Managing Shipments in a Product Sampling Campaign

Note: This article assumes you have previously approved and/or declined experts for your Product Sampling Campaign and that your products have recently shipped or are about to be shipped. If there are any unforeseen shipment delays, please immediately contact your Customer Success partner.

Overview

Shipping is the process of delivering free products to approved experts in your Product Sampling Campaign. Each expert is limited to receiving one product in the mail for which they must experience and share content. Within this phase, you must upload tracking information for each expert, update their shipment status to “In Transit” when the product has been shipped, and track your shipments.

As a reminder, after an expert is approved for your Product Sampling Campaign, they will confirm they received the product and get to know it before sharing content. The messaging on your campaign landing page will let the expert know the status of their shipment, and they will also receive automated emails and in-platform notifications.

To manage your shipments, visit the Shipments tab of your Product Sampling Campaign in the Campaign Manager of the Advocacy Platform. Here you will see a list of the approved experts that require shipment updates for your Product Sampling Campaign.

The state of experts

Each approved applicant starts with having a status of their product being not shipped in the Advocacy Platform. As the campaign manager, you aim to change each expert's status to be In Transit by or before your Expected Ship by Date. This way, the expert understands when the product will arrive at their front door.

As a reminder, you configured the Expected Ship by Date earlier in the Receive the Product activity.

• You can ship products before or after this date, but we recommend sticking to the expected ship-by date to ensure a positive expert experience and help you stay organized.
• Provide each expert with tracking information so they clearly understand when their package is arriving and ensure you meet your campaign objectives.
• All experts will receive an automated email and message as soon as you insert a tracking link, change their shipment status, and click Save; it's best practice to provide experts with their tracking information and change their shipment status all within the same day or week to ensure approved experts are on a similar timeline.
• Don’t leave experts in the “waiting” not shipped stage; close the loop and let them know their tracking information and when their product is in transit.

Shipment filters

By using a combination of filters and sorting, you can explore the shipment status for different types of experts and identify any experts that still require tracking information.

Use the filters on the left-hand side of the Shipments tab to surface the experts who meet your desired search criteria. You can refine the results by:

• Shipment Status – Click the status you would like to monitor (e.g., Not Shipped, In Transit)
• Segment – Click the audience segment you are interested in monitoring (if relevant)
• Show experts with – Click the information you would like to monitor (e.g., Tracking Links)

How to import tracking information

1. Download this template CSV file and customize each field with tracking information for each sampler.
   
   • Supported shipping providers include FedEx, UPS, and USPS 
   • A maximum number of 1,000 rows is supported per CSV file
   • If the samplers' full names are in one (1) column, the tool automatically separates their first and last names into two (2) separate columns in Step #4 below
2. In the Shipments step, click Import tracking info
3. Click Select file to upload your completed CSV file
   • You can upload one CSV file at a time. Only .csv files are supported.
   • If you use more than one shipping provider (e.g., FedEx and USPS), please create a separate CSV file for each shipping provider and upload them both in this step
4. Click Continue to organize the imported file.
   • Select "My file has headers as the first row," so the first row in the data is ignored (optional)
   • Select "My file has separate columns for first and last name," so the data automatically merges these into one column and matches them with the experts' name (optional)
   • Select which column(s) include the names (e.g., Column A or Columns A and B)
   • Select which column includes the tracking information (e.g., Column C)
5. Click Preview Data to review the data before importing the file to the Advocacy Platform
6. Click Import Matches to automatically provide the expert with a custom tracking link and update their shipping status in the campaign to In Transit. The expert will automatically receive an email from ExpertVoice with this information.

TIP: If there are any errors, double-check the selected columns, click Back to update the columns, or replace the file with a new version.

How to update the shipment status

Another way to update an expert’s shipment status is to do this one expert at a time manually. 

In Transit

When you know that the products have shipped:

1. On your Product Sampling Campaign, click on the Shipments tab
2. Then, click on an individual expert's name
3. On the expert's Shipping tab, click the shipment status dropdown menu and select In Transit
4. Next, copy and paste their tracking link here.
   • Your shipping company should provide you with tracking links for each package.
   • Tracking numbers are unable to be included here. However, you should monitor all tracking information in bulk using the information provided by your shipping company. (e.g., UPS, FedEx)
   • The tracking link will be included in the expert's Receive the Product message to give them more transparency about their product's delivery status. 
5. If you’d like, you can choose to type a personal note or individual instructions for that expert.
   • You can include the tracking number here if you'd like.
   • Any individual instructions will override the instructions you already saved in the “Receive the product” activity. However, you can copy the text from that message, paste it here, and tweak the instructions for this one-off expert if you’d like.
6. Click Save.

Once you complete these steps, you cannot undo this action. The expert will automatically receive an email and an in-app notification within 24 hours, letting them know that the product is on its way and that they must mark their product as "received" on the campaign landing page when it arrives.

Packaged Received

Experts will manually confirm that they received their product in the mail as part of their first activity, and the expert's shipment status will automatically change in the Advocacy Platform when they do.

When tracking product shipments, if you notice an expert or multiple experts still have products in transit when you know they’ve been delivered; you can manually change the expert's shipment status in the Advocacy Platform to Package Received in the Shipments tab.

Tracking how many experts received product

As soon as experts start to confirm they received their product in the mail, you can view a summary of their shipment status within the Shipment Progress bar chart.

When the expert completes their first activity (Receive the Product), the progress bar will turn a dark green color and inch towards completion. A lighter green color will represent the packages that are in transit.

• If you have multiple segments, click Show progress by segment to drill the data down by segment and see how many packages have been delivered compared to your Target Size for each segment. 
• You can also use the Shipment status filters on the left to show only those not shipped, in transit, or received packages.

The total number of packages in transit or received should match as closely as possible to the segment Target Size. However, you can change the Target Size at any point if you’d like by visiting the Configuration tab and adjusting your segments.