What You Need to Know About Amazon Communication Guidelines

Transcript

Rachel: So, thank you all again for joining this webinar on What You Need to Know About Amazon Communication guidelines. So, for anyone who may not have talked with me before, my name is Rachel Hoover. I'm the Customer Education Manager here at eComEngine.

Rachel: And that means that I try to make it as easy as possible for you to get set up and use our tools including FeedbackFive. And that should make it much easier and quicker to run your business. So, you can focus on the things that are more important, that's my goal.

Rachel: And my goal today with these communication guideline updates that Amazon's putting out, I just want to make them as clear and easy to understand as possible. And give you the details on what we are going to handle for you by updating FeedbackFive and then what you might need to do for yourself.

Rachel: So, if you're able to, I actually recommend that you open your FeedbackFive account and follow along. You might notice a few quick things, so you can go ahead and update today and then you won't have to worry about it before November 3rd.

Rachel: It can be easy to forget what you have set up in there. So, I'm going to try to make this clear and easy so you can do all of your updates as soon as possible and not have to worry about it anymore. But again, we are recording this webinar, we will share it around.

Rachel: So, if you can't follow along with everything and you want to go back and double check, you'll be able to review the recording again later. All right. So, to start off, just a quick reminder to everyone. So, Amazon has updated their communication guidelines, but those updates go into effect on November 3, 2020.

Rachel: So, we have a few weeks to prepare and make sure that everyone is up to date with these new guidelines and that you're safe before any new policies go into effect. And there are some things that Amazon is just clarifying or reaffirming that you are allowed to do, so there's some really good news in these guidelines and then there are also some action items.

Rachel: So, some updates that you probably will need to make to your templates in FeedbackFive and some things that FeedbackFive is also going to change to do for you. So first, let's go touch on some of those good news items. So, Amazon has restated and made it very, very clear that you can send emails, you can send messages to your customers and they split the messages into a couple different groups.

Rachel: So, they talk about just permitted messages which are things like replying to a customer question or maybe arranging delivery of a large package, things like that, that are always allowed. And then, also proactive permitted messages, which is the type of thing you might be sending with FeedbackFive.

Rachel: So, anything you sent to a customer that's not a response to their question would fall under proactive permitted messages. And Amazon's clarifying that you can still send those and you can send them via email, you can use just directly in Seller Central the templates that they have, the request to review button or third-party applications from the application store.

Rachel: So, FeedbackFive is in Amazon's Appstore. They're aware of us and they know what we do. So, if you have signed up with FeedbackFive, that is still completely okay. And in fact, the way that FeedbackFive sends emails is either through the Request a Review system or through email, through Buyer-Seller Messaging.

Rachel: And both of those are also allowed no matter what way you choose to trigger them. So, Amazon's just clarifying that you can still do all those things. And in their list of reasons why you can send a proactive permitted message, they gave a long list of reasons that I couldn't quite fit on the slide here, but one of them is requesting product review and or seller feedback.

Rachel: So, you are still allowed to send proactive messages and you are allowed to send them to request review and seller feedback. As well as other things like invoices, product instructions, et cetera which we'll talk about soon. So, that's some good news, just Amazon reiterating and clarifying that there's nothing to be concerned about there.

Rachel: And then, there will also be some action items. I'm not calling it bad news. I think these are just things we'll need to be aware of and possibly update. So firstly, if you are using the official Amazon template which you see on the right side of the screen right now, you don't need to take any action, you don't need to worry about being compliant.

Rachel: If this is the only template that you're sending with FeedbackFive, it's already completely compliant with all existing policies and all the updated policies that are going into effect on November 3rd. So, Amazon has created that message. It's already set up to follow all of their guidelines. So, you won't need to do anything, if that's the only template that you're sending.

Rachel: But if you are sending any other templates, so any wizard or custom templates through FeedbackFive or even anything that you're sending outside FeedbackFive, you will want to go and look at those again and just make sure that  they're up to date before November 3rd, so that you don't run into either Buyer-Seller Messaging restrictions or potentially even account suspension depending on what violation that you might accidentally be doing.

Rachel: So, some of the things that are changing, like I said, we're going to update for you. We're going to tweak FeedbackFive, so that it follows some of those more technical policies and then some things we're not able to do automatically for everyone in the system, so you'll want to update those before November 3, to make sure you're safe.

Rachel: And then, some of the policies that Amazon has put out in these guidelines are actually already not allowed. So, already true. Even before November 3rd, you should really be updating those as soon as possible if you're already accidentally in violation of an existing policy.

Rachel: So, I'm going to try to point those out as we go through so that you know what to prioritize and you'll be able to change those things as quick as possible in case you're accidentally doing something that's already not allowed. So, with that, let's go into a few things that Amazon says every proactive permitted message must have.

Rachel: So firstly, it has to be sent within 30 days of order completion. That's something that we're going to update FeedbackFive to handle, so you won't need to worry about that one. Order completion means order delivery, basically. So, we'll make sure that no messages are being sent out too late after delivery.

