROI for customer acquisition for B2C marketers was direct mail. Direct mail also scored highest among marketers for customer contact and retention.

Let's say you sell shoes. You know that the average person buys 1 to 2 pairs of your shoes per year. You have to capitalize on repeat business in order to grow your business! Here's how.

Mine your list.

Your ecommerce website supplies you with all kinds of data if you use it correctly. You can pull a direct mail list of everyone who bought shoes six months ago. You know they're likely to purchase again. You need to be in front of them when they do.

Plan Your Offer.

You know from you data that you'll likely sell 200 pairs of shoes, so now it the time to negotiate a mass purchase from your supplier to support your promotion. You should be able to negotiate preferred pricing which you can use to support a special offer to your client list.

Work with Your Fulfillment House

With prior planning, you can work with your fulfillment house to prep orders in advance and in bulk. This can save you in labour and fulfillment costs. Your fulfillment house can also receive orders for you from your direct mailing campaign. This will save a step in the fulfillment process.

Design and Mail

Design and mail your offer to your mailing list. A letter or card sent to previous clients is a great way to generate sales. It's personalized and is more likely to get opened than an email.

Support Your Direct Mail Campaign with email.

Support your direct mail campaign with reminder emails. This will increase the response rate of the campaign and result in higher sales for you.

Start Again & Repeat

This is a process that can and should be done repeatedly with clients on your list. If you establish a program of repeating this cycle monthly, quarterly or semi-annually, whatever makes sense for your business. This process will help grow your on-line ecommerce business.

Tips for Driving Traffic to your eCommerce Website

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 16:16:00 +0000

Many ecommerce websites are built in a hurry and vendors quickly get overwhelmed at adding new products, photos, product descriptions and filling orders. If you want to sell online, you need to rank on Google for the products you’re selling. There are some key things you need to do to make your site more search engine friendly.

Be Consistent with Product Names on Your eCommerce Website

Be consistent with product names. If you’re selling “Brand A Hats” then you want to make sure you set up your product pages properly and be consistent.

· The URL for the product page should contain “Brand A Hats”. Example http://www.mystore.com/brand-a-hats-pt333595

· Your H1 page title should contain “Brand A Hats” Example: Brand A Hats from My Store.com

· Your sub heading H2, H3, etc should contain the product name. Example: “Product Specifications for Brand A Hats”

· In your text, you should include “Brand A Hats” 3-4 times.

· Make sure you include in your Photo Alt text “Brand A Hats” for all of your product images for that page.

Get your Meta Titles and Descriptions Right for Your eCommerce Website

Don’t fill in your Meta Titles and Descriptions by Default! Sometimes people use their store name to fill in Meta Titles and Descriptions. This is not right either. Your store will be found on your store name, pretty much guaranteed, so don’t waste this valuable space to re-state your store name. The meta title and meta description are what people see when your page gets found on search engines like Goolge. Most ecommerce store software gives you the ability to customize this. You should be writing your meta titles and descriptions to both contain your keyword and entice customers to click on your search result. Example:

SEO Title: Best Online Prices For Brand A Hats | Free Shipping!

SEO Description: Great prices on Brand A Hats, thousands in stock, same day shipping and Free shipping on orders over $100.

Employ Canonical References

Most ecommerce website software solutions are messy when serving up pages for products. For example you may be able to find the same page under:

· www.mystore.com/brand -a-hats

· www.mystore.com/catagories/hats/brand-a-hats

· www.mystore.com/ladies-hats/brand-a-hats

· www.mystore.com/daily-specials/brand-a-hats

· www.mystore.com/?search?prod_id3395.asp

Search engines see these as multiple copies of the same page. They will all rank separately. What you want is direct all the ranking to one page. This is where canonical references come into play. Simply add http://www.mysite.com/brand-a-hats/> in the HTML to the product page and this will ensure that no matter how your ecommerce website serves up the page, it always tells the search engines that /brand-a-hats is the main page and where all the ranking should go.

Make sure you don’t have more than one version of your home page.

Similar to the canonical issue, many websites by default have many versions of the home page. You need to make sure they are all directed to a single one. Examples are:

· http://www.mystore.com

· http://mystore.com

· http://mystore.com/default.htm

· http://mystore.com/defaul.php

· http://mystore.com/index.htm

· http://mystore.com/index.php

These issues have similar effect on ranking by search engines as canonical issues. The engines don’t know which is the “real” home page. This issue can be dealt with using the canonical reference, but a better way is to employ a 301 redirect. Your ecommerce store software should have an option to do this. If not, you can use your .htaccess file in your root directory to employ 301 redirects.

Missing Pages and non-existent products

Ensure you don’t have any missing pages. 404 missing page errors count negatively against you in SEO. The search engines rank user experience very high and if your site is generating a lot of missing pages and 404 errors you should clean them up. Also, if you have old products that you no longer carry in stock, you should re-direct them to the current version. For example if you had “brand-a-hat-ver2” and new for this year it’s being replaced by “brand-a-hat-ver3” then you should re-direct traffic to the new page.

