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Over the past few years, the unboxing experience has gained popularity on social media. It is now a crucial component of eCommerce marketing plans. “Unboxing experience” encompasses more than just opening a box.
When a customer first opens a gift, their reaction is one of unforgettable enthusiasm. This experience stays with them.
You may be wondering why it matters so much when a consumer opens a package containing something they ordered. This matters because, when done well, it can be a powerful selling point.
It also provides an excellent opportunity for brands to expand through repeat business, recommendations, and other avenues. Customers find unboxing reviews to be highly beneficial influencer content.
In this article, we will discuss how to create an unforgettable unboxing experience. We will also cover the key benefits this offers eCommerce brands. Finally, we will look at companies that have successfully implemented unboxing experiences as part of their strategy.
What Is an Unboxing Experience?
One of the first things you typically do when purchasing a new item is check product reviews. Unboxing videos are the next form of content you will find if you want a more thorough look at a product.
Creating an unforgettable unboxing experience is vital as a result. The entire act of your customers opening and removing things from the box is known as the “unboxing experience.”
While for most of us, that may be a daily occurrence, an unpacking experience can occasionally deliver that “wow” factor that inspires us to love a brand and place additional orders.
Its goal is to increase the value you provide to both your customers and your company by producing an engaging and memorable experience.
When your consumer receives their email of confirmation or even their final shipment notification, the customer experience does not end—it just begins.
You can carry on the experience when they open and explore the contents of their eagerly awaited package if you have a fantastic unpacking experience.
They have had a significant role in the enormous popularity of this movement. It would be best if you create a remarkable first impression as an online retailer with your customers.
Benefits of Creating an Unforgettable Unboxing Experience
The best thing about developing an unforgettable unboxing experience is that you can easily use it to enhance conversions without making massive changes to your operations.
It also functions just as well when customers expect certain products rather than a mystery package. The potential to connect with your clients through this experience before they ever open your product is significant. It offers incredible benefits, including:
1. Enhances Customer Loyalty
Your clients are more likely to try additional products after a positive unboxing experience to recreate this positive experience.
They will be more inclined to refer your company to friends and family if they continue to receive this treatment. Simply put, the unwrapping process improves the consumer impression of your business as an extremely powerful marketing tool.
Having repeat consumers is crucial to creating a long-lasting, sustainable brand. From a financial standpoint, maintaining long-term customer connections is far more profitable than using efforts to find new customers.
According to a study by Bain & Company, building these relationships is not as simple as it might seem; however, 60% to 80% of customers do not return to the same business after using a product or service, even if they were previously satisfied.
This is because brand loyalty is about more than just a product’s or service’s quality. Even if your clients are delighted with your goods, it will be challenging to profit from this if you do not provide them with a distinctive unboxing experience.
2. Encourages Sharing on Social Media
Engagement is one of the fantastic results of a good unboxing video. According to 62% of marketers, their video success is defined by how many views and shares they receive on social media.
For instance, Unbox Therapy and UrAverageConsumer both have successful YouTube channels devoted to unpacking videos.
Although YouTube does not publicly display the number of shares a specific video receives, it is safe to assume that these channels receive a lot of shares given their expansion.
Get social proof by having your customers post about their unboxing experiences on social platforms. It also serves as a testimonial to the quality and reliability of your business.
This will enhance the reputation of your business and demonstrate your dependability and integrity to prospective clients, who nearly always check reviews before making a purchase of a new item.
3. Tells the History of Your Brand
Unlike conventional retail, internet retailers have fewer opportunities to awe and impress customers. Utilizing each touchpoint to build a distinctive brand experience that distinguishes you from rivals and gives clients a positive experience is crucial.
Additionally, your brand’s message is communicated through more than simply the product itself, including the brand packaging, packaging design, and packing materials.
Consider a scenario in which your brand emphasizes sustainability initiatives. In that instance, the packaging frequently significantly impacts the customer experience.
