For any shopper stuck in the snarl of a mall traffic jam or a winding retail line, it's easy to recognize the appeal of point-and-click shopping. Buyers save time, effort, and, during the holiday-shopping season, sanity. But a Catch-22 of mail-order and internet shopping is that added convenience comes with increased product returns. For one distributor, this was a reason to enter the integrated labels market.
Jim McCarthy, a sales representative at Collegeville, Pa.-based Innovative Print & Media Group, visited a telecommunications client who remarked that increased returns seemed to go hand-in-hand with the company's success. Typically, mail-order customers with returns go back online and print their own labels to affix to packages, then mail those packages themselves. What Innovative Print & Media Group's client found, however, was that this sometimes led to confusion at the post office, lost packages, missing labels and shipping delays. The telecommunications firm didn't want expensive, returned parts sent out in other orders, so these obstacles were critical.
"They kept saying, 'It's important that we get them all back. It's important we get them all back exactly right. It's important none of them are lost in the UPS system. It's important that we credit the customer's account,'" McCarthy says. "There were all these reasons they had for making the process very smooth."
To address this, Innovative Print & Media Group worked with InfoSeal LLC, a manufacturer in Roanoke, Va., to devise a pressure-seal form with an integrated label for UPS-certified forms. With the new integrated label, the process is simplified and the delays minimized. After a customer with a product return calls the telecommunications company's 800-number, a personalized, integrated label is sent out to him via U.S. mail. Included is the order information, client contact details and a certified UPS return shipping label form that the recipient can affix to the returned package. Another call to an 800-number (this time to UPS for a pickup) or a visit to an UPS drop-box sets the return in motion. As a bonus, the label also can contain a teaser, offering the customer a deal on keeping their product, savings on other products and more. "The end user likes it because they've had a problem, they want to return something, and instead of a cold computer, they get something in the mail quickly that signifies that someone's listening to them," McCarthy says.
To avoid mailing problems, Innovative Print & Media Group ran every prototype by the U.S. Postal Service to ensure that the outgoing label would meet postal specifications, while also keeping mailing costs low. (The low cost is essential because the distributorship's client could send 1 million integrated labels annually). Consulting UPS also was key, McCarthy says. "The way the piece had to be folded to protect the label, it almost had to be folded so that part of the label was hanging out," he says. "We didn't want to do that." Instead, Innovative Print & Media Group and InfoSeal LLC met with UPS and made the label slightly smaller than UPS' standard 4 x 6-inch size so it works in the shipping company's system.
"The customer was wowed that they could automate the whole thing at one time," McCarthy says. "They said, 'There's no envelope or separate label. We don't have to watch inventory for that. There's no mismatched labels.' One little form change saved headaches for everybody."
--Katie Weeks
Thanks to InfoSeal LLC, Roanoke, Va., for assistance.
Integrated labels can save clients time and money, but initially selling the concept, designing prototypes and manufacturing unique solutions can be challenging. To make the process as smooth and effective as possible, here are tips from Jim McCarthy, a sales representative at Collegeville, Pa.-based distributorship Innovative Print & Media Group:
