5 Product Photography Tips to Build Customer Loyalty
Great product photography is an important element (especially for e-commerce sellers) when establishing your brand & online presence. In our DIY product photography guide you’ve learned how to take the perfect product photo and picked up some great techniques when editing your photos.
You may be thinking, “how does product photography help me build customer loyalty?” Consider this: We live in a visual world. The typical customer will see the product once before they submit their order and don’t see it again until it’s delivered. Using your product photography to fill in the gaps in their post-checkout experience will separate you from the competition. Here’s a quick tip video on how you can use product photography with ShipStation:
Add Product Images to Packing Slips
If you’re not including packing slips with your orders, you might be missing out on an opportunity to engage with your customers. Packing slips, or sales receipts, are an effective package insert to include in your shipment to show value and build customer loyalty. You may have never thought about how to make them less boring: consider including your product photos!
Not every e-commerce platform out there makes it easy to include a high-quality thumbnail on your packing slip. Here’s how you can add product images to your packing slips in ShipStation.
Insert Product Pictures on Tracking Emails
Tracking emails on average have an open rate of over 100%; the most engaged point-of-contact between you and your customer after checkout. The tracking email is another great place to include your product photos with the order information.
Listing out your customers’ purchases with images is a great way to visually stimulate your customer every time they go to track their package. ShipStation makes it simple to customize your email template to include product pictures.
Show Item Images on Tracking Pages
Having your very own Branded Tracking Page is an easy way to make your business look like a million bucks. Unlike the typical carrier tracking page, your customer stays on a page that’s all about your brand and increases engagement with your social media & website links. The branded tracking page is a key place to put your product photos so your customer can see what’s on their way.
This is is a crown jewel of ShipStation and is easy to setup your own branded tracking page.
Promote Products on Delivery Emails
Once an order has been delivered, a delivery notification email can be a great sense of comfort and assurance for your customer. This is a great opportunity to build customer loyalty and give them exclusive offers with discounts, coupons, and promotions. It can also be a great place to promote a product to increase repeat customers.
Delivery emails are usually something only the big marketplaces can offer. With ShipStation, it’s super straightforward to automate sending a delivery notification email to your customer once the package has been delivered.
Include Product Photos on Branded Returns Portal
A great return policy increases customer loyalty and brand perception. It’s important to make returns an easy process for your customer. This doesn’t mean it should, in return, be time-consuming for you. A Branded Returns Portal will offer your customer ease-of-use to create their own return labels and give you peace-of-mind. Including product photos for your Branded Returns Portal can help your customer easily identify the products they want to return.
The Branded Returns Portal is an exclusive way that ShipStation allows you to offer your customers a unique experience with your brand and save you time & money. Learn how to setup a Branded Returns Portal here.
More Creative Ways To Use Product Photography
Uploading the perfect product photos to your website or marketplace is a great first step. Before this blog, you may had never considered how product photography can be a great visual for your customer’s post-checkout experience with a shipping software. Here’s some more fun and effective ways you can use product photography to build your brand loyalty.
Create Package Inserts
Take a great lifestyle image of your product and turn it into an alluring promo card or printed flyer. This is a great addition to your customers’ unboxing experience. Check out our Brand Your Shipping webinar if you’d like to learn more about this!
Post A Carousel Ad on Facebook
Facebook introduced the carousel format as a fun new way for your followers to swipe left/right through your content. Each card consists of an image or video, a headline and a call to action. Use your product photos to create an engaging carousel ad.
Post A Photo Set to Instagram
Instagram now lets you upload up to 10 photos on a single post in your feed. You can show off individual, detailed, and lifestyle photos of your product to convey a story or show off a product. Have some fun and experiment with it!
Create An Online or Print Ad
You have your edited product photos, now just get creative! Maybe you don’t have it in the budget just yet to launch an online ad campaign or buy a space in your favorite magazine. Don’t let that discourage you from designing your own ad with your product photos. Make one with a clean white background and come up with some clever copy, or, use a lifestyle image to tell a story about your brand. Try posting one of your ads on your social media page. If it gets a good organic reach, try boosting it for that extra engagement!
Write A Blog or Article
If you don’t have a blog, start one. It’s an easy way to share content and attract people to your brand. In addition to it’s SEO and online marketing benefits, it’s a great place to talk about your story, your product and how your product has changed you (or your customers’) lives. Sprinkling a beautiful product photo into the mix of your copy will show off the confidence you have in your product. The combination of visuals and the story may prompt your readers to explore your products and become customers.
Sell Online?
If you’re an e-commerce seller, great product photos are key to getting sales and reducing your returns. A nice touch to your customer’s online shopping experience might be to incorporate your product photos beyond checkout. With a shipping software like ShipStation, you can promote your brand and wow your customers with additional places where your product photos can live like a Branded Tracking Page, your shipping confirmation emails, your packing slips, and more. If you want to use your product photos to their best advantage and save time and money when shipping your products, try out ShipStation free for thirty days.