Episode Summary
In episode 9 of the 7 Figures and Beyond ecommerce marketing podcast, Greg Shuey hosts Ross Brenner from Profit Trust to discuss the significant yet often overlooked opportunity for e-commerce brands to reclaim hundreds to thousands of dollars per month in unclaimed shipping refunds from FedEx and UPS. Ross explains that these refunds arise from a variety of charges including dimensional adjustments, rated weight inaccuracies, late deliveries, fuel surcharges, etc. To claim these refunds, a detailed process involving filing claims and following up is necessary. Brenner shares his journey into developing a technology platform that automates this process, saving brands significant money by automatically identifying and filing for refunds on their behalf. This conversation also touches upon the importance of shipping cost optimization, the impact of carrier selection on costs, and strategies brands can implement to save on shipping while enhancing customer experience.
Key Takeaways
- Unclaimed Shipping Refunds: Many e-commerce businesses miss out on reclaiming substantial amounts from FedEx and UPS due to unclaimed shipping refunds, which can be for various reasons like late deliveries or incorrect charges.
- Automated Refund Claiming Technology: Profit Trust has developed a platform that automates the process of identifying potential refunds and filing claims, significantly reducing the manual effort and ensuring businesses reclaim what they’re owed.
- Importance of Carrier Selection and Shipping Optimization: Choosing the right carrier and understanding the nuances of shipping options can lead to significant cost savings. Ross emphasizes the importance of analyzing shipping zones, service levels, and the potential for ground shipping to fulfill needs at a lower cost.
- Business Growth and Cost Savings: The savings from reclaimed shipping costs are often reinvested into the business, particularly in marketing, operations, or sales, to further fuel growth and increase visibility in a competitive market.
- Continuous Review and Negotiation: Regularly reviewing shipping agreements and negotiating based on volume and service needs is crucial. Profit Trust’s platform also offers insights into whether a brand’s shipping rates are market-appropriate, potentially leading to further savings.
Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Ross Brenner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ross-brenner-a0899249/
Profit Trust: https://profittrust.com/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey: 0:28
All right, hey, everyone, welcome to episode 9 of the 7 Figures and Beyond podcast. As I mentioned yesterday, we’re recording these on back-to-back days, which we have never done before, so boo-yah to that. I’m pretty excited about our conversation today. As I mentioned yesterday, we’re not talking about marketing at all. Well, maybe a little bit. Today, our guest is Ross Brenner from Profit Trust, and we are going to talk about how to reduce your FedEx and UPS expenses by capturing unclaimed shipping refunds. You’re probably thinking what the heck right? This is the reason that I invited him to join today is because it’s likely that you’re missing out on hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per month in unclaimed shipping refunds. You might not know what those are. I mean, I hadn’t until Ross cold-outreached me on LinkedIn. We had a phone call and I’m like, wow, this is huge. This is a really big opportunity for e-commerce brands. You can take these refunds and invest them right back into your business. A lot of businesses do that and they invest it right back into their marketing to fuel their growth. That is why we’re talking about this today, because you need to get on this right now. If you haven’t heard of it, I want you to reach out to Ross right now. Before we dive in Ross, would you please take a few minutes to introduce yourself to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you got to where you are today?