Both of these issues can be solved by using a 301 Redirect from the missing page/old page to a current and active page. You’re software should have an option for you to do this. If not you can manually add the redirect in your .htaccess file.

Hire an eCommerceFulfillment Expert

Product reviews are key to driving conversions on your website. Lot’s of positive reviews drive sales. Getting the right products to your customers fast is critical. Here at Dare Marketing, we understand your business and how important fulfillment is for your ecommerce website. We offer full ecommerce fulfillment solutions. Contact us today for a free consultation on ways we can help you improve your ecommerce fulfillment.

How Drop Shipping from Canada to the US can be Easy and Economical

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 13:53:00 +0000

Drop Shipping from Canada to the US is a Headache No More!

Many Canadian retailers and eCommerce merchants face the issue of how to supply US customers with their products from Canada. Now, drop shipping from Canada to the US is the answer. No longer do you have to open up or contract with a distribution warehouse in the US to service your US customers. You know that opening a distribution or fulfillment center in the US is both costly and time consuming. There is an alternative. You can set up a Canadian Fulfillment center to act as a US Postal Service Depot and ship from Canada just like you were in the US, eliminating the need to set up a US fulfillment center. Here’s how.

How to drop ship from Canada to the US

Dare Marketing offers a unique service. They act like a US Postal Service Depot and route the parcels through the US Postal Service for you. This is a great option to deliver packages to your US customers. Not only is it affordable, but easy to integrate into your ecommerce business because they offer flat rate shipping. Also, take advantage of all the excellent tracking and tracing offers that the US Postal Service offers. You’re customers will get a USPS tracking number to track their shipment. Plus, not only can you ship to the US via this method, but internationally as well. Dare Marketing offers a similar solution through the USPS for international order fulfillment as well.

Key Advantages of Dare Marketing’s USPS Drop Shipping Solution

1. Flat Rate Shipping

Makes it easy to calculate your costs and include it in your billing to your customer.

2. On-Line Track and Trace

Allows your customers to trace their own shipments, giving them piece of mind and saving you time manually tracing their shipments when they have questions.

3. Fast Delivery Service

The USPS network is both fast and efficient getting your deliveries out to your customers quickly and economically.

4. Ship to International Destinations

Routing through the USPS allows you to ship to international destinations other than the US. A one-stop solution for your entire fulfillment needs will save you time.

Is Drop shipping from Canada to the US for you?

If you’re an eCommerce merchant, or maybe involved in an on-line deal site where you are shipping small packaged items under $200 per item, then this is a great solution for you to be able to supply your US customers both economically and efficiently. Plus, the tracking options give your customers a great impression of your service levels.

How Can I get Started Drop Shipping from Canada to the US?

Dare Marketing offers a complete solution including set up for a very reasonable cost. Contact Dare Marketing today and speak with one of their logistics experts to help you find the most cost effective and efficient way to fill orders shipping from Canada to the US, or anywhere for that matter!

Contact Dare Marketing

How eCommerce Retailers Stay Ahead of the Competition

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:17:00 +0000

eCommerce Fulfillment is a Growing Market

The ecommerce fulfillment market is growing rapidly. It’s key for your online business to make sure you’re getting your share of this huge growth opportunity. This article will explore some of the key issues that will keep your ecommerce sales growing.

eCommerce revenues topped $1 trillion dollars for the first time EVER in 2012

Source: eMarketer

eCommerce sales represented 10 of ALL discretionary spending last year, and are expected to increase by 9-12% in 2013

Source: comScore

How can you capitalize on the incredible growth in the ecommerce market?

The key areas to focus on for your ecommerce business are: marketing, pricing, fulfillment and service. These four factors are key to expanding your ecommerce business.

Marketing Your eCommerce Business

Marketing is a big part of any online business. The concepts of on-line marketing aren’t really that different from traditional marketing, other than there are a wide range of new tools and technology available to make marketing much easier. Marketing is still about three things.

1. Knowing the value of the product or service you offer and differentiating that from your competitors.

2. Finding an audience or market segment that is interested in your message.

3. Promoting your product or service to that audience at a price that makes sense

In today’s World, finding your audience and promoting your product or service has never been easier. Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, Google Adwords and Google Search Engine Marketing are tools that most business owners are comfortable with and can easily leverage their huge potential to get their message out. Those uncomfortable with the technology can work with an SEO or Social Media Consultant to them put together an on-line marketing strategy.

Pricing Your Products and Services

Pricing products and services on-line is requires a little more strategy than traditional pricing strategies. On-line it’s easy for customers to look up multiple competitors and do a fair bit of pricing research before buying. Here are some things to consider in your on-line pricing strategy.

Competitive Prices

Do some research! It’s not hard to find out what your competitors are charging. You absolutely need to use this as a benchmark for your pricing. While there may be many reasons for you to charge a higher or lower price than your competitors, you still need to know what you’re up against.

Know Your Margins

You need to know what your costs are pretty accurately. For any pricing strategy to be successful, you have to know whether it will generate enough margins to keep you in business.

