How to Get Verified Purchase Reviews & Increase Amazon Sales

Transcript

Liz: Hey, everybody, this is Liz from eComEngine. I'm sharing my screen with you. And we're going to get started today on an awesome webinar about how to get verified purchase reviews and increase Amazon sales. I'm here with Shannon Roddy of Marketplace Seller Courses, a friend of ours and an awesome guy. And we're going to talk about all that stuff, how FeedbackFive can help you. And I think we're going to just go ahead and get started now. So welcome. If you have questions, please pop them into the question section of GoToWebinar.

Liz: We'll be taking questions as we're going through the material that we've got for you today. And we'll also have a section of Q&A at the end. We're also offering 30-day free trials on FeedbackFive and RestockPro and 150 free credits eComSpy. So you'll see that at the end and how to access that but I wanted to tell you guys that at the very beginning so without further ado, let's get started.

Liz: So I'm Liz Fickenscher. I'm the industry liaison at eComEngine which means that I work with sellers. I work with industry partners and talk to a lot of people and try to figure out what you guys need to be successful in Amazon Marketplace. I'm based in Richmond, Virginia. I've been here since 1995. I live here with my husband, my little white dog, Margie, and my completely crazy cat Duncan.

Liz: I'm going to introduce Shannon in a second but first, I feel compelled to tell you a little bit about eComEngine. In case you haven't heard of already, since the mid 2000s, we've been dedicated to helping Amazon sellers automate segments of the business, become more profitable, more streamlined, less stressed out. Our first tool of FeedbackFive was the first third party feedback and product review tool in the eCommerce space, and then RestockPro came along several years later. It helps you manage your supply chain. And then eComSpy helps you make smart decisions about inventory that you might, thinking about purchasing to sell on Amazon.

Liz: But we're here to actually talk about getting verified reviews. Something I know I think a lot about, I know Shannon thinks a lot about it. I know you guys as sellers think a lot about it too. So, without further ado, I'm going to introduce you to Shannon, Shannon why don't you tell the folks a little bit about yourself.

Shannon: Hi, well, thank you so much for having me Liz and eComEngine. So excited to be here. I know we've got a ton of people who are attending, sort of maxed out the space and continuing to, for everybody who's here live and going to be able to do Q&A as well as people who are watching the replay. Thank you guys so much for joining us. I'm really excited to present what I think is going to be really, really helpful information. I've been doing eCommerce since specifically Amazon Consulting for over six years, and the founder of marketplace seller courses which are online courses, resources and tools designed to help sellers and brand owners start and grow their business on Amazon and have the pleasure of either launching or optimizing or working with over 75 brands on Amazon. And that includes private labels manufacturers and authorized resellers.

Shannon: So ton of information that you're getting learning from not one company who has a story to tell, but 50 stories and experiences and I'm really excited to dive in and share all that information with you guys.

Liz: Well, and just to interject, I recently looked through Shannon's course material, and I'm not just saying this because he's here. It's awesome. I mean the course is awesome. I was like, "All right, sign me up. I'm going to start selling on Amazon." More than books. I'm going to sell more than books on Amazon. But I don't want to get too off topic. So Shannon, let's go through the agenda.

Shannon: Yeah. So here's kind of the road map. That's why we have a road. This is where we're going. I want to cover everything. So even if you're an advanced seller, I want to go through all the different steps. The first is really the why, why should we send feedback emails? Why is that important? Why is that vital to the business? What is the difference that it makes to get those verified purchase reviews. I'm going to talk a little bit about the emails themselves. Some best practices and tips and things that I've learned over the years working with the different companies. We're going to talk about some policy violations or policies that Amazon has in place regarding feedback. And make sure that everybody keeps in line with that, because our goal, obviously is to keep everybody's account safe and healthy and thriving.

Shannon: Also talk about the use of discounts and what that looks like and how that affects your reviews. And then we'll dive in and actually cover some specifics in terms of FeedbackFive. Liz will talk a little bit about that. And then I will talk a little bit about Marketplace Seller Courses just to give you guys an inside overview of what we do, as well as some exciting opportunities and some special sneak peeks that are available only to this audience, actually. So yeah, let's go ahead and get started.

Liz: All right. Real quick, though, we do have one question about everything that we're going to highlight today. Just the levels that expectations applies for the question, it says apply for the USA and Europe, please point out when there are differences for these regions. So I know that there's some GDPR stuff and all that kind of stuff. I think that overall, the material we're going to cover applies for sellers on all Amazon marketplaces in terms of the importance of reviews, the importance of your internal processes and the importance of following Amazon's Terms of Service. So would you agree with that?

Shannon: Yeah, definitely the importance aspect and some of the aspects of use of discounts. In terms of policy outside of Amazon, we're primarily going to cover what applies to amazon.com and US based sellers, there may be policies and stuff outside of the US that I may just be less familiar with. So, think of the primary focus would be an amazon.com in the US and sellers obviously in whatever region you're selling in, you're going to need to be responsible for knowing what you can and can't send and what additional restrictions are going to apply to you.

Liz: In your particular marketplaces Seller Central is sort of like your go-to resource for that. And just so you guys know, a recording of this webinar will be sent to you with all these visuals later today. So, you're here and I appreciate you being here, but I encourage you to stick around but you will get the recording too. All right, let's get started.

Shannon: So stepping back, too fast.

Liz: Sorry.

Shannon: Too far. Let's talk about why Amazon reviews are important. So I look at it as two aspects that play together, accelerated sales, increase conversion rate, and that's what ultimately will generate any product towards the best seller. You may not get to the best seller but Amazon obviously tracks the bestseller rank of every single product in their catalog. So in terms of accelerated sales, the more reviews you have, and the better those reviews are meaning the closer to four and five star reviews they are. The higher your products are going to rank in Amazon's algorithm system, which is A9. That's the algorithm that Amazon uses to rank all the products, so the more stars you have, and the higher star ratings you have, the higher you're going to rank.

Shannon: At the same time when a customer hits your detail page, which is called a session in Amazon, if you're looking at the reports, so a session is a visit from an amazon customer in a 24-hour period. If they purchase your product, that's going to be increasing your conversion rate, so the more people that hit your detail page and buy your product will increase the conversion rate and the number of stars and again, the level of star rating, the higher that is, the greater your conversion rate's going to be. So if you have a product that has three stars and its a overall average two-star rating, you're likely going to have a much lower conversion rate than if you have 50 stars and an average four and a half star rating.

