Your shipping offering can make or break a sale. Whether it’s your shipping policy, cross-border reach, or a strategic offer, there are many options to market your shipping strategy to drive sales.

Easyship cofounder Tommaso Tamburnotti sheds light on how brands can leverage their cross-border shipping operations to effectively market themselves this holiday season! See how your business can boost its brand globally simply by adopting a smart shipping strategy.

How Can Shipping Be Used as a Marketing Tool?

Your shipping strategy can be used to market your company effectively. However, to build a successful strategy, one must identify your ecommerce shipping strategy goals.

This becomes even more important for the holiday shopping season. It’s paramount for people to feel confident that they will receive their products in the shortest amount of time possible.

Goals to Drive a Successful Shipping Policy:

• Increasing conversions
• Increase average order value
• Expand market or target audience
• Decrease costs
• Improve operational efficiency

A great shipping experience also leads to positive PR as strong word of mouth spreads. Meanwhile international shipping also offers the opportunity to build brand awareness to new markets around the world.

Promoting your stores shipping options helps with the following:

• Builds awareness with store visitors on how they can save money
• Gives shoppers the confidence that there won’t be surprises at checkout
• Builds trust that purchases will get to the recipients in time
• Can help increase the amount customers spend, to redeem offers such as ‘free shipping’

How to Generate Word of Mouth Through Shipping

Positive word of mouth helps build your brand awareness around the world, leading to lower marketing spending. Being responsive to customer inquiries can also be a great way to give customers a positive impression of your brand, helping to develop your best client promoters or advocates.

You can promote your shipping strategy via:

• Building an email marketing list, to communicate directly with your customers. Additionally, if you send abandoned cart emails you can mention special shipping offers to help convince visitors to convert.
• Add a banner or pop-up on your eCommerce website to promote your shipping offers. This can be IP specific, as shipping offers can vary by market or even zipcode
• Promote your shipping promotion on social, it can provide as a true value to your audience and also drive engagement via social sharing.
• Run paid advertisements. I know this sounds a bit counter-intuitive to pay to promote discounted shipping; however, it can be an important step in driving traffic to your store, and drive familiarity with your brand within a very targeted audience.

What Role Does Branding Play in Your Shipping Strategy?

Branding doesn’t just stop at your website or once a purchase has been made. Instead, shipment tracking emails, as well as, your end users tracking page offers the opportunity to add a personal touch to your customer experience and be seen as memorable to customers, leaving a good impression for your brand.

Should businesses target their holiday marketing on a local level, or use a top-down strategy for all markets instead?

Generally, using a local marketing strategy works best, as it's crucial to understand the differences in regional buying behaviors and take local language and customers into account. It’s still important that all your buyers understand that you can service their needs, which is why going with a platform like Easyship, which makes international shipping as simple as domestic, is step 1, in driving a successful eCommerce logistics strategy.

Generally, using a local marketing strategy works best, as it's crucial to understand the differences in regional buying behaviors and take local language and customers into account.

Other topics explored include:

• eCommerce marketing best practices
• How companies can take their marketing cross-border
• Key stats about cross-border shipping

See how to grow your global image - and sales - this holiday season!