DHL Global Mail

In light of rising costs for parcel delivery services, what are the best practices that e-commerce companies reliant on the parcel providers can employ? Consider the following

While the quest for faster shipping is an ongoing struggle for retailers and fulfillment companies, it's unlikely that drones or anticipatory shipping alone will be the key to faster deliveries. Instead, these services will be the gateway into a new shipping model — one that's customer centric, highly personalized and characterized by the following:

Google FedEx SmartPost or UPS SurePost and plenty of hits show up in the search results. Some reviews are positive, extolling benefits that include cost effectiveness and fewer surcharges over air/ground alternatives, end-to-end package visibility, free Saturday delivery, and more. However, your search results will include complaints ranging from transit times that were too lengthy to crushed/damaged packages. One thing is for sure: With the meteoric growth of e-commerce and consumers’ demand for free or low cost shipping, these services are here to stay.

This helpful guide offers cross-channel retailers the opportunity to learn from experts in their space on a variety of topics critical to running a successful (i.e., profitable) business, including mobile marketing, operations and fulfillment, search engine marketing, and much more!

FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service provide many easy-to-use online tools and resources to help small businesses meet their shipping needs. In addition to shipping management tools, the carriers also provide educational resources and helpful advice from small business specialists. Here's a list of shipping resources from USPS, UPS, DHL and FedEx. There are small business and e-commerce solutions, shipping software tools and many more resources to help.

Consumers and carriers are squeezing e-tailers: customers expect free shipping and carriers keep raising prices. Residential shipping costs are skyrocketing out of control. What’s a shipper to do?

Published rates have spiked throughout the parcel industry, and will impact the bottom line of any cataloger who ships goods through any of the major parcel carriers. But according to Tim Sailor, founder/president of Long Beach, Calif.-based Navigo Consulting Group, the impact doesn’t have to be negative. Despite recent rate hikes, catalog/multichannel shippers still can cut good deals if they play their cards right. “Shippers don’t have the advantage now, since carriers are incentivized to sell their services at the highest possible cost,” Sailor said during a session at last week’s National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment in Schaumburg, Ill. Recent rate