Rachel: They do need to include the 17-digit order ID which you have a shortcut tag that you can purposely insert the order number in FeedbackFive templates. But we will also update FeedbackFive just to make sure that every email has that even if you didn't purposely include it, so you don't need to worry about that one either.

Rachel: And thirdly, content must be in the buyer's language of preference. And it seems like we've already had quite a few questions on this one. So, I wanted to dive into how we're going to handle that for you a little bit. So first, as just a basic minimum, we will make sure to exclude buyers to prefer a non-default language for their marketplace from buyer seller messaging requests.

Rachel: So, I'll unpack that a little bit because I know it's complicated. So basically, if you're selling on amazon.com, for example, the default language for that marketplace is English. And so, we're assuming that probably your templates for that marketplace are set up in English.

Rachel: That's how our default works and that just makes sense. But a buyer who's purchasing through amazon.com can go into their Amazon settings and say that their language of preference is Spanish, for example. So, even though the default for that marketplace is English, the buyer may have chosen Spanish, Amazon is saying you may not send a message in English to a buyer who prefers Spanish.

Rachel: So, to handle that, initially, just to keep all of our sellers safe, we will at least be excluding buyers who chose Spanish from your amazon.com marketplace and FeedbackFive just to make sure that you're not accidentally sending a message in English to that buyer.

Rachel: But we're only going to do that for a Buyer-Seller Messaging requests, not for the official Amazon template because that one gets translated automatically by Amazon. So, there's no need to exclude those customers, they're already going to get it in their language of preference.

Rachel: So, that's how that will work. But we also plan to add an ability for you to set up translations and actually send translated templates to those buyers who selected a language that's not the default for that marketplace. So initially, you'll be following all policies once we set it up to just exclude those buyers.

Rachel: But then, to make sure that you still get to have a chance to communicate with those customers, we do plan to add additional functionality. We don't have all the details or the timeline exactly on that yet. But it'll be coming as soon as possible and we'll keep you all up to date on that.

Rachel: Next, we will need to go into some things that are not allowed which is not as much fun but it's definitely very important. So firstly, Amazon says that order or shipping confirmations are not allowed. This has actually been true for a while. Amazon says that they send their own order confirmation email and shipment notifications.

Rachel: So, if you are sending anything like that yourself, you're just doubling up and it's, really, too many emails for the buyer to receive and maybe they're going to get upset and maybe unsubscribe. So, it makes sense that Amazon's moving in the direction of less is more, just don't send anything that's really repetitive.

Rachel: So, if you have an order confirmation or shipping confirmation email setup in FeedbackFive today, I do recommend just going ahead and turning that off because actually that policy has been mentioned before and Amazon's just clarifying it again for November 3rd. The next one is a little bit new though.

Rachel: So, messages that say only thank you or that you're here to help if buyers have any problems, that I've seen a lot of sellers using maybe thank you note type emails or just proactively sending an email right after the order's placed to say if you have any questions or problems, just reply, it can be a good way to build more of a personal connection between your buyer and yourself.

Rachel: But I think Amazon here is, again, just going in the direction of less is more, you don't want to be sending too many emails. Every email that you send should really be offering a specific necessary bit of value of some kind to your customer. Or you are allowed to ask for reviews and feedback still.

Rachel: But I think just other types of messages that are less necessary Amazon's going away from, that's the pattern that I'm seeing in a lot of these policies. So, if you currently have a thank you note, email setup, or one that just says, "We're here to help, respond." Maybe trying to weed out those buyers who weren't so happy before the review request or something like that, go ahead and turn those off before November 3rd.

Rachel: Next, marketing or promotional messaging, including coupons. Marketing and promotional messaging has also not been allowed for a long time. I'm not sure if I had seen specifically the mention of coupons before. But I think Amazon's just making it very clear that even if you work in a coupon in with your other messages that are allowed, that's also not allowed.

Rachel: So, just go through your emails, make sure you clean out anything that's pressuring buyers toward maybe an additional purchase or sending them to buy the same item again. Anything that's not about the current purchase and is trying to encourage them toward another purchase, I would say it's probably going to fall under marketing or promotional messaging.

Rachel: So, that's also something that you'll want to review and take care of. The next few are all related to product reviews which is a big important topic as I'm sure you're all aware. Amazon's very, very cautious with product reviews. So, they're allowing product review requests as we said, but they are clarifying exactly how you can do that.

Rachel: So, number four, language that either incentivizes or persuades the buyer to submit positive product reviews or seller feedback including by offering compensation, money, gift cards, et cetera. They're going through a long list of examples of things that you might be offering an exchange for review all of which are not allowed, but this has really been pretty much the same for several years.

Rachel: So, you're not allowed to use any type of language that pressures a buyer toward only leaving a positive rating. And you're also not allowed to offer anything at all in exchange for review. So, even if you ask in a neutral way but then say, "And send us a screenshot of your review and then we'll donate $1 to your favorite charity."

