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Plain or branded packaging – what’s the right choice for your business?

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Branded packaging

You’ve created a great product, you’ve got a platform to sell it on, now you need to figure out the best way of getting it to your customers.

The packaging you choose may not feel like the biggest business decision you’ll make, but you can’t underestimate its role in your customer experience. For ecommerce businesses, packaging is likely your customers’ first physical interaction with your brand – it’s on you to make sure it’s a good one. Getting it wrong often leads to disappointed customers who are now less likely to order again; getting it right can leave a lasting impression on your customers and empower your brand with another way to introduce itself to new ones.

Today, there are so many packaging decisions that businesses can make; a fundamental one is whether to go with plain or branded mailers. But is there a right option? Here we explore the pros and cons and see what the research says.

Cost vs ROI
The first big hurdle our customers come to when deciding between plain and branded packaging is cost. Long story short, plain mailers are cheaper; they directly lead to an improved profit per order. But this should be seen as a short-term gain. 

Bespoke, branded packaging is an investment. It’s an opportunity to take a quite literally plain feature of your customer experience and transform it into something that’s unique to your brand, a memorable touchpoint, and a potential point of difference.

As well as being a tool to visualise your brand, your packaging can also say a lot to your customers about your business and its priorities. Branded packaging adds a layer of quality and thoughtfulness to orders that customers appreciate – they can see that you’ve gone the extra mile and invested where your competitors may not be. If you’re selling a premium product, it goes without saying how valuable it is for your customers to feel this way – you want the quality of the packaging to reflect the quality of the product inside.

With 61% of people saying that branded packaging makes them more excited about receiving a product, the boost it can bring to your customer retention is firmly rooted in data. As is its impact on customer acquisition: half of people say that branded packaging makes them more likely to recommend a brand to their friends.

If the debate comes down to cost vs return on investment, the added value branded packaging brings far outweighs the relatively small extra cost you’ll spend on it.

An opportunity to turn customers into ambassadors 
In a world connected by social media, everyone has a voice – including your customers. They have the potential to hugely influence your brand’s reputation and sway their friends, family and followers into making a purchase from you. The businesses that find themselves benefitting from this don’t just have customers, they have customers who are ambassadors for their brand.

Unfortunately, transforming your customers into brand ambassadors isn’t something that can be achieved overnight. It’s the result of consistently providing value to your customers at every opportunity – not just with a good product. This requires analysing your entire customer experience to find the room for improvement and investing to make marginal gains – including your packaging.

40% of consumers say that they would share an image of packaging on social media if it was branded or in any way unique. Branded packaging presents a huge opportunity to broaden your brand’s online reach, and even become a genuine supplement to your marketing.

A must for any business
It’s so important for brands to understand that their customer experience doesn’t begin when the customer first uses your product: it begins when the customer first realises a need for it.

Bespoke, branded packaging is a must for any business that cares about bringing value to every touchpoint in their customer experience.

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