Thank You!

[MarineDepot]

​

To our customers,

You may have heard that Marine Depot was recently honored with the prestigious Bizrate Circle of Excellence Award for outstanding customer satisfaction in 2016.

What you may not have heard is our sincere thanks to you, our customers, for choosing Marine Depot for your aquarium supplies and taking the time to rate and review our business.

Your honest feedback has helped us grow and improve in innumerable ways. It is a privilege to be able to help aquarists around the world develop their skills and succeed in this hobby we love so much.

The Marine Depot staff is a small but dedicated team whose passion for aquariums is matched only by the enthusiasm of our customers. Although we are not perfect, we promise to continue improving and working hard to ensure you experience the best service and support in our industry?and ecommerce in general.

Winning the Bizrate Circle of Excellence Award for the fifth time is a real honor. Only the top 5.8%?or 208 stores of the 3,600 in contention?earned this prestigious designation. However, we won't be letting this accolade go to our heads. In fact, it is motivating us to work even harder to provide you with better products, better support and better value in the future.

We look forward to demonstrating our commitment to your satisfaction again next year! With your help, we will earn our 6th Circle of Excellence Award?so be sure to keep those ratings and reviews coming to let us know how we are doing.

As our way of saying thanks, please take $5 off your next order*:

Use Coupon: THANKYOU​

*Limit 1 per customer. Brands with MAP policies are ineligible for discount. Offer ends 11/1/16.

 

[brooklynreefers]

No Thank you guys !
you guys are one of the corner stone online retailers for this hobby !
now $5 is silly, how about $10 for MR members only:grouphug:

 

[MarineDepot]

Ah Shucks

No Thank you guys !
you guys are one of the corner stone online retailers for this hobby !
now $5 is silly, how about $10 for MR members only:grouphug:

OK, just for today and just for MR members ... :inlove:

... use coupon code MRMEMBERS to take $10 off a $100+ order (some exclusions apply, ends @ midnight tonight, limit 1 per shopper).

 

[brooklynreefers]

hey i have a question for you guys, its a personal business question.
i saw that you guys once tried to follow BRS shipping model and free shipping on all orders regardless of how much. maybe it was a temporary thing; or maybe you guys were testing to see if it can work. when i go online shipping in the age of amazon prime, paying for shipping seems to turn me away from one site over another **** more often then not. i know someone has to pay for the shipping cost of items, i was wonder how does retailers like BRS able to do it, while you guys are not ? im just curious how it all works. i know shipping isn't cheap going from west coast to east coast. so i dont blame you guys. :fett:

 

[MarineDepot]

Free Shipping

hey i have a question for you guys, its a personal business question.
i saw that you guys once tried to follow BRS shipping model and free shipping on all orders regardless of how much. maybe it was a temporary thing; or maybe you guys were testing to see if it can work. when i go online shipping in the age of amazon prime, paying for shipping seems to turn me away from one site over another **** more often then not. i know someone has to pay for the shipping cost of items, i was wonder how does retailers like BRS able to do it, while you guys are not ? im just curious how it all works. i know shipping isn't cheap going from west coast to east coast. so i dont blame you guys. :fett:

Hi brooklynreefers, thank you for your question! I will try to be as transparent as possible without disclosing too much, since this is something we talk about a lot here.

First off, you are very observant: we did do an experiment offering free shipping on every order (well, 99% anyway) during August of this year and ran the promotion through Labor Day.

We can't speak on behalf of other retailers, but for us, what happens when we offer free shipping on every order is shoppers spend less per order. As you might expect, more shoppers place orders though since free shipping eliminates a big friction point (as you mentioned).

It is difficult to ascertain what the long-term effects will be after a short-term experiment. The only thing we can conclude is that more experimentation is necessary.

Perhaps, in the long run, customer retention is higher and/or the lifetime value of a customer improves when you offer free shipping on all orders. If we do offer free shipping on all orders, maybe we need to offer additional incentives to shoppers to spend more and boost the average order value.

At the end of the day, we understand shoppers don't like paying for shipping very much. That is why this is a topic we are actively (and frequently) discussing and will continue to experiment with to find an approach that appeals to shoppers but doesn't come at too much of a cost (namely customer service).

To better compete with Amazon Prime, we recently opened up two new warehouse locations, one in Nevada and the other in Georgia. 95% of Marine Depot shoppers are now receiving their order within 2 business days using standard shipping, which we are super stoked about!

Looking to the future, you may have noticed we have a new beta version of our website up and ready to shop. We'll be incorporating some really cool features and shopping perks in the weeks ahead I think you'll be really excited about! I hope you will check them out and continue letting us know what you think because we have a ton of other stuff in store in the months ahead.

You feedback truly makes us better and we really value your opinion, so thank you for taking the time today to share it with us.