Is customer experience enhanced by branding e-commerce shipping boxes?

While an entire marketing industry exists around the concept of experiential packaging and its impact on the customer experience, the focus has been mostly on inner boxes. The Wall Street Journal reports retailers are attempting to offset shipping costs by selling ad space via package inserts that are placed on the inside of boxes, but printing on the outside of shipping boxes still remains a largely untapped market.

While the outside of corrugated shipper boxes has been largely ignored, that seems to be changing. Some retail giants, such as Amazon, are driving the trend of branding shipping boxes.

It has been more than four years now since Amazon made headlines by plastering its shipping boxes with advertisements for the movie Minions. Amazon has continued to use its shipping boxes to promote its own products, as well as partnerships with select advertisers, including a partnership with Revlon, and more recently a promotion with Chevrolet. It is time for retailers and e-commerce companies to consider how on-the-box branding and advertising impacts the customer experience.

Let's unpack when branding boxes can have a positive impact on customer experience for retailers and e-commerce companies.  

When does it make sense to brand shipping boxes?

●    When campaigns are part of an omnichannel strategy.
When customers are exposed to a company's marketing message in multiple channels, it is not a surprise when they receive a box with a message that mirrors a message they have seen via the retailer's other marketing channels, such as a website, social media account, or billboard. Consistent messaging through omnichannel marketing is key for avoiding customer confusion. While shipping boxes are an often overlooked marketing channel, they represent one of the only physical touchpoints a customer may have with your company. Instead of viewing shipping boxes as a product protection and delivery device only, view them as a shippable billboard that is a key channel of communication in your omnichannel marketing strategy.

●    When cross promotion is in your company's DNA.
Retailers like Amazon make frequent use of cross promotion to boost sales so it doesn't come as a surprise when a company like Amazon uses shipping boxes to promote its products or products from select third-party companies. However, this type of cross-promotion works best when your company promotes its own products or products that are closely tied to your company's offerings. For instance, it might diminish the customer experience if a pharmaceutical company sold advertising for an unrelated product, such as pet food or scuba gear, but it might make sense to sell advertising or promote a partnership with a third-party company that provides medical devices or health products.

●    When you have data on your customers.
Marketing is all about knowing your customers, what messages they want to receive and which channels they want to receive them. Your customers may or may not want to see ads on your boxes, but that doesn't mean you have to leave on-the-box real estate blank. The blank canvas of shipping boxes does not have to be used solely for advertising. You can use the data about your customers to promote relevant messages outside of advertising content, including championing causes or raising awareness of issues that matter to your customers. Instead of selling ads, consider donating the unused space on your boxes to promote a charity or non-profit organization that your company supports. Shipping boxes can also be used to provide educational or informational content that consumers find useful, such as recipes, fun facts, coloring pages for kids, etc.

●    When on-box branding is used strategically.
Use on-the-box advertising sparingly. In other words, don't over do it. If your boxes begin to look like Times Square's billboard alley, ad fatigue will quickly set in. This is true for any company, but when done strategically, branding the outside of a box is an opportunity to stand out from the competition, especially in industries that typically ship products in unbranded boxes.

●    When the unboxing experience needs to be memorable and shareable.
Unboxing videos have become a boon for marketers who want to tap into the power of online influencers, but many unboxing videos start with unpacking the unbranded outer brown shipping box. Do you really want the first impression of your product to be a plain brown box? Why not make the entire experience more visually appealing, shareable and memorable for consumers? Modern printing technologies can completely transform the look of corrugated packaging to mimic any type of material you can imagine, including wood, fabric and stone.

Until recently, brown corrugated shipping boxes had only one duty — ensure the contents of the box arrives undamaged. Now shipping boxes are blank canvases for marketers to use to enhance the customer experience. You have already purchased the structure to ship your products. What are you doing with it to improve customer experience? Shipping boxes provide too much valuable real estate to leave blank.

Pete Galbiati is the director of marketing at Peachtree Packaging & Display.