Open Source Marketer recently had the wonderful opportunity to interview Eric Nash, Director of Online Marketing for Stamps.com. This was a great interview that allowed us to discover all the benefits of their service and get a good idea of who would best be served by printing their own online postage.
We recorded and transcribed the whole interview, so you can watch, listen, or read all of the good information.
Enjoy!
Charles & Toff
OpenSourceMarketer.com
Interview Transcript
Charles: Like I said, tonight our special guest is Eric Nash. Eric is the Director of Online Marketing for Stamps.com. He’s been with them since 2006 and he’s been involved in online marketing for the past 11 years. He is a veteran in the online marketing space.
At Stamps.com his attention is focused primarily on customer acquisition and he’s responsibilities include paid search, SEO, affiliate marketing, display advertising and social media.
So he’s going to have a good bit that he can share with us tonight about the stamps.com program and about how as an affiliate you can promote some of the offers they have.
So, Eric thank you for being on the call with us tonight.
Eric: Hey thank you for having us Charles.
Charles: I really appreciate you taking time out to spend with us.
Eric and I met at EBay on Location Dallas last month and I was very interested in what he had to say and how Stamps.com was going the extra mile to make things easier for people who are shipping products online.
I like to say that they are manufacturing time. We can’t get lost time back. It’s one of those things that we can spend, but can’t earn.
So Eric, we really appreciate you being on the call with us.
Eric: Yeah, we’re looking forward to it. I can’t agree with you more about small businesses who spend a lot of time and wear different hats. Hopefully our software is a great option to them to save time and hopefully save money.
Charles: So you talk about Stamps.com being software. I’ve been to the Stamps.com website, tell us a little about how Stamps.com is different compared to the post office.
Eric: Absolutely, so Stamps.com is online postage software. It brings all the services that the post office has right on to your PC.
You can print all the different types of mail classes. You can print them using your existing printer. You can print them on to an envelope, on to a regular sheet of paper, such as a shipping label and attach it to the package or even onto an adhesive label that you can attach to the package.
Anything from postcards, to packages, to newsletters where you can print it out from your own PC, it’s a huge time saver.
Once you print it, we have features in the software that allow you to set up a carrier pick up so you can have a postal service employee come and pick up a package if you’re sending a bunch of them out.
Or, once you print it you can drop it in a regular mailbox or give it to your letter carrier.
One huge benefit the USPS has compared to everyone else is that they are usually dropping mail off usually to every business every day. So as you print your postage you can give it right to the letter carrier and let them take it back with them.
Really what it does is eliminate the need to go to the post office and wait in those lengthy lines.
Certainly everyone’s aware of USPS’s financial problems over the last year or so and they’re talking about closing post offices and closing more of them in the next few year. So, those lines will probably only be getting longer.
So, our service really helps you eliminate the time consumption that happens when you’re driving to a post office as well as standing in line or waiting in line there.
Charles: Okay, so really your printing official postage then?
Eric: Absolutely, we operate under a license from the USPS. We aren’t the actual postal service. We are a public company that was started way back in 1996 when the Internet boom started.
We were actually the first PC postage provider that was approved by the USPS. They often will call online postage “PC postage”.
We currently have 400,000 paid subscribers. Many of them have been with us for many years and that covers both regular small offices who are just using our service to print letters and print certified mail or special services like that.
About forty thousand of our customers are ecommerce shippers that are actually shipping packages and using priority mail, express mail, or even media mail or parcel post some of all the different mail classes that are there.
Charles: Okay, that is a lot of people using PC postage as you said. What would be the target consumers for Stamps.com? Are they just in for the business class or what are they looking at?
Eric: You know, for the most part we target small businesses, really anybody who has 20 employees or less. But we do have a lot of consumer cross over. Sometimes people who are living in rural areas where the post offices are quite a ways away, they use the service quite a bit. Obviously people who are tech savvy and are sending lots of mail out and they’re sick of waiting in line, they use our service.
We also have a chunk of people, who are elderly people who are sending lots packages to grand kids or family members and have to go to the post office a lot, but they aren’t necessarily a business, they’ll use our service too.