Consider “Value Based Pricing”

Value based pricing is an interesting concept and should not be ignored. Let’s say you’ve invented a tire that lasts twice as long as the tires currently available today. It doesn’t cost any more to produce, so should you charge the same price as other tires on the market? Of course not, value based pricing says that you could charge almost double to the current price of tires. This is how pricing based on value works.

Cost-Plus Pricing

Many people practice cost plus pricing. They know for their business to survive they need to make, let’s say, a 30% margin. Pricing using this strategy is pretty simple. Just mark up every item to make a 30% margin. However, this is not ideal. You may be losing business where the volume and cost to service would justify a lower pricing and you may end up with business with low volume and high cost to service. Be careful applying this one.

Anchor Pricing

Consider using anchor pricing. We’ve all seen it, but it works. This is where the first price a customer sees is very high let’s say $100. Then after a few clicks on your website, “Today only, one low price of $49.99”, even though you intended to sell it for $49.99 in the first place! The concept of anchor pricing works because the buyer perceives a higher value than the actual price.

Contextual Pricing

People often like to compare. Don’t give people an incentive to go and compare your price with someone else! Give them easy to understand option on your site. For example: Platinum = $100, Gold= $75 and Silver = $50. Then you can even highlight the gold package as “best value” knowing that that’s the one you want to sell. Contextual pricing works because it gives your buyers the option of choice.

eCommerce Fulfillment is Key to Growing Your Business

Once you have one the order online, then next step is ecommerce fulfillment. You need to be able to deliver the right order, quickly and economically. This is where an eCommerce Fulfillment provider comes in. Best practice is to outsource eCommerce Fulfillment to an expert. Some of the key things to look for in an eCommerce Fulfillment House are:

· Expertise and past history of successful ecommerce fulfillment

· On-line order tracking

· The ability to process rebates and returns

· Logistics and shipping expertise that you can leverage

· Knowledge and expertise in how to fulfill your orders economically and come up with win/win promotions that reduce fulfillment costs and increase sales.

After Sale Service

Your customers are going to want to know if the items they ordered are in stock, when they will ship, when they did ship, where they are in-transit and when will they be delivered. They will also like an easy returns policy if an item is defective.

All these services are typical of what an ecommerce fulfillment house can do for you. Typically, you want to make sure you’re ecommerce fulfillment partner has an online tracking and inventory system as well as, a way to integrate their data into your information system.

Next Steps

Dare Marketing is a premier ecommerce fulfillment house with years of experience fulfilling on-line orders. Dare can help you bring it all together. Your marketing, fulfillment and logistics all under one roof! For a free consultation with a fulfillment expert, contact Dare today and we’ll give you our opinion of your current ecommerce fulfillment strategy and recommend some economical ways to improve your fulfillment system while reducing costs.

Fulfillment Houses: eCommerce Retailers' Secret Weapon

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 17:39:00 +0000

What is a Fulfillment House?

A fulfillment house is a company whose primary business is the logistics of taking and processing your orders right up to final delivery to the customer. Most fulfillment houses provide warehousing services, on-line order entry/tracking, pick and pack services, as well as, shipping and mailing services. A mailing house is typically a complete outsourced, end to end solution to fulfill your orders.

Why are Fulfillment Houses so Popular?

With the tremendous growth of the internet and on-line retailing over the past decade, it's made it very easy for virtually anyone to start an online business. All you need is a product or products to sell and a website. The internet has empowered many small business owners to start to make real money on the internet. However, the back-end of on-line retailing isn't as simple as setting up a website. Someone has to store your products, receive orders, process them, provide economical shipping options and manage the day to day flow of orders and goods to customers. This is where most ecommerce retailers get bogged down. Order fulfillment is a complex task, best left to experts. It's also very capital and overhead intensive. Two things a small business cannot afford. This is where Fulfillment Houses come in. Fulfillment houses provide this service as a full outsourced solution, at a reasonable cost, with little or no overhead investment.

Benefits of a Fulfillment House

There are many benefits to an ecommerce retailer to outsource the fulfillment process to a third party. Some of the key benefits are summarized below.

Reduced Overhead

Investing in a warehouse and distribution facility is an expensive proposition. Add up the costs of people, rent, equipment, software, insurance, heat, hydro, etc. it can be very expensive, especially if you're just starting out. The other issue with on-line retailing is that it's usually very seasonal, around events and holidays. However, the costs of operating your own distribution warehouse are a constant all year long. If you choose to outsource, you only pay for what you use.

Improved Cash Flow

Seasonality is a huge factor for an on-line retailer to deal with. Cash comes in giant lumps around major holidays and shopping seasons, but expenses continue all year long. Having to lay out cash for employees, rent, insurance, etc. all year long, is a real drain on cash flow. When an ecommerce retailer chooses to outsource fulfillment, the cash outlays are matched with the incoming cash. Outsourcing offers retailers an excellent way of managing and improving cash flow.

Speed of Implementation

Let's say an internet retailer wants to launch a new product line, or just start up. While the process of building a website and marketing the products on-line may be pretty straight forward, launching a distribution facility with a proper fulfillment plan is not. It takes time to hire people, put the facilities and technology in place to start the order fulfillment process. An internet retailer who chooses to outsource order fulfillment can start up in no time, leveraging an existing fulfillment house's facilities, technologies and distribution network. This makes it easy for an internet retailer to enter the market at light speed!

