Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen
[00:00:31]
Welcome to the eCommerce marketing podcast. Everyone. I am your host Arlin Robinson. And today we’ve got a very special guest Tommaso Tamburnotti who is co-founder of Easyship, a platform that helps eCommerce stores confidently go global by simplifying domestic and international shipping. Tamburnotti comes with a wealth of banking and global eCommerce experience. Before Easyship, he began his career at Nomura in London, then relocated to Asia to become the Marketplace Director at Rocket Internet for both the Malaysia and Hong Kong offices. Tamburnotti was born and raised in Italy and holds a Bachelor and Master of Science from Bocconi University in Milan. He also studied at the University of Richmond and Pontificia Universidad Catolica in Santiago, Chile. He is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia Class of 2018, where he is an active contributor. Welcome to the podcast Tommaso.

Tommaso
[00:01:40]
Hi Alan. Thanks a lot for a powerful introduction. Oh yes. It’s it is great to be here. Thanks a lot.

Arlen
[00:01:46]
No problem. Not a problem. And I’m really excited to talk to you about a shipping e-commerce shipping because it’s actually one subject that we haven’t covered fully on a podcast. And I know there’s a lot of intricacies when it comes to shipping more than people realize. And I know you’re gonna shed a lot of light on that for our listeners today, but before we get into all of that, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and specifically how you actually got into what you’re doing today?

Tommaso
[00:02:14]
Sure. So you already cover most of the information in your, in your introduction, but yeah, basically I was working in, in investment banking for a little less than a year, and I saw that it was not the right path for me. I wanted to get involved eCommerce because I always been very interested in that. And I think that is, is very exciting. What is happening on the, on the global scene? So I, I quit my job and I got hired by rocket internet, a big conglomerate of e-commerce companies around the world. And my job was to be the director of marketplace for this company called Lada in Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. There is basically an Amazon copycat for south Asia. Basically my job there was to make sure to onboard these Asian sellers, to sell our platform and sell worldwide. And when I was working there, we were looking for a platform like, like easy ship.

Tommaso
[00:03:13]
So basically a platform that would serve as a shipping gateway. So sort of like pay or strip, but for shipping. So something that we could use for all our thousands of merchants selling on the platform, and we couldn’t find anything that was statutory back then. And we were really surprised because you know, shipping is such a big space and there are plenty of companies that help you to sell, okay. Sell online. Like, you know, I mean, of course there’s very famous eBay, Amazon Shopify, one, a lot of companies that help you to collect payments like PayPal and strive, many others, and a lot of companies that help you to promote your store doing online marketing, like Facebook, Google, and other market marketing provider. But when it comes to is if you can’t think of any platform that help you to ship from anywhere to anywhere, right. There are, there are of course, like many platform that help you to ship in the states. But when you have to look about it on the, on the global C, they don’t, this company is don’t have internationally. They don’t make ship internationally. So we decided to, to quit and start this on this, this own project. And this was almost five years ago. And then since then, easy ship has drew to team of around 50 to 60 people with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and New York.

Arlen
[00:04:36]
Okay, great. That’s that’s awesome. Tammaso yeah, you’ve really grown considerably in just, you know, five years or so that’s so that speaks volumes to you guys identifying a major need in the industry, because I know from what you saw shipping globally is, was a pain point. And I guess for a lot of businesses, it still is a pain point. And so your whole goal was to, you know, you identify that and, and came up with a solution to, to ease that pain. And that’s, that’s how a lot of major businesses as successful businesses do start, they identify particular pain point in a industry or area, and then they hone in find a solution for that and, and, and then market that to the masses. So that’s definitely impressive. And I, I definitely applaud you guys for that and doing well with that. Speaking of shipping, you know, any e-commerce business that is dealing with physical products that have to be shipped, you know, know that shipping can definitely be a pain point for sure, because there’s a lot of logistics.

Arlen
[00:05:37]
And then specifically, if you’re talking about shipping internationally, now, one of the things that I know, the companies that actually ship, whether it’s just domestically here in the us or internationally, one of the things that is always a big struggle is how do you stay competitive in the world of free shipping? You know, when you have all of these companies, big major brands, you know, offering the free shipping, the Amazon and the other companies that are offering the free shipping, how do you stay competitive? And do you think it’s possible for, you know, an average e-commerce business to be competitive without offering free shipping? What is your take on that?