But the bulk of our customers are a small business that are looking for a better way to print postage. They don’t want to get a postage meter and pay the high cost of leasing a postage meter and they’re sick of driving to the post office to drop off their packages or their mail or even buying stamps at any retailer and then playing stamp lotto saying, “Well this feels like two or three stamps”.
Charles: So okay, as a business owner do I still have to have a scale? Is that what I hear?
Eric: You know, you definitely would need to use a scale especially if you are shipping a lot of different weight envelopes or packages. The cool thing is we actually give you a scale when you sign up for our service.
There is a small handling charge, but we give you a 5lb. digital postage scale. It’s connected to the computer via USB cord. So as you weigh your envelope or package in that scale, the weight is automatically imported into our software.
So for package shippers who are eBay sellers or something like that who are having to manually input lots of different information, whether it be the weight or the size, this is one extra step that is eliminated.
Of course there is always an opportunity to mistype something or mistype the weight. So this USB connected scale would eliminate that need. You don’t need to do it manually, the scale will automatically imports that data right into our software.
To people who may need a higher or bigger scale that can handle more weight, when you do sign up, there is an option to take the credit of a 5lb. scale that we will give you and apply that credit to either a 10lb. scale or a 25lb. scale. So we give you that options too to increase it and apply the credit we are giving you for free.
Charles: That is a good deal. Back in the day when I shipped products as an eBay seller, I had to go out and get a scale. It just seemed like a no-brainer. It was always a guessing game and I didn’t want to do that. It seems like those scales were $50 dollars a piece or something like that?
Eric: Yes, there are a bunch of different types and bunch of different ratings for each scale. Ours is pretty much the standard. If they’re looking for heavy duty shipping scales and needed it down to the nitty gritty weight, ours is probably not going to do that but it certainly will get you past the basic stuff.
It will certainly be applicable for 99% of small businesses out there who are shipping, so it’s a good deal and it’s free. Shipping and handling charges for it are right around $8 depending where you live in the US.
It’s a free scale and it’s yours to keep afterwards, even if you don’t like our service, you can keep the scale and continue to use it.
Charles: Okay, so tell me about the package you mentioned that includes the scale and the service. Tell me how that works? How do I sign up for the program and what will I get?
Eric: If you sign up the program, we offer a 4 week, no risk, trial. So this means you can try our software, the full version of it for 4 weeks and if you don’t like it and all you have to do is cancel the service and you won’t be charged a thing.
We give you $5 in free postage to use during that trial so you can basically sign up this afternoon, go in there and print a couple of stamps if you want, print postage right onto an envelope, print it right onto a shipping label. We are giving you $5 in free postage to use it and try it.
Our software will let you import your address book from Outlook, ACT, or content manage software like Lotus or Corel, or any kind of software that you are storing your address in. You can import that all in and you can literally start printing postage within a few minutes of signing up with the service.
We will also send you out a welcome kit that will contain a bunch of different types of shipping labels. We also send you some free postage vouchers, so if you like our service and feel you want to continue with it, you can become a paid subscriber.
By the way, the cost per month for the subscription services is $15.99/month and when you become a paid subscriber you can redeem a $10 postage coupon the first month you pay the bill, as well as the second month. So really the first month and second month come with free postage, which technically brings the cost to $6.99 a month.
Basically we are giving you $5 free postage upon signing up to use in the trial and you can get an options to get 2 additional $10 postage vouchers to use. Of course we are giving you that free scale upon sign up as well.
We are trying to make it easy and hopefully people will see the benefits of avoiding long lines at the post office. There are all this kind of features that we offer for shippers and those sellers on eBay as well.
We have integration to import your data from eBay right into our software and we offer all the different kinds of mail classes.
One huge thing for eBay sellers is the ability to print international postages. Our first class international, which is in a very low cost form of shipping class. So we offer different features for people to use and hopefully they will continue to redeem and use the free postage.
Charles: There are three points that are really important, one is when you said you can avoid the long lines at the post office. So I can print the postage from my computer, but do I still need to go to a post office?