Access to Technology

A modern fulfillment house is full of technology. Technology is key today in reducing picking, packing and shipping costs. A typical fulfillment house will have a front end web based interface for their customers that is completely integrated with their back-end pick and pack operation. Order fulfillment houses typically have barcode pick and pack systems, inventory control systems as well as logistics and shipping systems. There is a huge investment in technology required to keep costs as low as possible. Most small business and ecommerce retailers can't afford the expense and the time required to set up these systems. The better choice is to rent them by outsourcing to a fulfillment house.

Access to Expertise

There is a great amount of expertise required in the fulfillment process. Think of all the specialized knowledge that's required: operating a facility, people management, equipment maintenance, safety programs, legal compliance, logistics, shipping, insurance. Much of this expertise and specialized knowledge takes years to acquire. Why not gain access to it by outsourcing to an expert!

Less Headaches, Peace of Mind

Many internet retailers get into the business because they like to sell and market products. Many also get into the business for the flexible hours and the allure of a business that can be operated from anywhere with a WIFI connection. However, the reality of order fulfillment requires a 24/7 presence that comes stress and headaches. Trucks don't show up on time, replenishment orders get delayed, customers sometimes get an incorrect product. All these customer service functions have to be resolved immediately if a business is to continue operating. These situations are stressful and time consuming. By outsourcing the fulfillment function to an order fulfillment house you alleviate these headaches and keep your schedule flexible to travel and enjoy the fruits of your labour!

Is a Fulfillment House Right for You?

If you enjoy selling and marketing more than the headaches that come with fulfilling the orders, then you should definitely consider outsourcing. In addition to the key benefits outlined above, outsourcing allows you to work "on" your business instead of "in" your business. This is a recipe for success!

Next Steps

Dare Marketing is an experienced, full service fulfillment house. Dare Marketing can help you reduce costs, overhead, and increase cash flow and profits. Book a free consultation with one of our fulfillment experts today and we'll help you put together a great fulfillment plan that will drive your business.

Top 5 Factors That Influence Success of a Direct Mail Marketing Campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 19:44:00 +0000

What is Direct Mail Marketing?

We’ve all seen it every day in our mailboxes. Direct Mail Marketing is everywhere. You get letters, post-cards and envelopes in your mailbox with a marketing message every day. Direct mail marketing is the entire process of designing a marketing plan using direct mail as a medium to generate leads or sales.

Direct Mail Marketing has been around since the invention of mail! Direct mail marketing has changed over the last hundred years, but the same basic principals are still the same. A hundred years of trial and error has got marketers to a much more scientific approach to direct mail marketing nowadays. Over a hundred years of best practise has pretty much narrowed down the success of a direct mail campaign to 5 factors.

#1 The List

The absolute #1 most important factor in any mailing campaign is the list. You can imagine if you were selling eyeliner, and your list contained 50% males, you would have a very poor list to start from. No matter how good your offer was, or how creative the mailing piece looked, you still be wasting 50% of the mailers sent. The quality, accuracy and relevance of your list to what you’re selling far outweighs any other factors in a success of a direct mailing campaign.

· Ensure your list is targeted to your buyers

· Ensure your list is cleaned of bad addresses

· Ensure your list is verified, people move all the time.

A quality list of buyers relevant to your product or service, which is cleaned and accurate, is an excellent investment in any direct mailing campaign. If you need help sourcing a list, Dare Marketing can help. We can source a direct mail list for you. Just contact us for further details.

#2 The offer

If you’ve already got a great direct mail list, then the next challenge you have to face is coming up with a great offer. The offer drives conversions. It’s imperative that you have a strong offer with any direct mail marketing campaign. Between the quality of your list and the strength of the offer, that probably makes up 80% of the success factor of your mailing. Here are some examples of offers:

· Limited time 10% off

· Buy now, get two for one

· Free gift with purchase

· Sign up now and be entered in a draw for a free gift

· Free ink when you buy a printer

· Free ebook, sign up now.

By far, “FREE” is the best offer you can give. If you can find a way to provide something free of charge with purchase or sign up, this will be a great high converting offer.

Caution: “Free Quote” or “Free Brochure” is not a compelling offer. These are free anyway!

#3 Call to action

Your direct mail campaign must have a strong call to action combined with the offer. If it does not, your prospects won’t know what you want them to do. If you want them to go to your website and fill out a form, then ask them! For example:

Go to www.mysite.com and click on subscribe to get your free ebook
Call 1-800-999-9999 to register for your free insider’s guide
Return the self addresses stamped envelope with the ballot filled out to be entered in the draw for a free vacation.

Make your call to action obvious and direct. Another factor to consider is how hard to make the call to action. If you’re collecting leads and make it really easy to reply, you may get poor quality leads. If you make it really difficult to reply, you will get less leads, but you’ll get better ones. With some trial and error you’ll get the right call to action. If you want to improve lead quality, make it harder to reply, if you want more leads, make it easier.

