Mailing Boxes and the Unboxing Experience
In this age of online shopping, click-and-collects, and delivered convenience, boxes are increasingly a part of the retail experience. Mailing boxes have so many uses and are a great tool for building e-commerce and retail businesses. As such, at Koch & Co., we have expanded our mailing box range. Read below for some tips and tricks for using our flatpack mailing boxes to help enhance your customers’ unboxing experience.
What is the difference between a mailing box and a regular gift box?
Koch & Co. Mailing boxes are cardboard flatpack boxes. They are designed to be quick to assemble and sturdy enough to tolerate the rough and tumble of transit. In this booming time for e-commerce, more options for colours, shapes, and sizes are constantly emerging in the market. Other boxes, such as hat boxes or hamper boxes, are more for display & style purposes only. They also need to be protected by an outer layer if they’re to be sent in transit.
What is the importance of a Mailing Box?
For many businesses, the mailing box is not only the outer packaging for transit, it is the packaging. In such cases, a generic mailing box may not be up to the job of communicating the all-important job of business branding. As the first physical thing seen and felt by a customer, a mailing box is part of the vital initial impression given of your brand and product. For today’s customer, who may never enter your shop front (if you have one), the mailing box you choose can say any number of things about your brand’s ‘vibe’ and values. Below, we’ll explain how the ‘unboxing experience’ is a key factor influencing how your customer gauges your product and brand quality. This in turn, helps determine their likelihood to become repeat customers.
Protecting your goods
In any packaging for shipping, there will nearly always be some wiggle room in which your product may bounce and rattle. To prevent damage to products, there are any number of packaging solutions. From packing peanuts to air pillows, there is a long history of utilitarian void fill. For an aesthetically pleasing way to protect your goods, check out our Koch & Co. shred, wood wool, tissue paper, honeycomb wrap, and kraft paper in a range of colours. With so many sustainable and attractive options for packing your products, you have options to consider what kind of a statement you want to make about your brand and your ethos via the unboxing experience of your mailing boxes.
What factors impact your brand’s ‘unboxing’ experience?
Aesthetic:
Factors like colour give an immediate impression of your brand. From sleek black to environmentally conscious kraft brown, colour selection says a lot. At Koch & Co., we have boosted our colour range to cater to your brand’s message.
Branding is another key factor. If your customer opens up a package to see custom-printed tape, tissue wrap, and/or stickers with your logo on them, they’re more likely to remember your brand. This kind of packaging also works to boost your brand and product’s ‘premium’ impression. Writing or drawing a note directly onto the interior lid of the box, or applying stamps or stickers is easy on our matte cardboard materials. A personal touch like a note can go a long way in making a customer or recipient feel valued and ‘seen’ in an ever-expanding and oversaturated market.
Feel:
A sturdy box can go a long way in instilling confidence a brand cares about their product and service. A flimsy box of a lower gsm (a.k.a. ‘grams per square metre’, or substance weight of paper and card) might be suitable for a shopfront packaging solution. However, receiving a dented or torn box from a courier doesn’t necessarily instil a sense of ‘quality’ or ‘care’. A poor-quality mailing box can give an impression that the product itself is of poor quality. Finding a broken or damaged product inside leads to a disappointing unboxing experience, probably followed by a tedious returns process.
Here we see how poorly planned boxing can lead to inconvenience for the customer. This, in turn, leads to profit loss for the business owner. Koch & Co. mailing boxes are designed to withstand the bumps and rough handling often inherent in the delivery of goods. This helps your goods to arrive at their destination looking presentable and in good condition.
Size and shape:
The suitability of a box for the size and shape of a product is important for positive branding. It is also important for the protection of your product during transit. When a box fits snugly around your product, your product better insulated against rattling bumps. This also enhances unboxing, because it also invokes a more custom-fit, premium feel. However, if your product is swimming inside a big box, this could be detrimental to both your branding and profit margins. An ill-fitting box comes at the cost of the user experience. It conveys more of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to packaging, and also usually involves over-packaging (to insulate the product). This mode of packaging is more wasteful, more work for the customer to dispose of, and less sustainable for the environment.
Also, it’s hard not to be disappointed by receiving a big box and finding a tiny (and possibly damaged) product inside. To help prevent costly breakages and to make it easier to find the right fit for your product, Koch & Co. has expanded their specialised box shapes and sizes from A5 to A3, wine bottle sizes, and beyond.
Ease of disposal/re-use
Sturdy and aesthetically appealing enough to reuse, a good mailing box can be re-purposed in the home. This creates a long-term advertisement of your brand and imprints it more heavily in the mind of the customer.
It can be difficult to know how to responsibly dispose of a box that is made of mixed materials. Koch & Co. cardboard mailing boxes are recyclable, which makes for a simple and guilt-free disposal process for your customer.
As a vessel that carries not only your product but also your brand, a mailing box can be so much more than a humble cardboard box. For mail boxing options in a broad range of colours and sizes, see our offerings online or visit us in-store at our Auburn Superstore. For more useful information on packaging, read our other Koch Guide to Wood Wool & Shred Buying or Fancy Gift Wrapping Ideas
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