March / April

Welcome to the latest edition of Nutraceutical News from IFS. In this and every issue you'll find insightful case studies, helpful fulfillment advice and valuable marketing tips to help your nutraceutical business achieve success.

For additional information, visit our Website, www.ifssolutions.com. To share your feedback about this newsletter, please click here. To unsubscribe, please use the link at the end of this issue.

In this issue:

• Case Study: CardioTabs - Four Successful Years and Going Strong
• Fulfillment: Do You Have an Auto-refill Program in Place? If Not, You Should!
• Marketing: Capture Email Addresses for Cost-Effective Online Communications
• Customer Service: A Good Call Center Representative... More than Just a Pleasant Voice
• About IFS: For More Information, Contact Us

In early 2000, Cardiovascular Consultants, a group of cardiovascular doctors, introduced CardioTabs, nutritional supplements developed specifically for the benefit of a healthy heart.

Choosing to focus on the sales and marketing of their products rather than managing the challenges associated with warehousing and fulfillment, CardioTabs turned to Innovative Fulfillment Solutions (IFS) for its expertise on those "back end" issues. It was a smart move, and as a result, CardioTabs' sales efforts have been successful from the very beginning.

Over the past four years, CardioTabs' product line has expanded, and its business volume has increased significantly. With CardioTabs multivitamin as its first core product, the company has since introduced two additional products - Omega Three Fish Oil and CardioTea, a powerful antioxidant that is rich in green tea catechins.

Ron Bremer, General Manager for CardioTabs, said, "The exceptional customer service provided by IFS is a key differentiator for us in a crowded dietary supplement market. Our customers can count on the personal attention and timely fulfillment that are the cornerstones of IFS' service."

IFS has supported CardioTabs' increases every step of the way, boosting its level of telephone support, adding additional warehousing/inventory capacity and offering additional product fulfillment services. Implementing a subscription (auto-refill) program is one service that has made a huge impact on customer retention and ultimately sales for CardioTabs.

Keith Milburn, President of IFS, said. "CardioTabs provides a quality product that is good for the health of millions of people. It's been a pleasure helping them get started and watching them grow. We greatly value our partnership with CardioTabs."

For more information on CardioTabs, you are invited to visit www.cardiotabs.com.

An auto-refill (subscription) program not only represents a huge sales opportunity for your nutraceutical business, it may also be one of the most efficient and cost effective ways to manage the fulfillment of your products.

By knowing in advance how many shipments you'll have each day, week and/or month, you are not only able to project your inventory requirements weeks or months in advance, you can also project labor needs, assess the amount of packaging materials required and determine the time it will take to complete your fulfillment process.

But probably even more important is the increased customer retention rate you'll see. And keeping your customers long term - rather than losing them to another nutraceutical brand - is obviously a big sales opportunity.

Your Call Center - the key to success
How do you put an auto-refill program in place? The key lies in your Call Center.

When customers call in for the first time, a knowledgeable, trained Call Center Account Manager will learn about their motivation for buying your product. If they are buying it on the recommendation of a physician, or if they are taking it for a specific condition (e.g. they are at risk for a heart attack), there's a high likelihood they plan to use the product for a long period of time (as opposed to a customer who has just heard about the product on the radio and wants to give it a try).

If they do, in fact, plan to use it consistently, your Account Manager can explain it will be more convenient for them to be on an auto-refill program so they won't have to worry about phoning for another shipment every time they run low. Plus, many companies offer a savings on a three-month auto-refill program over the cost of a monthly shipment.

Once the Account Manager explains the advantages of the auto-refill program, he or she will get the customer's credit card number and expiration date - of course assuring them the information is absolutely confidential and not to be used for any other purposes - and enter that information into the system. Then each time the monthly or quarterly subscription is automatically processed (approximately 7 days before the customer is due to run out), the customer's card is charged - at the lowest possible rate - and the shipment is processed and mailed.

Auto-refill programs - a win-win situation
So, while an auto-refill program gives your customers the best value for their money, it will also:

• minimize the number of calls to your Call Center
• reduce your per order cost.
• reduce the amount of labor involved in each order; and
• streamline the entire fulfillment process.

Plus you'll retain more of your customers, which means you'll see more consistent, "automatic" sales. What a win-win situation!

If you haven't begun capturing customers' email addresses yet, when you take a good look at your 2004 marketing budget, you'll surely wish you had!

Even though a targeted, well-written direct mail campaign is hard to beat in terms of responsiveness, email marketing is playing a more and more important role in today's competitive environment. It can often be used cost-effectively (thanks to no printing or postage costs!) to enhance your other marketing efforts.

Capturing your customers' email addresses
So what's the best way to capture email addresses for your customers? Once again, the answer lies in having a pleasant, well trained, Call Center team. When customers call in to inquire about your product or to place an order, after their basic information has been captured, your Account Manager should explain that you offer occasional information and special offers via email, and would they mind providing their email address. If handled correctly the customer will most often give you their email address. If handled incorrectly you will miss this valuable opportunity.

Our IFS Account Managers regularly capture email addresses for more than 70% of our clients'call-in customers. Just think about the possibilities of sending occasional email updates and/or special offers for a very limited expense! You'll be amazed at how quickly you'll see the value in capturing your customers' email addresses.

If you run your own Call Center, consider the following tips when hiring and training your staff:

• A passion for customer service. Make sure your Call Center personnel are passionate about customer service before you hire them. You can enhance an employee's skills with appropriate training, but if someone simply isn't, by nature, a pleasant person and/or doesn't understand that the customer is truly King, find someone else.

• Experience. Call Center personnel should have extensive experience in customer service. Whether it is experience in retailing or another customer-intensive position, don't assume just anyone can walk in your door and become a good Account Manager. It takes someone who has had experience dealing with all types of people to be really good at customer service.

• Quality equipment. When you give your Call Center staff the best equipment and software available, they will be far happier and much more productive for you. Find a user-friendly software program designed for data capture and continually update it as new versions become available. Many programs on the market can help you 'capture the sale," but it's your after-the-sale' value (e.g. being able to assess your sales activity and segment your customers for future marketing efforts) that will depend, in large part, upon your software program.

• A pleasant environment. Creating a good working environment for your people means more than just giving them comfortable chairs, a good computer system and their own workstation. Because there is often little predictability in call volume, managing this variable factor can make the difference between a stressful work environment and a pleasant one for your staff.

One last tip: Depending on the breadth of your product line, you may also want to consider having one Call Center person become the resident expert on each of your products. At IFS, we assign an Account Manager to each of our clients, and that Account Manager becomes an expert on their products and is the lead person on all incoming calls for that client. Our clients have seen that, when one person has ownership of an account, it can pay big dividends.

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IFS is a world class, full service fulfillment operation with a track record of success. A woman-owned business, we proudly serve some of the country's most respected corporations. With a special expertise in the fulfillment of nutraceuticals, we can help you run your nutraceuticals business more efficiently and more cost effectively.