#4 The Design/Creative

While the design and creative is important, it probably accounts for less than 20% of the success of a campaign. So many people put so much effort into elaborate images and themes and colors, in the design of their mailing piece, when it’s not really a huge factor. Time and money is better spent buying a great list and covering the cost of a “free” offer. They blow the budget on graphic design and don’t spend their budget where it counts. You’re design and creative should be simple and not distracting from the offer. After all, after the list, the offer is the most important factor in a direct mail marketing campaign. Simply show a picture of your product or service in use, or the benefit of your product and service.

#5 The Copy

While great copy can increase the success rate of your campaign, the reality is most people read the offer, the headings and a few bolded points and skip over the rest. The quality of the copy generally accounts for less than 10% of the success of a direct mail marketing campaign. Many people slave over crafting the copy and whether a comma or a semi-colon should be used, or whether to use “you’re” or “you are”, etc. The truth is, it’s not that big a deal. Spend your time on the list and the offer!

Direct Mail Marketing Execution

While not specifically a design factor. Give some consideration to the execution of your next direct mail marketing campaign. Personalizing the envelopes definitely increases the success of your mailing campaign. For this, you’ll need the help of a Lettershop. A Lettershop will take your list, stuff the envelopes and personalize them with your prospects’ name and address. Dare Marketing is a full service Lettershop and will assist you preparing your mailing and printing your envelopes with personalized addresses.

Another factor you may want to consider with your direct mailing campaign is to do a free product offer as a key component of your direct mail marketing campaign. In order to do this, you will need a fulfillment house to receive requests for your free products and send them out to the qualified leads. This is something Dare Marketing will also help you with. Dare Marketing is a full service fulfillment house.

Perhaps your offer includes a rebate form, for example, buy the product and mail in this card for a $50 rebate. This is a great offer to increase sales, as well as, providing the marketer with data on the prospects that took advantage of the offer. This is imperative for any ROI calculation. Dare Marketing will help you with this too. Dare Marketing is a Rebate ClearingHouse. Your rebate redemptions are collected and fulfilled, while you get reports and lead data.

Anytime you’d like a review of your current direct mail marketing campaign, or help setting up a new one, Dare Marketing would be happy to help. Set up a free consultation anytime byclicking here.

How to Implement a Rebate Marketing Program to Acquire New Customers and Boost Your Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:02:00 +0000

Marketers all over the World in many different industries implement rebate marketing programs to boost sales and attract new customers. This article will explain what a rebate marketing program is, how to implement one, some important considerations, and the pros and cons of a rebate marketing program.

What is a Rebate Marketing Program?

Rebates, or sometimes called “refunds” are a popular tool used by businesses to promote their products and services. Rebates are different from “coupons” in that they are not a discount from the purchase price, at point of purchase, but rather a refund or gift sent later to the customer after the purchase. Rebate programs typically include some form of data gathering about the purchaser at the time of rebate registration.

How to implement a Rebate Marketing Program

Step 1: Offer a rebate to all who purchase a product or service.

Typically, a business offers the rebate marketing program as a limited time promotion. This has to be communicated through advertising to a business’s target market. The success of a rebate program is highly dependent upon potential customers’ awareness of the rebate offer. You can send out rebate offers as a direct mail campaign, or simply have the rebate forms displayed at the point of purchase.

Step 2: Create rebate fulfillment rules.

Typically, a customer will be asked to mail or register on-line and provide details about the purchase, like a proof of purchase and the UPC (Universal Product Code).

Step 3: Collect the Data and Rebate Fulfillment.

A business needs to have a plan to fulfill the rebate. This can be a time consuming and labour intensive process of collecting the marketing data about the purchaser, checking the validity of the rebate submission, and mailing out the rebate check or promotional item promised in the rebate. Typically, this part of the program is outsourced to a Rebate Clearinghouse, or a Rebate Fulfillment Company, or sometimes called a Rebate Management Company. These companies usually provide a mailing address to send in the required documents, or an on-line solution to collect and verify the rebate. Many also provide a service to print and direct mail the cheques out to the rebate applicants.

Step 4: Analyze the results.

Your Rebate Management company should be able to provide you with lots of data about the amount of rebates fulfilled, the names, addresses and phone numbers of the rebate applicants, date of purchases, and the total cost of the program. You can then correlate this to your sales figures for the period and determine the effect of the rebate promotion.

Important Considerations

· The rebate needs to be compelling in order to be effective. A $1.00 rebate will not generate much response. In comparison, a $50 rebate will be worth the effort to mail in, or register for the rebate. This is why typically; rebates are for high value items.

· Not everyone takes advantage of a rebate program. Typically only 25-40% of purchasers who are eligible for a rebate will actually go through the steps to obtain it. You need to factor this into your ROI that a large percentage of the people who buy the product or service because of the rebate, will never take advantage of it. This makes rebate programs very effective and low cost.

· Select a rebate clearinghouse that can handle your promotion. Ensure the rebate management company has the staff, expertise and experience to receive and process your rebates. If the rebate fulfillment part of your promotion isn’t done painlessly for the consumer, you end up with dissatisfied customers.

