Minimizing Returns - Slide Deck in Full
Introduction:
Slide Action: Enter your client's Shopify or subsequent platform to find out their own return rate.
Talk Track:
Knowing consumers are still taking caution with spending in 2023, we felt it was important to do a general gut check on the health of our return rate. What we found was that our return rate is currently sitting at a ___%.
[Option 1 - return rate high] This is higher than the expected percentage of returns compared to total sales within the e-commerce retail category, but keep in mind that many other types of retail may be skewing this data (outside of our industry). Nevertheless, we feel it's important to take the time to strategize ways we can reduce that return rate and retain more revenue in your pockets this year.
[Option 2 - return rate low] We're pleased to see [brand] is below the overall expected return rate for retail e-commerce, but there are still some areas we see us being able to improve to retain more of our revenue.
Return Bracketing Education
Slide Action: none (unless you see fit to customize).
Talk Track:
Returns can feel pretty difficult to shrink, especially when it comes to the Fashion industry. Our consumers have completely different bodies and tastes on how their clothes should fit leading to an average of 45% of returns across the industry being initiated due to the item being wrong to their preference once arrived. In recent years, to combat the rise of e-commerce and shrinking ability to try new brands in stores, younger generations have pushed more heavily toward purchasing multiples of the same item or additional items with the intention of returning them.
Ways to Reduce Bracketing / Sizing Returns
Slide Action: IF the client is already applying these strategies, remove the slide or offer specific improvement opportunities. Remove if the client is not in the fashion industry.
Talk Track:
One of the easiest ways that we can start to minimize this from happening with our audience is to carefully detail our PDPs. Offering imagery that highlights the piece on different body shapes can make it easier for a consumer to envision themselves in the product. We can do this by collecting UGC when possible or adding another model to our lineup during product shoots.
To give our users more trust in our sizing from trusted sources (their peers), we should implement a fits small, true to size, or large opinion bar to all our review questions. Social proof can be much stronger in the eyes of our consumers and help them feel confident in their sizing decision.
Slide Action: IF the client is already applying these strategies, remove slide or offer specific improvement opportunities. Remove if the client is not in the fashion industry.
Talk Track:
Another effective route we can take is implementing a size finder plug-in like Fit Finder or Fit Predictor. We recommend one of these two tools because as you can see with Fit Finder on the right, this addition offers specific questions about their body type to recommend a size, making a user feel like more bases have been covered in the decision-making process than rather than the typical 3 standard measurements. This tool in particular also offers a buyer notification when selecting multiples of a product to help deter bracketing.
Fit predictor is another well-received option and offers the simplicity of the user choosing a brand they already know and love to compare your sizing to.
Is implementing a plug-in like this something you foresee your dev team being able to accomplish to help the buyer experience?
Slide Action: IF the client is already applying these strategies, remove slide or offer specific improvement opportunities. Remove if client is not in the fashion or beauty industry.
Talk Track:
Moving over to our last piece of advice regarding bracketing/sizing specific returns, interactive shopping experiences are making waves and are here to stay. With 73% of adults saying AR was able to help them with a purchase decision, this is a huge area of opportunity for [brand] to consider. Whether we look at social app filters or an on-site experience, this can make it much simpler for our consumers to picture themselves with our product and what style works best for them.
Ways to Reduce Returns Overall
Slide Action: IF the client is already applying these strategies, remove which ones or offer specific improvement opportunities. Alter text if the client is not in the fashion industry.
Talk Track:
Our key ways to reduce returns overall come down to 4 strategies here. The first is to solicit feedback and genuinely listen to our audience, whether it's through requesting reviews or more details during returns. We also want to reevaluate any offers that may be incentivizing the purchase of additional items that could just lead to returns [if possible, relate to the client here with an example of a recent promotion].
Another great area to channel some energy into is optimizing our post-purchase email and SMS sequences...
[Option 1 - not managing email automation] - I'd love to have our team take a look under the hood of our current sequence strategy and see where we may be able to give our buyer more confidence in their latest purchase. Would your team be open to this?
[Option 2 - managing email] - Our team is actively reviewing our current sequence strategy for any areas we can refresh for better performance.
Lastly, we can improve our customer experience across the board by finding more ways to make our customer feel apart of our community and offering excellent and quick customer service options.
The High Value of a Great Returns Policy
Slide Action: IF the client is already applying these strategies, remove which ones or offer specific improvement opportunities. Alter text if client is not in Fashion industry.
Talk Track:
Of course, we know there's a rare-to-none chance that we eliminate returns completely so before we wrap up today we'd love to cover some ways to optimize our return policy to avoid deterring new or past customers from purchasing with us. I'm sure for all of us on this call these factors on the chart here have mattered to us too in a purchase.
Happy Returns and eMarketer have found that it is abundantly clear consumers are expecting free returns and will even abandon their cart after reading a returns policy they don't agree with. The best we can do is to provide a positive and easy experience from our customer service all the way to the mailbox of their choosing to ensure we don't lose them as a long-term customer.
Talk Track:
Partners like Loop, a returns management tool, can take the guesswork out of building the perfect returns policy for you! Their platform is optimized to promote exchanges over returns while collecting feedback about your products. It also makes the experience easy and seamless for your customer. Our client, Aviator Nation, saw amazing success with an 11% decrease in refunds and over half of return revenue retained.
**If client is interested, please contact Alex Bauer.