Customers in the UK choose eco-friendly packaging 81% of the time, and eighty percent think that packages ordered online have too much packaging.
4. Influencer Marketing
Influencers have rapidly emerged as a crucial tool in the marketing strategy’s toolbox. Customers now distrust traditional advertising strategies more than ever since they are frequently deceptive.
Influencer marketing, on the other hand, is less expensive, more focused, and more likely to give a company recognition if the influencer is regarded as a leading figure in the industry.
It would help if you went above and beyond to leave a good impression because it is essentially a modern form of “word of mouth” marketing. It is critical to keep in mind that influencers differ from celebrities who ‘endorse’ products.
While there are similarities, influencers are mostly regular people who gain enormous followers and companies by being seen as reliable. This implies that people are unlikely to endorse a brand in which they have little faith.
As personalizing their first experience with your product will earn you massive points from the outset, a successful unboxing experience is an ideal approach to establishing a connection with influencers that could result in powerful partnerships.
Unboxing-based material can give your business a lot of attention. This is a potent recipe that is very advantageous to your brand if it is used in the context of influencer marketing.
5. It Raises Value Perception
Very little of what branded merchants sell is entirely unique. You must provide more than simply a product if you want customers to choose you over your rivals. Here’s where you can have a fun unboxing experience.
Few companies have created unboxings as well as Tiffany & Co. Just like their engagement diamonds, their robin’s egg blue jewelry boxes have become recognizable.
The box alone is a byword for their primary brand values: elegance, sophistication, and good taste. It is commonly known as (and trademarked) “Tiffany blue.”
Such is the power of having an unforgettable unboxing experience. When done right, the unwrapping process may be just as valuable (and appealing!) as the actual product.
How To Create an Unforgettable Unboxing Experience
What steps can you take to ensure your consumers have a memorable unboxing experience? Thoughtful branding and packaging are important, but more factors are at play.
Here are some suggestions on how to create an unforgettable unboxing experience for your eCommerce.
1. Personalize the Experience
Include handwritten notes with every purchase as one of the best ways to enhance the experience of unwrapping your purchases.
This fosters a relationship with your clients and enables them to see your “human side.” They will feel like more than simply another customer as a result.
They will be touched that you took the time to consider their order carefully, and as a result, they will be more inclined to promote your business to their friends.
Because many shops sell handcrafted goods, this strategy is prevalent among Etsy’s small business vendors. For instance, Clothing for expectant mothers and their infants is available from the Emma and Ashe Etsy shop.
The seller has included a handwritten, unique thank you note in the package.
Emma and Ashe illustrate that a big store is unnecessary to have a fantastic unboxing experience. Their items make excellent baby shower presents thanks to their basic design and attention to the comfort and ease of usage moms need.
2. Brand Presentation
By using branded packaging, you can give customers a seamless experience from browsing your store to receiving their items.
Giving your shoppers further details about your company, products, and brand from the time they first see your box is a terrific approach to complete brand storytelling.
Consider how it would appear if it were left at their door. Consider gentleness when working with delicate or frequently gifted products—it is crucial to value confidentiality if your product line requires it. In some situations, symbolism may be more effective than outright brand mention.
Keeping with the symbolic theme, keep in mind that your packaging conveys your brand’s ideals. Sustainable brands and products go hand in hand with sustainable packaging.
Consider how simple it is to navigate the box as a final thought. Nobody wants to break through miles of scotch tape with scissors to get their eagerly awaited goods. Your customers should be able to open the package without causing damage to it or your product.
3. Use Discount Coupon
A discount coupon for subsequent purchases is another more scalable method of enhancing the unboxing experience. It is simple to print coupons on demand, so you can alter the codes on a monthly basis (or at other predetermined intervals) to prevent misuse.
Imagine that you are still concerned about coupon code abuse (and do not want to deal with the hassle of constantly updating them). In that circumstance, you might use Stationery Pal’s example:
By enticing the customer to sign up for a membership program that will provide them points as a kind of discount and money for referrals, the company doubles up on the “thank you” letter in its product boxes.