Ross Brenner: 2:08
Yeah, yeah, glad to be here and thanks, greg. That’s a great intro and I think you hit the nail right on the head. We’ll talk a little bit more about that, but let me tell you first and foremost, let me just clarify what I think you mean by unclaimed shipping refunds. Then I’ll tell you how we got here and why we’re here and why we built the technology that we have, because it’s helping thousands of brands literally save millions of dollars every single year. An unclaimed shipping refund isn’t necessarily unclaimed. What it means is that it’s a refund that’s owed to you and, whether the carrier decides to give it back to you or not, for a dimensional adjustment, a rated weight and accuracy, a late delivery, a fuel surcharge, and the list goes on and on. They are not offering that up. You have to almost raise your hand, file the claim, ask them for your money back, follow up to make sure you got it, validate where that credit is going, and so on and so forth. So there’s a process to it. The way we got into this is we were in the infomercial space for years, offering numerous different products and shipping them out. We found that oftentimes dealing with the carriers like FedEx, like UPS, a little bit of DHL for international. These packages were getting delayed, we were getting charged with all sorts of SS oil fees, fuel surcharges, you name it and we said there has to be a better way to get our money back from these carriers rather than manually filing for all these claims. So we developed a technology, along with our coders, to figure out a way to do that, and it’s all done through the platform. And so what the platform does in a nutshell is it automatically identifies when a package has a surcharge, an assessorial fee, packages delivered late sometimes more than 60 seconds on an express service and it’ll automatically file for these refunds on behalf of our clients, saving them the shipping costs, any sort of additional fee that comes with it. It gets the money automatically put back into their account, so they don’t have to take any manual effort to do all this which, by the way it’s not, can take up to an hour to two just to file one single claim, especially if you’re doing with the damage package, oh gosh. So we kind of alleviate our clients needs to do this and we really allow them to be more autonomous on Focusing on the business and not so much on the shipping side and getting their money back and it’s a time suck. And if you think about I Always use this analogy there’s I don’t know if you, if you’re familiar with easy pass, right, you know easy pass or Sun pass, depending on where you’re located, the system when you go through the toll booth, how there used to be. Right, there used to be a guy who used to collect your money or your change and he used to drop it in and the toll goes up and you can pass through when you could do a hundred or two hundred cars an hour. Right, that’s the manual way of filing claims and that’s how a lot of companies are doing it today because they don’t know what technology like this exists. We are the easy pass or the Sun pass or whatever System you have in your state or country to just zoom right through. It scans and you go, and now that toll booth Collector doesn’t need to exist and that bridge can collect thousands of Fees every single hour, every single minute, depending on how many cars are going through without stopping. So I use that analogy just to let people know there’s ways to automate certain things. This is a tool that’s going to automate the entire claims process, from identifying to filing to getting the money back, and then, as an organization, we just share in what we save our clients. So there’s really no upfront costs or downside for them, and that’s in a nutshell. That’s really how it works.
Greg Shuey: 6:15
That’s awesome. Like I said, I had never heard of this before. My clients don’t ever talk about it. They never talk about those kind of pain points. I mean, a lot of them are probably running on, you know, shopify when, when they’re printing labels directly from Shopify and so maybe they don’t even know that this is an option. I mean, I print my labels directly from Shopify with my e-commerce brand and again, I had no no idea. Which kind of leads me into my next question is like why? Why is this a thing that no one is really talking about? You’re the only person I’ve ever seen talk about this thing, so why? Yeah, it’s a good question.
Ross Brenner: 6:55
I think it all goes back to education. And when I speak to a client or a shipper, most of the time they don’t know that this technology exists, because unless you’re actively looking for it or searching for it, it’s not just available, it’s not just in your face. So when I speak to brands or referral partners, it goes back to the education what does the technology do? What is its purpose, how does it work? And once someone sees that Something goes off in their mind to say, hey, I could save a lot of time, I could save a lot of money, I can use that money to put it back into my business, whether it’s the marketing side, or alleviating and I hate to say this but taking away this responsibility from somebody and, you know, allowing them to allocate their, their services to a different part of the business, or even getting rid of them if they don’t need them. But it’s just not something that’s just out there. You really have to kind of be in the know about it. Or Maybe you worked at a company that had this type of service in the past and now you’re bringing over to your new company because you’ve had that experience. But it’s just not something that’s out in the open. It’s just not something that’s out in the open. It’s just not being talked about, aside from, obviously, what we’re talking about today, and you know some of the content that I put out on LinkedIn.
Greg Shuey: 8:11
Yeah, for sure. So, before we hop into my next question, I I would like with you to share with our listeners what are the requirements like? When we talk to you like, yeah, you can’t be running through Shopify shipping right, it’s like so what are some of those requirements that someone could say, okay, I meet those. Or, holy crap, I need to meet those and know what action to take.