Tommaso
[00:06:17]
So I think Indiana is, I mean, it’s a zero sum game, right? There are people that offer free shipping, but of course the brands have to have to pay for it. It’s not free. So they, they’re gonna probably like embed shipping cost in the, in the item, price. Other other store, they prefer to have an item. Price is cheaper and charged on the shipping. So at the end of the day, the total selling price is the same. So whatever the customer paid the same, you don’t create value for free shipping. It’s just a marketing thing. I think that free shipping on the other hand in terms of marketing is a powerful tool. Every store should be, should offer free shipping option. A lot of customer ask us, okay, so, okay, we’re gonna offer shipping. What’s the minimum basket size above which we’re gonna offer it for me.

Tommaso
[00:07:02]
There is not, there is, it’s not a matter of free basket. That depends on the shipping cost. Depends on the item, dimensions and weight. Of course, if I’m shipping a t-shirt, we know that the, the shipping cost of a teacher nationwide is, is quite cheap. So, you know, probably if you, if you sell above $20 dollars, you can already afford to, to offer free shipping, but you I’m selling, let’s say a table as a different story, right? I mean, shipping cost is so much more expensive than it to increase the, the basket size. What we always suggest is to offer free shipping for the cheapest option that you find, even if it’s very slow and then give the customers the opportunity to upgrade their shipping. So you’re doing an effort say, okay, we do free shipping. Maybe if you want it tomorrow and we need to choose an overnight solution, then there’s gonna be, you know, an additional 10 bucks, whatever.

Arlen
[00:07:56]
Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s good. I’m glad you identified that, that in essence, there really is no such thing as free shipping because somebody’s paying for it. You know, the, the shipping companies aren’t provided their services for free. It’s just the costs, like you said, are being absorbed by the company or not necessarily absorbed they’re, they’re rolling that into the price of the product. It’s just, you don’t really know what their breakdown is. So, you know, most consumers don’t know the, the breakdown of their, you know, the product that they’re purchasing, the margin, the shipping costs, you know, there’s a lot that goes into the pricing. They’re paying for it somehow. It’s just, they don’t really realize it. It’s, it’s all in there. So I’m glad you identified that because, you know, it’s something that almost any business can do. Any e-commerce business that’s selling a product can do is adjust their pricing in such a way.

Arlen
[00:08:41]
So like you said, even on small products, you can offer the free shipping. And what you said earlier as well is it’s, it’s really a marketing tool. It’s a kind of a psychological thing. I’ve, I’ve listened to many podcasts and webinars about the psychology of the consumer and the fact that someone sees free shipping it, it just kind of does something in the mind of a consumer that gives them a little bit of ease. Even though let’s say the price could be comparable to the price of a, the same product that they’re purchasing from another seller where they, they do charge for shipping, even though those, when it comes down to it, there’s a similar price. Just the fact that they see that in their minds, they feel they’re getting something free. It’s a little bit more appealing. So I think that’s kind of what it, what it really comes down to as far as increasing conversions, cuz that’s really the bottom line for e-commerce sellers is they, they, they want to increase their conversion rate. What do you think are some best practices to increase conversion at checkout and have a competitive shipping policy?

Tommaso
[00:09:48]
Yeah, sure. So first I think is important to give as many option to the customer as possible, right? So usually we suggest customer to give brands, to give free option the cheapest, the fastest and the best home money shipping solution so that the, every customer can be satisfied. Right. You know, you’re gonna find those customer that say there is so price sensitive and I don’t mind to wait one week to receive their item. As long as it can save couple of dollars there as their other customer. And then therefore they’re gonna ask for a very cheap solution, but you know, if you only offer a cheap solution, you’re under risk to not convert or clients that they are become rush. And they don’t mind to pay couple of dollars more because who knows, it’s like a birthday party or something and they need to get the gift really quick or, you know, they’re about to they’re traveling.

Tommaso
[01:10:33]
So they want to receive their items before they, they leave the country. So it’s a matter of choice, right? It’s the same thing. When you buy a flight, you don’t want to be shown one flight only. You like to go to a greater and see all the flights available and choose the best at you. According to your schedule. Another point is the best is to work with, as mental shift, this, the need to work with as many shipping provider as possible, right? If you fly only with one airlines, it’s difficult to find the best flights, right? You need to basically compare all of them because some are very good at something and, and so on. So if you, we see that our, the clients that are converting them more and the most and are actually saving more money, are those that are working with 15, 20 different companies.

