It’s easy to identify with a person like Grace Reynolds, for example. Grace is the owner of CleverBean.com, a site selling eco-friendly, earth-conscious houseware and kitchen products. Her one-person, Web-based storefront sells to customers nationwide. Although sales come in around the clock, she must schedule and plan for shipping and mailing.

Similarly, Liz Beavers is someone making sales offline — yet she still has shipping needs. Liz is a sculptor specializing in reptile, amphibian, and dinosaur garden decor, found at LizBeavers.com. A large portion of Liz’s sales occur offline as part of a tourist-driven open-studio tour. Tourists frequently request shipping back home rather than risk breakage while traveling.

Here are some ways Grace and Liz reduce the stress of mailing products so they can stay focused on their small businesses:

1. Stock Shipping Supplies
   Time and money spent on a stocked supply closet can ultimately save you even more time, money, and prevent headaches, too. Keeping an inventory of supplies on hand reduces a lot of the gasoline and time costs driving back-and-forth. Keep your supplies neatly organized and, as best as possible, standardized. Flat-rate boxes and standard sized envelopes are easy to manage and track.

   Many small business owners opt to recycle bubble wrap or packaging they receive. This is fine for one-off mailings, but can quickly become unwieldy if your volume is higher. Reuse what you can for savings, but plan ahead for regular orders.

2. Pre-Pack Popular Items
   Some products will predictably move faster than others. To streamline this, you can prepackage these items prior to an anticipated busy season, or just have them packaged and on hand. This makes the process speedier.

“Automating the process as best you can will save you so much time in the long run,” advises Grace.

Artisans like Liz may benefit from size standardization. Although Liz makes and sells one-of-a-kind products, she simplifies shipping by creating work in small, medium, and large sizes.

“There are variations within these sizes, but each grouping has a similar average measurement and weight,” explains Liz. This helps her procure appropriate materials and better estimate shipping costs.

1. Skip Handwriting Labels
   Whether you’re shipping four or 400 packages a day, it makes no sense for a business owner to handwrite address labels. Pull the shipping address from your sales invoice directly to the mailing labels.

   “Invest in a label printer and develop a good relationship with your mail carrier or UPS driver (or whatever service you use),” adds Grace. “That relationship will get you out of many a jam when you really need things to be picked up that day.”

1. Never Run Out of Stamps
   Print postage directly so you never need to worry about stamps. A solution like Pitney Bowes’ Digital Mailroom combines a postage meter with stamp-printing capabilities. Most major carriers (USPS, FedEx, etc.) offer postage-printing services.
2. Reserve One Day for Mailing
   Processing all orders on one or two set days every week can make the process faster for smaller-scale merchants.

Be clear about shipping in your sales copy, emphasizing the scale of your operation if necessary. Shipping is part of great customer service.

A micro-scale business might yield an unexpected marketing angle, too. (For instance, buyers may expect an artisan purchase to take longer to ship; or, supporting your “slower delivery,” a one-person operation may be part of its appeal.)

Conversely, prompt delivery will set you apart from other small merchants. Offer expedited shipment options as an upsell to impatient shoppers.

Don’t drive yourself crazy fulfilling the shipping and mailing aspect of your business. Automate the process at whatever scale you operate to save your sanity. Look for opportunities to streamline — whether by pre-packing popular items, standardizing sizes of the items you’re shipping, or using flat-rate boxes — and soon shipping won’t be a burden. Cha-ching!

Katie McCaskey writes about small business for Vistaprint, a leading provider of custom marketing products and services for businesses of all sizes. Katie is also co-owner of George Bowers Grocery, a specialty neighborhood retailer/café/beer garden in Staunton, Virginia.

Mobile Development Options

As Benjamin Wald wrote for Inc.com, there are three mobile development strategies that business owners should consider when choosing how to build their mobile web presence: a mobile app, a standalone mobile website, and a fully responsive website. I strongly recommend reading the article, as Wald does a great job of defining each approach to mobile web development, as well as its pros and cons.

If you’re lucky, then the type of mobile web presence your business needs will be clear-cut. For many businesses, a decision will be harder to reach. Do your customers mind using your standard website on their mobile devices? Is a standalone mobile site sufficient for how your mobile customers interact with your business? These can be tough questions to answer.

Customer Guidance

Luckily, every small business has a valuable resource in answering these questions: its customers. Chances are that you or someone in your business speaks with customers regularly. These conversations are great opportunities to learn how your customers interact with your business while using their mobile devices. Partnering with customers upfront will increase the chances that you make a decision that keeps them happy.

