A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail Father’s Day reminder from a store where I’ve bought gifts from online before.  Since I typically put off holiday gift buying to the last minute and end up paying extra for shipping, I was grateful for the reminder.

Lesson one to online merchants: EMAIL MARKETING WORKS!

With over a week before Father’s day I thought the ample lead time would save me some cash on shipping. I clicked through to the website and browsed to find some sweet treats for dad. I quickly found a nice gift of sweet snacks at a reasonable price and clicked through to the checkout page.  Where I stopped.  The shipping charges nearly doubled the price of the goodies.  Call me cheap,  but if there’s one thing I learned from my dad growing up on his farm in Minnesota it’s the value of the dollar.

That reasonably priced gift now seemed tremendously overpriced. If I was going to spend that kind of money – it had to be a better gift. So I abandoned my shopping cart and Googled “Free Shipping Father’s Day gifts”.  Multiple stores came up and I quickly found a gift.  It was much nicer than the original gift.  I did end up spending the same as the other gift would have cost with it’s shipping charges,   but I now felt like the gift I was sending was worth the money I was spending.

Lesson two to online merchants – FREE SHIPPING WORKS! Consider the value of your product.   If shipping costs make your item seem extraordinarily overpriced you will lose sales.

Lesson three to online merchants.  CLOSE THE SALE! If your e-mail marketing campaign is driving traffic to your site but you’re not seeing corresponding sales, make sure you look at the value you’re offering to your customers.  It’s a shame when something like high shipping costs causes them abandon their shopping cart when you’ve successfully drawn them to your store with your e-mail marketing campaign.