October 5, 2008

Submerce Shows How Submerce v5.2 Can Help Grow Sales While Cutting Direct To Consumer Operational Costs

With the U.S. economy looking bleak for the next couple of quarters, direct-to-consumer professionals look for ways to cuts costs and help retain customers without cutting consumer's online experience and customer service. Submerce answers the call by offering the following suggestions for any direct-to-consumer professional.

1. Stop Paying Transaction or Commission Fees for Online Sales
If you are paying a monthly hosting and a transaction fee for your online or direct-to-consumer sales, switch to an eCommerce provider such as Submerce which offers a flat fee monthly service that includes unlimited number of transactions. Most eCommerce solution providers charge anywhere from 1.75% to 5.25% above and beyond what you are paying your credit card processing fees. For an average winery that does $40,000 a month in gross sales, that can range from $700 to $2100 in transaction fees alone. With Submerce, your monthly fee would not exceed $250 for standard eCommerce and $375 with club management. That's a savings of at least $5400 to $20,000 per annum by switching to Submerce. By following the philosophy of offering a flat monthly service fee, Submerce allows predictability of your operational costs. Whereas a competing service will charge you both a hosting and a transaction fee, reducing your profit margin for your sales success rather than reaping the full benefits of your hard work.

2. Renegotiate Your Existing Fulfillment or Shipping Carrier's Fees
Renegotiate your shipping fees with either your shipping carrier or your fulfillment house. Many wineries have not taking the time to review their existing rates or discuss options to cut costs with their fulfillment house or shipping carriers. Fulfillment houses are like cell phone carriers, they don't want to see you go and if approached, they may review your current contract and offer ways to reduce shipping costs. Also remember if your wine club has grown or your number of shipments has swelled past your original estimated colume, there may be an opportunity to discuss a new rate based on your new volume.

3. Shop For a New Fulfillment House or Shipping Carrier
If your current shipping carrier or fulfillment house is not willing to renegotiate, then it's time to start shopping. Many new shipping companies have launched in the last couple of years and may offer a more competitive rate to attract your business. If you ship in house, take a look at your rates and compare them against each other. If you have been using FedEx, take a look at UPS. If you have a lot of packages going to California, Nevada and Washington, Submerce recommends calling Golden State Overnight. We have been receiving positive feedback from our customers who found that they can save 15-20% on shipping using this carrier. By using Submerce, it makes it easy to switch carriers, load and update new shipping rates in just a couple of minutes so your company can start saving almost immediately.

4. Review and Renogotiate Your Credit Card Processing Contract
Review your current contract with your merchant and credit card processing company. With the recent turbulence in the banking industry, many banks have merged which means that you may be stuck with a new rate that is not competitive. Submerce recommends reviewing your contract at least once a year and possibly start shopping for a new processor or merchant bank that will offer a better rate or possibly better customer service. Just like shipping carriers, if your volume has grown like many of our customers after they switched to Submerce, you may be eligible for a better rate. Even a half percent discount can meet thousands of dollars over a course of a year. By powering your eCommerce site with Submerce, switching merchant accounts or processors can be done in as little as a couple of days once your bank has approved your application.

5. Offer New Frequency Options for Wine Club Shipments
If your company has a wine club and is starting to see a trend of attrition, ask your customers who are canceling for the reason why they are opting out. Recent customer polls have found that customers who originally signed up for a monthly shipment no longer want to receive wine every month, but would be more than happy to get a shipment every other month. By creating a new club that offers the same wines as a monthly club on a bi-monthly basis, you will be retaining customers which is far better than losing them. By using Submerce, creating a new club can be done in under a minute and moving customers from one club to another can be done in just a couple of seconds. If a bi-monthly does keep the customer's attention, offer a quarterly club or place them on suspension or hold status for 6-8 months. This will allow them to continue to receive the montly newsletters while also offering them the continued benefit of wine club discounts.

