Promotional Fulfillment: What It Is and Where to Find it

Promotional fulfillment can be part of the eCommerce fulfillment process or a separate fulfillment service. Your eCommerce business might benefit from making fulfillment part of your marketing plan.

What is promotional fulfillment?

Promotional fulfillment is shipping samples, giveaways, prizes, marketing materials, and other promotional items. B2B promotional fulfillment could involve shipping seasonal product displays or free samples to retail outlets or other businesses. B2C promotion fulfillment might include shipping prizes to contest winners, adding marketing materials to packages during the order fulfillment process, or sending free samples to consumers.

Here are four examples of promotional fulfillment:

Shipping boxes of sample-size beauty products to salons to give to their clients.
Processing an offer that lets consumers get a free item when they provide receipts showing a qualifying purchase.
Adding a coupon or flyer to a customer’s order during pick and pack fulfillment.
Packing and shipping samples to businesses as an invitation for them to carry a product.

Where can you find promotional fulfillment services?

Some fulfillment companies specialize in processing only promotional fulfillment. But promotion fulfillment can be part of the 3PL services offered at any fulfillment center.

If you already work with a fulfillment company, your 3PL can probably provide promotional fulfillment during order processing. For example, you could add a coupon or a free sample with each order. If you run a lot of promotions or need specialized promotional fulfillment services, make sure your warehouse can provide the services you need.

Marketing fulfillment through kitting

Kitting is a warehouse process to streamline order picking and packing. It’s the perfect way to add promotional fulfillment to your order fulfillment process.

With kitting, you can create a SKU for each promotional item and add that to the pick list for orders that meet the criteria of the promotion. The process makes adding a brochure, gift card, or sample item to an order easy. By adding these items to your product list in the warehouse management system, your 3PL can execute your marketing strategy without slowing down your fulfillment.

Kitting can also benefit promotional fulfillment services by pre-assembling promo packs. For example, you might want to send sample sizes of five different scented lotions plus a brochure about the product line to consumers or retailers. Your fulfillment center can create the kits in advance, so your sets are elegantly packaged, and the shipping process is fast and easy. Kitting assortments of products also reduces the chance of fulfillment errors that can occur when workers must assemble kits on the fly.

How can promotional fulfillment benefit your eCommerce company?

Here are some of the ways that your eCommerce company can leverage promotional fulfillment to increase customer loyalty and enhance your business:

Insert coupons with customer orders. You can specify the amount of the coupon based on the size of the order or your data on the specific customer. Adding a physical voucher to a package saves you postage costs. And, when the customer opens a box from you, you can be sure that they are paying attention to the contents, unlike a coupon in the mail, which could get discarded as junk.
Include a thank you card with a coupon code in each order. You might offer a set discount with the card or a mystery discount that the code unlocks.
Add your latest print catalog with each order you ship.
Give each customer a sample of a product that’s not in their order.
Include a gift in the box. The gift could be a promotional item, such as a pen or billfold with your logo on it. Or you could use gifts to get rid of obsolete inventory. The customer who bought your latest jewelry set might not have ordered last year’s earrings, but she might be delighted to get a pair for free.

Rules of thumb for promotion fulfillment during order processing

Here are some principles to guide you in successful promotional fulfillment:

Marketing inserts and samples should be light enough that they have little or no impact on your shipping costs.
Create a SKU for each freebie and add it to the packing list so promotional fulfillment doesn’t delay shipping.
Use kitting to create promotional sets ahead of time. Kitting works for paper as well as products; you can kit multiple flyers or coupons into a group.
Work with your 3PL to figure out in advance the best way to add promotions or marketing materials to your orders in advance. Create an SOP so packers know exactly how you want your boxes assembled.

Red Stag Fulfillment provides industry-leading fulfillment services

At Red Stag Fulfillment, our job is to make your business look good. When your sales grow, that grows our business too. So, helping our clients grow and scale is central to our mission.

If one of our clients needs a package insert, we will figure out the best way to do it. We constantly refine our processes and collaborate with our clients to make sure our fulfillment services help them meet their eCommerce KPIs. Kitting is one of our core service offerings because we have seen the many ways that it can improve the pick and pack process, including for promotional fulfillment.

Red Stag Fulfillment guarantees the accuracy of our services, and that includes marketing fulfillment. We can offer ironclad guarantees because we have one of the industry’s lowest error rates.

We see fulfillment as a part of your marketing plan. If customers are delighted by their orders, they’re more likely to order more, and top-notch fulfillment is one of the best ways to make your customers happy. Think of Red Stag Fulfillment as your customer happiness service. Contact us today to find out how we can help you promote your business.

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