If you sell software online, you don’t need logistics. You just generate a code and send it per email. Basically you’re selling air. It’s called Electronic software distribution. But not all of us belong to Generation Y and easily accept virtual payments for virtual products. A lot of older people prefer to have some physical object.
In software world its typically called a Backup CD-Rom. It’s just a copy of your software, which normally everybody downloads via your website, burned on a CD-Rom.
It’s amazing (for me at least) how may people are willing to pay for it 5-10 €. But they do.
Every night and 01:00 a script imports e-store data in the CRM and CRM generates list with addresses of the people, who bought a Backup CD-Rom. In the morning an office assistant prints the addresses, places CD-Roms in envelopes and puts them to the postman.
At some point I had an idea to outsource the production. I was looking for a company, which can:
Once per 5-6 month:
- Produce and print CD-Roms with the software and nice layout in our company style
- Print nice CD-Rom wallets in our company style
- Print nice stylish paper with our logo (for the letter which goes with the CD-Rom)
Daily:
- Accept per email a list with addresses for the people, who need to receive the software
- Print their name with some text on the offical paper with our logo (“Dear mr Smith,…”)
- Print their name and address on a sticker for the envelope.
- Put CD in the wallet
- Put wallet and offical letter in A5 bubble envelope
- Put sticker on the envelope
- Sent it per post
- Must be affordable
It was not easy to find such company in Netherlands. Almost all of them are doing only printing of CD-Roms and marketing materials, not sending them. The one I found is Blue-Digital (not commercial link). I hope they can save us a lot of time and money and I’ll write more about experience with them later.