Eric: No, actually you don’t need to. You print the postage, whether it is on an envelope or a package. If you are using an envelope you can give it to your regular letter carrier as they pass by to drop off the mail. You can give them your letter and they will take it back with them.
For packages, you can schedule a carrier pickup to come to your office or home and actually pick up a package. That services is free as long as you are shipping with either priority mail or express mail.
All you need to do is ship one package via priority mail or express mail and they’ll come and pick up. Let’s say you had one package that was priority mail and twenty others that were parcel post, or media mail, which are both cheaper classes. They will come to pick up the 20 parcel post with that one priority mail package for free as long as you are sending a priority mail or express mail package.
So it’s really eliminates the need of even go to the post office and wait in those long line. If you need to add special services such as certified mail or delivery confirmation, all that stuffs can be done straight through our software, including package insurance and all kind of different options.
Some other cool features that our software provides is we offer the ability to hide the postage value on a package or on a shipping label.
So for eBay sellers or really any ecommerce seller who is shipping via the USPS, you may charge a shipping and handling charge because you have a box, tape, storage cost, and all kinds of handling fees. Sometimes a buyer may get a little upset if they are paying $5 or $6 handling and they notice the postage cost is only $2 or $3 dollars.
The ability to hide the postage value eliminates that problem. They basically see the exact same shipping label and they get the package just as they normally would, it’s just the actual postage value is not printed on the shipping label.
Charles: That’s a really good point. If you can get the product to somebody and fulfill your end of the obligation, then there’s no real value in having a conversation about the postage.
Eric: Yeah, unfortunately the buyers forget that there are handling charges and costs and fees. You have to buy a box, tape, and bubble wrap. They seem to think that’s all just the cost of doing business and forget about it.
So, that hidden postage can really eliminate some headaches. In terms of eBay, your seller ratings are really your bread and butter, so it’s important to keep those positive and in good standing. The ability to hide the shipping value on the postage is one less headache you have to deal with.
Charles: Yeah, and talking about headaches. Going down to the post office is not a fun thing.
From my experience with selling on eBay, you never knew what the day was going to be like. You never knew how many orders you were going to get and you wanted to ship out order as quickly as possible. But, then you tried to minimize your exposure to the post office because it is such long lines and there isn’t any value there.
I could see how I would lead off every day’s shipping with at least one package that would afford me to schedule local pickup. That way I would be assured that I could schedule something. That would be great, especially with just the time spent.
Eric: Oh yeah, let’s say you have an employee who drives packages to the post office every day or even a few times a week. That’s time is spend driving to the post office, money spent on gas, waiting in line, and that gives the employee time to stop off at the 7/11 to grab a coke.
That’s a lot of time lost and loss of efficiency that you’re losing as a small business owner. Time is huge, so by eliminating that issue and that hassle of having to drive and drop off and wait in long lines at the post office is just tons of cost savings as well as being more effective.
If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur who is wearing ten different hats in a one man operation, Stamps.com offers the ability to be much more effective. You can focus less on standing in line and more on tasks that require your focus to make your business a better run business.
On top of that we offer a lot of different things that you can’t get at the post office. We have postage discounts on priority mail and express mail. Up to 14% on priority mail and 5% on express mail. You can’t get that at the post office. The USPS provides those discounts only to the PC postage providers.
We also have address verification, if you happen to mistype an address in the delivery address, like adding an extra number or you enter the wrong zip code in, our software will verify that address in real time with the USPS main database.
It will come back to you and say we notices a problem with this address, it’s not a valid address, can we change it to x y or z. It will give you some different option for you to choose. That just helps you to be more efficient.
If you’re a package shipper you don’t want your package sent back to you, which can hurt your seller rating and make it take more time to get the package to the buyer. So, it’s just one extra benefit that we offer we feel is a huge benefit.
Charles: Yeah, I’d say the only thing that’s worse than standing in line to mail a package, is standing in line to mail a package twice.
Eric: Yeah, and usually that second time you’re going to have to send it a little faster mail class. So, you’re going to spend even more money and that’s eating right in to your margin as a small business owner or entrepreneur. So that’s never any fun.
