Shipment Notifications: What It Is & How to Create the Best One?

Imagine the frustration of missing a delivery because you weren't informed it was coming. Or picture the disappointment of planning your day around a package that arrives much later than expected.  These scenarios above are probably what your customers are experiencing in terms of shipment notification. And these emotions are may ultimately going to lead to a poor review.

Fortunately, you can transform their experience from one of uncertainty to one of confidence and satisfaction  by implementing a robust system for keeping customers informed.

In this blog post, we 'll everything you want know about shipment notifications and show you how to create the best ones for your business. Whether you're an e-commerce newcomer or a seasoned pro looking to upgrade your processes, you'll discover practical tips to enhance your delivery notification strategy.

What are Shipment Notifications?

Shipment notifications, also called delivery notifications, are messages sent by ecommerce merchants to keep customers informed about their orders.

Customers receive information like tracking numbers, estimated arrival dates, and even product suggestions, keeping them informed and engaged throughout the delivery process.

Let’s explore different types of Shipment Notifications.

All types of Shipment Notification

There are several types of shipment notifications that businesses can use to keep customers informed about their orders:

• Order Confirmation: Sent immediately after purchase, confirming the order details and payment.
• Order Processing: Informs customers that their order is being prepared for shipment.
• Advanced Shipment Notification (ASN): Alerts recipients about incoming deliveries before they're shipped.
• Shipping Confirmation: Notifies customers when their package has been dispatched, often including tracking information.
• Out for Delivery: Informs recipients that their package is on the final leg of its journey.
• Delivery Confirmation: Confirms successful delivery, often with proof of delivery details.
• Estimated Delivery Updates: Provides revised delivery dates if there are changes to the original estimate.
• Delivery Exception Notifications: Alerts customers about delays, address issues, or other problems affecting delivery.

Why do You Need Shipment Notifications?

People always want to know where are their packages. When there’s no notification, shoppers will constantly check tracking information or contact customer support for updates.

To handle these inquiries, you need a whole team to receive questions, inquire about corresponding orders, and respond to customers. This is a huge and inefficient task that consumes a lot of time and money.

With the shipment notifications, it’s easy to resolve this problem now that your customers will be notified when order status or shipment status changes. Use shipment notifications to send proactive package status updates to shoppers saving you from the hassle of having a large team dealing with WISMO problem.

In addition to solving these problems, shipment notifications bring other benefits like product recommendations. This serves as an opportunity for businesses to showcase complementary items or personalized offers based on the customer's purchase history. These recommendations can enhance the shopping experience, encourage repeat purchases, and increase your revenue.

How to create the best shipment notifications? - Step-to-step

Three essential elements that determine whether the shipping notification is appropriate and perfect are:

1. Notification Triggers: determines when the notification should be sent to the recipient.
2. Notification Channels: the medium through which the notification is delivered to the recipient. Common channels include email, SMS (text messages), Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
3. Notification Message: the content of email, SMS, etc.

Notification Triggers

Shipment notifications are triggered based on specific events or conditions that occur during the shipment and order process. Generally, based on shipment status changes, those triggers include:

• Shipment pickup: Shipment pickup: This notification is sent when the shipping carrier collects the package from the sender's location or a designated drop-off point.
• In Transit: During the transportation process, there are multiple checkpoints along the route. Some carriers may send notifications at each checkpoint to provide updates on the package's progress and estimated delivery time.
• Out for delivery: This notification is sent when the package is out for delivery and en route to its final destination. It informs the recipient that their package will be delivered soon.
• Delivered: These notifications keep customers informed about the status of their package during the final stages of delivery. They typically include updates such as "available for pickup", or "delivered", etc.
• Shipment exception: These notifications are sent when there are unexpected delays or issues with the delivery. The purpose is to inform the customer about the problem and provide necessary information to help resolve it.

Trigger Frequency

Since tracking information often has numerous checkpoints, it may not be ideal to trigger a notification for every new checkpoint. Instead, it is more effective to send notifications only when there is a change in the shipment's main status or substatus. This ensures that customers receive relevant updates without being overwhelmed by excessive notifications.