Rachel: I've seen sellers get really creative with this. None of that is allowed if you're offering anything at all in exchange for review. Amazon's going to detect that and that's one of the ones that I've seen them be very strict about. At minimum, I think they would restrict your messaging. At maximum, they might be suspending your whole account.

Rachel: One other thing to note on that one, they are putting seller feedback in the same category. And in the past, I think they really focus more on product reviews with this type of policy. But now, it seems that seller feedback is also just falling in the same bucket.

Rachel: So, anything that you're not allowed to do when asking for a product review, you're also not allowed to do that when asking for seller feedback either. Number five, language that requests removal or update of an existing product review.

Rachel: You actually don't really have a way to do this in FeedbackFive because for a long time now we haven't had any way really to connect that review with the specific order, buyer and send out that message automatically. But I included it here because it's in Amazon's policy, it's very important.

Rachel: And if you have found a way to do that manually, that's also very unsafe. So, if you're doing something like that, just make sure you're not sending out anything that asks for removal or update of a product review. That is different from seller feedback.

Rachel: So, you can still go to the Feedback Manager in Seller Central and use that to contact the buyer and you get one chance to ask them to remove their feedback if you resolved the issue, but that's only for seller feedback, product reviews for this policy are totally different.

Rachel: And next language that requests a product review only if they had a positive experience with the product. Again, that's been pretty much the case for a long time. This can get a little bit tricky. So, pretty much if you're saying anything like if you're happy, please leave a review or if you had any problems, please contact us before leaving a review.

Rachel: Anything that tries to divide buyers into happy or not so happy and send them in different directions, that's not allowed. I think they would say that that's product review manipulation. And again, very, very dangerous, ultimately for your account.

Rachel: So, try to avoid just any if phrase or anything that says before leaving a review, any of that I think would fall under rule number six there. So, you can still just say, "Please leave a review." Or, "Would you mind leaving a review." Just something totally neutral.

Rachel: And then, I think down below, you could still say something like, "Reply to this email if you have any questions." Just keeping it very, very neutral, very minimal, letting them know that they can reach out to you especially maybe for merchant fulfilled orders where you're really handling the customer service.

Rachel: But you don't want it to be conditional or choose one or the other of these paths, you can put both options there just very, very neutral. So, that's all the product review request policies there. The last one I highlighted as being a big update because I think I still see a lot of sellers doing this and it's an unclear from Amazon for a while.

Rachel: So, a repeat request per order for a product review or seller feedback is not allowed. So, that means if a buyer purchases multiple times, you can send a request for each separate order if you'd like to. But for the same order number, they should not be getting more than one request for review or feedback.

Rachel: And we've already had some questions on this one like, can I send one request for a product review and one request for seller feedback? Based on what I've seen from working with a lot of sellers who got restrictions on their messaging or other problems.

Rachel: And then, my teammates we're working with thousands of Amazon sellers all the time. Plus, what we've just been hearing from Amazon, what pattern we've seen from them over the last several years, it really seems like Amazon is encouraging one request total.

Rachel: So, that could mean just choosing which of these is most important to your business and requesting only reviews or only feedback. Or it could mean following the example of Amazon's official template and actually putting both in the same email.

Rachel: And I think that can be a good strategy as long as you make it very clear which one is which. So, if you say, well, like Amazon's template says, rate this item and then underneath that says, rate your experience with the seller. So that way, it's very clear that these are two different things.

Rachel: So, I think that can work because a lot of buyers don't really know the difference between the two and they need some guidance. If they're getting two separate emails and one says leave a review and the other says leave feedback, they probably just think it's the same thing.

Rachel: But if they see them in one email with very clear language, maybe they'll actually go and leave both. And then, a third option for that might be if you're on the pro plan level or above with FeedbackFive, you have the ability to create a custom campaign and use the order number campaign rule.

Rachel: So, you could set it up so that all your odd numbered orders, get a seller feedback request and all your even numbered orders get a product review requests, something like that. So, you can divide up your audience. Each order is just getting one request, but they're different for different orders so that you still get some of both coming in for your business.

Rachel: So, there's a lot of ways to handle that. But the bottom line is no more than one request message per order number. All right. Let's go ahead and move on. So, that's the list of types of messages that are not really allowed. But then, there's a few more notes on the content within the message that might not be allowed even if the type that you're sending is good.

Rachel: And again, I'm trying to make it clear which ones are on your end, which ones we will be handling for you. So, the first one on this list is external links, unless they are secure working links necessary for order completion or links to Amazon. I want to unpack that one a little bit because I think there's maybe some confusion on this one or some room for interpretation.

Rachel: Links to Amazon are still totally fine. So, that means a link to leave seller feedback, a link to leave a product review, a track package link, maybe even a link just to the order details in case the buyer wants to review them, those types of things are still fine.

Rachel: This is my opinion but I think maybe this opens the door for if you had some instructional material or just information about the products that's uploaded onto Amazon, that should still be okay because it's a direct link to Amazon. Other than that, you should just be really, really cautious about what type of links you're sending.