Shannon: So the idea is that it plays in two parts. And as one grows, it affects the other one as well. So as your conversion rate increases, it increases sales velocity, well, that automatically will increase the ranking of your product on Amazon. And because of the increased number of reviews, you're going to get from the number of increase orders. It just cycles back around and around and around and around. So this is a big picture of 30,000 foot view, the more stars you get, and the higher star ratings you get, the higher increase conversion rate you're going to get and the higher your product is going to rank in Amazon. And that cycle continues to play out more and more. And what we're going to talk about today is how to impact and influence that cycle, how to push it along and keep the flywheel spinning.

Shannon: So let's talk about why seller feedback is important, and we're going to talk about two aspects. I wanted to mention this because it plays into the product reviews as well. There's two types of reviews that a customer can give. So one is seller feedback, that impacts the seller only. And it's designed to give feedback for the seller, did they list the product correctly? Did they sell the product new, if they had said it was new, did they ship it on time? Was the packaging good? Were there any problems in terms of communication? That kind of thing.

Shannon: So seller feedback is important because resellers, people who are selling on the listing have multiple other sellers, they're going to win the Buy Box at a higher price point. And this is so key and this is from data taken from feedback from feedback that was taken several surveys over the last several years, that the higher your seller feedback is and your overall seller performance health, you could actually increase the price and win the Buy Box over another seller even if their price was lower. So for anybody who's ever competing for the Buy Box, seller feedback is huge.

Shannon: Now, if you're a brand owner, and you've got exclusive distribution and tight distribution enforcement for your product on Amazon, this is going to build brand equity. So if somebody clicks and you're the only seller on the page, then if they click on the seller name, it's going to take you to their seller profile, which you can see an example of TableMate here. This helps build brand equity and consumer trust, if I see TableMate For example, we actually just hit 100, I didn't even have a chance to update it, but they just hit 100% positive feedback in the last 12 months due to our phenomenal customer service rep that we use.

Shannon: So this is going to increase consumer confidence. It's going to increase the number of orders that you're going to get, and it's going to build your overall brand equity on Amazon. So this is the seller feedback component and then we're also going to talk about product reviews.

Shannon: Okay, so I want to talk real quick about why we should send emails. So the first is increase positive seller feedback and product reviews, the more emails that you send, and we'll talk about the best practices, we'll dive into that. But the more emails that you send, and doing it correctly, you're going to increase that positive seller feedback, because you just saw the example from TableMate. And you're also going to increase positive product reviews. But it also does something else. That email becomes a customer touch point that the customer will oftentimes reply to that email if they have an issue with the product or their order. And we found so many cases where if you look at our messages, and TableMate is a great example, if you look at the messages, there's so many emails that we get from consumers who are replying to that first FeedbackFive automated email.

Shannon: And it may not even be that they opened it when they first got it, and may that it be, it went into the inbox and they archived it or went back on page two or three. But if they had an issue with their product, maybe two or three weeks later, they'll go back to that email as a touch point and go, "Hey, I remember I got an email from this company regarding this product." And they'll reply to that. And what that does is it gives us the ability to fix their issue, to solve their problem. Maybe they had a faulty product, maybe the product was damaged in shipping, and we get to correct that issue before they just leave negative seller feedback and negative product reviews.

Shannon: You have to think of it on both sides that the goal of the emails is to increase positive seller feedback and product reviews and at the same time decrease negative seller feedback and negative product reviews. That making sense so far?

Liz: Make sense to me.

Shannon: Awesome. So we're talking about the first email. So this is an example of one that we sent out for TableMate. So we're basically going to break this down into two sort of categories. The first category is what I would call a product that is an innovative product or requires assembly. So in this case, a TableMate has a little bit of minor assembly. So what we've done is we've sent that first email out, and you can see that there's a hyperlink there with included assembly instructions. Even though there's instructions in the box, people may miss them, they don't see it. That email, again, is a customer touch point. They can contact us if they have any questions or any issues. And it also invites some relief seller feedback. If it's an innovative product, meaning it's not something people typically use, maybe it's just not as intuitive as a normal product that you might use every day. That's even more important to send that first email typically when the product is out for delivery or day of delivery.

Shannon: And the reason is because people are going to try it and if they immediately don't get it, they don't like it, it doesn't make sense, they're going to start a return order, maybe an A-to-Z claim if they're really feisty, or they're just going to contact you and start a return. It's like give negative seller feedback, they're not happy with it.

Shannon: It's so important to provide the information they need to use the product correctly with that first email. Now, if it's a regular product, or a normal use item, a T-shirt, for example, you don't really need any special instructions. Typically, there might be some wash instructions. But again, those are going to be pretty standard. It's hard for somebody to use a T-shirt wrong. So in those cases, we typically recommend sending a day after delivery, give them a chance to take it and use it and try it.

Shannon: And if you are already an established seller, and this is really important. If you're already an established seller, and you don't need the seller feedback as much, it's not as important to you as those product reviews. You might be able to skip this first email and I'll talk about what that looks like in terms of the second email. But if it's a regular product, you can send an email asking for a seller feedback, making sure they received it on time, making sure it was in good condition. We've gotten everything from, it never got delivered, it was lost by the carrier. And all those things are things that we can dive in and help solve.

Shannon: But in some cases, it may not be necessary, the bulk of the orders that you do don't have any issues in terms of using them. And you're already established with seller feedback, and you're really looking on focusing on product reviews. So in those cases, we're going to focus on the second email more so for everybody else you can focus on both of them. But let's go ahead and look at that second email and actually, I think we've got a couple more. I think we have a couple more notes in terms of the first email but let's go to that next slide.

Shannon: Okay, so this is in terms of that first email really both of the emails, the two most important parts and I think if you go through, we got these graphics, these phenomenal graphics that listed a awesome job putting together.

Liz: That's my favorite part.

Shannon: So the two most important things about any email that you send are open rate and click through rate. And I remember when I first talked to Liz and our her team about this, I basically made the comment, I said, You're not in the feedback email, business or email feedback business. So if you're in the subject line business, because the most important thing, it doesn't matter what's inside the email, people don't open it. And so that's where we saw some really cool changes that they've made. You can see in your campaigns now that it has an open rate percentage right next to every single campaign. So you can gauge that very quickly. And the two most important things that increase your open rate are the subject line, and then the day of the week or the time of day.