Here are some ways – there are obviously more – that you can engage your customers when deciding on the right mobile development strategy for your business.

In-person Conversations

If you have a store or office location that customers frequent, then you probably have opportunities for personal conversations. Why not use some of these conversations to ask customers about how they interact with your business on their mobile devices? You might write down a few questions to ask people when the opportunity arises:

• Have they visited your website from their smartphone or tablet?
• What were they looking for during past mobile visits? Did they easily find it?
• Would they mind visiting the site right now and giving you their thoughts?
• What do they like about your current site?
• What might be improved through your mobile web development project?

In-person conversations always provide the best ability to get specific answers from customers. You can easily change your questions based on what someone says. Just make sure that you take notes on all of your conversations and keep them in one place. That will come in handy when reviewing what customers tell you and making a decision on your mobile web presence.

Quickly and easily build your own mobile website!

Sign up for pbSmart^TM Mobile, a new way to easily create your own mobile website and help your business grow.

Explore mobile website pricing

Online Surveys

Chances are you have some kind of customer email list. Consider building a simple survey and sending a survey link to your customer email list. A survey incentive – such as a one-time discount or special perk – will get customers more motivated to complete the survey. There are also tools that allow you to launch a mobile survey through the use of a QR code or a posted mobile web URL in your store.

If you don’t already have a website or lack a customer email list, then you might print surveys out on paper or postcards. You can ask interested customers to complete paper-based surveys in your store in exchange for some type of incentive. Whatever approach you take, make sure that you can easily compile and tabulate the customer responses.

Social Media

Social media can be another great way to reach out to customers about your mobile web development strategy. This is especially true in social channels that are heavily used via mobile devices, such as Facebook and Twitter. If you have a Facebook for business page, then you can post questions and polls to customers. The best part about it is that a large percentage of your customers are probably using Facebook on their mobile devices. They may be better positioned to give you good answers because they’re already used to using mobile websites and apps.

Competitor Research

You can also take a look at how your competitors have built their mobile web presences. Competitor research is especially useful if you have a rival that really understands its customers and how to market to them. Just be careful that you don’t only lean on competitors for insight. In many cases, your competitors may have made a poor decision that could also cost your business down the line. As a general rule, it’s always best to validate your decision with customers before starting to build a mobile marketing presence.

What Next?

Once you have enough input from customers, your mobile web development decision will become clearer. Whether your customers prefer a standalone mobile website, a mobile app or a fully responsive site, you can proceed with more confidence that your marketing investment will pay dividends in the future. Your customers should be happy and your business should reach more people like them through its mobile marketing presence.

Our conclusion about daily deal websites at the time was that they are certainly worth a try, as long as this is done with a “test and learn” approach. 

Fast forward one year later and that’s exactly what many small businesses have done. A great blog post on entrepreneur.com provides highlights of a study into small business use of daily deal websites.  The study comes to the conclusion that daily deal websites can be profitable for small businesses, provided they stick with it and run more than just a few campaigns.

The idea is that there is a learning curve to using daily deal websites and when businesses run seven or more campaigns the success rate rises significantly. Alongside this finding, the study offers several tips for success. The first is to check the success rate of daily deals for your specific industry, since some do better than others. They also recommend taking advantage of the fact that there are so many daily deal websites around, so use this to your advantage to negotiate the best terms for your deal.

The other lesson from the study was that daily deal websites tend to be better at lead generation than at providing a short term boost to sales.  Again, this speaks to the need to stay in it for the long haul.  If the tactic is used with short-term expectations or the testing is done with only one or two campaigns, you might miss out on the longer term benefits of daily deals.

These are lessons that go beyond daily deals and into marketing in general. What do we want to get from a tactic? What does success look like? How will we measure it, and on what timescale? All good questions to ponder as we get into any new initiative!

What Next

A mobile website is another great way to reach local customers online. It puts your business in front of mobile customers who are nearby and ready to buy. Find out how easy it is to create your own mobile website with a free trial of pbSmart™Mobile.

What about you? What are your experiences with daily deal websites? Let us know, we’d love to hear from you!

Every so often though, stats emerge to remind us just how huge the mobile opportunity has become. In fact, for some analysts, the mobile phenomenon is a shakeup on par with the introduction of the internet itself. 

A recent infographic from Mashable gives us a glimpse into the growing mobile marketplace.  Based on survey data from a number of sources, the infographic highlights some amazing findings.

