It’s been a few weeks since the Marketo User Summit took place in downtown San Francisco, the largest Summit yet with approximately 2,800 current and prospective users in attendance. The theme for this year’s conference was “A Brave New You,” with various Marketo experts and industry thought leaders speaking on our abilities as individual marketers within the Marketing Nation.

Now that the keynotes and breakaway sessions are over, I’ve had some time to mull over my thoughts from the Summit. Here are a couple of takeaways I think are worth mentioning from the conference:

1) Marketing automation is not a replacement technology

Marketing automation is a great way to take control of the customer experience, measure marketing ROI, and drive revenue, but marketers need to remember that automation is only a portion of their customer experience strategy. When it comes to marketing automation, creating and keeping content relevant is key–especially as what is “relevant” is always evolving.

As marketers, we have the ability to know what content people are interested in by what they look at and click on, or understand important details about a person’s buying behavior (i.e. see who wants to talk to sales and who doesn’t, or see who likes to correspond via email and who likes speaking to someone directly)– Always keep these things in mind when you’re building your campaigns.

2) The importance of social marketing – B2B still means people to people

Social marketing grants your customers a forum for open communication with your company and allows you to stay engaged, get to know your customers as individuals (not just a company), and find out what their needs are. After all, marketing is about addressing people and problems, not just the product, so find out what people are saying and respond to it.

When you post content, encourage readers to share it. Social media “shares” and “likes” give direct insight to who your influencers are and enables you to reward them for speaking positively about your company. Providing quick social share buttons with your content make the task of sharing easier and the act of sharing more likely to occur.

During the Summit, many of the speakers were encouraging attendees to post their learnings on their social media pages. If you were questioning the impact of social media, it was made a little more evident when #MUS13 started trending on Twitter that week.

3) Get to know the people behind the titles/company

People shouldn’t just be viewed as “leads” or “contacts.” More often than not, a sale involves interaction with more than one person at a company, each with their own unique buying journey. Maintain quality engagement with each person individually and track your progress through lead scoring in your marketing platform. The key is to know the people behind purchasing decisions and help prepare them for a sale.

With all the marketing tools currently available to us, we as marketers have the ability to be change agents in our companies and industries. As Phil Fernandez, CEO of Marketo, puts it: “You are moving your industries forward. We’re calling this the Marketing Nation– the network that allows you to help your companies and organizations go from good to great… You are pioneers in changing yourselves, your business, and your careers.”

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Over the past few years, the boom in popularity for online retail and ecommerce sites has become telling of the evolving wants and needs of today’s shoppers: We want to shop for goods in an effortless and convenient way. And what’s easier than having goods delivered to your front door after a quick browse through a site and a few clicks of your mouse? Businesses have already started to figure out the answer to this: Not only do we want to shop for goods in an effortless and convenient way but we want them now.

Many physical retailers and brick and mortar shops are using ecommerce as a cost-effective solution for company expansion in order to fight off quasi-extinction and compete with large online retailers which offer more flexibility and product variety than brick and mortar stores. With the rising popularity of online shopping, the urgency for effective, fast, and inexpensive shipping solutions has become a significant factor in a company’s online success.

Competitive shipping options have been an important feature for online stores in order to survive in the increasingly-competitive online shopping market. For a while now, “free shipping” has been a popular solution for attracting new customers while keeping current customers loyal, but the needs of the on-the-go consumer are ever-evolving. Today, companies are realizing that simply offering free shipping is no longer good enough to keep consumers happy; it has become so widely used that it is now virtually expected. Both large and small ecommerce sites are continuously vying for top spots in the online retail arena and many are learning that “same day delivery” may be the new answer to their success and survival.

Beta programs for same day delivery, like Amazon Prime Local Express Delivery, eBay Now, and Walmart Same Day Delivery are all testing out the same premise for a new trend: expedited shipping services that enable a customer to order a product and have it delivered to their door within the same day or even hour. While the current beta programs have limited service areas, early cut-off times for ordering, and select items that are available through the service, same day delivery has the potential to revolutionize the shipping industry and become the new standard that online consumers will expect in years to come.