Shannon: And FeedbackFive allows you to modify both of those, which is really, really unique. And we can try different subject lines. So there's also the ability to A/B test which we'll talk about in a minute, but subject line is the most important thing. And then the second thing is the day of the week and the time of day. So you can actually modify those to increase your open rate. So that's getting people to open the email, once they've opened the email, then we've got to focus on the content. And one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of sellers make is just providing way too much content. People are super busy. And the number one thing that we see is sellers asking for way too many things like, "Hey, we'd like seller feedback. And if you have an issue, contact us and can you give us a product review? And here's some assembly instructions," like total overload. So we want-

Liz: Coming out pretty, yeah, I've seen some really, really involved emails, you don't want to fit more than one call to action.

Shannon: That's exactly it. So keep it really simple and only ask for one thing. Now you can provide a little information. We're going to talk about that in the next slide. But the idea is if you're making a request, you only want to ask for one thing. And then the second thing is make it fun, make it interesting. People get boring text emails all day long. Even if it's a cool subject line, and they're intrigued when they open it, if it's just a boring email, you want to spice it up a little bit. So adding graphics, adding colors, adding formatting, really has the ability to increase the engagement rate to invite that click through. And FeedbackFive makes this really, really simple, but you can easily pop in graphic of the product, and it auto populates, you can easily tweak the text and the formatting using their advanced tool. So these are the two biggest things and the most important things to consider when creating your email, whether it's first email or a second email.

Shannon: So let's go to that next slide and dive right into that. So once we talk about increasing open rate and click through rate, the coolest thing that FeedbackFive again, makes it really simple to do is you can have your campaign and you can very easily copy that campaign and do what's called A/B testing which typically looks like sending the first email, the A email to orders that end in the numbers, zero through four, and the second email sending with numbers ending in five through nine. So it allows you to send emails basically half to one and a half to the other approximately.

Shannon: And you can test out different subject lines, for example, you can A/B test different days or times of day or content. I think, Liz, you mentioned, there's a seller that even breaks it down and sends it at the same time by the different region. So what timezone the customers, and it's going to send it at that time, like you find 11AM on Tuesdays with your great open rate day, then you can send it to that customer at that time, and they actually duplicate that campaigns to break it down by timezone. So, it depends on how engaged you want to be, how much time you want to spend, but knowing the importance of this, it's definitely at least at the very minimum testing your subject line, once you get a good subject line, you can then A/B test different days or times a week, I wouldn't recommend trying to do more than one thing at a time. But start with a subject line, and then do days and times.

Shannon: And once you get that open rate really high, then you can A/B test content to look at how many product reviews am I getting for every hundred emails or so that I'm sending? How much seller feedback am I getting? And that's going to be a good gauge of how engaging your content is, and the calls to action and making it really simple for customers.

Liz: Yes, and it's really, Shannon has especially really unlocked that potential within FeedbackFive. It's really exciting to me because subject lines are the most important part and you can A/B test subject lines all day long. Once you find one that works, then you can start playing with the other campaign rules but that subject line is, and he's really good at writing them.

Shannon: Now this is the hard part to swallow. So I'm going to be totally honest, this is really hard for a lot of sellers to swallow, but good leaders pay attention to reality. So we adapt to reality and we play around within that. So here's some things that you need to consider as a seller to set your expectations. The first is that a couple years ago, Amazon allowed customers to opt out of emails. And we see this lot, anytime people get overloaded, people are sending like three, four or five emails per order. It just got a little to the point where they were just getting bombarded. Amazon made a technical update and a policy update. And they allowed Amazon customers to opt out of receiving these automatic notifications. Now from FeedbackFive, that average opt out rate is about 30%.

Shannon: So it can change from seller to seller, but that's sort of an overall average, which means that yes, if you send 100 emails that about 70 of those will actually go through. So maybe 30%, maybe 30 of those sellers have opted out.

Liz: Well, and we actually had a question about what if a customer is opted out of emails? And the answer to that is you can't send them an email. There were some people that were trying to find tricks and hacks and all that kind of stuff. But the bottom line is that you don't want to send an email to somebody who doesn't want to get one. And the fact that 70% of the people that you're emailing still are okay with getting emails for you, you have a much better chance of success.

Shannon: Yeah, and the one caveat to that, and this is important to note, it's not a hack. It's not a workaround. It's not something that should ever be used in any automated capacity. But if there's a situation that is actually urgent, that requires you to send an email to a customer, putting important in the subject line, I think it's in brackets, but we'll provide some of that information. I think that it's also available on Seller Central. Those are only an extreme case and we're talking about product recalls, for example, for you-

Liz: And those should be sent through buyer seller messaging in your Seller Central account, we actually have disabled the important in brackets from the subject line of FeedbackFive, because we didn't want any bad actors getting themselves in trouble.

Shannon: And that's a great point. So again, that has to be used in the case of extreme situations only. Again, I would say product recalls would be a good example of that. And I would even contact Seller Central, obviously, you're going to have to contact them in solid performance and let them know what's going on. But that's really the only exception and caveat to that. Okay, let's talk about open rate. So average open rate in FeedbackFive, and this is really amazing, is 25%. And I think that the reason this is so high, is because of the services that they provide that help you with your subject line.

Shannon: And we'll talk about that, I think in a couple slides Liz, but the average open rate is at 25%. So that gives you a really good target. Again, it's going to depend on the seller, and it's going to depend on how many emails you're sending and the type of product that you're selling, but overall, all that they're seeing is the subject line. And so your subject line is getting you an open rate that's significantly lower, you're going to want to contact them and see if you can make some changes. And again, try different subject lines to increase that and get it closer to that 25%. Because you really want to maximize that as high as you can.

Shannon: Now, this is, this is the challenging part that I think a lot of sellers have a hard time swallowing. But it's so so important. The average number of reviews or feedback per 100 orders is 1.5. It's about 1.5. Now, before Amazon allowed opt outs, and before feedback emails became more and more prominent, we would typically see that for and this is probably I would say about four or five years ago, we would see that for 100 orders, you'd get about four reviews on average for a product and that's without any solicited feedback or anything. If you had solicited feedback, that would bump up to five or six. And I think this is the challenging part that a lot of sellers don't get is well that's hardly making an impact. I'm only getting an extra one or two reviews for those hundred emails that I'm sending out.