Tommaso
[01:11:20]
On the other end, we know that working with 15, 20 different shipping companies can be really time consuming. You have to go for a lot of paperwork, sign out of contracts, pay out of deposit. So of course it’s, it has one advantage, but it’s very difficult to set it up. And, and that’s the reason why through ship, you can access more than 200 than 50 different shipping solution that just with one account, right. So you can use all these solutions without having an account directly with them. And, and that’s, that’s the, that’s the best part.

Arlen
[01:11:49]
Right?

Tommaso
[01:11:50]
Right. Yeah.

Arlen
[01:11:51]
Yeah. That’s, that’s awesome. Yeah. It seems like, as we stated earlier that it’s a, it’s really a pain point. I mean, you, you wanna be able to offer as many shipping options as possible through as many providers that do the shipping of logistics as possible, but it, it is a process front, like you said, there’s paperwork, there’s contractors deposits and smaller e-commerce businesses. Typically aren’t in a position to, especially if they’re a startup or just getting started. They, they’re probably not in a position to, to go through that upfront. They may only be able to, to offer shipping through just a few providers. And so yeah, I can definitely see the value in the solution that, that you guys have for sure. Of course, with global shipping, we, we talked about earlier that consumers know typically, especially, let’s say if you’re, you’re shipping a table versus a, a t-shirt, you know, the customer automatically, especially if they know it’s gonna be shipped globally, can pretty much understand that they’re gonna have to pay for some shipping for that because that’s a, you know, that’s a large item, so they, they understand that. But at the same time, you always want to make people have an idea that they’re, you know, they’re shaving money, you know, that you want them to have that knowledge there so that they can, you know, can kind of pull the trigger. So what are some ways that you can give customers the perception that they are saving on shipping costs, if you do have to offer shipping.

Tommaso
[01:13:14]
Yeah. That, that, that’s a really difficult question to answer. I’m not sure whether you can communicate their saving on shipping. What I believe is that is, is more like the way around, like it’s thingss to mark up shipping rates and show them that you are actually squeeze out of it. You know what I mean? So buyers buy buyers buy online from different stores and sometimes from some store that are like, let’s say more honest and transparent and they’re gonna list their shipping costs. They’re gonna see a low shipping cost. I don’t know, let’s say $10. Then they go to another store and they buy something of similar size and they select the same solution the same quarter, but this time, the store charge $20. Right. So now as a buyer, I feel a bit betrayed because I feel like that the store is kind of like charging me a lot on the shipping price. And he waited to show me this until I arrive at the last step. So after I fill in all my address and so on, so I always adjust a client, a clients to never overcharge on shipping. If you want to make margin, make margin on the product, not on the shipping, because now buyers they buy from different stores. So they have visibility of what is the market shipping cost.

Arlen
[01:14:34]
Yeah. That, that totally makes sense. And especially because like you said, the shipping typically cause gonna come up at the end, towards the end of the checkout. And if somebody is, you know, generally has an idea of what they can probably expect for the shipping, if they go all the way through and get to that end point where they have to select their shipping and they see it’s a, an unusually high amount that can definitely turn off a buyer and have them wonder if they really should move forward and abandon the cart possibly. So yeah, I see it makes total sense that you really shouldn’t try to make money on the, on the shipping. You know, the, the goal I think really always has to be, is to offer as low shipping costs as possible. And then, you know, of course you’ll make your money as a seller up on the pricing of your, of your actual product and other things.

Arlen
[01:15:22]
If you have other ancillary, maybe upsell items, you can try to make your money up on that. That’s definitely common where there’s a lot of upsell items that are done on e-commerce stores these days at the very end to try to, to increase the per sale value. So those are ways I think you should really look at as a, as a seller. So with shipping, because you know, shipping a lot of times is not necessarily the first thing somebody thinks about when they’re, when they’re shopping for something. So we’ll go back to the example of a table. It’s say I wanted to buy a dining room table. If I’m looking for one, I’m not necessarily thinking about shipping off hand immediately. I’m just trying to find the right particular table. So as a business, what are some ways and what are some of the best ways actually to promote, you know, attractive shipping offers?

Tommaso
[01:16:15]
Yeah. So I think your difference is between international and domestic buyers, right? If for domestic buyers, I think is important through delivery time. So, you know, you show multiple option to your customer with, with like different names. So they know it can be USPS or cloud SPS priority made FedEx ground FedEx overnight, or many others. This is just an example. Usually we usually, so first you ensure they call your name, this very ugly thing, checkout where people show express or economy shipping. Right? What does it mean? Like who ship it? I’m paying like, I don’t know, $15 it say express, is it a PS? Or is it a FedEx ups? You know, people, people value the quarter name, people value the quarter service and if they pay for something, they need to know what they’re buying. Right, right. So this is 0.1 list. They quarter name point sure. Is the delivery time, you know, back to the point of before, like showing express solution or a economy solution, what does economy, I mean, quantify economy, am I gonna wait a week or a month?

Arlen
[01:17:28]
Right.

Tommaso
[01:17:28]
So people they need to know. Right. Especially cause they compare price with delivery time. This is mostly for me for the, the basic ones. If you go to the bit more advanced one, for example, with us, you can show a checkout also the rating of the career. So, you know, one for every shipment we do, we send a survey to the buyers asking how was experience with the quarter, right? And then we collect all this data and do rankings. So people can see the satisfaction score of each quarter before they buy. Right. So this is this, this, the thing is very valuable. Then if you go to, to the international buyers, one additional point on top of the free, at least before is about taxes and duty. If you are in, let’s say the UK and you buy something from overseas, from the UK, they’re probably gonna have to pay taxes when the goods reach the custom, right.

Tommaso
[01:18:26]
And more specifically, these taxes are divided into V a T. So save taxes or import duty. So custom taxes, you know, if I’m looking in the UK and I want to buy something from the states and I need to pay taxes, but I don’t know much, taxe doesn’t gonna pay this can be scary. Right? I mean, I run the risk to pay a hundred dollars for an order. And then when I arrive at, when I, when it gets delivered at home, I need to pay another $50 and this can be really annoying. Right. So I think to make your shipping more attractive is always good to show a full lended cost. So give visibility to the buyers, how much they can expect to pay in taxes. So once they buy, they already know exactly much it is, or even better like even the option to prepay those taxes and guarantee them.

Arlen
[01:19:15]
That’s true. Yeah. Because like you said, for certain things, when taxes are involved, that’s, that’s something else in addition to shipping, which can be in kind of an unknown, you know, you really don’t know, depending on, you know, where their business is located, what type of taxes have to be assessed. And so yeah, those different types of options, even prepaying is something that I know can, you know, can definitely be useful to kind of alleviate that pain and that worry that the, that the consumers have. I mean, you, you probably know a lot about this when we’re dealing with all of these different shipping providers, these different couriers, they all have, I would imagine, you know, kind of set pricing and it’s really kind of all based on location. I know that you’re sending it to, and from the size of the shipment package, the weight and all of that, a lot of that I know is, is, is standard. So their pricing with respect to that I know is, is pretty fixed, but on a business owner’s side, what are some things that they can actually do to affect the time that they’re spending, preparing shipping as well as their overall costs? Or is there anything that the business owner can do outside of what these couriers and shipping providers are charging?

Tommaso
[02:20:31]
I think that the best way to, to save money is, is it’s like into what I said before is to have options. If you only work with one core, you’re kind of tied to what they offer, right? So the best way to, to have the best deal is to have options. So you should work with as many career as, as you can, or if you are maybe not the right size to hire operational team to manage these relationships is to work with a consolidator, like for example, easy ship, right? I mean, what we do is we give access to all these solutions, without any commitment, you don’t need to hire two people on operation and pay deposit to work before these quarters. And you can find always the best, the best rates. Another one is, is to find the right balance between between time and money.

Tommaso
[02:21:15]
You know, a lot of people sometimes say, oh, I’m, I’m saving. I’m gonna save $1,000 in on my shipping cost a month. But then this involves using like maybe like much slower or way terrible performance quarters, if you’re setting $1,000, but on the, on the shipping bill. But then you’re gonna spend so much time in operation to follow up with the quarters in case there are orders lost or not delivered, and your customer satisfaction will be much lower. So you you’re basically you’re setting cost, but you’re also gonna have less revenues. So this is an important trade off that I think all store and brands have to consider, you know, sometimes cheaper doesn’t necessarily present a good deal.

