The Courier Selection from The Delivery Conference – how big & what services

8th February by Chloë Thomas

The Delivery Conference 2016 was packed with interesting lessons for improving your business in 2016. You can find our breakdown of the key takeaways right here.

During the conference it was clear that the right delivery options are important to get orders from your customers. So I thought I’d work my around all the suppliers exhibiting at the conference and find out how big you need to be to work directly with them, and what their service offering includes.

I’ve summaried that data below grouping the couriers into Normal Parcels, Lockers/Click and Collect, 2-Man, and Ireland. (It’s amazing how much development there’s been in the last 12 months!)

[couriers – I’ve managed to lose your business cards – so if you want me to correct anything below please just get in touch]

A handful of things to note before you dive in:

Required Volumes of Parcels – these are rough guides. If you’re just under please do still give them a call as they’re always interested in your growth potential
Prices – I’ve ignored pricing here for oh so many reasons! So you’ll need to chat to the couriers directly about that
Service offering – these are being tweaked all the time, so use this list as a starting point, not the be-all-and-end-all of your research!
International parcels – with the exception of Ireland i’ve ignore international parcels.
Rather than go direct to the couriers (especially if your volumes are small) you might want to see what your warehouse and fulfilment team recommend

Before running off to start relationships with a vast array of different service providers remember this:

premium vs economy

This is based on MetaPack’s data – so a combination of ALL the parcels that went through their software. It shows by day over the Christmas season 2015 (starting on 23rd November, ending 3rd Jan). Economy is the standard delivery method, and premium services are anything the customer has to pay extra for – next day, Sunday, time slots, lockers etc etc.

Key lessons to take from this before you dive into the courier’s details:

Standard delivery is always the most popular (apart from a few days before Christmas) so make sure you have a great standard delivery before you tackle anything else.
Premium services are rarely used by more than 30% of customers, so find out what your customers want before you add every possible option!