Ross Brenner: 8:36
Yeah, that’s a great question, because when I speak to my Prospects all the time and they’ll tell me about their shipping processes or their accounts, in my head I’m actually qualifying them right. Do they meet these requirements in order to? In order for us? to help them in order for them to work with us. So two things one, do you ship with FedEx, ups or DHL? And two, do you have a direct account with FedEx, ups or DHL, whereas you have a login right UPS, comm username and password? Because the way that we sync up to our clients accounts it’s through that username and password which governs all of their accounts, which governs all of their shipments, and in doing so, we put that set of credentials onto our platform which, by the way, is a web-based platform and it’s no IT integration 30 seconds and you’re automatically on. But those are the two requirements, and the reason we need that username and password is because when we get refunds back for our clients, we want them to see the benefit. We need those credits to go back to their account. So I know that you and I had a conversation in the past about, you know, shopify shipping and if they’re using a Shopify account. The problem is is if I get that Shopify account refund that’s going to Shopify, shopify’s keeping it. They’re not getting the benefit they’re probably doing and they are most likely doing this with the size and technology that they employ. So the answer is simple FedEx, ups, dhl, shipper do you have a direct account? And you know we really don’t have any minimums or maximums. But the clients that are spending around ten thousand dollars a month plus those are the ones that see the biggest benefits because they can tend to save anywhere from you know typically up to eight to fifteen percent a month in refunds alone, without doing anything. You know our technology does all the work and, by the way, if they spend more than twenty five thousand a month, there’s something called a rate optimization piece where we can actually tell a brand are your rates market, appropriate For what you’re actually spending? Is that thirty five dollar package that you just paid for, should that actually cost you thirty five or should it cost you twenty nine? And we can run that analysis across the market and let them know Are your rates in line with where they should be or are there additional discounts out there that you should be taking advantage of that you may not have during your last rate negotiation, and We’ll give you that data. We’ll point you in the right direction. We’ll help you with that renegotiation. So there’s a lot of savings to be had on the shipping side. I just saved one of my clients one point three million dollars last year. It’s a very well-known Fashion brand, but what they did with that money is they actually hired a new marketing team To outsource all of their Google and Instagram ads. It was a third party. They Reallocated the duty of their shipping manager to do something different, so they didn’t have to spend time Auditing their rate agreement, filing for claims, doing all the work that we can do for them, and then they grew their business. They just put it back into the business and they just up their revenues by an extra 8% this year.
Greg Shuey: 12:01
That’s so great and like it was money that was already gone. It’s not like they’re having to scrape together more money to build this marketing team. It was, it was already spent, but now it’s coming back right back into the business. Exactly, exactly, cool, all right. So why don’t you share with us kind of what you’re seeing across the shipping gen or the shipping industry in general, like what are some of the trends you’re seeing, things that our listeners just need to be aware of as we navigate 2024?
Ross Brenner: 12:31
So I think everybody’s out there offering or wanting to offer free shipping. Now, right, but they don’t actually know the metrics behind. What does that actually cost them and how does that factor into their margin? Right, nobody wants to pay for shipping if you’re on the consumer side and if you can offer it on the merchant side, well, that’s an added benefit. So everybody’s trying to play that game, so to speak. But I find that a lot of companies aren’t actually Factoring in the variables that go into what that means to offer free shipping. So it’s something that we help our clients with. It’s just a data piece, giving them the data to better understand. Well, how much are you actually spending on shipping, with all of the fees and assasorials tacked on? What can you actually afford To charge the client or not charge the client, based on that dollar amount spent? And that’s why you see all these companies now saying if you spend a hundred dollars, you get free shipping, spend five hundred dollars, you get free shipping. So you have to really understand when can you offer free shipping, how does that impact the business and how many shipments are you actually offer free shipping for? And what is that costing you? Because of course, there is a cost there, depending on what carrier could be more or less. To just really understand your numbers, understand the margins behind what you’re doing and how you’re doing it?