Message Delivery Time

When sending notifications via SMS or other IM channels like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, it is important to consider the timing of delivery. For example, you don’t want to send an SMS notification to a customer during nighttime hours when it might disturb their sleep. Setting appropriate delivery times helps ensure customers receive notifications at convenient and acceptable hours.

Some software allows you to customize the delivery time.

Advanced trigger

Advanced triggers can indeed be helpful in managing complex situations and providing a more tailored experience to customers.

Scenario 1: Customizing notification type based on the recipient's location

Set up an advanced trigger that examines the recipient's location and determines the appropriate notification channel. By doing so, you can guarantee that your customers will receive notifications via their preferred method and in their most effective channel.

Scenario 2: Sending notifications when there is no change in status for x days

In this scenario, you can create an advanced trigger that monitors the status of a particular event, task, or process. A status change may be monitored for a specified period of time. Upon meeting the condition, the trigger will automatically send a notification to the customer and the relevant parties, thus keeping them informed of the situation. This proactive approach allows you to take timely action, ensuring that any necessary steps are taken when there is a lack of progress or change.

Notification Channels

There are multiple channels through which shipment notifications can be sent to customers:

• Email: The classic option offers customers the flexibility of being able to check at a pace that suits them, with no additional costs.  Furthermore, it is a cost-effective solution for businesses.
• SMS: SMS notifications have a significantly higher open rate than email, making them an ideal channel for transmitting concise updates such as delivery notifications and tracking links. They offer a direct and efficient way of reaching customers.
• IM Channels: Instant messaging (IM) channels such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp have emerged as popular alternatives for sending shipment notifications to customers. These IM platforms provide businesses with the ability to communicate in real-time, offering a convenient way to provide updates to customers on the go.
• Mobile Push Notifications: Another effective channel for shipment notifications is mobile push notifications. By leveraging push technology, businesses can send real-time updates directly to customers' mobile devices, ensuring they remain well-informed throughout the order process.

Notification Message

Most shipment software provides built-in message templates. This means you don't need to rely on third-party services to send out these notifications. However, if you are already using a notification platform, such as Klaviyo, and therefore do not want to manage and edit email templates in multiple places, you should consider shipping software that is integrated with these notification platforms. We'll discuss this later.

In email notifications, you have more flexibility to create longer messages with formatting options like paragraphs, bullet points, and images. You can also include links or attachments in emails to provide additional information or resources.

Since SMS has a limited character count, it is important to prioritize brevity while ensuring the message effectively conveys the necessary details.

Therefore, when working with both email and SMS notifications, it's important to consider the different editing approaches and adapt the content to suit each one effectively:

Email Notifications

When considering email notification ,there are two containers should be talked at first:

1. Email Sender's address: The sender's email address should be customizable so that you can use your own email domain for sending out emails. This customization allows for a better branding identity, as your customers will recognize the sender as coming from your company.
2. Email Content: Shipment software typically includes predefined email templates for different triggers. These templates provide a starting point for crafting the content of your email notifications. Having different templates for each trigger helps in sending appropriate and relevant information based on the situation.

Content Editing

Content editing is about how you update email content. Usually, shipment tracking software will provide some editors for you to update. There are 2 typical email editors:

• Visual Editor: a visual editor is user-friendly and does not require knowledge of HTML coding. It allows you to easily customize the email content and make it align with your branding. However, visual editors may have limitations when it comes to advanced features like responsive design or dark mode.
• Code-Based Editor: If you require more control over email styling and want to implement advanced features, such as responsive design or dark mode, a code-based editor is available. This editor allows you to directly edit the HTML code of the email template. However, using a code-based editor requires some programming experience or knowledge to make modifications effectively.

