Working Effectively with a Fulfillment House

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:

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. How many items will be in a typical order?
4. 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?
5. 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.

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Boost Online Sales: Launch a Canadian Ecommerce Site

Launching an ecommerce website is as involved as starting up a physical store, just different because it's digital. Gone are the days when you could just post your products and add a few 'Buy Now' buttons. To be credible, you have to brand and merchandise your site, showing you're a going concern and not just a spam site looking to phish private data.

Are you a company based outside Canada and are wondering why Canadians aren't shopping on your global website? Canadians like to shop in Canadian dollars on Canadian ecommerce sites. If product has to be shipped into Canada, some Canadian shoppers perceive that shipping and delivery can be unpredictable, and they are concerned about possible additional customs fees.

But, you might be thinking, if I set up a warehouse in Canada, it'll add extra fixed costs, which is a risk I'm not willing to take.

There is an alternative. Outsource your complete ecommerce operation, from order-taking to shipping to invoicing, to a fulfillment house located in Canada. Fewer hassles for you fewer hurdles for your customers.

You can then focus on driving more sales online.

More and more organizations are providing outsourcing solutions. Here at Dare Marketing, we not only handle complete end-to-end online fulfillment logistics for you, we'll also build your ecommerce website, branded to your corporate look and feel.  If you would like to see some examples, just ask us.
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Where to Get Logistics Help for Your Growing Online Business

Your online business is growing.
You started your business in your basement, and it is growing fabulously.
You are shipping more and more product but your house is looking less like a house and more like a warehouse.

You're considering renting office space, complete with warehouse. If this is your first business, you many not know that you have other options.

There is indeed another cost-effective, scalable option.

Outsource your storage, order-taking and shipping. Not only will you get your house back, you'll also be able to re-allocate your time towards marketing, sales or business development, growing your business even faster.

And you won't have to rent space for storage.

Who should you outsource to? A 'fulfillment house' (like us, Dare Marketing).

What's a fulfillment house? More than just a shipping service, fulfillment houses are companies that can offer a broad range of e-commerce support services, such as marketing and logistics support.

In the area of inventory and shipping, a fulfillment house can handle the following for you:

• Store your products
• Receive orders from you, or your site.
• Fulfill the order by picking and packing the right products, properly
• Ship the order

A fulfillment house can handle more than e-commerce order taking, packing and shipping. Here at Dare we also handle personalized mailings, direct mail and rebate processing management.

You probably don't need all the services we provide. Tell us about where the stresses are in growing your business, and we'll give you some ideas on where we may be able to help. Call or email us today. We love solving problems.

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Save Money on Direct Mail to the USA

If you're a Canadian company with customers in the United States, the rising Canadian dollar has probably reduced your Canadian dollar revenue. You're probably scrutinizing all of your costs looking for every opportunity to save.

If you send more than 200 items per mailing, such as marketing literature, newsletters or catalogues to your customers south of the border, consider the following tips that can help reduce your mailing or direct mail costs.

• Can you reduce your postage costs?
  Are there ways of bundling, pre-sorting and routing that can reduce your total postage costs? If you are mailing to the USA in lots of 200 or more,  there can be a cost savings opportunities available to you.

• Can the weight of your direct mail piece be reduced?
  Weight counts and choosing a lighter weight of paper stock can be critical. Using a smaller envelope will also reduce weight. Or you might want to redesign from a flyer to a drive-to-website postcard.

• Can the size of your direct mail item be optimized for a lower cost?
  Perhaps your marketing agency suggested a non-standard size mailer so that your direct mail item would stand out in a pile of mail. Could this be resulting in significant extra cost?

If you send more than 200 items per mailing, savings can quickly add up.

As part of our direct mail and mailing fulfillment services, we regularly discuss cost-saving tactics like these with our customers. Call us today to discuss how you might be able to reduce your direct mail costs.

Donna Kutter
Dare Marketing
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Double Duty: Learn More About Your Buyers With Help From Your Rebate Fulfillment House

Do you ever wonder about the people who buy your products? You can learn a lot about who buys your products by collecting data through a rebate program. You can ask buyers why they bought your product or if there is a new product line that you should consider. Perhaps there's a need you currently aren't meeting. Wow! Now you know what to market to your clients.

Here are 5 different things you can find about your customers:

1. Who they are
2. Why they bought your product
3. Where they bought your product
4. What they think about your product
5. Which related products are they thinking about buying next.

To collect this data, are you taking advantage of all the services available from your rebate fulfillment house? If you are working with a fulfillment house as part of your rebate fulfillment program, why not have them capture the data for you?

A fulfillment house typically has both the experience and manpower to efficiently capture data and provide it to you in a summarized, easily digestible format. Data capture can be tedious and requires time that may not be easily available in your office.

Why take the time to capture the data? Data not gathered is a lost marketing opportunity. Even just names and addresses can be used as the building blocks for an email newsletter (with permission, of course). A rebate fulfillment program can be designed to ask customers strategic questions such as "How does our product compare with our competitors?"

Build your data capture goals into the design of your rebate fulfillment program. Consult your fulfillment house early, as they may have some ideas on how to make the data capture of your rebate program even more effective.

Do you have comments about rebate management or rebate fulfillment programs? We welcome discussion, so please do comment.

Donna Kutter
Dare Marketing
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Direct Mailing List Quality Key to Successful Direct Mail Campaigns

Some days it can seem like your direct mailing list is out-of-date before you finish compiling it.  No sooner have you included a new name on your list than your new prospect has moved.  Maintaining your direct mailing list is a continuous process.  And by paying attention to a few important details you can save a few dollars.

Here are three common problems to watch for in your direct mailing list:

• Are there duplicate addresses?
Do you have the same person appearing more than once on your direct mailing list?  Possibly under different pseudonyms?   For example, does your direct mailing list have Mr. Smith listed as Joe Smith, J.S. Smith, or J. Sam Smith – all with the same address?  Mailing to Mr. Smith three times not only wastes your money but is likely to irritate him.

• Are all of your addresses complete?
A direct mailing piece that has an incomplete address will simply be returned to you.  Postal codes for example, present their own set of problems.   Have all of your postal codes been input into your direct mailing list accurately? Have zeros been accidentally keyed in for the letter O?   A search function on your mailing list program will be able to help you identify these errors. 

• Is all of the information on your direct mailing list current?
  How old is your direct mailing list?  When was the last time you checked each listing? Whether you maintain your own direct mailing list or purchase a list from a service provider, it is well worth the cost to update the information through an outbound calling service that will verify your contact’s name and address. After all, people change jobs, move or change interests.  A direct mailing list provider will be able to help you with this service.  

Nobody wants part of their direct mailing campaign delivered to the wrong person, or worse yet to the wrong person twice!  A direct mailing list that is accurate and current can be the key to a successful direct mailing campaign.

Do you have processes that’ve worked for you to help you keep your direct mailing lists in order?
Donna Kutter
Dare Marketing
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Tips on Choosing a Fulfillment Company That's Right for You

One of the topics of focus of the October 2009 issue of Direct Marketing News (dmn.ca) is fulfillment.

In this issue, Donna Kutter has contributed some tips on choosing a fulfillment company. Donna's article, titled Not All Fulfillment Houses are Created Equal, is on page 7 of the October issue of DMN.


This article can also be read on Dare Marketing's website:
Not All Fulfillment Houses are Created Equal.

How does this compare with your experience selecting fulfillment companies? ...more >