Greg Shuey: 13:55
Yeah for sure. I think a lot of newer brands you know, brands that are sub one million and just trying to get some traction right come into this and they’re like yep, okay, I need to offer free shipping. Amazon offers free two-day shipping. My competitors offer free shipping, oh yeah. And I need to offer a 10 to 15 percent discount on my pop-up to be able to get these people to make a first purchase. And by the time you’re done with your discount and your shipping, there’s no margin left or potentially you’re upside down, especially if you’re using paid ads to be able to acquire those customers. It can turn messy in a hurry. It really can.
Ross Brenner: 14:40
It can turn into a giant mess, I mean listen, the paid ads are Gold right, because you’re getting in front of a, an audience that you may not have gotten in front of before the algorithms that Google and Instagram and Facebook now that that what they can produce, it really is game-changing. So you’re already paying for that. Why discount your services or your product or your shipping if it doesn’t necessarily need to be discount? Or Make the threshold higher for what you’re going to Allow for free shipping and get them to get up to that spend so that it really be makes sense. Right, it all has to make sense for the business, so that’s what I typically tell my brains when they’re looking at these types of things.
Greg Shuey: 15:28
Yeah, we do a lot of threshold testing with our clients. It’s like if we, if we inch this up five dollars, what does it do to conversion rates? Right, if we inch it up another five dollars, what is it? Oh, you know, conversion rates dropped. Okay, we need to bring it back down, and that’s kind of our sweet spot. And so we’re looking at conversion rates coupled with, like, what is the true cost of that, so that again we can get as profitable as we can. And I think another thing that most brands don’t think about is like they just Sometimes assume that lifetime value is guaranteed as well. Right, they’re gonna come back and make a purchase. So, yeah, it’s okay if I lose money on my first order, but For a lot of brands, lifetime value is not guaranteed whatsoever. Right, like you have to work insanely hard to get profitable on that first order because you don’t know if they’re coming back.
Ross Brenner: 16:19
Yeah, nothing in life is guaranteed, to be honest, and so that’s why the client experience when you make, when they make that first purchase and when you send out that first shipment, is Everything right. It’s not just about how quickly can I get that product there, but how does the packaging look? You know how was the order delivered? Was it delivered in a timely fashion? You know how happy is the customer with what they just purchased and are they gonna buy again, and you and I both know how difficult it can be for some brands to just get that reorder, and so a lot of these metrics play a big factor, and that’s why what you’re doing to help these brands is so important, because that second order or that third order is much more difficult than that first order. Someone’s always willing to test something out, and if the experience isn’t there, if they’re not happy with the product for whatever reason, you may never see them again.
Greg Shuey: 17:17
Especially right now, when money’s tight for Americans yeah like the economy is weird, like inflation sucks and like they’re they’re bargain shopping, right, and if you don’t have another discount for the next one, they’re going to go somewhere else and they’re going to find a similar product and take that discount. They’re not loyal anymore and so, yeah, I love that. What else I mean? Is there anything else you’re seeing in relation to trends?
Ross Brenner: 17:45
Well, I think another trend that I’m seeing is, you know, aside from which shipping carrier these companies are using, based on what they’re doing right? Maybe FedEx has more planes and UPS has more trucks. Trying to figure that out, maybe implementing a final mile or a first mile service to get that product there a little bit cheaper. But I think everything it always trickles back to cost savings. And how can I keep the experience the same and spend as little as possible to maximize what I’m doing and that’s what still relates back to free shipping without hurting, you know, expectations or customer service, and keeping the value of the brand where it needs to be, because the more companies that enter a market and it becomes more and more saturated, it becomes harder and harder to sell. How can you really separate yourself? It comes down to the customer experience. It comes down to the deliverabilities, it comes down to how good is the product that you’re actually selling and is someone going to repurchase and how can we get them to repurchase right? So even the marketing. You know I see a lot of companies these days putting a lot of money into marketing, and it’s funny when I go on my Instagram myself and I click on a gene brand. You know I need a new pair of jeans. All of a sudden, 15 different ads pop up for gene brands, and now I’ve got all these different brands to choose from. So what separates one from the other? Right, and that’s always the what’s going to stick out, is always going to be in my mind. You know who I essentially go with. Whose ad looks the nicest? What relates back to me? What can I connect with? So that’s what I’m saying.