By including a bonus item with your customer’s orders, such as a free sample of a product they purchased or any other gift (as long as it is consistent with your brand), you will give your consumers a sense of exclusivity, specialness, and care, which will enhance their customer experience and motivate them to recommend you to others and make repeat purchases.
4. Pick the Appropriate Packaging
It is crucial to select the appropriate type of packaging for your items before putting your brand’s colors or emblem on any old package.
Unboxing refers to more than just opening boxes. It describes the process of removing products from any packaging. You may offer modest items, in which case a sizeable bespoke package is not required.
Or you could sell t-shirts that fit snugly inside a polymailer rather than a box. Make sure your packaging complements your product(s), whether you ship your goods in containers, poly mailers, or padded mailers.
The reason is that if the packaging is too small for your product, it may result in your customers receiving bent or broken products.
You can pay too much for the size of the box rather than the product itself if the box or mailer is too large. Select the appropriate packaging from the start to completely avoid these errors.
5. Share Your Journey
By including details about your product’s path, you can also quickly scale your unpacking experience.
This is a fantastic method to add the transparency factor, and it works incredibly well for firms in the sustainability niche. It enhances your products’ selling aspects and helps demonstrate your brand’s beliefs.
An eco-friendly subscription box business like Essentials Eco, for instance, offers a comprehensive brochure about the brand founders and details on each item in each shipment.
In this instance, you could provide a story about how you started your company with this specific product instead of just demonstrating the shipping path (for example, did you have a problem that needed to be solved?).
6. Use Email Teasers
Get your consumers excited by sending them email teasers. Transactional messages are a potent tool you can use as an eCommerce merchant after a successful sale.
Your customers will likely see your order and shipping confirmation emails because they typically have the most significant open and click rates. Since your consumers are anticipating receiving the things they just bought, they offer a special chance for you to cross-sell them.
Similarly, you may use similar messages in your explore, product, and cart abandonment emails to assist your clients in completing their purchases. One potent social proof is to see how other customers have reacted to your goods.
The perfect thing to persuade buyers who are otherwise undecided may be seeing others with wonderful unpacking experiences.
7. Encourage Social Media Posting
Similarly, if your customers had a fantastic unboxing experience, it’s time to pique their interest further. Some of that organic UGC lurks in the wings if you’ve added a hashtag or asked your customers to share their unboxing experience on their social media platforms.
To let your shoppers know what to expect and further pique their interest in their upcoming unboxing experience, include those postings in your emails and put your hashtag alongside them.
Encourage your consumers to post unboxing experiences on social media (such as YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok) to increase brand exposure.
You can promote unboxing videos by making a public playlist of user-generated content (UGC) and letting buyers know they can be recognized on your channel.
For instance, HighPeak Co. offers a TikTok playlist of user reviews, including unboxing videos.
This approach to establishing a public UGC playlist has the dual benefits of increasing brand exposure and social proof.
Conclusion
Giving your company the edge over its rivals that it needs to generate recurring clients and draw in new customers may be done by creating an unforgettable experience that makes your customers happy with a memory they want to remember.
It is a fantastic method for small businesses engaging in online commerce to stand out from the boring brown boxes of larger online stores.
This is so because your consumers’ first point of contact is the box you deliver them. And if you do it right, it may be a powerful selling point for clients who will buy from you again. Having said that, do not forget to use original packaging.
Reevaluate the wrapping and unboxing procedure throughout the following days. Think about your existing spending, the amount of your typical order, and your profit margins.
Consider what you can change to give your consumers a better experience that will encourage them to return and recommend you to others. Your creativity is the only thing stopping you from creating a unique unpacking experience.
Many solutions are available to fit every budget, and inspiration is general everywhere on the internet. The essential components of any excellent unpacking experience have been put out in this post, but it’s up to you to choose what will represent your business to your customers the best!
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