In the fall of 2017, the Twitter hashtag #Shipageddon began appearing with photos of dogs dressed as mail carriers and screenshots of Amazon’s revised delivery dates.
The portmanteau, coined by the hosts of “The Jason and Scott Show,” is shorthand for a situation in which America is stretched to its limits and holiday orders—even those placed by the deadlines that marketers emphasize in drip campaigns—are late.
Is #Shipageddon really coming? Maybe.
It’s no secret that the pandemic has put a strain on America’s mail carriers. The popularity of online shopping has soared; by one estimate, the pandemic has accelerated the rise of online shopping by about five years.
Within a year.
That alone has put a huge burden on shipping companies. “When people shop online, it becomes more complex to get things out the door,” Jay Sauceda, CEO of third-party logistics company Sauceda Industries, told MarketerHire.
Think about it: When people shop from brick-and-mortar stores, a single large truck delivering to a store’s loading dock can deliver to thousands of homes.
When people shop online, getting what they need to thousands of homes suddenly requires thousands of deliveries.
It’s the fourth quarter — the highest point of retail sales each year — and shoppers are more engaged in e-commerce than ever before. This year, Shopify saw sales increase 76% year-over-year during Black Friday Cyber Monday; Adobe Analytics reports that overall, e-commerce revenue during Black Friday Cyber Monday was up about 23% year-over-year.
Source: Adobe Digital Insights via Statista
This year, though, total Black Friday Cyber Monday revenue was down by about the same percentage — because of a significant drop in physical store sales. Sensormatic reports that foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores is down about 50% from 2019.
“The stores are literally like ghost towns,” David Bassuk, global co-head of the retail practice at consulting firm AlixPartners, told The New York Times.
Meanwhile, shipping carriers are “drinking from a fire hose,” Sauceda said.
Will the pressure be so great that our shipping infrastructure breaks down? What does this mean for marketers? We spoke with Sauceda and his colleague in the 3PL space, Casey Armstrong, chief marketing officer of ShipBob.
For his part, Armstrong doesn’t have much to worry about this year. “Things are going pretty well at ShipBob,” he told MarketerHire the day after Cyber Monday.
Sauceda feels prepared, too. So far. Thanks to careful forecasting, he says, his "delivery schedule is very tight," and his team hasn't had to work as much overtime as it did in 2019.
The key, Armstrong says, is for merchants to understand the holiday brazil phone numbers guaranteed delivery deadlines for different mail carriers, as well as their 3 words).
Beyond that, he doesn't see much cause for stress and indecision. He and Sauceda cite several reassuring signs.
The major airlines have been hiring since March.
"Overall, carriers have managed the holiday orders pretty well," Armstrong says. "They've been hiring aggressively from the beginning."
FedEx, for example, hired tens of thousands of new workers and package handlers in July to meet demand during the pandemic. It hired another 70,000 workers to prepare for the holiday.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that Amazon's headcount was up 50% year-over-year as of Black Friday, thanks to more than 400,000 new hires - most of them warehouse workers.
In other words, there's no shortage of people.