Charles: One of the things you mentioned earlier was international shipping. I’m really interested in this because I know that I shipped to Australia and that was incredible. The shipping on that was more expensive than the products themselves. Is that the same with Stamps.com or is there something different there as far a international shipping?
Eric: Yeah, you can ship international. We make it very easy.
The international market on eBay is growing 3 or 4 times faster than the domestic markets. So, a lot of the eBay sellers are interested in shipping international, but they’re a little hesitant because there are a lot of things involved. You have the customs forms and the price and all that.
So, we offer the ability to ship any type of mail class, whether it be priority mail international, express mail international.
More importantly we offer the ability to ship first class mail international and that’s a huge thing because if you’re shipping a small priced item, whether it be eBay, Amazon, or your own shopping cart and let’s say it’s only $15 dollars. To ship that via priority mail, even the cheaper priority mail flat rate, you’re going to pay possibly upwards of $26 on regular priority mail international or even on the flat rate small box it would $12.78. That same product would be $10.76 on first class mail international.
So, if you’re selling a small item, you don’t want to be paying double or triple the amount to ship that item. Having lower shipping cost just makes you more competitive certainly in the eBay space or even a regular shopping carts.
So first class mail international is the most cost effective means of shipping via all shipping carriers include UPS and FedEx.
If you’re a seller and you’re able to send your product via first class mail international, you’re going to see a ton of cost savings. That’s really cool and very important.
Along with that our software includes customs forms, built into the software. It’s integrated right in, so as you input your delivery address, that delivery address is going to be imported right into the customs forms.
You’ll still be required to state what the product is and declare the country of origin. That’s something you will have to do no matter what. The fact that we import the delivery address just saves more time and reduces the possibility of error.
Additionally, we also include the country restrictions on products that can be shipped to a country. Every country has it’s own list of restrictions in terms of what can be shipping in to it. They are very unique items.
Sometimes it’s no gold or silver can be shipped or any precious metal or stones such as diamonds. Other times, it’s animal bi-product that can’t be shipped in, for one reason or another. So our software is hooked up to the USPS mailing database.
Those restrictions are changing all the time, so our system is able to import any changes and show you what the existing restrictions are. So, that’s a huge benefit that’s another time saver.
Saving time is obviously a huge message that we are trying to relay here along with lots of discounts and the ability to save money as well. Hopefully we can provide that to small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Charles: You said something about Amazon. Are there hooks or pieces that are Amazon specific?
Eric: Actually that’s a great new feature that we’ve just added. We’ve added a lot of new shipping features over the last twelve to eighteen months.
Really the main feature has been the ability to import data from the main ecommerce market places. So eBay being one huge ecommerce market place, Amazon also.
Now the one catch with Amazon is it has to be an Amazon Pro Merchant account. Amazon has two types of accounts when you’re a seller. Amazon Pro Merchant allows third party API access. So that’s how we are able to access into that.
Basically ecommerce sellers are selling on eBay, or they have their own shopping carts, and they could be using Amazon as well or even some of the newer market places such as Etsy or Bonanzle. What we want to provide is a one stop shipping solution for all of you USPS shipping.
You basically connect your Stamps.com account with an Amazon account or an eBay account, or on Etsy or Bonanzle you can can connect right to PayPal and you can basically import your sales order data right into your Stamps.com software.
That gives you the ability to batch print. Let’s say you have 100 orders in a day, you can print all the label right there. Or you can choose with labels you want to print.
Some people sell and package everything on Tuesday or Thursdays and drop everything in the mail on Wednesday or Fridays. Other people prepare their packages for the East Coast or the West Coast at different times of the day. We give you the ability to print all your label, some of them, only by store, or you can print just your Amazon sales in the morning, print all your eBay sales in the afternoon, and print all your own shopping cart sales at night.
Depending how you want to prepare your package shipping, we give you full flexibility to print and more importantly get the data into the Stamps.com software to make it easy to print.