Rachel: Make sure that they're truly necessary for order completion and that they're secure. So, they should start with HTTPS, not HTTP. So, things like sending buyers to your social media or something like that, that's not considered necessary. Amazon could really either restrict you or at least just strip the links out or something like that, there's just no reason really to do that.

Rachel: But if you have something that's instructions for the product or something that's going to be really helpful to the customer that they really need to have to complete the order, then you can include that. Along similar lines, Amazon is saying that attachments are not allowed except for product instructions, warranty information, or invoices. So, you can still send attachments, but they're limited to those type of things that are necessary for the order.

Rachel: They're directly related to the current purchase. So, this is not a sneaky way of working in marketing material. Really, anything that is not allowed in the Amazon message itself probably shouldn't go in your attachment either is the rule of thumb I would say because Amazon can certainly open your attachments.

Rachel: They can look at what you're sending. It just needs to be something that's directly necessary for the current purchase. Logos, if they contain or display a link to your website, this one has been true for a while. So, you are allowed to use your logo.

Rachel: But if you somehow have your website URL in your logo, even if the logo itself isn't links are clickable, if you just have the website written on there, that's not allowed, so be very careful especially if your store name is something like mystore.com. If there's any like .com, .net, something like that in the logo, I think Amazon would say that's a website.

Rachel: So, you can either rework your logo so that it doesn't have that in there and upload a new version through FeedbackFive or just go without the logo, maybe just put your store name minus any website information just in text, that would work too.

Rachel: And again, that one is already true. So, if you're doing that today and maybe weren't aware of this, it's best to go ahead and delete any websites or any logos that contain any of that information. A link to opt out of messaging is not allowed.

Rachel: You probably don't have this if you're using FeedbackFive, because we took away our opt out links a long time ago when Amazon instituted their own opt out. But maybe double check if you notice that somehow maybe an opt-out link for your own company email list or something worked its way in there, you want to go ahead and delete that.

Rachel: Sensitive content, that's pretty straightforward. I think maybe depending on what type of products you're selling, there might be some judgment call with this. But maybe just stay on the cautious side with things like that, I think Amazon can be pretty particular as we've seen.

Rachel: Tracking pixels or images, we're going to handle that one for you. And I'll explain a little bit more about what that means in just a minute. Email addresses or telephone numbers. So, email addresses, I think Amazon's been stripping those out or at least saying they're not allowed for quite a while, but they're clarifying that telephone numbers are also not allowed.

Rachel: So, if you want your buyer to be able to get in touch with you, the best way is just to say, "Reply to this email if you have any questions." Because if they respond back to a FeedbackFive email, it just goes through buyer seller messaging and becomes an incoming message for you.

Rachel: Or you can use the contact us shortcut tag, it was just a link that says contact us and it takes them to the Amazon page where they can send you a message. So, either way, it's just channeling all the communication through Amazon system, so that they have a record of it.

Rachel: They could arbitrate disputes. They could see if you're doing or saying anything that you shouldn't be. So, everything should go through there, not through a direct email or a phone number. Number eight is images of purchase products, as Amazon includes those on your behalf.

Rachel: So, you definitely know that feedback five has always included product images and a lot of our suggestions. We have shortcut tags that include the product image automatically all of that, we will be taking those away. So first, we will just be removing the option to add those into your templates.

Rachel: We are going to go back and do our best to basically find and replace on existing templates and just make sure that none of those product image tags are still included anymore. But this is a good time for you as the seller to also go and check your own templates.

Rachel: Because if we just automatically find and replace all the product image tags, we might not make your template look exactly how you want it. So, if you want maybe a button that's in a certain color rather than the product review link with stars or whatever you have now, it's best to go ahead and set that up yourself.

Rachel: So that way, you know exactly what your template looks like. We're not accidentally messing up how it looks in any way. So, that one's going to be a combined effort. We're going to do everything we can to keep you safe. But it's actually better in the long run if you go ahead and review your own template and just switch out.

Rachel: Any shortcut tag that currently shows the product image and just put in a different shortcut tag of your choice that doesn't include the product image. So, for example, if you're using product review button with image right now, you could switch it out for just product review button, for example. I'm seeing a lot of people raise their hands in Zoom and a lot of questions coming in.

Rachel: So, I'm going to pause for a second. Yeah, we'll be able to take questions at the end. I'll take as many as I can. So, if you're raising your hand because of maybe a technical issue, if you're not able to see my slide, or just have confusion about the way Zoom is set up, maybe try to put your question in Q&A and Nikki will look out for it.

Rachel: I don't know. Some people might have joined a little bit late, but Zoom creates two windows. So, if you're just seeing me talking and not the things I'm talking about, you might just need to double click on the video window that you're seeing now in Zoom will switch it, so that you can actually see the slide too.

Rachel: I know that's a common issue sometimes, so. But if there's anything else, just put it in Q&A and either I or Nikki will do our best to answer your question. All right. So, that's product images. So, that's going to be a joint effort a little bit. And then, the last one on this list of content that's not allowed, spelling errors or grammar issues.