Arlen
[02:22:01]
Right, right. Definitely. Yeah. And that’s, that’s something you have to, you have to consider. It could be. And, and I think that’s where, what you mentioned as far as putting the ratings for the different careers can definitely help exactly help the customers make that decision, because like you said, they can, they can kind of see, okay, maybe you’ll have a, there’s a cheaper option, but their ratings may not be as good as the one that has the, the higher ratings. And so that’s definitely something that I think can help. One of the things I was, I also wanted to ask you though, is, does it even make sense as far as to try to save costs on shipping? Does it make sense? And is it even worth the trouble to come up with different types of, or, or even explore research, different types of shipping and packing materials or even the method that a business is using to, to package their products. If, if let’s say they’re doing this in house, or if, or at least if they’re in control of that process, is that worth the while on a per order basis, will they save money over time or is it not even worth the time to try to, you know, go with a, a cheaper material or different packaging style? What, what’s your take on that?

Tommaso
[02:23:11]
It depends on the kind of item you sell. If you sell a brand, if a brand is yours, the packaging I think should be a very good quality packaging because it’s part of the product, right? A good packaging experience represent the brand. If you’re selling something it’s extremely cheap and commoditized, like, I don’t know, below $5 point, maybe doesn’t make sense to spend too much money in packaging because any way the buyer is just patent to receive something really cheap in terms of the packaging material. Another thing that I think is very important is the packaging dimension. So, you know, when you ship with certain quarters, they charge you with volumetric weight. So that means that they base the shipping costs, not only on the weight of the item, but also on the size. So if you don’t have the perfectly fed box, you’re basically shipping air with it and you’re gonna, you, you you’re charged for the area to ship.

Tommaso
[02:24:09]
So it’s important to have packages that fit your items in that case. Also, if you have your own brand and therefore you are the one designing your packaging, there may be some, some situation in which metric dimension, the dimension of the box, I’d say is just couple of inches bigger than what they could be. And this may, may lead in, like, I don’t know, maybe like increase the shipping cost by like 30%, right. Because the quarters go by pounds. Right. So if you, if you do the computation of the, of the dementia maybe becomes 1.05 pound, right. So if you would’ve just like, cut it by one inch or two inches, then maybe would’ve been below the one pound and maybe say, if you say $3.

Arlen
[02:24:54]
Yeah. That’s that makes sense. So, yeah, it definitely sounds like it’s, it’s worth going through those iterations. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, sitting down with your, your product team and then figuring out, okay, what’s gonna be the absolute best size of, for the package where we’re not compromising the quality of the actual overall package. They’re still representative of the brand, but making sure that, you know, you, you don’t have so much wasted space. And like you said, you’re essentially, these companies are gonna be charging you for air and for space. And so I would say over time, if you, if you cut the size down per purchase per product purchase, you can definitely save, save over time. So that, that totally makes sense. And I’m glad you, you enlighten this on that. Great. Well, that’s, that’s awesome. Well, you’ve definitely enlightened me on this podcast with regards to shipping because I, I didn’t know a lot about the different options and the different thing e-commerce businesses have to look at when considering, you know, shipping, because it, it it’s something when you’re selling a product naturally, you, you, there’s gotta be a lot of thought spent with regards to your policies and the, and the companies that you’re gonna be using for it.

Arlen
[02:26:00]
Yeah. We really appreciate having you on Tommaso on the e-commerce marketing podcast. I, I think you’ve definitely not only Enlighted me, but our audience as well, hopefully. And I know this recording is gonna go a long way for e-commerce sellers worldwide. Finally, if any of our listeners want to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do it? If they’d like to pick your brain a little bit more about all things e-commerce shipping.

Tommaso
[02:26:25]
Yeah. I mean, they, they can reach out to me if they have any cash in my email is Tommaso. So T O M M a S O easy ship.com. We very, very, very happy to have like some casual conversation and, and see how we can share some of the material guides on shipping that, that we’ve developed else. You can also go to our blog. So on easy to com we have a blog where we list a lot of articles about the most diverse shipping topics and also resources like tools like tax estimator, shipping policy generators, shipping rates, estimators. So these tools are all dynamic and can be all, has for free from our website.

Arlen
[02:27:13]
Okay, great. Great. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Those sound like some great resources that I know our listeners will, will take advantage of. Well, thanks again, Tommaso for being on the e-commerce marketing podcast, we appreciate your time and your expert opinion, and we look forward to our listeners, digesting it and improving their shipping policies.

Tommaso
[02:27:34]
Thanks a lot. That’s really exciting.

Arlen
[02:27:37]
All right. Thank you.

speaker 1
[02:27:39]
Thank you for listening to the eCommerce marketing podcast. 

Podcast Guest Info

Tommaso Tamburnotti
Co-founder of Easyship