Additionally we also post back tracking details back into eBay and Amazon. The fact that the customer is going to see the tracking details posted back into the account is a huge benefit. They know the package is on the way. They see the tracking information. They can click on it and get all the relevant info that they need to see when their package is going to be delivered.
Charles: So you’re saying that when I’m in the software and I print the software, I put the label on the box, it shows up on Amazon as being shipped.
Eric: Correct. Once you print that label, it’s going to produce that tracking number for the delivery confirmation and then post that back to your Amazon account as the package is being shipped.
Charles: That’s very handy. I can see the value in that because, let’s say you have ten orders that you’re shipping out. Now they are all automatically updated.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely.
Depending on what service you were using prior, you would have had to go back and do that manually. That would give you more opportunity to make an error.
Some people are shipping 20, 30, or 40 packages as day. They are going back in and entering 40 different tracking numbers in the account, it is easy to make a mistake.
So this is one less item you have to do on your long list of items that you have to do as a small business or entrepreneur.
Charles: Yeah, and you definitely have to do that. You can’t just leave that person in the dark by not communicating back that their package has shipped. Certainly you can do it, but it doesn’t create a good user experience.
Eric: If you look at eBay, shipping is two out of the four items that are on a sellers DSR. So one is communication and speed of shipping and the other is cost of shipping and handling. So having the ability to see the shipping should help you get better seller ratings overall.
Charles: I believe a customer’s perceived speed of shipping has to do a lot with how fast they get that notice. If they get that notification within 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the situation, then it’s shipped and in their mind it’s done.
Eric: Yeah
Charles: That’s a great thing compared to saying a few days later that your package shipped.
Eric: Yeah, whenever you buy something you always want it right then and there. Having to wait is the one aspect of buying things online is that you have that shipping time. So, the sooner you can get that product in the buyer’s hands the better the buyer feels and the better ratings you will get and hopefully the buyer will be more likely to buy from you again. It just helps everyone out when shipping is very speedy and the communication of the shipping is right there.
Charles: Good deal. I hope that everyone on the call can see the value of this and understand that Stamps.com is going the extra mile to give people the opportunity to try out the service. And they’re putting different pieces of the puzzle together like the free scale and free postage which makes it effortless. Plus all the pieces that we’ve talked about like being able to avoid the post office and getting discounts on postage and things like that. All I hear is value, over and over again.
So I think the next part that I’d like you to give us some insight into is the affiliate program that Stamps.com offers.
I know we have affiliates in our community who are either looking for new offers to promote or we have people who have blogs or business sites and they’re always looking for additional things to offer their audience that will add value to the conversation and will provide them will compensation as well.
So tell us a bit, if you will, about the affiliate program.
Eric: Absolutely, our affiliate program has a great CPA. The program itself is managed through the Commission Junction network. The CPA is a $50 CPA from Stamps.com.
Basically we are paying you $50 just for someone to sign up to our service.
When someone signs up they do have to put in their credit card, but the person won’t be charged if they cancel within the four week trial.
We’ve been pretty much a four bar program and had a period where we were a five bar program within the Commission Junction system. For the most part we’ve been a pretty rock solid four bar. Our earnings per click (EPC), a common metric in Commission Junction for three months has been 66.50. So it’s been a pretty good CPA. It’s had pretty good performance for us.
People who have blogs about entrepreneurship, or small office and home office, or home based businesses, or even network marketing could use the program. People who are trying approach Avon sellers or Mary Kay sellers, anybody who’s going to be shipping lots of products out, we are a great alternative for.
Also sites that are focused around those topics of small business, or B2B, or home office / small office, or home based business, we work great as just a banner or a button on the side.
We’ve seen a lot of growth in the coupon sites in the last year or year and a half since the economy kind of tanked. There has been huge growth in coupon sites and deal sites. So, those have worked very well.
A good chunk of our volume comes from people who are doing paid search. We don’t allow you to go direct to page, but if you build out your own page, we certainly allow you to bid aggressively.
We have a few restrictions on paid search, but not too much. We’re pretty aggressive in general about letting you do kind of what you want to do. We don’t allow any type of incentivized marketing, so you’re not allowed to give away prices or anything to get people to sign up.
We do like social media marketing. Some people are using Twitter, Facebook, and all the new types of marketing out there. We still allow you to do that.
We have all different types of banner sizes. More importantly if you see something you need that we don’t have, we can make it on the fly. We have a creative team internal and they can make any type of banner you need very very quickly. Usually within a few hours, we can get that out to you or we can upload it to the Commission Junction system.
We don’t allow email unfortunately for affiliates, but that’s something I’m always fighting and pushing for with our legal department. So far we haven’t been able to get that approved. I’m hoping some day we will.
Really if you have a site that’s targeting small business or even just business software or tech software, I’d like to invite anyone to give us a shot and give us a try.
We have a pretty good program, lots of different creatives, lots of different sizes, and a pretty aggressive offer for the customer to sign up. It just equates to money in the affiliate marketers pocket.
Charles: I just like the fact that you mentioned that someone can cancel within that first four weeks and the affiliate still gets paid. Is that correct? Am I right?
Eric: That is correct, so long as they are a real person. Keep in mind that some affiliates can get pretty aggressive in what they’re doing. So you can’t just grab a telephone book and start entering names.
As long as it’s real quality traffic, absolutely. We’re just looking for people to try our software and see how it works. We’ll give you a $50 bounty basically if that person signs up and is a new customer. They can cancel and they never have to pay a cent to us and we’ll be paying you. But, the person does have to be a real live person.
Charles: Yeah, that’s one situation where you want everyone to win. Even though the affiliates still get paid, they still need to attract the right traffic so that they’re getting the right conversions. That’s definitely something to keep in mind.
If you’re an affiliate and you’re looking at this offer and your thinking this is pretty good, don’t just see the dollar figure. If you’re audience is interested in this and it’s related to your topic, it’s something that you already talk about, and it’s a close match then that’s going to be a win for everybody.
The customer’s going to get the value they’re looking for, your going to get the affiliate commission and then of course, Stamps.com will be encouraged to continue with the program or at least have similar offers. When something works for most companies they rarely change it.
Eric: Yeah, we’re right there with you. We are looking for good affiliates to produce good solid leads.
We have lots of affiliate contests. We have all kinds of promotions. If you’re an affiliate and you have been in the past and you’ve become dormant for what ever reason, we do all kinds of promotions and contests to kind of get you back interested and put our offer back live.
We’re constantly trying to help motivate affiliates and get them to get our offer live and hopefully get them to generate signups for us and in turn revenue for them. I’m an affiliate marketer myself so I certainly know of trials and tribulations of affiliate marketers and what they have to go through and how hard it is.
So, we are looking for good affiliate marketers to join our program and hopefully promote us and get some good solid traffic.
Charles: Affiliate marketing is a dynamic field and to have something like this where the offer is out there, the product is solid, the payoff is good, and if done properly then everybody wins. That’s definitely the way to go.
You mentioned that your creative team can do banners for you and things like that. Once your signed up to the program through the program using Commission Junction, is that something you’d go through the affiliate manager to request or how does that work?
Eric: Yeah, so we have probably over 70 banners in various sizes.
Charles: Yes, it’s really impressive. You have lot of selection out there.
Eric: Yeah, but everyone has different needs and requirements, so in the event that someone needs a different sized banner or even a custom banner that might have a certain message on it, we can certainly make that for them.
Sometime affiliates want to have it color coded to their site, or a special headline. Anything like that we can create and either send it to them direct and then they can just use a regular link off of another banner or if it’s something that other affiliates need, then we can post it into the CJ system and let them grab it from there.
We have coupon codes that are active in the Commission Junction system. Unfortunately our Stamps.com platform isn’t very flexible for coupon codes for affiliates so we are not really able to make unique custom codes for a coupon site. But we are able to make coupons that are more generic and you can grab those and use those.
Like I say, any type of banner that you need or any size, or any specific message that you’re looking for we can definitely create.
As an example, we’ve had a service that was focused on sending military mail or developing care packages for people who are serving in the military and they wanted our banners to focus on sending mail to APO/FPO (Army Post Offices and Fleet Post Offices for the Navy).