Rachel: So, I know that can be tricky. You're maybe writing quickly. Or if you're writing a template in a language that's not your first language, there's a lot of nitpicky little things that Amazon may or may not pick up on with this. I think it's always a good idea to just at least have one more person read over anything that you're writing in your templates.

Rachel: So, get that second pair of eyes. Maybe write it in word and you spell check or set up Grammarly which is a little plugin you can use. Just find some way of just double checking, making sure there's no obvious misspellings or errors. And I think that'll actually be really helpful for just making sure that your customers are able to read your message really easily.

Rachel: It's putting your best foot forward. I think Amazon's just looking for messages in general to be as clean and straightforward and easy to read as possible. All right. So, let's move on to what are these tracking pixels or images that you've heard of. So, they're basically small, invisible images that are inserted in emails that help us track open rates.

Rachel: And unfortunately, we will have to remove these from our emails by November 3rd to keep you safe. But we're going to keep open rates available for as long as they're allowed to. So, up until November 3rd, you'll still have open rates in the tool.

Rachel: You'll still be able to track those for your Buyer-Seller Messaging templates. So, if you want to run an AB test, maybe try out two different subject lines or just take screenshots maybe of the open rates that you have right now and keep an eye on how they're doing right now, so that you have an idea before they go away, now's the time to do that, you have a few more weeks.

Rachel: And then, just before November 3rd, right, when they're not allowed anymore, that's when we'll be taking those out. But before November 3rd, we are also going to be adding some new analytics to FeedbackFive. And personally, I'm really excited about what we're doing.

Rachel: It's taking a lot of maybe the same information that we've had in the past, but just arranging it in a much more visual, much easier to work with way. And I think it's going to do a lot of good for any sellers who are feeling a little bit in the dark about how well their emails are working, whether or not these messages are really doing what they're supposed to do.

Rachel: So, even though open rates will be going away, we will have some new analytics that we're really excited to share with you. So, be on the lookout for that and we'll be announcing that coming up soon. All right. A few more things that are not allowed.

Rachel: I know this is long guys. So, thank you so much for joining and for your patience with all this. But as you know with Amazon, it's just important to get down in the details sometimes. So, some of these things on this slide are more about the styling of the templates, the look and feel.

Rachel: So sadly, the first two are a little disappointing. I know I had a lot of fun with these things, but emojis will not be allowed anymore. So, you will see pretty soon I think in the next couple of days, we will be taking out the ability to add emojis to the subject line in the advanced editor, so we're going to take that away.

Rachel: We're also going to go back to existing templates pretty soon and just try to auto delete emojis that are there. But here, again, like the product images, it's a good idea to go and review your own templates and make sure that they're still going to look the way you want them to look even without the emojis in them.

Rachel: So, if you used an emoji maybe to replace a word in a sentence or something and we just delete it, it could turn out very strange. So, you just want to take a look at that and make sure that there's still going to make sense, maybe go ahead and delete the emojis and just rework the template yourself.

Rachel: Similarly, with GIFs or GIFs, so those animated images, we're going to be disabling the ability to upload those to FeedbackFive and add them. But you will probably will want to go to your own templates and go ahead and remove any that are already existing and make sure that your templates still make sense without them.

Rachel: So, it's on us to disable the ability to add them, but it's on you to go to your existing templates, remove those and do whatever else you need to do to just make sure the templates still make sense. The third one is a little more technical. So, unsecure images are not allowed.

Rachel: If you use our image library, you're safe. So, if you've uploaded graphics through the image library on the right side, sorry, it's probably reversed for you, the right side of the advanced template editor, that's totally safe. Or in the wizard, if you just uploaded your logo at the top of the template, that's safe.

Rachel: So, we host those securely. If you created your own HTML template and you're hosting an image from your own website or somewhere else, it might not be secure. So, you just want to double check that. Next, message margins over 20% max width and image or graphic sizes larger than 80% max width, that can seem weirdly specific or confusing.

Rachel: But basically, preview your email, send test emails, check those test emails on mobile. Try them out with different email clients, just see how they look before you start activating it for your customers. And you want it to just not look weird, you want it to be easy to read, easy to scroll through.

Rachel: You don't want anything that's making people scroll side to side on mobile, for example. You want everything to be narrow enough that it's just easy to read and easy to work with, that's pretty much going to be safe. If you're doing it where it just doesn't look odd and it's very easy to read, probably you're already within these guidelines.

Rachel: Overrides of Amazon's default line height, font family or font color, number five. Basically, you just want to keep it simple. Amazon uses black Arial font for their part of the message. So, those parts on the top and bottom of the email when you preview it or the parts that Amazon controls, that's what they use.

Rachel: So, we recommend just going with the same thing. And I think we'll be updating our template editor to remove some of the other options that are not so good. But I think now's a good time to go ahead and go into your template now, make sure you don't have any other font colors or any unusual styling just to make it very simple.