Shannon: But again, I want to put this in context. If you're getting right now 1.5 reviews per 100 orders and you're able to double that, then long term, you're going to double the number of product reviews that you have on Amazon. So I want you to think about it long term. If at the end of a year, you have 150 reviews, if you had used FeedbackFive, you would have 300 reviews. And you see how impactful that is? Again, remember, you go back to that accelerated feedback loop, where the more reviews you get, the higher your product ranks, the more people buy your products, the more email reviews you're sending, and so on and so forth.

Shannon: So you have to think of it strategically and you have to think of it long term and this is what I say, success is getting an extra two reviews per 100 orders. That's success for any seller across the board.

Liz: And I think that's a really good point. And that's a really good expectation to make. Because you do hear people that say I'm sending out 10 emails a day or I'm sending out 100 emails a day or I'm sending out 300 emails a day and to have an expectation of a percentage or just an expectation of per 100 orders that hopes level set for any level of seller, what they can expect from an automated reputation management system. I did have a note and we said we're going to talk about on a couple slides but I'm going to talk about it now. If you are sending emails and you are using FeedbackFive, we do have a team of experts at eComEngine who can help you optimize your FeedbackFive account, play with subject lines.

Liz: Colleen is with us today helping out. I wonder Colleen would you mind popping a link into the campaign health check guide, into the chat and GoToWebinar. That page folks will give you a link to set up an appointment with one of our what I call FeedbackFive doctors or FeedbackFive professors or gurus. But that's a good resource for you guys. So sorry to hijack you, Shannon, but I'm on track.

Shannon: I've been doing this, again, I've been doing this for six years. And we did. I did that walk-through and tutorial when I was on boarding some of my clients. And I found it extremely helpful. There was just some best practices. Because again, if you think about it from an internal perspective, FeedbackFive they know what works, they know what subject lines convert the most, because they've got all the data and they can help you do the same thing for your email. So if you have anything less than I would say 18, or even 20, 23%, schedule that meeting because it's going to be so helpful for you to get one-on-one to go through and make sure that you're getting the most of the service. The worst thing we can ever do is not take full advantage of everything that we're paying for and that's being offered.

Shannon: So the other thing that I was going to mention this is with all the updates and changes that Amazon's made over the last couple of years in particular, what essentially we're seeing is Amazon's leveled the playing field. And so when Amazon first started allowing customers to opt out, one of the big things that we saw was a lot of clients going, "Hey, I'm getting all these opt out emails, I don't think it's working, I'm just going to quit the service."

Shannon: So there's two things that you need to be aware of. So one is, there's a really, really simple way to go into your notifications. And this is available through FeedbackFive, that you can go into your notifications, and instead of you getting those opt emails, FeedbackFive gets them. And that's really important for them building up their database. So people who have opted out that way they don't send them emails in the future. And that's going to be helpful for every single seller that uses FeedbackFive, but what it also does is you have to remember, if other sellers are opting out and not using services, they go, "Hey, look, the opt out rate is too high. I'm going to jump off." I look at that as the perfect opportunity to jump in and maximize your use of emails, because now all of a sudden, if other people are not using it, it's giving you a competitive edge. And again, if you can double the number of average reviews per 100 orders, that's going to make a huge impact.

Liz: Absolutely. All right. We're getting to my soapbox.

Shannon: Dun, dun, dun. Hey we like sellers. And we want you to sell on Amazon for a long, long time. So to do that, I want to go through some really practical logistics as well as just some high level sort of how to think about right. So here's some practical logistics for anybody regarding any type of feedback or even consumer requests. So one is you can't contact customers outside of any issue with their order. So the only reason you can contact an amazon customer is specifically because of their orders. That's really pretty straightforward. That's why the emails are asking for seller feedback about their order, asking for a product review about a product that they ordered. It's in regards to their order. The second one is, you can't use coupon codes, up-sells or cross-sells to retarget or remarket to those customers.

Shannon: Does that make sense? So it's not saying that you can't have coupon codes that are available on Amazon itself. But what it's saying is in the email, you cannot say, "Hey, if you use this coupon code, you can get 10% off your next order." You can't do that. You can't also say, "Hey, these other products are great that go with the product that you just bought on Amazon. Why don't you check these out as well." So no, up-sells no cross-sells, the email really just needs to be focused on their order.

Shannon: The next one's just in regards to some of the updates that Amazon's made over the past couple years. Very, very simple, very straightforward. No reviews from you, from friends or family. Very straightforward. It can only be from people who have purchased the product previously. That's who Amazon is looking for. No incentivization for reviews. And so we again, just encourage everybody, obviously, everybody here is ethical, because you've chosen to attend a webinar, that in the title we talk about how to do this without violating Amazon's Terms of Service. So we know that's why everybody's here. So this is to help keep you in line with that.

Liz: Well, and this is serious, serious stuff. When I talk about this stuff all the time. That's why we took important out of the subject line potential for FeedbackFive, I mean, and it is harder to get reviews. We know that. Amazon is changing the landscape. They're implementing new policies to prevent companies from manipulating product reviews, because there have been bad actors since there have been product reviews. There have been bad actors and we had a review gate way back when, when they said okay, no more incentivized reviews because people are gaming the system so bad and people are still trying to game the system and Amazon just recently updated Terms of Service. They didn't change the rules, but they said, "Look, here are the consequences." And we haven't really been clear about the consequences before but you will get suspended. We will suspend your license.

Liz: We will potentially pursue legal action. I mean, this is no place to mess around. So yes, absolutely ask for product reviews in a TOS compliant way but do not be a cowboy and try to or cowgirl, cow person and try to break the rules because it's just not worth it. It's just really not worth it. And Shannon, I actually skipped your second email slide by accident so we're going to-

Shannon: That's all right, we'll jump back to that.

Liz: Yeah, we're going to go back to that because that actually...

Shannon: ... Jump back to that.

Liz: That actually tells you guys how to think about your product review request and we haven't done that yet. So I apologize for that.