So what’s forecast for the shipping industry? Same day shipping doesn’t just appeal to a specific niche group — last minute shoppers, busy parents, the car-less, and recluses everywhere all have a common need for fast, easy, and hassle-free shopping experiences. And as the demand for same day services grows, shipping companies will be able to develop more efficient and cost-effective systems to provide service to more areas and extend cut-off times with even faster deliveries.

Some call this a threat to retailers and they may be right. Services evolve just like products do, and standards for shopping online will be raised once again when someone gets same day delivery right.

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Another week, another new ecommerce fulfillment integration. We are happy to announce an integration to help you with your WooCommerce fulfillment. This integration is released by SkyVerge and supported by WooThemes, the developers behind WooCommerce. You can see our help page for this release, including installation instructions, in our WooCommerce Support Center page.

Easily display real-time shipping quotes during checkout, then automatically export the customer’s order to Shipwire after it’s processed. Inventory and Order Tracking information can be updated automatically on a recurring schedule and order tracking information is available on the Edit Order page to see the status of every order placed.

Integration Features

• Show real-time shipping rates directly from Shipwire
• Automatically push orders to Shipwire for fulfillment and shipment
• Automatically update inventory and tracking information on a recurring basis (e.g. every 5 minutes)
• See order and tracking information for every order right on the Edit Order page
• Receive email notifications if an order fails to export or encounters an issue that prevents it from being shipped.

There’s comprehensive documentation available to walk you through the setup process and explain all the different settings, and support is available 24/7 via support.woothemes.com.

The Shipwire integration for WooCommerce is available for purchase on WooThemes.com for $99.

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To help unwind from the stresses of Tax Day here in the US, Shipwire is happy to announce another product update. Take a deep breath and check out some of the newest features and upgrades coming soon to your favorite order fulfillment platform.

Simplifying large shipping orders
Merchants can now “Upload a spreadsheet” of products/quantities for large wholesale orders rather than entering them in “One at a time” through the interface

Improving accuracy of inventory and routing calculations
1.  Merchants now have the option to count their bundled items as either kitted inventory or single units:
Bundled/kitted items can be counted as inventory that may be broken into sellable single units for more accurate inventory counts and routing calculations (Please contact Shipwire Support if you’d like to enable this feature).

2.  Pending case items will also be counted as sellable single unit inventory in non-autobreak warehouses:
Future routing decisions for single unit purchases will take into account case inventory, even if it’s stored in a non-autobreak warehouse.

3.  Inventory synchronization for product bundles:
Bundle inventory will be pushed to the cart API (i.e. all outbound cart connections that have Shipwire inventory synchronization will get accurate estimated counts for product bundles).

Stay up-to-date on the latest product, shipping, and e-commerce news by subscribing to our blog.

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There are many challenges with running an ecommerce business. Smart brands, however, use the right tools to help them get ahead of the pack. In the last decade, many platforms have become available for small- and medium-sized merchants which two decades ago weren’t even available to the largest corporations. Ecommerce platforms let you sell your products without having a brick and mortar store. Analytics help you analyze your traffic and make smart decisions about how to sell. Order fulfillment lets you have the global reach of a Fortune 500 company for the price of a few lattes per month. But there are yet more areas where you still want to get professional, focused help for your business, where it wasn’t available before. For example, as your brand grows, you get fans, you build a community, you get lots of social media followers. But those fans are all over the world, so how do you engage with them when you’re asleep and they have a question?

Enter Metaverse Mod Squad. Mike Pinkerton, the COO of Metaverse Mod Squad, recently spoke with us and described what this great firm does.

Metaverse’s services include moderation, customer support, community management, social media services, and QA. Basically, while your audience is online, 24/7 interaction with customers and communities is difficult and time consuming. So Metaverse helps you with this in the same way Shipwire helps you with your global fulfillment. While you focus on delivering an outstanding product, the Metaverse team engages on behalf of your brand: Moderating content, chatting with customers, managing communities, and buzzing in social media.

And we’re happy to announce that starting now, Shipwire has partnered with Metaverse to give Shipwire merchants the benefits of community management and customer support for their buyers.

