Give Customers Delivery Notifications and Get More Business

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Online sales are soaring. Almost every industry, from wine to furniture and even pharmaceuticals, is experiencing this boom. If your business delivers, now’s your chance to grow your online sales if you can provide a great delivery experience, and that includes giving customers delivery notifications.

Delivery notifications are crucial because 85% of consumers say they’ll buy from a retailer again if they can easily track their purchases throughout the process. But 47% won’t order again from a retailer with poor delivery alerts. 

Increase your online sales — and decrease your costs — by offering customers delivery transparency through delivery notifications. 

This article covers the following topics:

What Are Delivery Notifications?

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 Delivery notifications, also called shipment notifications or delivery alerts, are messages that tell your customers about their packages’ progress. Delivery notifications are sent through text messages, email notifications, or even mobile app alerts. 

Businesses should use delivery notifications to keep customers informed throughout the delivery process, starting by letting them know they’ve received the order, providing an estimated delivery time and tracking number once it’s out the door, and finishing with a notification when it’s delivered.

How Delivery Notifications Help Your Business

Informed delivery improves your customers’ experience and can also increase your profits. Consumers want to know where their products are and when they’ll arrive. Satisfied customers will buy more, which makes more money and reduces overall expenses for your company.

  • Attract New Customers: If you provide exceptional delivery-tracking services, customers will come to you because they prioritize this service. Sixty-six percent of shoppers bought from one retailer over another because of better delivery services. And close to 70% of consumers said the ability to track delivery was one of their top three considerations when buying online.
  • Increase Customer Loyalty: Ninety-three percent of shoppers “want to stay informed throughout the delivery process,“ and 98% of customers said ”delivery is a key part of their brand loyalty.“ With delivery notifications, your customers are satisfied, and you earn their loyalty. 
  • Increase Profits: Greater customer loyalty goes hand in hand with increased profits because “loyal customers spend 67% more with a business than new ones.”
  • Prevent Redelivery: When a customer doesn’t have delivery visibility, there’s a greater chance your business loses time and money because of a failed delivery attempt. Redelivery is often needed when your customer isn’t home, and your delivery requires a signature or they requested inside delivery. If your customer knows when you’re delivering their package, they can plan to be home, and your driver won’t have to return another day.
  • Decrease Customer Support Costs: Questions or issues with package delivery are among the top reasons shoppers contact customer service. With better delivery transparency and tracking, you deal with fewer calls and emails, requiring less employee time for customer service issues.
  • Decrease Return Expenses: With 20% of online purchases returned by customers, returns cut into your profit margins. One of the top reasons shoppers return online purchases is because they arrived late. With better delivery transparency, customers know the estimated time of their delivery up front, saving you the expense of processing a return.

OptimoRoute Helps Your Delivery Stand Out With Notifications and More

With sales moving from in-store to online, providing the best delivery experience to your customers is the way to differentiate your business. 

With OptimoRoute’s features, we make your delivery stand out and:

  • Help you provide same-day delivery. Eighty percent of shoppers want same-day delivery service, and our software makes that a possibility with automation that quickly calculates the best routes for your drivers in minutes. Routes are delivered straight to drivers’ phones with our iPhone or Android app. If a last-minute order comes in or a driver calls in sick, add the update and our routes automatically recalculate.
  • Offer free delivery. Customers want their stuff fast, but, most of all, they want it delivered for free. OptimoRoute helps you cut down on mileage and gas expenses by providing the most efficient routes while balancing workloads among drivers to reduce overtime costs. You can offer free or low-cost delivery when you save money on other expenses.
  • Give customers notifications and real-time tracking. More than 88% of customers said they track their online order’s status. At this point, if you don’t provide a tracking service, you’re shrinking your customer base and losing money. Our software makes it easy to send your customers real-time tracking information and delivery notifications.
  • Keep track of your drivers in real time. With live tracking, you see where your drivers are and know their estimated time of arrival. You can also tell which deliveries are on track and which ones are behind. 
  • Improve delivery accountability. With OptimoRoute’s Proof of Delivery feature, you’ll know that when deliveries are marked completed, the package successfully arrived at its intended destination.

OptimoRoute Makes Delivery Status Notifications Easy

Package tracking and delivery notifications are a must in the online-shopping world, so the way to stick out is to make the process as easy as possible for both you and your customers. Since text messages are twice as popular as emails for delivery notifications, we make sending your customers real-time tracking texts very simple. But you can also send email notifications if your customer prefers or chooses both.

Here’s how to send delivery notifications. 

Turn on order-tracking features. 

  • Go to the Administration dropdown menu, and select Settings.
  • Select Order Tracking at the bottom of the menu.
  • Click on the Order tracking enabled checkbox. There is a checkbox for email notifications and a checkbox for text message notifications.

Update our template with your information. OptimoRoute provides editable templates you can personalize.

Once your routes are calculated, hit send to let customers know that you scheduled their order. Your customers receive a notification and a two-hour delivery estimate as soon as you schedule their service. Notifications can be sent in advance or on the day of delivery.

Customers also receive a live tracking link to follow the order’s progress in real time. Customers appreciate live tracking, and with OptimoRoute, they can follow their delivery from the moment it’s scheduled to the when it lands on their doorstep. You can easily provide up-to-date, by-the-minute tracking, so customers know exactly when to expect their orders.

You can find more information on how to enable our notification texts and emails here.

2 Guys With Knives Improved Customer Satisfaction With OptimoRoute’s Realtime Order Tracking

2 Guys With Knives is a meal-kit delivery service based in Vancouver, Canada. By enhancing their tracking process with OptimoRoute, they turned their business into the area’s leading specialty food-delivery company. 

Fitness guru Patrick Carr and chef Sergio Pereira created a meal-delivery business that caters to health-conscious customers. The duo realized if they wanted to maintain a competitive advantage and keep their customers happy, they needed to improve their logistics and delivery.

Manually planning their daily deliveries was time-consuming, and as their business grew, it caused errors, such as missed deliveries and duplicate orders. 

2 Guys With Knives turned to OptimoRoute to automate their scheduling and route planning. They quickly saw the benefits of our software. They saved time planning routes, saved money with improved efficiency, and boosted their customer satisfaction with delivery notifications. 

The duo said their “clients love knowing the status of their deliveries,” and that “tracking is a great feature for our company because it helps us let our clients know everything about their deliveries.”

Boost Your Online Business With OptimoRoute

Give your customers the delivery transparency and fast service they want with OptimoRoute. We’ll help your business grow by giving you a competitive delivery advantage, improving your customers’ experience and saving you time and money. Sign up for a free trial today and see how we can help your business. 

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