One of those stats is that a third of all consumers say they prefer to use some form of mobile device when shopping. This includes looking at websites or using apps on their smartphones or tablet computers.

If you break that down to look just at mobile website browsing, the number is just as astonishing. The number of consumers who browse the internet in order to shop on their mobile devices is one in four! Take into account the fact that more and more mobile phones are now internet-enabled, and that number is only going to get bigger.

This growing trend in mobile use – or if you will, a revolution in how people communicate – is something that every marketer needs to pay attention to. To make an analogy, it’s like learning that one in four of your customers were avid radio listeners: you’d certainly have to consider adding radio in your marketing mix!

Another stat worthy of mention relates to the use QR codes marketing.  Half of all smartphone users have scanned a QR code, and of those, 1 in 5 have made a purchase after scanning a QR code.  Yet another mobile trend worth our attention!

What Next

See our infographic on small business marketing practices for more insights to help you plan your marketing programs. If mobile marketing is part of your plans, why not sign up for a free trial of pbSmart™Mobile and build your own mobile website in minutes. You can also create your own QR code marketing campaign with pbSmart™ Codes, our QR code marketing software.

What about you? What impact has the mobile revolution had on your business so far? Please share your experiences and successes below, we’d love to hear from you!

27% of you are sticking with traditional hand-written cards this year, while 23% prefer group emails with well wishes for customers.  Less popular options were mailing generic holiday cards (18%), sending coupons or gifts (18%), and finally, sending personal email to customers and suppliers
(14%).

Regardless of the channel you choose, it’s important to keep regular contact with customers, especially over the holiday season, and throughout the year for that matter. 

Here are some tips you might want to consider for better holiday greetings:

1. Time matters.

People take vacations this time of year.  Get cards out early so customers and suppliers get them before their holiday, not after it’s already over. If you haven’t sent your cards yet, you might want to consider Happy New Year mailings, instead of traditional Season’s Greetings. The other advantage of this is that your cards probably won’t get lost amongst the heaps of other holiday mail.

2. Consider a personal message, rather than a religious one.

Remember that not everybody celebrates Christmas. In fact, many Americans don’t. While few people take offense to a Santa card, you might want to consider sending a more personal message, something’s that reflective of your business and services. This will help your card stand out amongst the rest and probably make it more memorable.

3. Use a QR code to thank customers.

QR Codes are a great way to get customers attention this holiday season, especially if they link to a special holiday offer or coupon. QR codes are easy to print on cards or place in email holiday greetings, and they’ll help you stand out from the rest, since only 18% of businesses seem to be sending coupons this year.

The holidays are a great time to be in touch with customers and suppliers, and pbSmart Codes and pbSmart Connections can help you send Season’s Greetings (or Happy New Year cards) in no time. Start your free trials now and don’t miss this great opportunity to thank customers and stand out from your competition.

What’s next?

• Learn how to use QR codes to get your business noticed throughout the holidays

Is a balance sheet something where you “park” numbers or assets?

Do you wonder why small businesses even bother with balance sheets?

You are not alone.

Instead of adding even more complicated financese to the mix, let’s consider a football team.  Their performance, and their potential to succeed, is a perfect analogy for small business financials.  While profit is the way businesses keep score, a smart team knows that ensuring they have all the proper equipment, players, strong defense and an aggressive offense is the way to win. 

Your balance sheet tells you the condition of your team and the resources you have available to finish the game and claim the Super Bowl brass ring.

Small Business Balance Sheet: Defined

Small business owners often express their frustration with the complexities of financial statements.  “Yes but what does it really mean?” is a question I hear all the time.  What they are really asking is, “What does this mean to my business success?  Will I profit by it?  Will it help me succeed?”

Understanding your balance sheet will absolutely help your small business grow its bottom line and reach your goals.  Consider the position of a kicker in football.  There are often jokes about them, and they are generally the lowest paid starter (first string) position on the team.

I remember watching a game where the kicker was injured, and there was no backup.  Suddenly the team was faced with losing the extra point on touchdowns, as well as the reliable option of going for a field goal.  What a game changer.  A review of the team roster (their assets) would have shown this weakness, a weakness that cost them the game.  

A balance sheet provides a summary of all your assets (again think players, equipment, etc.), all your liabilities (injuries), and your shareholders’ equity (team owners).  For every balance sheet the following equation must hold true:

Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders’ Equity (or Surplus for a Nonprofit)

Manage postage and shipping costs from your desk

Save money on your shipping and routine mail! With online postage stamps from pbSmartPostage, you can eliminate trips to the post office and closely track your shipping and mailing costs.