As always, we’re looking to help our customers grow, and growing and managing their fan base is part and parcel of growing their brand.

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Shipwire Partners and Affiliates, 2013 is off to the races. Before the year gets away from us, we wanted to give you a quick update:

• Shipwire at tradeshows and industry parties
• New features and branding
• Partner branded resources
• Affiliate referral Tracking
• API updates: api.shipwire.com and API keys
• Best practices for integrations
• Is your module marketed correctly on Shipwire.com?

Tradeshows and attendance
Shipwire will be at a number of industry events, here is a quick list:

• MivaCon 2013 – Thank you to the Miva team for hosting us.
• Launch 2013 – March 4-6 in San Francisco. Nate went and met a bunch of great software and hardware startups that are changing their respective spaces.
• SXSW 2013 – Shipwire is a proud member of Thesmallbusinessweb.com and our tech team hosted the annual mixer at SXSW Interactive
• Magento Imagine 2013 – We’ll be there. Please come visit us.
• Netsuite Suite World – May 13-15 in San Jose. Shipwire will be there to bring awareness to our new Netsuite order fulfillment Module.
• Internet Retailer 2013 – June 4-5 in Chicago.

There are a few others on the agenda for which we have not confirmed our attendance. Our Account Team is hitting up quite a few other trade shows and we’ll be putting up blog posts to let you know where you can find us.
 

New Shipwire features you should know about
We launched so many new features over the past year, it’s hard to even know where to start. Here are some highlights that are relevant to our partners, affiliates, and developers.

• Enhanced gift messaging api
• Kickstarter shipping
• Netsuite order fulfillment
• Granular product hold preferences
• Opencart order fulfillment
• BigCommerce order fulfillment
• Performance upgrades and lots of new features
• Behind the scenes at Shipwire’s LA Warehouse
• Product aliases
• New Hong Kong Warehouse
• Simplified pricing and volume order handling discounts
• Commercial invoice upgrades
• Multiple e-bay account support
• Additional partners come onboard

Shipping and order fulfillment marketing & sales best practices
A few tips and tricks to get the word out about your Shipwire integration. Remember your partner tracking URL can redirect to your Shipwire landing page or any page on Shipwire.com.

Case studies – There is no better way to prove something works than to let a satisfied customer make the point for you. If one of your customers is getting a lot of benefit out of the integration, grab a quote from them and put it on your blog, tweet it, or put it on your features page. If you want to team up with Shipwire’s marketing department to do a case study, please reach out.

List a few benefits – Many of our partners simply list that they have a Shipwire integration; to be more effective, list a few features and benefits of the integration.

For example:

• Instant access to warehouses in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia
• Multiple warehouses can help you cut domestic shipping costs by 35% and international shipping costs by up to 75%.
• Get free shipping and business tools for your garage, warehouse, office, or retail store. Multi-location USPS online label printing, inventory management and order management features.
• List the Shipwire API calls that your integration supports

Seek feedback – Inform your users what the integration does today and where you could take it. See what feedback you get.

Best Practices – We like including features and benefits guides, as well as tips and tricks for our integrations. We have found that when we combine our efforts and produce documentation that answers common customer needs, implementation questions often get resolved before they reach support queues.
 

Changes to Affiliate and Partner Terms
We clarified our partner terms to help with confusion about commissions, payout schedule, and tracking. We’ve simplified it and removed the lower-tier payouts. If you have developed an integration, there are very favorable terms and it’s easier to track payments.

• $.30 an order
• We need to know you sent us the lead, so use the tracking provided for your affiliate account

Partner program landing page is here. Program terms are here.
 

Is Shipwire Marketing Your Integration Correctly?
We market integrations on our connections pages. Any integration to Shipwire gets a reciprocal page on Shipwire.com and gets listed on our compatible solutions page. Contact partner (at) Shipwire (dot) com if you need to adjust content.

If you want to work with Shipwire Partner Marketing to outline a marketing plan, joint press release, or blog post, send an e-mail to partner (at) Shipwire (dot) com. We also support partners using content from our blog to seed your own blog posts. If you have any questions, send an e-mail and we’ll get right back to you.

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