Email Personalization

To achieve email personalization and set advanced triggers for customized emails, here are some options you can consider:

1. Customer Localization: To send emails in the customer's preferred language or based on their address regions, you can collect this information during the signup process or through preferences settings in your email marketing platform.
2. Customer Segmentation: Segmenting your customer base allows you to send targeted content based on specific criteria such as demographics, purchase history, or engagement level.
3. Message Scheduling: Many email marketing platforms provide options to delay notifications between messages or specify a specific time range for message delivery. This allows you to control the timing of your email communications to ensure they reach recipients at the most appropriate time.

Product Recommendation

A personalized product recommendation is a tailored suggestion made to a customer based on their unique preferences, browsing history, and purchasing behavior. If you want to know more about product recommendation you can check our page 'Guide to personalized product recommendations' for more details.

SMS Notification

SMS notifications are quick and direct. They let customers know about shipment updates. They have a higher open rate than emails.

There are two options for sending SMS messages.

• Built-in SMS Sender: The built-in SMS sender allows you to send text messages directly from the platform you're using.
• Dedicated SMS Sender: A dedicated SMS sender provides the flexibility to send messages with your own branding identity, creating a more personalized experience for your customers.

Content Editing

• SMS Templates: SMS templates are messages you can send quickly. They save time and make your messages consistent.
• Customized SMS Notifications: You can also customize the templates to match your brand's voice and style. You can edit or create new templates to make sure your messages match your brand. Tailoring your SMS notifications can enhance the customer experience and strengthen your brand.

3rd-Party Notification Platform

Integrating with a third-party notification platform, such as Klaviyo or Mailchimp, can be a convenient choice for sending notifications. These platforms offer advanced features and customization options for managing email campaigns and notifications.

One of the advantages of integrating with a platform like Klaviyo is that if you are already using it for your email marketing needs, you don't need to set up separate email shipments in your software. You can utilize your existing templates and workflows within the system for sending notifications, which simplifies the process and maintains consistency across your communications.

Additionally, these platforms often provide analytics and tracking capabilities, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your notifications and make data-driven decisions for optimization.

Recommended Software for Shipment Notifications

If you’re not using a third-party notification system, consider using some full-featured shipment software to help your business. Here are some shipping software that have great reviews:

AfterShip

AfterShip is a shipment software that provides excellent notification features for tracking packages and keeping customers informed about their deliveries. It offers multiple communication channels such as email, SMS, and Facebook Messenger to send notifications to customers.

With AfterShip, you have access to a wide range of delivery statuses, including 7 main statuses and 33 sub-statuses, each with corresponding email templates. One notable feature of AfterShip is its visualized & HTML email editor, which enables you to customize email templates according to your branding and preferences. The built-in SMS sender comes with pre-written templates, making it convenient to send text notifications to your customers.

Additionally, AfterShip offers advanced notification rules that allow you to create personalized email workflows and tailor the communication based on your customers' preferences.

FAQs for Small Business

If you didn’t have a software now, chances are you'll experience your customers asking these questions:

I received a notification that 'the USPS package has arrived at the warehouse' what does it mean?

• Package location: Your package has reached a USPS distribution center or sorting facility, often referred to as a warehouse.
• Processing stage: The package is now in the USPS system and is being processed for further transportation and delivery.
• Next steps: From this warehouse, your package will be sorted and prepared for the next leg of its journey, which usually involves:

1. Sorting based on destination
2. Loading onto trucks or planes for transport to the next facility or local post office

If the notification is 'the USPS package has arrived at the warehouse and cannot be delivered', what can I do?

1. It's probably a scam. The USPS doesn't send unsolicited text messages about undeliverable packages. These messages are scams called "smishing."
2. Don't click links. Don't click on links in messages. These links often lead to fake websites designed to steal your information.
   Don't give out personal info. The USPS won't ask you to confirm your address via text or email.
3. Check official sources. If you're expecting a package, check its status on the USPS website or your Informed Delivery account.
4. Report the scam. Report USPS smishing to [email protected]. Include a screenshot, the sender's number, and the date.
5. Forward the message. Forward the text to 7726 (SPAM) to report the scam number.

If you are looking to learn more about shipment notification or if your business is experiencing specific notification issues and needs, we are here to help.

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