Start your 60-day free trial!

Small Business Balance Sheet: Reading at Glance

A balance sheet is a snapshot.  It tells you about all the assets of your business and all the claims against your business at a specific point in time.  This is important to keep in mind.  Imagine a football team looking at their injured list from 4 weeks ago when deciding on the starting players for that day’s game.  Doesn’t really make sense, does it?

There are three main categories in a balance sheet;

i. Assets
ii. Liabilities
iii. Shareholders’ Equity (also referred to as for nonprofits)

Assets

All assets were not created equal for the small business owner.  Since cash and cash flow are always a consideration for small businesses the liquidity of assets is crucial.  Liquidity is another way of saying how quickly can you convert an asset into cash without losing value.  Highly liquid assets are cash (of course!), bank CD’s, and (hopefully) accounts receivable.

Other categories in assets include; inventory, pre-paid expenses, investments, fixed assets, and intangible assets.  While these don’t require monthly review, it is important to do an assessment at least once a year.

Key Business Points   

• Know at a glance what is available quickly for your cash needs.  It’s possible to be growing like crazy and cash poor, in fact some businesses have grown themselves into failure. 
• Keep a close eye on your accounts receivable.  If this is growing, or makes up a large percentage of your assets, you need to step up collection activities.

Liabilities

This section summarizes the monies your company owes to others.  The main split here is between current liabilities (due in less than 12 months) and long-term liabilities (over 12 months).  The potential liability from warranties is recorded here, as well as taxes incurred but not yet paid.

Key Business Points   

• Just as important as knowing cash on hand, a small business needs to keep their finger on the pulse of what they must pay out in the near future. Don’t forget, current liabilities only reflect expenses already incurred.
• Do you know how the mob was brought down?  Not for murder – for TAXES.  That’s right, it was the IRS that brought the mob to its knees.  Keep a sharp eye on taxes due, and the deadlines set by Uncle Sam.

Shareholders’ Equity

If you had to liquidate your business today, and could get book value for all your assets, then shareholders’ equity represents the money you would receive for the business after all debts were paid.  If you have partners in the business, this value would be split between you. 

Key Business Points

• Shareholders’ Equity that is negative, or close to zero, is a huge red flag.  It means that you don’t even have sufficient assets to cover your liabilities.  Investigate and address immediately.

Final Thoughts

What is the financial health of your business?  Does your balance sheet report lots of unexpected injuries (liabilities)?  Are your cash reserves sufficient for the upcoming months?  What is the status of your accounts receivables and shareholders’ equity?  Just 10 minutes a month will give you crucial insights to your small business, and assist you in winning the profit game.

P.S. If anyone knows why most NFL teams don’t have a backup kicker and the starting kicker is one of the lowest paid on the team please share.

As more Americans purchase mobile devices, the need for a strong mobile-friendly web presence is becoming increasingly important for small businesses. Those who don’t take the necessary steps to take advantage of the developing mobile trends risk falling behind their competitors. A mobile website is a great tool to keep up and even get ahead of your competition by making you more accessible to the mobile masses. Despite that, many businesses might still wonder if they really do need a mobile website.

This PDF guide from Pitney Bowes looks at 8 ways a mobile website can help you grow your business, providing information on how a mobile website can help you:

• Reach the mobile majority by making themselves more accessible to the 2/3 of Americans who already own a smart phone or tablet computer

• Stay ahead of competitors who haven’t invested in a mobile website yet by taking advantage of this great way to connect with your customers

• Grow your customer list by using it to capture customer email addresses

• Take advantage of local review sites to provide potential customers with an easy way to connect with information and promotional offers from your organization

• Support other marketing initiatives by providing QR code links to your mobile website on direct mail pieces or links to your mobile website in marketing emails

• Keep up with larger businesses by using your mobile website to look increasingly more trustworthy and professional

• Easily add to your web presence without having to build a costly mobile app that you may not even need

8 Reasons Your Business Needs a Mobile Website

This article from Pitney Bowes looks at 8 reasons you should build a mobile website for your small business. Download the guide today and find out why you should embrace this important marketing channel.

Download the FREE Guide

A USPS postage increase of 5%-10% will take effect on January 27, 2013. This means that small businesses that do a lot of shipping, especially packages less than 1lb, will be looking at cost increases that could negatively impact profit margins or customer satisfaction if not properly managed.