Consider 3 factors in your overall design:

Increasing the size of the rebate will increase sales AND redemption rates
Increasing the effort required to obtain a rebate will decrease sales AND redemption rates
Giving consumers more time to redeem the rebate increases redemption rates.

Pros and Cons of Rebates

Pros

Cons

· Simple to communicate and understand, depending on the offer structure

· Although discount based, it avoids the "discount on every purchase" mentality

· Rebates in the form of gift certificates can often drive customers back to the store

· Does not require much administration

· Cheaper to administer than a reward points based scheme

· Can allow tiered offers for highest value customers ice: buy 1 get $10, buy 10 get $100

· Does not provide instant gratification

· Rewards profitable and unprofitable customers alike

· Can be expensive depending on the rebate thresholds

· Disguised discount program affects margins

· Can alienate infrequent shoppers

· Easily emulated by competition

At Dare Marketing, we have the experience, the staff and the technology to manage your rebate fulfillment program seamlessly. If you have any questions about how to set up a rebate fulfillment program please give us a contact us, our marketing experts are standing by to answer your questions.

Is Direct Mail Dead?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:04:00 +0000

The internet is buzzing with “the death of direct mail”. Postal services are losing money and many are concluding that traditional direct mail is dead!

Is direct mail really dead?

Absolutely not! Here are 7 reasons Direct Mail is here to stay.

1. Direct Mail Delivers Strong ROI

According to a recent study, the Direct Mail Marketing Association concluded that for every dollar spent on direct mail, it resulted in an average of $12.61 in direct marketing-driven sales.

ROI: Summary of DM-Driven Sales Per $1 of DM Advertising
Return by Medium	2004	2008	2009	2010	2014
Direct Mail	$12.33	$12.55	$12.53	$12.57	$12.61
Direct Mail (Non-Catalog)	$15.59	$15.52	$15.22	$15.28	$15.48
Direct Mail (Catalog)	$7.06	$7.28	$7.32	$7.34	$7.27
Telephone Marketing	$8.49	$8.57	$8.48	$8.42	$8.29
Internet (Non E-Mail)	$25.93	$19.88	$19.83	$19.86	$19.77
Internet Display	$25.53	$19.78	$19.57	$19.57	$19.21
Internet Search	$27.60	$21.84	$21.85	$21.90	$21.93
Social Networking	NA	$12.57	$12.39	$12.45	$13.02
Internet Other	$17.59	$16.62	$16.48	$16.75	$17.03
Commercial E-Mail	$58.01	$44.93	$43.62	$42.08	$36.70
DR Newspaper	$13.26	$12.77	$12.46	$12.26	$11.89
DR TV	$7.02	$6.81	$6.63	$6.62	$6.48
DR Magazine	$10.30	$10.11	$10.27	$10.26	$10.06
DR Radio	$8.66	$8.60	$8.29	$8.28	$8.09
Insert Media	$11.76	$11.60	$11.45	$11.43	$11.35
Other*	$6.93	$7.01	$6.89	$6.91	$6.87

*Other includes all other trackable DM delivered media including outdoor, facsimiles, podcasting, displays, and kiosks.

2. Direct Mail is More Deliverable

Up to 20% of email messages are undeliverable due to anti-spam software an email address changes. Most regular mailing lists guarantee a 95% deliverability rating.

3. Direct Mail is “Sticky”

With email, if a prospect doesn’t like the email at first glance, it is simply deleted. Never to be seen again. With a direct mail piece, it can be put aside for later, it can be passed along to someone else, or it can just hang around to be viewed by multiple prospects. This is especially true with catalogues. Why do you think Avon still distributes catalogues in this digital age? Because they work!

4. Standing out from the Crowd

Because everyone is going digital these days, everyone’s email box is filling up with marketing messages, while, at the same time, the volume of direct mail is down. Some estimates say by 25% in the last two years. Think about that for a minute, a direct mail campaign now has a better chance of standing out from the clutter.

5. Direct Mail Delivers Instant Trust

In today’s digital world and the constant bombardment of internet scams, letters from African billionaires leaving you sums of money, viruses, etc. The consumer is wary of on-line marketing. It takes a lot to build credibility on-line these days. Direct Mail print advertising doesn’t have the same negativity. Most people consider printed matter to be trustworthy and tangible and are more likely to see it being reliable.

6. Direct Mail is B2C Marketing’s Secret Weapon

According to a recent survey conducted by Target Marketing Magazine, the channel that delivered the strongest ROI for customer acquisition for B2C marketers was direct mail. Direct mail also scored highest among marketers for customer contact and retention.

7. You Don’t Need Permission

Unlike email marketing, you don’t need permission. Most email marketing is required to be permission based so that it doesn’t contravene anti-spam laws. With direct mail, you can send a letter to anyone you want to. You don’t need permission. Direct mail is still the number one way of reaching out to an unknown prospect.

So why Don’t More People Use Direct Mail?