Submerce can manage this easily through the online application and allows administrators to set vacations and hold statuses in just a couple of seconds. By contiunuing their discounts, you will keep the customers loyal to your brand and to your website. Others may frown on this, but remember, some sales is better than no sales and extending a discount even though the customer may not be getting the monthly shipments consumers see this as a way of your company having some compassion for loyal customers.

6. Manage Your Own Website
If you have been relying on an outside agency to manage your website design and maintenance, you have been spending anywhere from $75 to $200 an hour for someone to do work you probably can have anyone on your staff accomplish. Webmasters have had a long stranglehold on companys' websites and those days are changing quickly by powering your website with an eCommerce application that includes content management such as Submerce. You may have heard the buzz around Content Management Systems (CMS) as being inflexible and hard to work with, but Submerce has been hard at work for the past 14 months changing those reputations.

With Submerce v5.2, the software allows more control over your website with regards to navigation design, page design, product inclusion better than competing solutions such as eWinery Solutions, IBG and EVT. With Submerce anyone on your staff that has the basic understanding of a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or Lotus Notes can be building and maintain a website in just a couple of minutes, allowing instant changes to content without having to schedule an outside agency to complete it for you. Got a last minute sale or promotion? Not problem. Just log into the Submerce administration panel, make the content changes, build the promotion and in just a couple of minutes your site will be ready for the big sale and you just saved an average of $75 to $200 completing it in short order.

7. Use Stock Photography
With regards to content, you can cut the costs associated with building webpages, brochures and collateral materials by using stock photography than hiring a photographer. Long gone are the days of having to use the clip art included in your publishing program, over the course of the past 5-7 years, thousands of royalty free stock image and photography sites have popped up all over the internet backed by very attractive pricing models. Sites like http://www.shutterstock.com/ offer flat monthly fees to gain access to millions of high resolution images from over a hundred thousand photographers from around the world online 24/7. So by mixing stock photography with some of your own images, you can deliver a stunning website, brochure, sales sheet and more all while cutting your costs to a fraction of purchasing rights-managed photos that can cost anywhere from $400 to $1200 each.

8. Use Free Mailing List Management and Newsletter Tools
Slash the cost of sending email-based newsletters by switching to Submerce which allows unlimited mailing list management and the ability to send targeted email blasts in just a couple of minuties. While 3rd party mailing list management tools can be very attractive by offering easy-to-use templates, in the long run these cost you anywhere from $.01 each and on up costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year. Submerce has many customers that send email blasts of their latest product offerings and promotions about every 2-3 days which attracts thousands of dollars of revenue per message. By taking the old rule of 5% conversion, that's a lot of customers you need to communicate to and by not worrying about a per message fee, your company can now tap into the market of sending targeted messages. Submerce has recently released their Customer Preferences and Targeting Tools that allows administrators of a Submerce-powered website to build mailing lists in just seconds based on query results of their database. Queries such as "customers within X miles of store", "customers who have purchased a type of product (red wine) or specific product(s)" can be generated and turned into a targeted mailing list. Those lists can then be managed and added to as customer purchasing trends or demographics change over time. By using Submerce you are not only saving money, your company also has the tools to send precisely targeted messages rather than blasting an entire customer list. Doing so will drive customers to opt out or refrain from purchasing products from your site in the future. Like many of the Submerce features, mailing lists are great tools as long as they are used properly and take into consideration of the respect for your customers' privacy.

9. Create and Manage Your Own Search Engine Optimization
One of the most advertised internet service offerings (beside the adult-related and low-fee mortgages) is Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. Now SEO is very important for any site, but there's very little black magic or science behind the process that prevents the average person to program their own keywords and metatags. Now as with any service, hiring someone will deliver results, just don't fall for the "I'll make your site the #1 in search results" as they will promise this to you and your competitor. You'll have to ask yourself how they do this, right? Well in the end it's a sales pitch and no SEO or SEM company can guarantee results. By powering your website with Submerce, you don't have to be an SEO expert or a programmer to get the right keywords into your website. Submerce offers far better SEO management tools than the nearest competing service at no additional cost. Once a customer, Submerce even offers your tips and tricks on how to get your SEO up to speed and how to manage it after launch. Just one of the many benefits of becoming a Submerce customer.