Rachel: Fonts and more than three sizes, that's pretty straightforward. Probably it would look pretty strange to have multiple different font sizes, so just keep it simple. You could have maybe one size for the body text and then a slightly bigger size for your store name at the top or something like that, that would be two sizes which is fine, but just you don't want more than three.

Rachel: Message bodies should not be centered or otherwise override default text alignment settings. Just keep everything aligned left. Usually, that's the best practice with email anyway because, again, it's easier to read. On mobile, it's just easier on the eyes, it looks very clean. So, just keep everything left aligned.

Rachel: And then, don't put more than two-line breaks in a row. So, if you're seeing extra gaps between your paragraphs in your emails, that's what Amazon wants to avoid, so just clean those out. All right. A couple more things that I wanted to touch on just here at the end. We're almost done.

Rachel: You may have read Amazon's actual guidelines. I noticed that there were a couple things I skipped because they're a little bit more in depth. So, accessibility issues. If you were not quite sure what this means or if it seems really intimidating, don't worry too much.

Rachel: If you are just keeping it simple and following all those other guidelines that we just talked about, so black Arial font, no extra spaces, no images that are too big, no animations, just nothing crazy or difficult to work with, mobile friendly, you're probably already totally fine with the accessibility guidelines.

Rachel: Because a lot of the things about just email in general are already limited. So, if you're following all the other guidelines, you probably don't need to worry about this one. And then, the last one that I wanted to go a little more into is Amazon's not allowing images that do not relate to your brand or company.

Rachel: So, we are going to work with you on this one as well, it's going to be a mixture. We're going to remove all our older wizard layouts that use seasonal or themed graphics. So, we'll just be taking out those options. We're going to do our best to delete those images from older templates and things like that. But again, it's a good chance for you to go in.

Rachel: And if you used one of those layouts and then customized it in the advanced editor, you'll want to probably go ahead and delete those images or maybe even just cut and paste the text of your template into a fresh new template and just start fresh, because that'll help you clean up a lot of these other styling things too and just make sure that you're good to go.

Rachel: So, we ask you to take a look at that yourself and make sure that it's updated in a way that looks good even though we'll be trying to delete all those images from our end as well. But if you added any images that are not part of our layouts and also are not related to your brand.

Rachel: So, if you had a funny meme or reaction GIF or something in there, those are not going to be allowed anymore. Again, Amazon just wants things to be clean, simple, professional, easy to read. So, go ahead and delete those. I recommend deleting them from the template and then also deleting them out of your image library completely, so that you're not accidentally adding them into any future templates.

Rachel: And those, we can't tell automatically the difference between an image that is related to your brand or company versus one that isn't, just for trying to do like system wide cleanup. So, that's going to be on your end just to clean those out before November 3rd.

Rachel: So, those are all the things that will be updated with these new guidelines. I know it's a lot to go through. So, if you're feeling overwhelmed and feeling like I don't know if I can update all these things, I don't know what I'm still allowed to do.

Rachel: I do want to give you, again, just a little plug for the official Amazon template. I know it might not be the perfect solution for everyone. But we've seen that it does seem to work well and it's very, very easy to at least turn it on and just try it out.

Rachel: So, if you haven't tried it before, you can turn off your existing campaigns and just go into your account and flick on that campaign that's already set up with that official Amazon template. It's already set up so that it won't overlap with your past emails and things like that.

Rachel: So, you could just turn that on, maybe try it for a couple weeks especially when we put out these new analytics, you should be able to see pretty easily if it's working better or worse or about the same than the templates you were sending before.

Rachel: So, you can test it out. And in the meantime, if you think you'd rather go back to your existing custom templates, you have some time to tidy those up and make the updates you might need to make. And if you're wondering whether this will work better or worse or what we've seen as far as the results of this Amazon template, we were curious ourselves.

Rachel: So, we did a study of over 1,200 sellers between March and June of this year who turned on the official Amazon requests in their FeedbackFive accounts. And on average, they saw about a 41% increase in the number of reviews they were getting per day.

Rachel: So, that's a pretty significant boost. Obviously, we can't guarantee that it's going to be the exact same for every account, but it was a really encouraging thing to see and I think makes it at least worth trying. If you're not really sure how to move forward, you can at least test out that official Amazon request especially for product reviews. We've just seen really good results with it.

Rachel: All right. That was a lot to cover. I'm going to take some questions for, I think we can go just a few more minutes here. It's 3:12 in Eastern Time, so I think I'll go to about 3:20, 3:25. If anyone needs to drop off, of course, I'm not offended. But I'm just going to see how many questions I can take.

Rachel: And again, this is all being recorded. We're going to send out the recording soon, so you can go back and review everything if you missed something. All right. Melanie asks, "Where can I find if my FeedbackFive has enabled the shipping confirmation email so I can make sure it's turned off?"

Rachel: So, that is something that we didn't put in by default. If you set up a campaign and maybe a custom campaign entitled it, shipment confirmation or something or if you just go into the template that's attached to your active campaign and see if it's saying something like your order has shipped and not really anything else, then that would probably count as a shipment conformation.