Since our software does allow you to do that, we created a banner for that affiliate and sent it out to them and it just focused on sending mail to APO/FPO. They posted it on their site and they have done really really well with it. It has been a great opportunity for us because we’re getting great leads for people who could really use our service. We gave them the ability to not just put a standard banner on there were people might not understand what it is or it might not communicate the right message. They had the option and ability to put a custom targeted message to their audience and like I said it’s worked really really well for us. So, we’re very happy and interested in doing that for other sites as well.
Charles: That’s a really good point. It’s the exact same product, but by having that APO/FPO on there it eliminates that fine grain friction that may make someone wonder whether or not it’s going to work for them. It just greases the slick to help them to make that decision. That’s a great tip. Nobody understand military shipping by default. Having been in the Marines, the first time I ever saw APO/FPO, I know I didn’t know what that was.
Eric: Yeah, and the USPS is the only authorized carrier to ship an APO or FPO. They are starting to open up some options for FedEx and UPS, but really it’s the USPS the only option currently. It gives you the ability to easily send mail to those who are serving in the military. It’s a great option.
I think on that particular site, they had been part of our affiliate program and they they really didn’t do very well because people didn’t know Stamps.com and they weren’t looking for it. But, then boom they changed the creative, which wasn’t under our suggestion. They came to us and we think we have this great idea and this is what we are trying to show.
So we said that sounds great, let’s make it. I think within 6 hours we had the banner back to them and they were able to post it. I don’t recall how fast it was, but it was pretty quick there after that we started seeing a huge increase in activity. So that made me a believer in making custom banner content and being a lot more agile for our affiliates. So, that worked our for us.
Charles: Yeah, that’s a great story. Well I think we are coming close to the hour mark, so I want to make sure that we have the opportunity to open up the floor to question and see what kind of feedback we get. Christopher are you still on the line with us?
Christopher: Absolutely, I’m happily chatting about bacon moon pies.
Charles: Chatting about bacon moon pies. I knew I could count on you.
Christopher: Absolutely!
Charles: So, do we have anything that we need to address at the moment.
Christopher: Looks like I’ve answered just about everything. We are good to go, but I actually had a question. How does your software work with Quickbooks or something along those lines.
Eric: That’s a great great question because we just released a Quickbooks integration about three or four months ago. Quickbooks is obviously the biggest accounting software out there.
Now for people who are using Quickbooks and have all their data stored in there and want to print invoices. They can now download an add-on or a plugin. They go to our site, click the link, and it loads the add-in into their Quickbooks software. Basically what that does is adds Stamps.com to their file menu to print US postage.
Then they can start printing postage with all their data inside their Quickbooks application without ever leaving Quickbooks. So, it’s a really exciting new feature that we added here recently and I think it’s going to work our really really well for businesses who are using Quickbooks. It’s one more time elimination.
Previous to the integration you had to toggle between Quickbooks and the Stamps.com software. That gave more of an opportunity to make errors and it’s time consuming to have to toggle back and forth.
But, now you’re able to print postage or shipping labels, or even buy postage. Really if you have a Stamps.com account, which you are required to do to print postage with Quickbooks, you never even need to leave Quickbooks or even sign in to Stamps.com, other than the first time you connect your Stamps.com account to the Quickbooks software. Once you do that you never have to log back in to Stamps.com ever again.
Charles: That’s great!
Christopher: Also I had another question that I was curious about. I’ve got tons of regular office supply that I’ve already purchased. I heard you say something about printing off the labels. Are there special labels that I have to buy? Is there anything, I mean, can I go down the street to Staples or Office Depot? Can I get all my stuff there?
Eric: Yeah, for the most part. There are a couple different options. If you’re printing shipping labels, you can pretty much use a huge number of adhesive labels by any of the main brands, such as Avery labels. They are probably one of the biggest ones out there. We support 50 to 100 different shipping labels. You can always just print them on plain paper and tape the label right on to the package.
