Save on Shipping and Returns With a Multi-Carrier Strategy

Shipping and returns play an important role in the consumer experience, so it’s worth investing in fast, reliable delivery. But everything has a price, and shipping costs can be steep. If you simply pass high costs on to customers, you might lose sales—but if you don’t, it could impact your profitability.

Enter multi-carrier shipping, a game-changer for ecommerce businesses looking to save big, streamline operations, and maintain high customer satisfaction. Let’s dive into how a multi-carrier strategy (and software) will transform your shipping game.

What is multi-carrier shipping? 

Multi-carrier shipping involves using a variety of national and regional shipping carriers to send packages instead of relying on a single carrier. 

For example, rather than sending every shipment with UPS, a seller might use UPS for heavy packages, USPS for lightweight ones, and a handful of regional carriers for next-day and two-day deliveries. 

Adopting a multi-carrier strategy provides much-needed flexibility to businesses, allowing them to choose the most affordable shipping rates, offer multiple delivery options to customers, and overcome carrier capacity limitations. Many organizations use a shipping API like EasyPost to automatically integrate with carriers and select the best shipping method for each package.

If you’re on the fence about a multi-carrier strategy, read on to learn more about the benefits.

How does multi-carrier shipping save money?

Multi-carrier shipping saves money by automating manual processes, providing access to competitive rates, minimizing the effect of disruptions, and paving the way for a better delivery experience.

Automate shipping and returns

A multi-carrier strategy goes hand in hand with multi-carrier shipping software. And that software does a whole lot more than letting your business integrate with multiple carriers—it also automates shipping, which has several money-saving benefits. 

First, automating shipping saves time and reduces manual labor costs. Without a modern, flexible solution, it can take warehouse workers several minutes to generate a shipping label for a single order. With shipping software, they can create and print labels in seconds. Once you’ve reduced the time and labor needed to create labels, you can allocate resources elsewhere, improving overall efficiency and productivity in fulfillment centers

Second, automation helps eliminate costly errors. With features like address verification, the system can ensure that all addresses are real places, resulting in fewer lost or misdelivered packages. 

In addition to improving outbound shipping, automation streamlines the reverse logistics process. Once you’ve approved a customer’s return request, your shipping solution will identify the best return shipping option and create a carrier-compliant label, which you can then send to the customer via email. 

Find the best shipping rates

Every carrier has different rates, surcharges, services, and specializations. Because of this, the cost of shipping, say, a five-pound package via ground could vary significantly from one carrier to another. 

The long and short of it? If you only use a single carrier to ship, you don’t know if you’re getting a good deal. Even high-volume shippers, who have the leverage to negotiate rates, might be missing out on even better discounts if they don’t explore multiple carriers.

On the other hand, when you leverage multiple carriers, you can compare pricing based on shipment weight, origin, destination, and delivery speed to find the most cost-effective options. (Don’t worry—your shipping software can do this comparison for you.)

Shipping software takes the cost savings even further, giving you access to pre-negotiated rates that are much lower than retail or commercial pricing. 

Avoid costly disruptions

Anything that slows your shipping down has a negative financial impact on your business, and that includes carrier disruptions. 

Relying on a single carrier leaves you vulnerable to major issues like bad weather or labor strikes, as well as smaller inconveniences like price hikes or unreliable service. Many organizations recognize this, with nearly 70% of retail leaders saying that relying on a single delivery partner poses a high risk.

The key to overcoming this challenge? Have a backup plan. By incorporating multiple carriers into your shipping strategy, you can mitigate the risk of disruptions, ensuring continuous operations and happier customers. If one carrier is affected by delays or experiences capacity constraints, it’s easy to temporarily move volume to another partner. 

Regional carriers are also your friends here. They’re less liable to experience disruptions than national carriers, meaning that you can count on them to keep your packages moving.

Compare carrier performance and improve the shipping and returns experience

Your shipping offerings have a major impact on shoppers’ buying decisions, and the delivery experience affects customer retention. To gain and retain loyal customers, you need to focus on the three shipping factors they care about most: price (63%), speed (39%), and convenience (27%).

While you may not operate your own delivery fleet, you can shape the delivery experience by choosing carriers that perform according to your expectations (and have a price tag that aligns with customer expectations).

With multi-carrier shipping software, plus a shipping AI like Luma, you can easily compare shipping performance among carriers to choose reliable partners and address recurring issues. Answer questions such as the following: 

• What percentage of your packages are being delivered on time? 
• Are customers receiving packages on time and damage-free?
• How easy is it to contact carriers for issue resolution? 

Efficient and reliable shipping reduces the chances of lost or delayed packages, cutting down on reshipments and customer service efforts. Similarly, a streamlined returns process encourages repeat business by boosting customer trust and satisfaction.