Greg Shuey: 19:35
Out of curiosity. I mean, what is the data show Like who, what? What is the most popular carrier? Is that UPS? Is it the postal service?
Ross Brenner: 19:44
Well, as everybody saw, dating back to the end of last year, there was a looming strike with UPS, right and the teamsters. They couldn’t figure out the deal and what was going to happen, and you saw a large shift of volume from UPS over to FedEx because there was uncertainty. So for a long time, months and months, and still maybe, fedex was the big boy in the room, you know, and a lot of companies were moving their volume to FedEx just in case what might be what’s going to happen. Now you see UPS making a big push, big push with their pricing. They’re being more flexible, they’re being more aggressive and they’re wanting to win that business back and they’re getting it, but at what cost? Right, everything goes back to at what cost. So we’re seeing a lot of flexibility when we see our UPS shippers wanting to renegotiate or get some feedback from UPS and they’re adhering to our request. So I think that FedEx and UPS are always going to be the biggest and then you’ll see some, you know, middle-mile, final mile, first mile carriers work in there. You’ve got your DHL and you know, for the lighter weight stuff, you’re always gonna have your USPS and now DHL Ecom is making a big push and they’re doing a great job. Yeah, interesting is that for like a lighter weight, typically yeah, typically two pounds and less is what we see. Dhl is DHL, ecom, in particular. It’s a fairly new product that they’re offering, I’d say, within the last couple years. Yeah, and they’re making a big push to take the business away from USPS or UPS mail innovations, that lighter weight, small stuff, bring it on to their platform and try to try to win that business through their pricing, through their service model and they’re and they’re doing a good job. But I always think and I always see FedEx and UPS are gonna sit at the top and then you’re gonna see, depending on how you ship, what you ship, how light or heavy or box, or the size of dimensions in the box, that’s gonna play a factor in who you ultimately decide to ship with.
Greg Shuey: 21:58
Gotcha, okay, cool, all right. So next question what are some of the things regarding shipping that brands can do to save money, and we’ve talked about a couple of them. What else? What else can they be thinking about?
Ross Brenner: 22:10
Well, I think they really need to dig down to Understand what zone they’re shipping to. Can that service that they’re choosing whether they’re doing an express two day or an overnight to a zone one or zone two Can they actually put that on a ground truck and get it there in the same amount of time and pay half the price? So you have to really dig down into the numbers and into the geographic location on where you’re shipping to best understand what service type should I be using? And I’ll give you an example. We have a client that ships from the Hamptons to New York City. It was samples sample and they needed it to be there next day or Sometimes two days, but usually next day. We ran the numbers and we figured out that they could actually get that same sample on a ground truck and had it to be delivered in the same amount of time and Instead of spending the $32.95 for an overnight shipment, they’re able to spend $14 or $12 to get it there in the same amount of time. So it doesn’t always mean overnight is overnight because it is, but what it means is what service level should you be using to get it there in that overnight period, depending on where you’re shipping from, where you’re delivering to and who’s really looking at that is your shipping team looking at that, or using some rate shopping tool that’s just gonna tell you here’s how much overnight costs? And let’s select that option because it’s a default, you know, characteristic, baked into your Website or your platform. So that’s, that’s one of the biggest things I’m seeing. It’s the analysis of zone coverage, service levels and how are you actually choosing those service levels or shipping types For that particular product to get it there within that that time?
Greg Shuey: 24:05
frame. That’s crazy that you could do that kind of analysis. I would assume that you know most of the tools are just pulling up a list of your options, right, and you’re like, yep, ups, that one’s the cheapest, the shortest time frame. Click on it. Yeah, the label, yeah right, wow, is that something that takes a human like? Is that someone that’s on your team that’s doing that kind of analysis? Or is it built into the tool? Combination of both?
Ross Brenner: 24:29
I mean our you know our back office employees are very Experienced in this field years and years in logistics arena but it’s an algorithm baked into the platform that we can run. It doesn’t take a long time to do. I could probably get my clients that analysis done in two days and it’ll save them, depending on their volume. It’ll save them a few hundred thousand, maybe even millions of dollars that they didn’t even know gosh, it was available to them.