What can you do now to prepare for those changes? Fortunately, there are some things you can do to mitigate the impact of this postage increase on your business:

Strategically integrate the postage increase into your pricing

The increase of standard shipping charges means businesses may be forced to pass the postage increase on to customers. That may seem like the easiest solution, but it’s important to approach the situation strategically. Businesses should carefully plan when and how it would be appropriate to pass on those new charges to their customers.

For example, E-tailers might easily pass the charges on to end-customers by increasing how much they charge for shipping. That’s an industry where shipping and handling costs are part of the expected norm. Consumers will probably see a similar increase in shipping cost regardless of where they order.

Specialty retailers that ship at lower volumes and are all about delivering a superior customer experience might consider other ways to foot the postage increase bill. Since prices can be higher in that industry, perhaps a very small price increase can make up the difference in shipping cost. Profit margins are also typically higher. Some business might want to try to absorb the cost and see what impact that has on customer satisfaction.

Manage postage and shipping costs from your desk

Save money on your shipping and routine mail! With online postage stamps from pbSmartPostage, you can eliminate trips to the post office and closely track your shipping and mailing costs.

Start your 60-day free trial!

Evaluate your business’ expenses

Continuously evaluate your operating costs and gross profit margin so you can get a good grip on what the 5%-10% postage increase could mean for your bottom line. As stated in the specialty retailer example above, revisiting your product pricing and can help you plan accordingly to avoid any surprises mid-year. This can also give customers less sticker shock when it comes time to see those postage or shipping costs added to their order.

Using the right tool can help

When the rate hikes happen, businesses that understand how the USPS’s postage increase will impact their operating costs will be able to pass the changes on to their end customers in the right way. To help businesses with the challenge, Pitney Bowes has solutions such as pbSmart™Postage and pbWebConnect  that can help lower your postage costs by up to 30%. They also update the shipping rates automatically, saving you the time and hassle of inputting it manually.

What’s Next: 

• Learn more about how pbWebConnect and pbSmart™Postage can help you with your shipping
• Learn more about the upcoming USPS rate changes

Season’s greetings emails also allow you to track whether your customers have opened the email campaign cards or used your offer. This helps you measure the impact that your time and effort has on growing sales during this crucial time of the year.

pbSmart Connections can help you use an email marketing campaign this holiday season and all year round.

We’ve pulled together a list of our most popular articles on email marketing to help you get a jump-start on your holiday and 2013 campaign planning:

• Email Marketing: A Guide to Getting Started.

Our comprehensive guide gives you all the information you need to start thinking about regular email contact with customers.

• Email Marketing Campaign Ideas.

This article has some great email marketing campaign ideas. Try creating an editorial calendar to plan your emails for the year ahead.

• The 5 Biggest Email Marketing Mistakes.

Build Customer Loyalty Through Email Marketing

Stay in touch with your customers and send them offers, updates, and valuable content. With pbSmart^TM Connections, you can easily build, track, and deploy email marketing campaigns that help grow customer loyalty.

Sign up for your free trial now!

Now that you’re well on your way to staying connected with customers this coming year, make sure you avoid these common mistakes.

• Email marketing is a low-cost tactic that helps small businesses get customers. psSmartessentials has tons of great articles to help you understand the best practices of email marketing.  Click to find more resources.

Or get started today with email marketing. Try our FREE 60-Day trial of pbSmartConnections.

Our mobile guide will show 3 great marketing strategies to extend the power of your mobile website and reach more customers. Here’s a sneak peak:

• Promoting your mobile website with custom QR codes

The versatility of QR codes makes them a great tool for marketing your mobile website. The QR code’s ability to take customers directly to a specific mobile page makes it useful, especially if your target demographic might not be willing to type out a URL on their mobile device. 

• Optimizing your local marketing efforts

Review websites like Yelp and Merchantcircle™ are becoming the place consumers rely on to find trustworthy information on local businesses. Adding a link to your mobile site on your local review site’s profile page can be a great way to help direct potential customers to your business and encourage them to choose you over your competitors.

• Integrating your mobile site with email marketing programs

Because so many people read emails on their mobile devices, a great strategy to engage those customers is to provide customers with a link to your mobile website in marketing emails. This can help greatly improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns by providing them with a link to further information and exclusive offers.

FREE Guide: "3 Ways to Make the Best of Your Mobile Website"

Download this free guide today and learn how you can use pbSmart Mobile to stay competitive with a great looking mobile website for your business!

Download the PDF guide now!