Creating a strong unboxing experience is a great way to capture your customers' attention and build brand awareness. This can be invaluable for driving long-term growth!
As an ecommerce seller, the first physical touchpoint you normally have with a customer will be when your product package arrives at their door. In this critical moment, how can you ensure that you capture the customer’s attention so they remember you in a positive light?
Shipping your best products in a plain, boring brown box is not enough to keep up with the marketing efforts of retail giants. Generic packaging isn’t engaging, memorable, or personable. Modern consumers demand a better customer experience. If you can’t—or won’t—give it to them, then they’ll simply find a competitor who can.
So, in such a fast-moving industry saturated with competitors selling similar products, eCommerce sellers need a new way to differentiate themselves. A premium, personalized unboxing experience can be that key differentiator!
In fact, a survey from Dotcom Distribution found that 40% of consumers are likely to make repeat purchases from an online merchant with premium packaging. The same study also found that premium packaging makes the brand feel upscale and builds anticipation for delivery.
The question is this: How can you create an unboxing experience that will keep your customers not just satisfied, but delighted, engaged, and coming back for more?
There are many benefits to providing your customers with a personalized and branded unboxing experience. Here are a few of the biggest ones:
No one would look twice at a brown box on a doorstep, but if people saw a totally unique box standing out against a sea of generic packages, they’ll become intrigued. This makes them more likely to check out your website or socials to see what you’re all about, increasing your brand awareness. Plus, delivering a great user experience can make your customers so excited about your brand and its products that they’ll be much more likely to share photos of their new package online.
In fact, 40% of online shoppers say they are more likely to share a product image or video on social media if the packaging is branded. This trend is only going upwards as social media becomes even more prevalent in the purchase process of modern consumers!
Unboxing videos have become a major trend among online influencers (such as product reviewers) and have the potential to persuade their fans to purchase your products. Statistics cited by Medium state that “1 in 5 consumers have watched an unboxing video” and that “In 2017 the term alone had 60 million searches and 3 billion views on YouTube — more than triple that of 2013.”
If you can create an interesting, unique, and entertaining unboxing experience that drives customers to share a video of it, you can help their followers discover your brand. It can also encourage people to buy from you because they want to participate in that awesome unboxing experience that they saw on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. from their favorite content creator.
By generating extra excitement for your brand among influencers’ followers, you can attract new customers that might never have considered your products otherwise. Unique unboxing experiences can also help keep your current customers satisfied with the products they buy from you—helping to ensure repeat business.
Repeat sales from existing customers plus new customers who saw an interesting unboxing video = more revenue for your brand!
Creating a unique unboxing experience that people will want to share (and one that encourages people who see subsequent unboxing videos to make a purchase) can be tricky. However, there are a few simple things that ecommerce sellers can do to create a superior branded unboxing experience:
Getting to know your customers is a must for creating a truly memorable—and positive—unboxing experience. How well do you really know your customers? It’s important that you’re able to answer questions like:
Fulfillment marketing leverages these kinds of insights about your customers to help you personalize packaging contents to create a custom unboxing experience that makes a positive impact!
For example, if you know that a repeat customer has a birthday coming up in the next few weeks, you can add a customized coupon to their package congratulating them and offering a discount on a future order. This helps to build a relationship with the customer while creating a more meaningful and memorable customer experience. It also helps incentivize the customer to buy from you again—driving revenue from repeat sales.
Fulfillment marketing is great for ecommerce sellers because it:
A key part of creating a memorable unboxing experience that makes customers think of you and your brand is making the packaging your own. If it’s not clear at the first glance who the packaging is from, you lose the potential impact of a strong first impression. In short, it’s important to let your brand’s personality and story shine through just from the box itself!
Having strong brand storytelling doesn’t just increase your favorability in your customer’s eyes—it can also be as much as 22 times more memorable than simply telling facts about your products. In an industry as saturated as ecommerce shopping, any chance you have to stand out from the competition is priceless.
How do you create strong brand storytelling with your product boxes? A key part is being able to quickly establish a “narrative arc” complete with a setting, characters, conflict, climax, resolution, and denouement (post-resolution bit establishing a new normal). Doing this with printed images on the box and a few short lines of text—and being able to trigger an emotional response with them—can be incredibly effective.
Ensuring that your branding and user experience is consistent for the customer—from browsing products on your website to receiving one—helps build a recognizable brand story. Once your audience knows, trusts, and likes you, they will be more likely to buy from you because you’ve created a deeper relationship with them—turning them into loyal advocates for your brand.
In fact, in 2019, 43% of customers reported being willing to spend more money with brands they’re loyal to.
“Think outside of the box” is a common bit of advice for creating unique and memorable experiences. However, it’s important to think about the inside of the box too—literally, in the case of unboxing experiences!
When it comes to crafting an unboxing experience, your presentation inside of the box can be every bit as important as the outside of the box. Lazily throwing your product into the corner of a shipping box isn’t going to build the cohesive, positive, and curated image you (and your customers) are looking for. In fact, such carelessness can contribute to damaged products!
So, it’s important to think about the size and shape of the product, the boxes you are using, and how your products will fit and look when a customer opens their box. Some brands will even add messaging and designs inside the box as a nice surprise for the customer.
To further elevate the customer experience and add a feeling of exclusivity, you could put a little something extra inside your boxes aside from packing peanuts and airbags! For example, you could add:
These add-ins can all help you build long-term customer loyalty and drive repeat sales!
To recap, a memorable, engaging, and personalized unboxing experience helps you:
Ready to experience all of these benefits so that your eCommerce business can gain a competitive edge? The Fulfillment Lab is here to help! We bring fulfillment and marketing together at scale—combining expedited shipping, order transparency, and complete customization to keep you and your customers happy.
How does it work? Our fulfillment team will meet with your marketing team, helping you to create a few customized fulfillment experiences for each unique customer profile. Using analytics within our Global Fulfillment Software™, you’ll quickly be able to pinpoint which experience your clients like the most. Then, you can upgrade and refine your packaging to align with the preferences of each customer!
With nearly limitless options for customization when it comes to boxes, labels, inserts, coupons, and more, you can maximize profitability while keeping it fresh and exciting every time someone buys your products. Contact us today to start creating an unboxing experience that will transform your customer’s experience!
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