Submerce recently brought on a very large, well established website over from a competing service and within three weeks, the Submerce-powered version was already pushing the company's internet search ranks up the chart. This was accomplished by just switching to Submerce and using the included tools to populate the SEO fields at the site, webpage and product levels- and without the help of an SEO export.

10. Streamline Work Processes with Automation and IT Outsourcing
Based on a recent study, one of the biggest areas of operational expenses was on managing internal processes such as lack of data flow automation or broken systems' integration which also typically leads to increased cost related to customer service. By switching to Submerce, your company will not only have access to a robust and scalable solution today, you will also have access to a system that will grown with your company- not govern its success. Submerce offers automated systems integration with many different third party systems such as FedEx, UPS, Oracle's JD Edwards, SAP, QuickBooks, ShipCompliant, New Vine Logistics and more are added just about every other month.

By automating these processes, your internal IT staff can focus their time on tasks that will be a better use of their time. Switching to Submerce will also allow you to outsource your website hosting by bringing in Rackspace Managed hosting as part of the Submerce Total Solution package. Rackspace is a top tier network that offers 100% network uptime and 24/7 support at no additional cost to you, saving you thousands of dollars a month staffing the required IT resources needed to keep your servers running.

By Switching to Submerce, you will not only be able to incorporate the top ten featured recommendations, you will also be trained on hundreds of other ideas that will help you streamline your workflows, boost sales, provide better customer service to your customers, build a more engaging website and much more. To ensure success, each Submerce customer receives hands on training on and consultation by one of our Submerce Specialists that has the experience and personal committment to get your new site up and running in 30 days or less. So what's stopping you from saving thousands of dollars each month while increasing your sales? Call Submerce at (707) 255-4393 or visit their website at http://www.submerce.com/

October 4, 2008

New Submerce Migration Tools Make It Easy to Switch Without Losing Valuable Data

Submerce announced additional details regarding their Submerce v5.2 software which was released to the general public on September 15th. Now switching solution providers doesn't mean your customers will lose their order history. The new release includes new data migration tools that make switching from competing eCommerce applications an easy self-managed process that can include past sales order history. Administrators have access to easy-to-use online tools that can import past sales history, customer account data, mailing lists, shipping tables, club information and more.

"Submerce has been providing a bulk of these tools for a number of years, but we've spent the last couple of months making these tools even easier to use as well as allowing administrators direct access to tools that were once only available to Submerce Specialists", says Jonathan Elliman, Chief Technology Officer for Submerce. "For one recent customer's launch, we trained one of their employees to import over 38,000 customer records which can be done in as little as 10 minutes, where other systems this is either something that cannot be done or takes hours to complete", continues Elliman. "Our goal for every Submerce release is to continue on the theme of unparalleled set of features, customer self-service and an intuitive interface all backed by our trained support professionals that can offer support along the way."

If you've been thinking about switching to a solution that is scalable, reliable and best of all affordable, it's time that you take a look at Submerce and start realizing your sales goals by using a eCommerce solution that offers 100% network uptime, customer support that is second to none and content management tools that do not limit your creativity. Call Submerce at (707) 255-4393 or visit the website at http://www.submerce.com/

September 23, 2008

Submerce v5.2 Offers Major Speed Enhancements to Point of Sale and Order Management System

Submerce announced today as part of their v5.2 release, the update will also be including the next generation Submerce Point of Sale which includes major speed enhancements, revised interface and new features. With the continued success of the Submerce platform, the development team continues to push the technology envelope by including a re-written interface and features that speed the order creation process while offering real-time integration with tools such as Six88's ShipCompliant, PayPal, Paymentech and fulfillment houses such as New Vine Logistics.