Also, we support thermal printers. So people how have a thermal printer, we support those as well. In terms or postage, you can print postage right on to an envelope, including window envelopes. A certain type of window envelope we know about, you can put in your printer and print right on them.
If you’re going to print stamps, we have a proprietary stamp called a net stamp. It has some USPS hidden watermarks on that and that’s what allows the USPS to know that it is a valid stamp. You can’t print a postage stamp onto a regular label. It has to be on this unique stamp. But, I do believe they do sell those as well in Office Depot, Staples, and Office Max. I believe Avery sales a generic brand for that.
Of course we also sell it too. But, you can always print postage right on to any envelope, on regular paper, and pretty much almost any shipping label. There are some exceptions, but for the most part any adhesive label.
Charles: Eric, for those special situations, do I have to go to the website to order those or can I order those through the software? How does that work?
Eric: Yeah, that’s one of the things that we give you in your welcome kit when you signup. But we also have a store that is right inside the software, or you can use the web based version of it. You can go there and buy net stamps.
We also offer what’s called a photo net stamp, which gives you the ability to include either a logo or a photo of a product or an item right onto the side of these net stamps.
So, that’s really cool for people. Realtors seems to use them a lot. They put their head on there so that everyone can see their head. Or they will do the house of the month or hot sale, just listed type item.
Some restaurant will do a picture of the month and feature a desert or something like that. Out here in LA where we are based, the movie studios have been using a lot of the photo net stamps to promote a movie coming out. Say Shrek coming out October 10th. They’ll put the date the movie is being released or the stars photo or something like that.
It’s an additional benefit you can do to customize your envelopes or mailing going out. It gives you the ability to kind of stand out in the mail.
Charles: Yeah, anything that helps you to stand out is a good thing.
Eric: Absolutely! No only that, our software allows you to print a message on a shipping label. So you could put something simple like a thank you, or it could include a promotional message like an end of season sale, or back to school sale coming soon.
Most people put in their website or have a special offer address. It gives you all kinds of cool customization of the label.
Also, if you’re printing on a regular shipping label, you can import your company label on that too. So, your logo would be on the shipping label. And that’s either on a regular piece of paper or on an adhesive label.
Charles: So what I hear is that not only does this thing save you time, save you money, and makes life easier, but it also opens up some opportunities that might not have been there before as far as being able to do additional promotions or customize and make yourself stand out from everybody else. That’s fantastic because we all need a little bit of edge, whatever edge we can get.
Eric: Absolutely. It gives you an extra communication means, basically. If you’re shipping lots of packages everyday, why not put some type of message on there alerting your customers to more opportunities.
Charles: Well good deal. Man, I feel like this has been an hour packed full of good information. I appreciate you Eric, spending the time with us educating us on this whole thing. I know I’ve certainly learned a lot and I hope that everyone who’s on the call has learned at least on thing new that they didn’t know before.
I’m not sure if you noticed before but I have a link on the screen to the offer you mentioned before where people will get the free scale and free postage. You can check out everything Eric’s been talking about and get a sense of how the service can work for you and help improve your business.
Eric, I want to thank you again for spending the time with us and I want to let everyone know that if they have questions about this after the webinar, they can always hit us up on Twitter.
They can also join the Facebook fan page to continue the conversation over there.
As always, you can post questions in the Member’s forums. Everyone gets the benefit of seeing the question and then maybe someone can jump in and provide the answer if they know it and then everyone gets the benefit of the final answer. It’s a great resource. If you haven’t used it yet, be sure to log into Open Source Marketer and post your questions in the Member’s forums.
Thank you Eric. I just want to remind everyone that Eric is the Director of Online Marketing for Stamps.com and he has spent the last hour with us just filling our heads full of information and letting us know how we can improve our businesses so we can do a better job of making money.
So, Eric thank you very much.
Eric: Sounds good Charles. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed talking about the affiliate marketing. It’s always fun to talk about marketing, internet marketing. Thanks for having us.
Charles: Yes, there are lots of great opportunities out there and I definitely think that Stamps.com is one of them, so thanks for sharing that with us.
Eric: Alright, thanks so much Charles.
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