Shannon: No, that's okay. Let's finish up this slide. And then we'll circle back. So the next one is no redirecting to your own website. People are like, "I'm going to include a coupon code with this or send them to my website so they can buy from my website. That's a big no, no. And I also look at it from this standpoint, if you want website traffic, direct traffic to your website. Your goal is to send as many people as you can to Amazon to leverage Amazon. Again, if you're looking for a number one bestseller, it doesn't help to redirect, repurchase customers to your website, that only hurts your bestseller status. So the goal is actually to keep people on Amazon. And you do that by not trying to redirect them to your website.

Liz: Wait, wait, wait, we have a question about that one real quick.

Shannon: Shoot.

Liz: So someone asks if our website link is in our company logo when we put our logo in email is that considered redirecting to your website? Yes.

Shannon: Yeah, that is a good question. And Amazon does have very specific language. I don't have it pulled up now. But they do have very specific language in terms of having your website and your logo. And that's something you're going to have to sort out with Amazon and I would do your research on that. Because yeah, that's pretty key, Amazon will suspend you for that, or potentially send notices.

Liz: So what we found also is that you can't even link to your storefront. I mean, the rules about linking away from Amazon, taking customers out of the buying process. And to that point, we did have a couple questions, because in your table email you showed a link to an attachment and people have asked, isn't that leaking outside of Amazon? And actually, within FeedbackFive, you can upload a document to Amazon server. So it's not a link outside, it's a secure release document.

Shannon: Yeah. And FeedbackFive does all that for you. So the service is called S3, and I use that separately as well, but it's Amazon servers. But that's a good point. But if you automatically upload a document, and do the hyperlink attachment, it stays within the Amazon ecosphere. I want to talk really briefly in terms of the overview about this aspects. I think it's so important. When looking an Amazon policy, you have to take into account two things. The first is what is your intent? And the second is what is Amazon's goal? And so I think if you can address those two questions you can do away with a lot of the sort of borderline practices. If your intent is to abide by Amazon policy, and to keep people on Amazon and to not redirect, not upsell, not crosssell, not manipulate reviews, then you're doing a good job, right?

Shannon: The other thing is to consider what is Amazon's goal. Amazon's goal is they want to keep people on Amazon. They don't want sellers to be bummed... Their customers to be bombarded by emails. And they don't want people getting phone calls or emails or other things outside trying to cross-sell or up-sell or again, take them off the Amazon platform. So, that's their goal. And if you combine your intent with their goal, you're going to be okay, you do have to keep up to date with the policy in terms of the specifics. But I think those are the biggest things in terms of having an overall frame of mind or a mindset that's going to keep your account in good health. Does that make sense? So you have to look at your intent, and Amazon's goal and put those together and that's going to guide you 90% of the time.

Liz: I agree with that.

Shannon: We're going to pop back to this other slide.

Liz: We are, we did have one question about can you in your FeedbackFive email, can you thank the customer for their purchase and provide a discount code for future purpose.

Shannon: No.

Liz: Unfortunately no, you cannot. That's bullet point number two. You can't do that.

Shannon: And before Amazon even prohibited this, again, we could link to your storefront on Amazon, even just sort of from the logo or whatever. But Amazon again, has made it very clear, once they put in the policy, then you got to jump on board, you got to make tweaks, and you got to abide by that. So, again, they're considering that, trying to retarget customers to purchase more from your storefront. And again, keep it about the order, right, everything's about the order.

Liz: And we'll handle a couple more questions about product review emails and their rules when I hop back to slide 11.

Shannon: The second email.

Liz: Sorry about that guys. All right, go for it.

Shannon: Okay, so this is the second email. And sorry guys for having to do this in split, but I think it'll still make sense in context. So real, real quick actually let's go back real quick just to the slide before, just so we can look at the first email and then the second email in context. Okay, you got to go back one more. Let's skip through.

Liz: How did that happen?

Shannon: So first email. This is talking about, again, when to send and whether or not you even need it. Let's go to that next slide. And this is in regards to that first email as well. Start with value. So again, with that first email, you want to start with value. The value of the principle is called reciprocity, right? So if I do something for you, people are more likely to do something for me. I don't necessarily agree with that philosophy holistically. I think we should be altruistic and do things just because, that's just my take on it. But in an email, your goal is to start with value to at least get them to keep reading.

Shannon: And so again, if there's assembly instruction, if there's use instructions, and I'm going to talk about how to exactly do this in a second, how-to videos, attachments, eBooks, those things are really helpful to do upfront, and then ask for seller feedback. So your goal is to provide the value and go, "Wow, they really gave me a lot of helpful information. Yeah, I don't mind taking 30 seconds and let them know like, hey, that video is helpful or that attachment or eBook or instructions are helpful." Assembly and use instructions you can do as attachments like Liz mentioned, it's hosted on the Amazon servers, so it's in line with TOS.

Shannon: And you can also do that with things like eBooks, again, I would keep these focused on the product. And one of the ways that we see those use really well is a customer who has like a food product, for example. And here's some recipes of ways that you can use this product. Again, in that eBook or in that attachment, you're going to still abide by Amazon policy in terms of service, you're not going to try to redirect them to the website, the goal is just to provide value. Again, your intent, Amazon's goals.

Shannon: The second thing and this is one of the coolest things that we discovered, and use feedback emails for is how-to videos. And I want to make sure that we talk about how to do this very clearly, because you have to keep in line with Amazon's TOS again, you can't redirect them outside of Amazon. The way you do this is there is a service called AMZ product videos. And what they can do is if you have a how-to video, for example, assembling this is a example called click belts that I'll talk about in a second. If you have a how-to video, you can pay them a small fee, and they will upload that video and they will associate it with any ASINs that you designate. So in some cases, you may have five ASINs that all use the same how-to video so you can associate with multiple ASINs, and it shows up under the related video shorts.

Shannon: What's cool about that is that video gets its own ASIN just like a product does. And if people land on that page, on a desktop, the video auto-plays and if they land on their phone, they could just hit play and watch that video. So what we did for click belts, it's a really cool belt, it uses a cobra buckle, but people are having a problem threading it. In fact, I was the consultant that on boarded them to Amazon, and I got a click belt, which was awesome. But I had trouble feeding it through. I had trouble threading it and figuring it out.