"We continue to set the benchmark for real-time integration with third party systems as well as the rest of the Submerce platform such as the Order Management System (OMS), Point of Sale (POS), Club Management, eCommerce and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)", says Jonathan Elliman, Chief Technology Officer at Submerce. "Others may claim that they have the same level of features, but a live demonstration of our platform will be proof in the pudding", continues Elliman. "With our aggressive development schedule and the size of our development team, we've been able to make major milestones in short order that allows us to develop new features while looking at ways to optimize the old ones", says Jonathan.

If your company relies on heavy retail and online sales and want an efficient way of managing them all through one single interface, call Submerce at 707-255-4393 or visit http://www.submerce.com/

September 15, 2008

Submerce v5.2 Released on Schedule

On the heals of their latest success, Submerce announced the public release of v5.2 which includes more standard features than ever before. The latest release includes over $8000 worth of bonus modules and features that were once add-ons are now part of the standard installation. Modules such as the Recipe Engine, Customer Targeting and Preferences, Ratings Publications and more are now available to anyone who is either on the Submerce Software Update Program (SUP) or launching on the latest release. Not only does the release offer these modules at no additional cost, they also include new Order Management tools that offer new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality, fulfillment management and much more.

"Our entire team gets very dedicated to every release as Submerce continues to push the envelop for not just the wine industry, but for all of the customers the Submerce platform services", says Sarah Elliman, Director of Sales and Marketing. "We had a tremendous success with the last release and we're very excited with this one in particular since it's including so many features that people were asking for", continues Elliman. "We've included our Sales Order Manager (SOM) module at no additional charge to show our committment to our customers by offering a tool to create orders for non-eCommerce sales", says Sarah. "We've offered the SOM for a premium in the past, but we're now making it standard for all customers."

"We wish we could share all the details regarding the latest release, but we do have to make sure that we maintain our competitive advantage by not advertising to our competitors as well" says Tim Holtermann, Senior Programmer at Submerce. "Over the course of the last 6 months we've tripled the size of our development team to ensure that Submerce continues to listen to its clients by building and delivering the features and tools they demand in short order", says Holtermann. "We have a sustained pace of both bringing on new clients and new development which has been working better than expected as the pace has been very face, but the rewards for both the development team and the customer have been very positive."

Many large companies have made the right choice to upgrade from their existing eCommerce solution to Submerce in the past few months as many of them were under the impression that there was no other choice. We encourage anyone who thought they had no choice but their current provider to schedule a live demonstration of Submerce by calling (707) 255-4393 or visit http://www.submerce.com/ for more information.

September 9, 2008

Submerce Meets Google’s Chrome Web Browser Compliance Requirements

Submerce announced today that their Submerce eBusiness platform meets the compliance requirements for Google's new Chrome web browser expanding on their list of supported browsers such as Apple's Safari (both Mac and PC), Mozilla's Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and more.

"We're very proud of our development and how Submerce easily accepts new technology", says Jonathan Elliman, Chief Technology Officer for Submerce. "As new browsers enter the market, we need to make sure that Submerce displays all the content correctly so that consumers can interact with any Submerce-powered site", continues Elliman. "We were one of the first to begin offering support for Apple's Safari for the PC and we believe we're one of the first to openly support Google's Chrome browser."

If you want your site to be easily accessible by the latest list of web browsers, we recommend giving Submerce a call and learn more about their eBusiness platform by calling (707) 255-4393 or visit http://ww.submerce.com/

September 8, 2008

Submerce Continues to Release More Details of Software Upgrade

Continuing on their successful release of Submerce v5.1 codenamed "Whitehorse", Submerce announced today additional information regarding their upcoming release of v5.2 scheduled for mid-September. Beyond the already released new features and tools that will be available, Submerce will be including four of their Expansion Modules as part of the standard feature set, including the most highly-anticipated Customer Targeting and Preferences module.