Rachel: But if you or anyone else from your company never actually set it up, then it's not in there. Our defaults are only seller feedback request, product review request or that official Amazon requests that contains both. Oops, I think I marked the wrong one as answered.

Rachel: Okay, sorry. Melanie had two questions. So, you also asked, "Where can I check if we send images with links to the products so I can make sure it's off?" If you go to your hover over emails, click on campaigns. And then, whatever campaigns are active, you just want to click on the templates for those campaigns and preview them.

Rachel: And if you see an example like box image, that's where the product image would go, and that would be what you want to replace. So, some of the tags that fill in product images are like product review image with stars or product review button with image, you want to just look out for those and make sure to remove them.

Rachel: And again, we are going to replace all of those ourselves, so you don't need to stress too much. We're going to at least make sure that you're not sending out anything that's non-compliant by November 3rd. But to make sure that your templates look how you want them to look, you may want to go ahead and replace those.

Rachel: Thank you for those questions. All right. Wyatt asks, "Would including a URL to our Amazon brand store at the bottom of my template just as a footer with no call to action violate the no marketing or promotional messaging?" That is a tricky one.

Rachel: In the past, I've seen Amazon's policy page specifically say that you cannot include a storefront link. And then, I think maybe they've changed that language or don't specifically say that anymore. So, I would say it's a little bit ambiguous. But to be on the safe side, I would definitely say to take it out.

Rachel: I think they're looking for anything that encourages an additional purchase and that would be the reason I think for including your storefront link. So, to be on the safe side, probably you want to take that out. Jacqueline asks, "Can we include a thank you and contact buyer inside an instructional video mail?"

Rachel: I think that should be fine as long as the instructional video that you're sending is necessary for the order, if it's going to be really helpful to the customer. And then, you're also saying like thank you for your purchase. Let us know if you have any questions, that should be totally fine.

Rachel: Because the main purpose of the email is to provide product instructions, so that's what I would say on that one. Makoto asks, "I'm thinking of using FeedbackFive as a Japanese seller, but I don't know which initial template is okay to use."

Rachel: You may want to have a template that you can use as is. Great question. So actually, we do. If you start up a new FeedbackFive account and you'll see three options of templates that we just give you and all of those really are safe. Some of them might currently have a product image or something in them, but those are the things that we're going to update for you even on existing templates.

Rachel: So, if you were to set up FeedbackFive today and just turn on one of our default campaigns with the default template attached, it would be automatically updated by the time November 3rd comes around and it will be safe. And of course, the official Amazon template is in there as well and that one's also already fully up to date.

Rachel: All right. This is going to be probably way too many. I'm sorry, if I'm skipping your question. Do feel free to reach out to us afterward too. I think we'll try to follow up with some of you ourselves. And then, if you still have a question later, do make sure to just reach out to us. I'm going to get to as many as I can here.

Rachel: Renee asks, "Open rate is a useful tool. How can we track the metric after November 3rd?" Unfortunately, there just won't be a way to track open rates after November 3rd because Amazon is just removing our ability to send the pixels that would track whether or not the buyer opened the email.

Rachel: If we continued sending out those pixels in your FeedbackFive messages, then you would probably get in trouble for it because Amazon sees that you're responsible for whatever you're sending, so that's why we're removing it. We don't want to put anyone in danger, so that is going to go away.

Rachel: But we will have some other charts and graphs where you can more easily see whether product reviews or feedback or both are increasing as your messages go out and things like that. So, we will have some other analytics to try to give you as much information as possible.

Rachel: Shannon asks, "Can you send an email to all customers with a link to the user manual? And then a week later, send an official Amazon review request?" I believe so. Yes. So, Amazon has not said, you have a maximum of one chance to proactively contact the buyer, they've just said you cannot send more than one request.

Rachel: And from what I've seen, if you're sending just a single email through buyer seller messaging and then also sending the official Amazon request, as long as those are not both requests, that seems to be totally fine.

Rachel: So, if you're sending an email that gives the buyer the user manual and then you're sending only one request and you're doing that with the official review requests, so that you know it's completely safe. That sounds like a very good strategy to give the buyers the information they need and then also ask for review. So, great question. Thank you for that.

Rachel: Ferris asks, "Are we allowed to enable or send both Amazon feedback and seller template, seller feedback request?" If I'm understanding correctly, so I think you're asking, can you send a buyer seller messaging requests to maybe the seller feedback template that FeedbackFive creates and then also the Amazon review and feedback template?

Rachel: No. So, that would be two requests for the same order. And that Amazon's definitely making it clear that that's not allowed. So, you have to just choose one or the other for all your orders whether they're going to get just a custom feedback template from you or the official Amazon feedback template.

Rachel: Wendy asks, "Assuming all of this would be relevant for print as well, say if an insert is included in the box when shipped." Great question. So far, I have not seen Amazon specifically say that all of this applies to packing inserts with the new guidelines.