Shannon: So what we figured out was we're getting negative product reviews, negative seller feedback, return requests, because people couldn't figure out how to use it. So what we did is we uploaded an AMZ product video to the detail page. And then we did this little screenshot with a play button. And we included that in the feedback email. We said, "Hey, watch this 32nd video to see how to correctly thread your click belt," and all of a sudden, I mean, overnight, the amount of initial returns, negative seller feedback and product reviews decreased and people were happy with the product because they understood how to use it. So for innovative products, for products that require a little more complicated user assembly instructions, I highly, highly recommend it.

Shannon: We've got some resources on our website that we could talk about later. But AMSY product videos again, you do not want to use link them out to YouTube or Vimeo or anything else, keep them on Amazon, it is a great way to provide awesome value to Amazon customers for a little more complicated products.

Liz: Shannon, people have a lot of questions about the video. Can you iterate how to do that? Is it a company? Is it a service?

Shannon: Yes. And you know what, let's follow up those at the end. When I talk a little bit about Marketplace Seller Courses, because it is very in depth. I don't have time to go into it. But yeah, that's great that people are excited about because it makes a huge difference and impact on your business.

Liz: Sure.

Shannon: I think we've got the second email. Okay, so this is the second email. Now, again, if you've got solid feedback for your seller account, you're doing great. You're not fighting for the buy box. People know how to use the product intuitively, they don't usually have an issue with that. You can either send a second email in addition to the first or you can just send the second email. Okay, and that's totally up to you the seller, test it out, see what works and make the decision that's best for your business. So this is a company called fruit bliss that I'm working with, absolutely love the product, oh my gosh, if you like... It's not even dried fruit. It's rehydrated fruit. So it's like super juicy. But it's in these sealed pouches and containers. My wife and I eat them all the time. They're amazing.

Shannon: But they would send the second email to get product reviews, and it's really, really simple. We're just asking them very simply, and again, you see that cool graphic, and the link and everything, all that's auto populated by FeedbackFive, you don't have to hire graphic designer or build any of that out yourself. It's auto populated based on the product that they purchased. And here's when we recommend sending that second email. These are general ballpark, it's not specific. Again, sort of figure out what works best for your product, but seasonal, we found like seven days after delivery is a good time. Perishable so again, that'd be like a food product like this 14 days after delivered so we would send These 14 days after delivered, soft goods, again, 14 days after delivered, and then hard goods 21 days after delivery.

Shannon: But the main thing that I think sellers should consider of when to send that second email is what would give them in a reasonable expectation enough time to use the product and actually try it out and see if they like it, right? If it's a T shirt, you could probably send that email three days after it's been delivered and asked for a review. Because really, they pull it out. Do they like the color? Does it fit? Is the graphic as funny as they thought it was going to be in person. That's it. There was not really anything else to test. If it's a barbecue seasoning, and you know, it's maybe early spring, they might not use that for several weeks even. And so you have to play around with it, make sure that they're going to have enough time to use it. Is it a product they're going to use every single day? Or is it more of a special occasion and if it's a special occasion type of product, you might want to wait a little bit and push that out.

Shannon: Amazon does have a cap, but I think it's like 60 days. So you can ask for a product where you have 60 days. So don't go beyond that. But these are general guidelines. And then again, get in there and A/B test and see what works for you as a seller makes the most sense. And again, when you send that second email, that's where you're asking for a product review, really short and simple. No, incentivization. And Liz, can you talk really quickly about, I sent you some some language that we're going to look out for Amazon's TOS? Can you talk very specifically about what they say you can and can't do in terms of what you can and can't ask for and how that sort of works because the language is important.

Liz: It's absolutely important. So if you decide to ask a buyer to provide a customer review, you cannot ask for a positive review. You can't say, "Please leave me a positive review on Amazon." You can get suspended for that. I mean, game over. And you can't request reviews solely from buyers who have had a positive experience. So most email and reputation management tools do have the option for you to only request a product review from people who have left feedback, positive feedback, I don't suggest that you use that feature. It's hard coded into a lot of the systems, including ours, but for a different reason that we'll cover in a different webinar. But we don't want you to do that, you're not supposed to just request product reviews from people that you know had a positive experience. You also can't ask customers to change or modify the review in any way.

Liz: So once they leave a product review, whether you solicited it or you didn't, you cannot ask them to change it. You can reply in line in Seller Central and say, "I'm sorry, you had that experience. We're working very hard to fix that so that other potential buyers can see that you're responsive and that you're respectful." But you cannot ever ask anybody to change a product review. They're sacrosanct in Amazon's eyes and it's a very important part of Amazon's process.

Liz: You can't try to influence the review in any way. So you can't say I'm a small business and my success and whether or not I can feed my children depends on whether or not you leave me a product review. I mean, like you can't say anything like that in an email you have to pretty much say, "Hey, I'd love to hear your honest review." That's pretty much it.

Shannon: Yeah, and I think the only exception again, and Amazon may change this, you look at in this example, we've got, it says leave product review in it, and it has five stars there. We're not asking for five star feedback. That's just sort of an auto populate thing that lets them know that they have the ability to review the product. So again, if Amazon ever makes a change, we're going to change all those things. But for now, in terms of the text in terms of what we're actually asking for, it's very straightforward. We're just asking them to leave their feedback in the product review.

Liz: Absolutely.

Shannon: All right so-

Liz: Now where do we go? I messed this all up. I think we go all the way over here.

Shannon: Amazon policy coupon codes, okay, this is super fun. Remember I talked and I want to make sure nobody's confused by this. I talked earlier about, you can't try to offer a coupon code or discount as an incentive to get something to go through your product. So we're not talking about incentives here, I'm just talking about on Amazon itself, Amazon has the ability for you to do coupon codes or you could do a promotion, if you buy one, get one free. So those are all acceptable before they buy the product. What I want to mention here is with some internal testing, we found that a discount of 20% or greater removes the verified purchase badges that you see on the left, so here we have amazon customer on the left, and we have their five star view and on the right-hand side that says... Again, I just did it with Photoshop, discount customer, so they got a discount of 50% off.

Shannon: And the reason this is so important is that verified reviews are weighted more heavily than non verified reviews. So for example, say you've got 10 product reviews, you've launched a product and two of those verified purchase. And the people who verified, who bought the product through Amazon in their verified purchase. They didn't really like the product, it was one star. But you had eight people that left you five stars that were all unverified purchase reviews. And those were all five stars. Your average rating might only be like around a two, two and a half. Just because those verified purchase reviews are so much more heavily weighted than the non verified purchase.

