3 Ways Technology Can Ease Delivery Dilemmas
Smart businesses realize the importance of direct mail in their marketing campaigns. This effort is wasted if the marketing does not reach the intended customer or if they accidentally end up receiving multiples of the same communication.
But what about getting your products into the hands of your customers? You could be facing the same issue. Delivery can be one of the biggest hassles for e-commerce businesses because, without a brick-and-mortar shop, it’s the only opportunity to demonstrate reliability.
Recent studies demonstrate that delivery issues cause up to 56% of customers to abandon a brand. This is a massive issue that, at times, is out of online retailers’ control.
Thankfully, there are some easy steps that e-commerce and other businesses can take to mitigate a large proportion of issues that arise along the delivery process.
1. Route Planning with Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding
Geocoding is one of the best ways to ensure accuracy and speed in shipping for online retailers. Geocoding functions by taking a postal address and converting it into coordinates on a map. But geocoding can be used to determine other information as well, such as the number of nearby customers per area and different demographic information.
Geocoding is also used for mapping and distribution management. The process of rendering shipping locations into geo coordinates can improve logistics and reduce shipping costs because the reality is that location and address are not always the same thing.
Geocoding also makes it easier to determine the precise distance from a warehouse to a shipment location.
2. Improved Address Accuracy
The financial impact of poor quality delivery data costs American businesses up to $15 million per year.
At the same time, 25-30% of company data becomes quickly inaccurate as people move and as city developments change. With data cleansing, inaccurate addresses and duplications can be removed, and all remaining addresses in the system can be validated.
This allows for more accurate deliveries, particularly for subscription-based online retailers.
For marketing campaigns, there’s nothing worse than getting the target’s name wrong or sending them duplicates (or more) of the same communication. Ensure your system is cleansed of inaccuracies with data cleansing and validation.
3. Pay Attention to Customer Communication
Customer communication is a huge component of good business practices. For e-commerce, this is often one of the only opportunities for offline communication apart from delivery. For local products and services, it has been found that direct mail is a far better marketing tool than emails.
For just about any delivery and marketing challenge, technology can play a big role in improving things for the company. Do not sit by and let this integral opportunity pass your business by. For more information about the technology options available, reach out to Anchor Software today.
