As an eCommerce business owner, a large share of your business hinges on packages being delivered on time and in good condition. If the postal service or a third-party shipping company fails to make deliveries, it can deliver a huge hit to your bottom line. For this reason, many online businesses turn to shipping protection (also known as shipping insurance) as a way to protect themselves and their customers against the risk of loss, theft, or damage of packages in transit.
So, what are some of the benefits of shipping protection for brands? How does shipping protection help protect against lost revenue? Finally, what kind of shipping insurance protects against porch piracy? In today’s guide, we will answer all of these questions and more, but first, let’s take a look at what shipping protection actually means for online brands.
What Is Shipping Protection?
Shipping protection is a type of insurance that protects packages from the moment they are shipped out until the moment they arrive at the correct destination. Many carriers like the United States Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS offer their own in-house insurance options. To protect your business against loss or damages, you can pay extra for parcel protection. This way, if something does happen to the package in transit, you will not have to pay to repair or replace it.
If you’re not impressed with the shipping protection offered by the major carriers, you can also get third-party shipping insurance through companies like ShipInsure. In fact, ShipInsure can offer lower rates, more comprehensive protection, and faster claims resolution than most of the bigger competitors. So, let’s take a closer look at the benefits of choosing ShipInsure as your primary shipping protection provider.
Improve Your Customer's Post-Purchase Experience
Building brand trust and customer loyalty require you to take care of your customers during every step of the purchasing journey. From the moment they begin interacting with your business until they’re actually using your products, you should do everything possible to guarantee that your customers will remain satisfied with your business — and feel encouraged to become repeat customers. However, a crucial element that many brands ignore is the post-purchase customer experience.
It’s tempting to just focus on selling more products, but if you ignore the post-purchase customer journey, you could be leaving your valued customers out to dry. Not only does this hurt the quality of your brand, but it could also lead to negative customer reviews. Fortunately, if you provide shipping protection as an option to your customers, they will feel more comfortable knowing that their shipment is insured against unforeseen circumstances. With this small difference, you protect your customer from the threat of lost or damaged shipments, greatly improving the post-buying experience.
Protect Yourself From Buyer Fraud
Without some form of shipping protection, you expose your business to buyer fraud. This can come in many forms, but one of the most common forms of buyer fraud is the lost package scam. Essentially, a customer buys a product and receives it in the mail, but claims that it never arrived. If you don’t have shipping protection, you may have to pay the customer or spend valuable resources to investigate the claim.
Once you use ShipInsure, you no longer have to worry about missing package fraud. Since ShipInsure takes care of the claims process and pays out reimbursements directly to customers, it is virtually impossible for you to be scammed by a buyer.
Protect Yourself From Porch Pirates
Sadly, porch theft has become one of the most common crimes that directly affect merchants, shipping companies, and customers. It is especially common around the holidays when millions of Americans order gifts online and have them shipped to their door. Even if you get traditional shipping insurance through a carrier like FedEx or UPS, you won’t get any kind of protection against porch pirates.
In fact, ShipInsure is one of the only shipping protection providers to offer reimbursement for packages that have been stolen from a customer’s property. Not only does this give customers greater peace of mind, but it also encourages them to do all of their shopping with merchants who offer this kind of comprehensive shipping insurance. Since porch piracy is such a prevalent issue, your customers will be far more likely to show your brand greater loyalty if you can protect their purchases from thieves with ShipInsure.
Shipping Insurance Cost Savings
As an online brand, it is usually your responsibility to pay for shipping insurance. Even if you find ways to pass these costs on to your customers, you will still need to pay for the insurance upfront with USPS, FedEx, or UPS. However, this is not the case if you opt for ShipInsure coverage.
With ShipInsure, customers are given the option to pay for ShipInsure coverage at checkout. For as little as $0.98 per package, the shipment will be fully covered during transit. This is far cheaper than most competitors and, since your business doesn’t have to pay the fees, you never have to worry about the costs.
To make ShipInsure coverage even more enticing, you could potentially save thousands of dollars on the cost of the staff needed to handle claims. ShipInsure fields all claims from customers and typically provides claim resolution in as little as 90 seconds. This way, you never have to worry about the cost of buying shipping insurance or managing the claims process. To get a better idea of the costs and savings of ShipInsure coverage, be sure to check out the ShipInsure ROI calculator.
Increase Average Order Value
Your brand’s Average Order Value (AOV) is a direct reflection of your ability to profit from each shipment. If you forego shipping protection and you have shipments that go missing or get damaged, you’ll likely see a huge drop in your AOV. This means you won’t be making as much money on each shipped item and, if you encounter enough issues with shipments, you could even lose money.
Shipping protection with ShipInsure eliminates this concern. Plus, ShipInsure customers see an average AOV increase of 27% because there is no risk of having to pay out-of-pocket if and when packages get lost or damaged. This means that you can literally make more on each package you send out by simply giving your customers the ability to opt-in to ShipInsure coverage.
Earn Revenue Share
Finally, what business doesn’t like to find new ways to earn revenue? If you get shipping coverage through a traditional provider, you’ll have to pay for it out of pocket. With ShipInsure, your customers pay a nominal fee for shipping protection, making it a win-win for you. To make ShipInsure an even better deal, you can now enroll your business in the ShipInsure Revenue Sharing Program.
Your business is automatically enrolled once you fulfill 100 orders with ShipInsure coverage. From there, you can earn higher and higher royalties on each order based on the total number of orders you send with ShipInsure. This revenue ranges from an extra 5% to 30% on all of your orders. If you’re sending out hundreds or even thousands of orders per month, you could substantially increase your company’s revenue just by getting started with ShipInsure.
Is your business looking for a better way to insure shipments? If so, be sure to reach out to the experts at ShipInsure today!