Most marketers today don’t have the experience. Direct mail is a tried and true technique that works! However, few young marketers raised in the digital age have experience with direct mail marketing. For direct mail marketing to work, it has to be executed properly. The right list has to be selected; the list is the #1 most important factor in the success of a mailing campaign. The second most important factor is the offer. It needs to be compelling and low risk to the consumer. The third most important factor is the call to action. A carefully worded call to action combined with a compelling offer is critical. Fourthly, the design of the mailer is lower down on the list of importance. So many people without experience in direct mail spend all of their time and budget on designing a glossy, fancy, artistic mailer, with little thought for the offer or call to action or who it should be mailed to. This is one of the critical mistakes inexperience direct mail marketers make.

Dare Marketing has over 15 years of experience with direct mail marketing. Dare has the experience to help you select a list, write, and design your mailer. Also, Dare is a direct mailing house, with a full lettershop, so we have the technology and the expertise to prepare the mailing for you and make sure you are getting economical postage rates.

Dare Marketing also has case studies of how effective direct mail marketing campaigns have been executed with Dare Marketing’s expertise. See Case Studies.

Hidden Secrets to Reducing eCommerce Fulfillment Costs

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 20:16:00 +0000

Fulfillment and shipping costs can add up to be a large part of your costs and eat into your profit. Looking for creative ways to reduce these expenses is critical for your business. There’s a secret to reducing your Fulfillment costs, and that’s kitting.

How Kitting Works for ecommerce

Let’s say you are an on-line vitamin supplier. You sell a wide range of products. Upon analyzing your purchase data, you see that typically, people who order your multi-vitamins also order your Omega 3 capsules and a protein powder. Wow that’s great information on two fronts. One, you can have a special promotion; buy all 3 together and save 10%. This will increase sales. You may even consider offering this on a “daily deal” type website to further boost your sales. Now, here’s where the fulfillment savings come in.

Cost Reductions

Kitting Items Shipped Together:

Let’s say you’re charged 80 cents per item and $2.00 per order. This order would cost you $4.40 cents. Now let’s say you invest some time into special packaging for the 3 items and implement a kitting project, packing them together. Your cost is reduced to $2.80 per order. Some of this will be offset by the cost to kit, but if you have a reasonable volume of items to be kitted, your savings can be significant.

In addition to savings on the pick and pack, you can invest a bit of time in the right packaging that can reduce your UPS/Fedex or Postal Rates. There could be additional savings here as well.

You also may be able to save on the labelling process. If all the orders weigh out exactly the same, your fulfillment house can weigh and label in one step as part of the kitting process, saving you more.

Pre-Kitting Sales Promos:

One final tip is to organize your promotions in advance. Let’s say you are preparing for a “daily deal” type promotion where you are offering your products at a significant discount in limited quantities to attract new customers. You can work with your fulfillment company to pre-kit and pack the shipment in advance and save on picking charges. Plus, your customers will get a faster turn-around as the orders will be pre-packed and ready to go.

Here at Dare Marketing we have creative solutions for your ecommerce fulfillment projects. We’ve been in the business for almost 20 years and can help you grow your business by fulfilling your customer’s needs.

The 5 Biggest Mistakes in Direct Mail Campaigns

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:30:00 +0000

1. Not Getting a Professional Copywriter

Direct mail and direct mail copy have been around for decades. Why re-invent the wheel! An experienced copywriter knows the tried and true techniques about how to write to drive conversions. For example:

· Your ad copy should always be written in the third person. It makes the customer feel like you are talking to them.

· Never ask a question in your ad copy. It gives control to the reader. Instead of asking “Need Some Red Shoes?” you should be saying “Elegant Red Shoes Found Here”.

· Keep your copy short and to the point. Don’t use big words. Keep your sentences short too.

· Highlight benefits. Instead of copy like “you’ll bend over backwards for our Red Shoes”, you should be talking about, “the soft soles in our Red Shoes will make walking a dream”

· A call to action. There are so many direct mail campaigns I see without a call to action. You’re sending your customers a mailing piece for a reason. To get them to buy from you! If you don’t tell them what you want them to do, they won’t “contact us” or “check out our website” or “request a free consultation”

2. Not choosing the right contacts to send your mailing to.

If you have a database of thousands of contacts, you can improve your response rate and lower the costs of your direct mailing campaign by selecting the right contacts from your database. For example, you could implement a couple of different scoring systems to prioritize your leads:

· RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value): this technique involves scoring the lead by how recent they have been in contact with, or contacted you, the frequency of contact, say in the last 12 months, and the monetary value of their purchases.

· Lead Scoring: Lead scoring may incorporate RFM but is much more detailed. You may have identified that your best clients are in a certain geographic area, age, gender, or in the case of business to business marketing, of a certain revenue size, in a particular industry. You assign points based on these factors and rank your database accordingly. If you only have budget to send out 1000 pieces of mail, you’d better choose your top 1000 best bets.

3. The Wrong Creative

The best direct mailing campaigns are simple, highlight the benefits and show the product or service in its ideal state. In the “Red Shoes” example, if you’re showing a picture of anything but Red Shoes, or someone joyfully wearing your Red Shoes, you should consider another design agency. Far too many times ads are created with images that don’t make sense. I’m sure we’ve all see the “I bend over backwards” photo. Or the shark image with a slogan like “we take a bite out of the cost of red shoes”. Don’t confuse your readers. Stick with a simple but elegant image of your product or service.