Rachel: But in the past, they have stated on at least one of their policy pages that you pretty much can't do anything in a package insert that you wouldn't do by email. So, I think, again, to stay on the safe side, you want to just keep it all consistent. Definitely, you're not allowed to offer a reward in exchange for a product review or something like that on a package insert, because Amazon will be able to place test orders or look at your inserts and find that out.

Rachel: So, you want to be really, really cautious on that. And I would say even like marketing material or sending them to purchase on a non-Amazon website or anything like that, I think it all most likely applies to packing inserts as well, even if Amazon hasn't quite said so as explicitly.

Rachel: All right. Jen asks, "Is there a limit of number of emails per order as long as they're within 30 days after delivery? For example, email one to provide necessary instructions and email two to request a product review." So again, I guess, I touched on this before.

Rachel: But Amazon hasn't said specifically a maximum number of emails per order, they've just said only one request. So, I think one email for instructions and one email to request a review should be allowed by these policies, but I wouldn't recommend doing more than that.

Rachel: So, more than two email is probably is just getting to be too much. And it's hard to think of more than two distinct reasons maybe to send an email. So, you wouldn't want to put like a separate review request and feedback request and instructions or anything like that.

Rachel: Yeah. Just one to offer information and then one to request for review or feedback or both should be fine. And along the same lines, Erica is asking, "Can we only send one email to a customer now either a seller feedback or a product review request?"

Rachel: Yeah. This is still I think a little bit ambiguous in Amazon's wording. But from what I've seen from working with a lot of sellers, sellers who are sending a seller feedback request and a review request for the same orders are tending to get restricted.

Rachel: It's not 100% all of the time, but it's often enough that I would say it's a pattern. And definitely you want to just keep that to one request to avoid getting potentially restricted permanently from sending proactive emails which we've seen Amazon doing lately.

Rachel: So, yeah, either pick one or the other or combine those into a single email. Okay. Still seeing questions coming in. I'll give it maybe one or two more answers here before we have to go. George asks, "How about UPS labels?" So, I'm assuming this is referring to either in attachments or maybe just sending an email like rather than product instructions or something, what if you need to send a UPS return label.

Rachel: It's not really specifically stated in Amazon's policy either way, so I hesitate to really make a judgment on that. But I think probably that's something that is directly related to the order. So, probably in the spirit of these guidelines, I think it should be fine.

Rachel: But again, just think about whether it's very necessary to the order. If someone has maybe asked to return their product and then of course you're responding to them and you need to include a UPS label that makes sense. But just be cautious about including anything that's really not necessary or just sending additional emails for maybe reasons that don't apply to all buyers or something.

Rachel: So, I think, generally that should be okay, but that's my opinion or my interpretation, something to be cautious about. All right. Jen asks, "How about a company logo that contains the company's website address?" So, no.

Rachel: That's actually already not allowed by Amazon. So, if you do have a logo that contains the company's web address in it, you want to go ahead and actually delete that today from your emails because Amazon already doesn't allow that. And they're still not going to allow that past November 3rd, either.

Rachel: So, you can have your logo, but just don't have your website in it. Okay. Barb has a really interesting question about if you have instructions, basically, do they have to mention only the products that the customer ordered? Or, can you compile the instructions for lots of different products into the same PDF? Or would that be mistaken for marketing material?

Rachel: That's a little bit tricky. I think, if you can make the instructions separate, that's probably a good experience for the buyer, so I would recommend that probably. We have something called SKU tags in FeedbackFive that I recommend you take a look at and see if that might help you, so that you can just insert the instructions for only whatever the buyer purchased which is really handy.

Rachel: So, if you go to the Help Center, click on Help in FeedbackFive and look up SKU tags, so SKU tags that might help you. But if you can't, like if it's not really practical to separate the instructions, as long as they truly are instructions and you're not trying to market those other products, I think that would still be allowed technically.

Rachel: You just want to be careful of the buyer experience too. If it's this big, long document and they have to scroll through it to find the item that they want or if you just have, I think you're saying you just have two or three items, so maybe it would be fine to put them all together.

Rachel: That's one of those gray areas or maybe it's ideal to probably separate them out, but that's my gut feeling. All right. I think some of the others that I'm seeing are pretty similar to ones that I've answered. If I didn't get to your question or if you think of more questions later, again, just feel free to reach out to us.

Rachel: You can reach us at feedbackfive@ecomengine.com by email. Or we have a phone number, we have live chat. If you click on help inside FeedbackFive and go to the Help Center, we have all of those contact methods available to you. So, just choose whatever is easiest for you, we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Rachel: And again, we will be sending out the recording. So, if you want to listen to it again, share it around, go through it and pause and update your account as you go. I think that's a really good idea. So, that'll be coming soon. Thank you all again for joining today. Thank you for sticking with it through this longer than usual webinar with all these different points.

Rachel: I'm so glad to see that everyone is really committed to getting up to date and following the guidelines because I think that's really important. So, thank you for joining and for all your questions and I may be talking to some of you soon. Have a good rest of your day, everyone.