One of the trade-offs of print-on-demand is that you never physically touch the package — which also means the unboxing experience, usually a big lever for small brands, feels out of your hands. It isn't entirely, though, and a few small, low-cost additions go a long way toward making a POD order feel less like a random drop-shipped box.
Most major POD platforms (Printful in particular) support custom packing slips at no extra cost — this is the easiest lever to pull first. A packing slip with your shop's actual branding, a simple thank-you line, and maybe a small handwritten-style note ("thanks for supporting a small shop!") costs nothing extra and replaces a generic, purely transactional slip with something that at least feels considered.
Some platforms also support inserting a small printed card or sticker into the package for a modest per-unit fee — worth it for shops where repeat purchases and brand recall genuinely matter, less critical if you're mostly selling one-off novelty items to first-time, one-time buyers. A small discount code for a next purchase, printed directly on this card, does double duty as a nice touch and a repeat-purchase incentive.
If your platform doesn't support custom inserts directly, a lower-cost workaround some sellers use is a small branded sticker (ordered separately and cheaply in bulk from a sticker printing service) that you apply to the outside of the package before it ships — though this only works if you're fulfilling manually rather than through a fully automated dropship pipeline, so check whether your specific setup even allows for that kind of intervention.
The QR code idea is worth mentioning again here specifically because packaging is one of the only guaranteed touchpoints where a real customer is looking directly at something from your brand — a small QR code linking to an email sign-up, a discount for their next order, or even just your Instagram, tends to get scanned more than the same offer buried in a marketing email they may not open.
None of this needs to cost much or add real complexity to your fulfillment process — the goal is a few small, deliberate touches that separate your shop from a completely anonymous box, not a full custom packaging operation that most POD sellers genuinely don't need.