Total Blue System Ecommerce

Offer shipping options specific to a type of customer

Show only the appropriate or relevant options; nothing more, nothing less to distract from the purchase process. That's a philosophy that's embedded in Total Blue System's shopping cart, especially concerning shipping method options. In a continuation of that idea, now your cart can present shipping options (like Next Day, 2nd Day, Standard, UPS Ground, etc.) specific to the "type" of customer.

• In other words, you can now limit which shipping choices are displayed to the shopper depending on the type of customer account he or she holds.

The immediate application of this new feature for some clients is to offer shipping that's tailored to the needs of dealers or wholesalers. The item quantities and item pricing for a customer of type "dealer" is unique from the normal retail shopper. Therefore, the pricing scheme for shipping will likely be unique as well. (In one case, a client has chosen not to calculate shipping costs for dealers during check-out; so their shipping cost totals are excluded from the online order process. This new feature enables such a configuration.)

Now you can create what we call a "shipping service" and restrict it to be available only to shoppers of a certain "user type." The User Types are definable by you within the Contacts module of the Admin Area. Assuming you've already configured a user type called Dealer, now you can create a shipping service just for those kinds of customers.

When such a customer comes through your shopping cart, signs into his or her account, and is then recognized as a dealer, the check-out experience that follows will be tailored to show shipping options for that type of customer.

Business email storage upgraded

Our e-commerce hosting includes business-class email for your company's personal communications. Now we've just upgraded the storage from 1 GB to 2 GB's of data. With webmail access, and IMAP from your desktop email client, you can keep all the emails that are important to you on the server.

If you'd like all of your company's accounts to be upgraded, please request this by contacting your account manager. There's no set-up fee; all is included in your normal software license. Enjoy.

Trigger email offers based on last order date

Oh, we've been looking forward to this one! The "hit 'em while they're hot" kind of email marketing messages -- to borrow a client's phrase -- can now be implemented, as of the latest System Update. Specifically, when an e-commerce shopper makes a purchase, the date of his or her order is passed into the appropriate Email Marketing module's demographics field value. Then you can configure triggers to operate on that date of the order and send out a personalized email message in follow-up.

The first applications of this capability, being tested now with certain clients, include:

• An "Are you satisfied with your order?" message template. Ask whether everything arrived safely and intact. Ask whether there's any questions about returns or guarantees. Ask the shopper to rate his or her experience. Whatever helps you establish the right customer service tone for the sake of encouraging the shopper's satisfaction and likelihood to buy again. (Of course, you can also suggest future purchases with text, graphics, and links in this very message.)
• A "Will you please review this product?" message template. After an appropriate period of time, ask your customer to post a review of your product on your website. Reviews definitely make a difference in improving shopper conversion rates. Go back to the source and ask those who bought the item to review it. Offer an incentive if they do within a limited period of time.
• An invitation to opt-in to your email publications message. You can configure a trigger such that if the customer is NOT presently a subscriber to any or all of your email publications (a.k.a. lists), then you can send them an encouraging email after a given period of time passes from the date of his or her last order. Don't assume that he or she wants to automatically receive special offers forever after placing an order with you. Ask him or her, get permission, and then expect better results from a more qualified, receptive subscriber base...

Here's what you need to do to enable this new capability:

1. Login to your Admin Area and go to the Email Marketing module, choosing the "View / Edit Demographics" menu option. Choose to View Demographics.
2. Create a new demographic (type = date) and call it something like "Last Order Date."
3. Return to the main Email Marketing module's start page, clicking on the top Email Marketing module tab in your navigation menu. Choose Special Demographics from the submenu.
4. Select from the Order Date Demographic menu, choosing the demographic field that you created earlier. To follow the example, this would be the menu item called "Last Order Date." Save changes.
5. Alert E-business Coach that you're ready for us to run your initial set-up and configuration steps to enable this feature for you. This includes a historical import of order dates tied to your existing email addresses managed in your Email Marketing module's master list.
   

That's the first stage of the process. Next you can go through the process of creating a message template and a trigger that ties into the Last Order Date. That's a topic for another day...