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Make Auto Parts Shipping More Brandable

Auto Parts Shipping

Each month we are fielded with customers who asks the question, “what more can we do to increase sales to our parts and accessory website next month?”  Our response is simple and always the same, “let’s not focus on the next month but rather, focus on next year.”  More often than not, we are answered with silence and/or some confusion.

Take your dealership for example, you didn’t just open the doors one day and waves of traffic came through the front door.  It took time, resources, patience, a consistent marketing plan and customers who you then turned into advocates.  The same principle needs to be applied to your eCommerce parts and accessory website.  You need to focus on the long game rather than the short game and do whatever you can to turn customers into repeat customers and brand advocates.

Since your website is your showroom, one opportunity for your brand to physically touch the consumer is through the actual shipping of their purchase.  So you need to make it count!  But before we get into a couple of ways to help build your brand through shipping, here’s what not to do.

 

Auto Parts Shipping Gone Wrong

Source: http://imgur.com/Sk4GIUc]

A genuine Ford part, came wrapped in Kia Motors bubble wrap in a Honda parts box. Talk about customer confusion!!!

Outlined below are some ideas to consider trying that will help increase your branding, and more importantly, your overall customer experience during your shipping process.

Custom Branded Shipping Tape

Instead of sending your customer a box with no branding or messaging, take a page out of Amazon’s book, seal and/or wrap the box with custom printed shipping tape.   Based on the theory of effective frequency, a consumer “has to be exposed to an ad at least three times within a purchasing cycle” (definition of effective frequency). John Philip Jones says, “Effective frequency can mean that a single advertising exposure is able to influence the purchase of a brand. However, as all experienced advertising people know, the phrase was really coined to communicate the idea that there must be enough concentration…to cross a threshold. Repetition was considered necessary, and there had to be enough of it…” (Journal of Advertising Research, 37 (4): 14-17, July 1997)

Custom Shipping Tape

Source: https://www.tapejungle.com/products/custom-packing-tape.html

 

Once your customer is excited that their package has arrived, leverage that excitement!  Unwrapping is one of the best parts, why not try turning it into a social experience?

Social Postcard Inserts

Every time you ship something drop a postcard insert into the box with instructions similar to our friends at LootCrate.  Include some type of call to action, like an invitation to a social media contest include company quotes or philosophies,  or maybe even a discount code on future offers.

LootCrate box

Image Source: Kissmetrics

 

These are just some of the ways to help increase your branding during your shipping process.  Take a few days to consider how you are shipping products to customers and what you could do enhance their experience with your brand.

Auto parts Marketing, parts marketing, ecommerce for auto parts

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