Shannon: So, again, it's totally cool to do coupon codes and promotions and everything on Amazon before the customer purchases. Again, we're not talking about incentivizing but just be aware that a discount of 20% or greater removes the verified purchase badge for a customer who purchases even to the Amazon platform. So just want people to be aware of that. Use of coupon codes, coupon codes are great, but if you're trying to get more verified purchase reviews, keep it at 20% or less. That make sense?

Liz: That's awesome advice.

Shannon: All right, what else do we got?

Liz: All right, we've got-

Shannon: I think we're almost done.

Liz: Well, so we're going to talk a little bit about FeedbackFive but we're running out of time. And I think it's really super important that we get to a little bit of the Q&A, because we've had a ton of questions.

Shannon: Let's cover this, we're going to do the speed mode, because again, a lot of you guys already use FeedbackFive, if you don't, you can click, Liz is going to put up a Bitly link that you can check this out. I want to talk real quick about a couple things. So one is I am an affiliate of FeedbackFive. I'm not an affiliate to make money. I am a promoter because I believe this is one of the best feedback tools out there. And as a result I get a commission for anybody that signs up. So that's the official disclaimer. But I use it for my own businesses, and I recommend it for my clients because I believe it's the best software that's going to be able to get you the most for your Amazon feedback tool.

Shannon: Okay, so that said, I want to hit real quick on templates, campaigns, and then Liz is going to talk about a free trial. So let's hit that next slide real quick. Because this is really important for people who are new to the platform to understand. FeedbackFive has two things, have templates and campaigns. So the template is the content of your email. So that's your subject line, any variables like the product, the customer name, and they've got a wizard that's so easy. If you have not used FeedbackFive, it can literally take you only five minutes to get this set up and get a general email going out. You can use a company logo, custom graphics, custom colors, super, super simple.

Shannon: So the first thing you're going to do is create your template. Let's hit to the next slide, and then I'm going to cover this and then I'll pass it back to you. Okay, the next thing you have is once you have a template, you're going to go ahead and create a campaign. And you're going to select the template that, that campaign applies to, so you're going to add a template to a campaign. And this is where you set up the campaign, say when to send email, and any other conditions or rules like only send for these skews only send for these ASONs, only send if the buyer this, that or the other.

Shannon: So the campaign is about when it goes out, the template is about the content. And again, I think, Liz, you mentioned that they need to be on a pro plan, talk about the plans that give them access to some of the campaign roles.

Liz: Okay, so the pro plan is pretty much where you want to be with FeedbackFive no matter your volume of sales, because that unlocks the access to all these different campaign roles and a whole bunch of different features. So even if you don't know that you want to stay there forever, if you're going to start a free trial, start the pro plan so that you can really see all the features that are available to you. And then if you decide those aren't important, which you won't, but if you do, then you can, great. But always start with pro. If you have questions about that I can help you so just contact me.

Shannon: Yeah, and again, when we talked about doing A/B testing and all the different times and days and subject lines, that's going to be critical for doing that. So you've got to do that when you get it set up initially.

Liz: All right.

Shannon: Take it away Liz.

Liz: Bitly here. And we did Bitly's because the links are so super, super, super long. And I'm going to include the Bitly for free trials in the email that all of you are going to get for attending today, you're going to get a recording in the video, you're going to get all the information about the free trial and all that jazz. And if we don't get to your questions today, we'll try to tackle a few of those in a timely manner. So I want Shannon, just a little bit about Marketplace Courses before we run out of time because like I said, I went through this program last week, and I was blown away. And I'm not just saying that I mean, I really really mean it, guys. It's really good information. So Shannon, why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

Shannon: Yeah, awesome. So real quick to give it background. I've spent six years doing consulting, but I spent three and a half years developing what I believe is the best online course for Amazon and I'm not just saying that, I want you to test it out for yourself. But we really delve in and talk about everything that you need to be successful. And it's not everything you need to know about Amazon because that would be 1000-hour course. But it's everything you need to be successful in terms of the essentials. And so we cover everything from Amazon strategy, listing optimization, how to do an effective product launch, seller resources, tools and resources. And one of the coolest features that I believe it has is a Q&A section right inside the course.

Shannon: So if you're watching a lesson, you have a question, you can ask it right in the course. And you'll get an answer, typically within 24 hours. So that's really, really key because again, as we see right on this webinar, people are going to have questions, and you need a place where you can get your questions answered. When you look at that opportunity, FeedbackFive and some of the tools that eComEngine has, that is one small component of the overall success package that requires to really build A plus listings and really knock it out of the park. So if you're interested, I think we've got... Is it on the next slide, I wanted to mention, we have a sort of an intro launch webinar that we're doing tomorrow. If you happen to be available, I want to jump on this, I'm going to be sharing three secrets that I believe are critical for any brand owners long term success to successfully launch and or grow an Amazon business if you're already selling.

Shannon: And all you got to do is go to marketplacesellercourses.com/start to go ahead and sign up for that webinar. Again, that's going to be tomorrow at 2PM. This is an internal launch. So this is not available anywhere on the website. It's not on social media. We're doing to our own email list and eComEngine users who are on this webinar only so don't share, this is exclusive for you guys. And we'll be putting together a bigger webinar for eComEngine if you don't have a chance to attend that but I want to make sure that people are aware of this if you're ready to take your Amazon business to the next level. This is a great opportunity to get started and do that.

Liz: Yeah, and I encourage you guys to get to know Shannon better and to get to know his material better because I think it's beneficial to sellers of any level. And that's my ringing endorsement from my friend Jay. So let's dive into questions in these last couple of minutes. We have, "I really appreciate how engaged all you guys have been. This is super." So I'm just going to kind of go through the list because it's been kind of coming willy nilly. But we didn't, someone asked, "Can we leave the support email address in the review responses if they respond on Seller Central, like inline can they leave the email?

Shannon: You're talking about their like alias email?

Liz: Now, I think what they're saying is okay, somebody leaves me a negative product review. I can't ask them to change it but I can respond in line in the review section. Are you allowed to pop an email in there?