Greg Shuey: 24:56
Wow. And how often do you need to do a review like that? Do do rates fluctuate enough from quarter to quarter that you should do it quarterly?
Ross Brenner: 25:05
I would say we typically rerun what’s called this agreement optimization every four to six months, and it’s not like interest rates, where you know they’re changing daily or weekly or monthly. You know these are carrier rates, right, so they’re not gonna be now. If your business has seen significant growth from Q1 to Q2 or Q3 and now you may fall into a different tier because your volumes, yeah, gone up tremendously, well, that means that you have a different threshold and that you can meet certain minimums and your dim divisor might change. So you’re entitled to all these different discounts that you may not have been aware of. It’s great that your business is growing and it’s great that you’re doing more sales I, but it should also be great that you can decrease your shipping cost because of that. And how do you know what to go back and ask the carrier for without running in a market appropriate analysis to best understand what are the discounts that I’m entitled to, that I should be asking for, and that’s what we see a lot of clients not able to do. It’s really understand the market, understand the discounts, what am I asking for? And it shouldn’t be an ask, it should be a tell. And if you do the right amount of research or you work with the right company it’s very simple.
Greg Shuey: 26:21
Here’s what you owe us. Hope it’s in our bank account tomorrow, versus we. Please have this. You know what they’re providing a service.
Ross Brenner: 26:29
You’re requesting what you’re entitled to and we know what you’re entitled to and most of the time they’re going to acquiesce to that request because you come to the table, we together we’re working together come to the table with so much irrefutable information that they have no choice but to acquiesce to that request because they know the information and the validation is there.
Greg Shuey: 26:50
That’s crazy. One more quick question before I get into my last is is that like a credit that comes back to your account? Or do they send you a check, or do they direct deposit into your bank account, like how does that work?
Ross Brenner: 27:08
I assume you’re talking about the refunds. Right, we’ll be applied for credits. Yeah, the refunds yeah. So you’re going to be required for an audit and recovery refund, which is a fuel surcharge, an assesorial fee, dimensional adjustment, a late delivery. Those are in the form of a refund back to your prior or future invoice, depending on when that invoice was sent. So it’s a credit issued back to your FedEx or UPS account and it’s automatically posted once the claim is successful. Loss and damage is issued in the form of a check and there are certain factors to go into and I won’t bore you with them or go too deep into it. But essentially that’s the delineation between the two. Audit and recovery for service failures or billing mistakes are in the form of a credit loss and damage. You get a check mail to your office Depending on the reason for the damage. You may get a check mail to you for the cost of the shipment and or the standard insurance amount, which is typically under bucks. So that $34.99 that you just paid for that package which was damaged in transit, you could actually get a check mail to you for $134.99 for that damage package. That’s awesome.
Greg Shuey: 28:26
Cool, all right. Last question for you Do you have a handle on what most brands are doing with these savings? Are a lot of them putting them back into marketing, or are there just a bunch of different business initiatives?
Ross Brenner: 28:41
Most of the time, the company is putting it back into the business in some capacity. I see a large portion of that being used for marketing. As we talked about, markets are becoming more and more saturated. How do you separate yourself and how do you get more visibility to potential customers? And if you’re a D to C brand, that’s everything. So a lot of it’s being put back into marketing. Whether it’s Google ads, more visibility on Facebook, instagram, youtube, tiktok, whatever it might be, whether it’s paying an influencer to do an ad for you, it’s marketing first and foremost, at least from what I’m seeing. And then maybe something on the operation side. Maybe you’ve saved so much money that you can hire a new employee, maybe a new salesperson, maybe a new assistant if you need one. So I’d say marketing, operations, sales, and then maybe sometimes the company is just keeping a few bucks because they earned it.
Greg Shuey: 29:40
Take a bonus. The owner is going to take a bonus.
Speaker 1: 29:43
They always do.
Greg Shuey: 29:47
I love it. Well, thanks so much, man. Thanks for hopping on. This was a lot of really great information and again for our listeners.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
