A Guide to Brand Building with Brand Packaging

It is no longer enough to provide a competitive price or free delivery to online shoppers. Customer experience is king, and one way in which brands are differentiating themselves is through packaging. Freebies, patterned bags and other little touches are beginning to find their way onto the nation’s doormats. Although it may seem difficult to prove ROI and the effect may be hard to measure, there are a number of reasons why packaging is the new CX frontier.
 

Create Brand Loyalty

The main reason for going the extra mile with your packaging is to create loyalty within your customer base. Although things the free delivery and returns are effective, they pull on the purse strings rather than the heartstrings. Packaging helps your customer get a warm fuzzy feeling as your product comes through the door, that they will want to repeat by buying from you again.
 

Keepsakes

Freebies are a common packaging trick, although they can be very effective. A simple box of chocolates may be all it takes to make your customer smile, as it did when we had our corporate Christmas cards delivered last year! However, you can be a little more imaginative. A non-perishable keepsake keeps your product and brand in your customers’ home and every day life. For example, a food company giving out tins and boxes so that even after the product is gone there is still a piece of the brand in the customer’s kitchen.
 

Brand advocacy

Giveaways and packaging tricks not only make your existing customers more likely to buy from you again, but encourage new customers to buy from you too. If they have a nice association with your brand, they are more likely to comment or review your products, to tell their friends or share it on social media. The more interesting or beautiful you can make your packaging, the more Facebook-worthy it becomes.
 

Get brand on the streets

This is especially key for pureplays. When customers bring their delivery home from work, or the postman is walking own the street with the parcel, it is a fantastic opportunity to get your brand name out there. It is a simple and relatively cheap way to generate interest in your brand whilst also providing a cohesive customer experience. Having branded rather than plain packaging gives you a high street presence without the high street rates.

Ecommerce Managers we’ve spoken to are all in tune with the possibilities of packaging and are working towards refining their offering. Some decide to advertise their freebies to encourage orders, whereas others like to leave it as a nice surprise to maximise the ‘fuzzy’ feeling. The only limits are your imagination (and what the postal service are willing to carry).