Shannon: No, no, no. I mean, you can basically let somebody know, message us and we'll be happy to resolve your issue. But Amazon will either strip out emails, or they'll they'll send you a notice. So even if it's your own Amazon email address, they want that to happen to the messaging system. So again, that's where sending these emails are so important, because again, you're going to get more people who respond to these emails and less people who are just leaving the reviews on their own.

Liz: And then we did have a couple more questions. Just to clarify, if you attach PDF in FeedbackFive, it is uploaded into Amazon's servers. So it's okay. You just have to do it the right way.

Shannon: Yeah, we'd never seen Amazon have any issues with that. So again if that ever changes, that's what you have to keep your ears so close to the ground, you've got to stay up to date with great services that are keeping up to date with Amazon policy. We've never seen an issue with that. So as long as Amazon's cool with it, then we're good and we haven't seen any problems uploading a file to S3 if it provides value to Amazon and abides by all their other policies.

Liz: And then someone has asked, "Should we ask for feedback in both the first and second email?" No, I don't think you should. First of all, if your second emails asking for a product review, you shouldn't have two calls to action. And I strongly believe and I believe it's in terms of service that you can only send one email per intention per order. So, no, don't do that. Don't send two feedback requests or two product review requests.

Shannon: Yeah, this is the specific language, it says you're allowed to send one email per order to request a customer review. So I don't believe the way I read that. It's not saying that you're only allowed to send one email, but you're only allowed to send one email per order to request a review. So at this point, as we understand it, it's okay to send one email and ask for seller feedback, and a second email to ask for product reviews. Again, if that ever changes we'll let you guys know but that's the way we read that. And again, think of it as your intent to stay in line with the Amazon policy and Amazon's goal of keeping their customers from being bombarded by hundreds or thousands of emails every day.

Liz: Glenn keep in mind also that Amazon does for most orders then sends an email buyers asking to review and provide feedback. So you don't want to do overkill. So if you're really trying to build your feedback score, one email per order, you should stick to one email per order to ask for feedback.

Shannon: Fully.

Liz: Don't harangue your buyers? Let's see. So there are a lot of... I don't want to run out of time when people are asking about this video thing. For the rest of you if there are policy issues that we can answer, we'll noodle around on the rest of your questions and try to address those in a timely manner for you guys, but let's use the rest of the time for Shannon to go over the video thing again because a lot of you have had questions about that.

Shannon: Okay, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to... Do I have the ability to pop a link in here, Liz.

Liz: Yeah, just put it in the chat.

Shannon: All right. So I am going to upload a link. And this is probably what a lot of you guys are asking about is how to add emails or sorry, how to add videos to your detail page. So, in here, we've got a link to AMZ product videos, we've got a coupon code that you can use, it gives you all the specs that you need to upload a video. And again, it's really pretty straightforward. So that's the first part is working with the AMZ product videos to go ahead and get a video up associated with the correct ASINs. And then from there, it's really just a matter of clicking on the video and it'll show the ASIN in the URL and then you can link to that video using the screenshot graphic and just Photoshop with a play button that you can put in your feedback email to link people to that video and show them how to use your product when they receive it.

Liz: Okay, and then there's one other, we've got a bunch of questions about the 20% threshold for verified reviews. Does that apply to Lightning Deals?

Shannon: That's a good question. I don't know, I haven't tested it with Lightning Deals. But that's probably going to be something that the Lightning Deals probably going to be worth it anyways. And yet look, if you find out I would love for you to connect with me on social, just Marketplace Seller Courses, let us know. Because again, we don't have the ability to test everything ourselves. So Lightning Deals would be a great thing to find out about, I actually had questions about that myself.

Liz: So one clarification, the slide says the 20% and more is, 20% and greater is not verified. But so it's 20% threshold, it's 21% the threshold or should we just take the-

Shannon: I think it was greater than 20%. We saw that you're okay at 20%. You can offer 20% discount and be okay and get a verified purchase. Again, test it out. If you see reviews coming in for products that you had a coupon code at 20% ad it's not verified. Amazon can and will change anything and everything on a daily basis. So it's not like we're not keeping up but we saw anything greater sort of is that ability to, people are looking to offer super discounted products and either hoping for reviews or maybe sort of asking on the side, and Amazon's not just trying to keep it really clean. Those companies are not going to offer a coupon code greater than 20% off anyways. So that's kind of the thinking and rationale behind that.

Liz: Somebody else says that, and we'll wrap up in just a minute, I asked Seller Central three times whether or not I could send coupons to repeat customers, and they said, "Go ahead," but you say this is TOS, could you shed light on this? I think and correct me if I'm wrong, I think coupon codes that could be construed as manipulation. Like if you do this, then you get this then that's what's against TOS. If you've got some agreement with Seller Central. That's different than your reputation management automation, right?

Shannon: Yeah. And again, it's tough because Amazon doesn't even get it right all the time. We know that you can find different Seller Central articles that completely negate each other. So again, if you want to contact amazon Seller Central and get approval or permission and try something, I would just make sure that you go through the policies and look for that language. And I can look for that as well and see if you want to connect with me on Facebook on Marketplace Seller Courses, and provide you the language that I've found. And again, it might be updated or changed. But what we saw very specifically, Amazon's goal is for you to not retarget those customers.

Shannon: I can say this, that if you're trying to get repeat customers for a reasonable product, then initiate FBA Subscribe & Save. That's the best way to do it, because that's exactly what it is. It lets customers know that they can sign up and get that product on a recurring basis for a discount. So I would definitely recommend FBA Subscribe & Save. But I will also sort of revisit the terms of service again, they're changing all the time.

Liz: Yeah and in the follow up email, I'm gonna send the link to the feedback requests to us and the reviewers to us for you guys to have, for easy reference.

Shannon: Really helpful.

Liz: But I do really recommend that you talk to Shannon. We are three minutes over, but I really appreciate everybody joining today. Shannon, thank you so much. I'm sorry, I messed up our slides. I think it went okay. Anyway.

Shannon: Yeah, we rebounded. Good.

Liz: Again, you guys that joined us today. Look out for an email a little later this afternoon with the recording. And if you have any questions contact me, contact Shannon. Let's get the conversation going. Shannon thank you so much.

Shannon: Yeah, thanks so much guys. Thanks Liz.

Liz: Thanks.

Shannon: Bye guys.

Liz: Bye.