"The Submerce Customer Targeting and Preferences Expansion Module allows administrators to target customers based on either customer's past order history or potential sales based on their set preferences", says Tim Holtermann, Senior Developer at Submerce. "The feedback from our customers that have already been using the module is very positive", continues Holtermann. "Now adminstrators can even target customers based on their proximity to zipcodes and set mileage ranges. So if someone is holding an even in New York or Chicago, a mailing list targeting those individuals based on their range, club member status, past history (both amount and products) and much more can be used to further define and refine the list", says Tim.

Also included in the next release will be the Recipe Engine and Published Ratings modules which are used to inform the customer while providing another opportunity to build your online community. "We found that customers that were using both of these modules helped drive traffic as well as offer more tools when it comes to SEO", say Sarah Elliman, Director of Sales and Marketing for Submerce. "By offering the Published Ratings module as a standard feature, content developers and can embed external product reviews for a specific product which allows cross pollenization of both content and traffic", continues Elliman. "The Recipe Engine has been receiving very positive feedback from the wine industry which is well known for offering suggestions for food and wine pairings. By offering this as a standard feature, this will help drive traffic and build an online community as the system allows moderated reviews on the published recipes as well as offering the idea on any products' details page", says Sarah.

Last but far from the least is the reintroduction of the Submerce Sales Order Manager (SOM) which will be available as a standard feature in Submerce v5.2. The SOM offers an alternative approach to generating a sale through the Submerce backoffice. This is perfect for sales that may not be completed through the Web or may occur via a phone sale. Being integrated with the backoffice, the administrator can easily load customer data, products, shipping charges and much more. "This is a good example of how Submerce listens to customers and responds quickly", says Jonathan Elliman, CTO for Submerce. "The SOM was replaced by the Submerce Order Management System (OMS) about a year ago and we began to discontinue the system because we were focusing on the OMS so that it would include all the features that customers wanted in the next version" says Elliman. "This interface used to be available for an additional cost, but we see this as an opportunity to maintain our competitive advantage by offering it free of charge since very few eBusiness applications either offer one or include one at no additional cost", continues Elliman. "Far from antiquated, the SOM has received attention from our developers to make it ready for the next release by offering a refined interface and seamless integration with ShipCompliant", says Tim Holtermann.

Submerce is anticipating the release of v5.2 in mid-September and already is grabbing the attention of existing customers who have subscribed to the Software Update Program (SUP). With inclusion of the SOM, Recipe Engine, Published Ratings and Customer Targeting Expansions Modules have a combined value of over $8000 and now are included in the next release which is worth more than the Submerce standard startup fees alone. Submerce recommends that if you were ever thinking about switching to another eBusiness solution that is stable, affordable and offers scalability that is rivaled by no other, that there's no better time than now to take a look at the Submerce eBusiness platform by calling (707) 255-4393 or visiting http://www.submerce.com/.

September 2, 2008

Submerce v5.2 to Re-Release “Create-Invoice” Function

Responding to customer feedback, Submerce will be re-releasing their Sales Order Manager system as a standard feature in the next release of the Submerce eCommerce platform. Based on the Sales Order Manager module which used to be available for an additional cost, Submerce will be offering this module free of charge to any existing or new customers who upgrade to Submerce v5.2.

"We built our Sales Order Manager module which allows the ability to create orders in the Submerce Backoffice over three years ago while today our competitors still do not offer such a feature", says Jonathan Elliman, Chief Technology Officer at Submerce. "We continued to develop this system until we released our Submerce Order Management System which many of our clients upgraded to based on that it offers far better functionality and CRM tools" continues Elliman. "But we also found that some customers want to continue to use both based on the type of order, so we've brought it back by also refreshing it so that it can support some of our latest technologies and integration partners such as Six88's ShipCompliant", says Jonathan.

The next release of Submerce will continue on the theme of offering more features, stability and scalability than any other eBusiness platform available for the wine industry. We recommend scheduling a solution demonstration for your company to see first hand how Submerce can save you time and operating costs by calling (707) 255-4393 or learn more by visiting http://www.submerce.com.