4. Forgetting about the offer

Every direct mailing campaign needs an offer. The offer sells! Consider, “Call us today and we’ll give you 20% off your Red Shoes Order” or “Buy One Pair of Red Shoes and Get One Pair Absolutely Free”. The offer leads into the call to action. A great offer will get much higher response rates that direct mailing campaigns without an enticing offer.

5. Not Choosing the Right Fulfillment House

A good Fulfillment House with experience in Direct Mail Marketing can save you thousands of dollars. They will have done this many times before. Get their input on design, mailing practices, timing and creative ideas. They can help you with solutions like variable data printing to personalize your mailing. This increases response rates. A good fulfillment house will also have a wide range of services like print on demand, which can save you money for smaller runs. They should also be able to provide you with services to capture your responders. They can fulfil literature requests, mail coupons, send a promo item, or process a rebate. The right fulfillment house can be a single source for all your needs. Choose carefully!

WEConnect "Doing Business Internationally" Winner

noreply@blogger.com (DARE Marketing) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:18:00 +0000

Dare Marketing is a member of WEConnect Canada. This week, at their annual conference, I am very thrilled to announce we won the “Doing Business Internationally” award.

Our bilingual call center staff, English and French-speaking, as well as our full service fulfillment capability allowed us to capitalize on meeting the needs of companies outside Canada that have customers in Canada. Through WEConnect, we have been introduced to new prospects, that we have converted to new customers.

WEConnect Canada is a non-profit organization supporting supply chain diversity through delivery of independent international certification for women-owned companies. We are proud to be a certified Women Business Enterprise (WBE) by WEConnect.

Thank you, to everyone at Dare Marketing, and WEConnect!

4 Ways to Improve Order Fulfillment

noreply@blogger.com (DARE Marketing) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:33:00 +0000

If you're a first-time ecommerce business owner or just starting a new online marketing business from scratch, you may not need the end-to-end fulfillment service that we at Dare Marketing offer. We're ready to work with you when your business is large enough that you no longer feel fulfillment is core to your operation, and you would like to outsource it to a fulfillment house like Dare.

Until that time, we'd like to help you grow your business.

Since optimizing order fulfillment will lead to greater customer satisfaction, we like to share with you a few ways that you can improve your order fulfillment. So we asked Michael Koploy, Analyst at Software Advice (website) and blog manager of Warehouse Management Systems Guide (website) for his thoughts. Michael has recently put together a fulfillment starter’s guide for first-time ecommerce business owners. In the guide, Michael emphasizes that business owners focus on the following:

Establish a Fulfillment Baseline: Start by measuring the metrics that matter most to your fulfillment operation. These metrics will be closely aligned with your customer service creed. For example, if next-day shipping is important to your business, focus on measuring order turnaround time.

Implement Technology to Improve Metrics: Business owners should invest in technology that can help improve the established fulfillment metrics. For example, if orders are getting lost or you’re finding that merchandise is unexpectedly going out of stock, consider investing in an improved barcoding and inventory management solution.

Assign Specialized Fulfillment Experts: Once your operation grows to the point that you need to hire employees specifically to assist with fulfillment, have them specialize in order processing, picking, packing or shipping. This allows them to become experts, improve your operation's efficiency, and empowers them to find new ways to make their tasks safer, quicker and more accurate.

Know When to Outsource: It’s also important to realize when it’s necessary to ask for the assistance of fulfillment experts. For example, if you believe that your time, resources and team members can be better spent focusing on marketing, customer service and merchandising, you should outsource fulfillment to allow your company to properly grow.

You can obtain more tips for fulfillment by reading Koploy’s guide: The Starter’s Guide to Effective eCommerce Fulfillment.

Do you find this helpful to you? Tell us what you think.

Working Effectively with a Fulfillment House

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:46:00 +0000

Over the years, we’ve had many people call or email telling us that they are starting a new company and would like to know how best to work with a fulfillment house.

Here are suggestons for the minimum information we require in order to provide you with a meaningful proposal for fulfillment house services integrated with an online webstore:

How many different items do you want us to handle? Please provide full details including sizes and colours if they are different. Different sizes and/or different colours comprise a different item.
How many orders do you forecast to arrive? We recognize starting a business is a new adventure and this is difficult. Do try and be realistic with these numbers. Perhaps provide a range of what’s likely, what’s your pessimistic scenario, what’s your wildly optimistic scenario?
How many items will be in a typical order?
How much inventory will we have to stock? What we need to understand is how often will this inventory turn over in a year. Are we starting with an inventory that will last 1 year or 5 years?
Also, the order taking program your website is being developed with is very important. Make sure it is a program that will allow a fulfillment house to create a link between your site and our warehouse management system. The orders need to transmit into our order fulfillment system.

If you do not have an online webstore, we can create one for you that will be fully integrated with our order fulfillment system. This online store will have the look and feel of your website, is secure and respects the privacy of your customers.
If you need more information, please feel free to call or email us.