At Viral Launch, it’s our mission to help you build the most successful Amazon businesses. We love having the opportunity to be a part of your entrepreneurial journey, and we don’t take this honor lightly. Part of our mission is providing you with the most sophisticated, effective, and results-driven Amazon seller tools in the world.
Based upon your feedback, over the past few months, we’ve pushed nearly 100 code changes, consisting of new search filters, performance improvements, and new features. 😱 And there is a lot more in the pipeline!
Product Discovery is a comprehensive and sophisticated tool that, for sellers with limited experience, can be quite intimidating. We understand. And that’s why we’ve made Product Discovery even more accessible with Preset Searches.
Presets allow you to run with filter combinations that we’ve created for you. For example, if you are looking for High Margin Market opportunities, but you don’t know which filters to use to find them, no worries! With Preset Searches, you select what type of results you are looking for, and we fill in the filters for you.
Example Preset: Quick Win Keywords
Filters:
Average Monthly Revenue: $5,000-25,000
Average Profit Margin: Min 50%
Sales to Reviews: Min 5
The filters will automatically populate based on the preset you select. This gives you a great jumping off point and a much better understanding of how to start using various filters to find the exact opportunities you are looking for.
Warning: It is important to note that presets are simply a starting place. They are there to help you better understand how to use the filters. If you only use the presets without making adjustments, you will likely find a lot of the same products other sellers have found. These may end up being bad product opportunities because of too much competition or saturation.
Coming soon, we will also introduce Custom Presets so you create and save your own preset searches! For example, let’s say you’ve stumbled across a killer filter combination that churns out amazing five star product opportunities. You can save that Preset (filter combination) so you can return regularly to see which new products, keywords, and brands we’ve added to the mix.
Let us know what you think of our new Preset Search feature in the comments below! We love honest feedback. 🙂
Now Mobile Friendly
Product Discovery and Market Intelligence are now available on-the-go with our new mobile friendly versions. Our best ideas don’t always strike us when we’re at our desks. And as an entrepreneur, you hate wasting time not being productive. Now you can knock out your product research or check sales estimates on new product ideas from anywhere. We’ve spent hours putting together a mobile design that is intuitive and still looks great.
Pro Tip: While we do not have a dedicated app for your smartphone, you can save Market Intelligence or Product Discovery as bookmarks on your home screen as if they were apps. This allows you to easily access the tools and begin searching instantly, providing the same look and feel as a native application.
Since launching Product Discovery just over two months ago, our data aggregation systems have been working tirelessly to keep our data fresh and to add new opportunities to our database. This means there are new products, keywords, and brands for you to uncover daily!
Ever think you’ve found all the “good keywords” or all the “best brands” in Product Discovery? Think again. Check back in a couple of days for plenty of new golden opportunities just waiting to be discovered.
New Filters Added Regularly
Along with our commitment to add new opportunities, we want to add new ways of discovering those opportunities. In the last month we’ve added two new filters, and there are more on the way. Those new filters are Shipping Tier (applicable to all four search types: Product, Keyword, Brand, and Category) and Brand Name (obviously only applicable to Brand search).
What additional filters would you like to see?
Nearly 100 Code Pushes in the Last Few Months
As a company, we are dedicated to having the most sophisticated and results-driven tools on the market. We want to make sure you have the tools you need to build your private label empire efficiently, scalably, and fast! We are relentless in our mission, which means we not only launch superior tools, but we are committed to continually improving performance, resolving bugs, and adding new features. In a market that changes so rapidly, constant improvement allows us to stay on top of the software market, so you can stay on top of your Amazon market! We average over two code pushes or updates each business day!
What would you like to see us update next? Let us know in the comments below.
Additional Updates
Market Intelligence: Major webapp performance improvement
Market Intelligence: Combined Competitive and Standard view with optional image on/off switch
Product Discovery: Added Clear All Filters button for quicker filter usage
Product Discovery: Added Idea Value to pinned results so you can estimate the total value of products found with Product Discovery
Create a free Viral Launch account to try out Product Discovery and Market Intelligence for free. Once inside the Launchpad, you can subscribe!
Getting reviews for a product on Amazon is becoming increasingly difficult. Amazon continues to implement new programs and Terms of Service, limiting seller’s abilities to elicit reviews. One age old strategy for capturing customer reviews is sending follow up emails to customers and skillfully asking for product and seller feedback. Join Cam and Casey as they dive into the data that has resulted from thousands of split tested email follow ups with in-house email copywriting guru Brandon Stewart.
Want to be on the show like today’s listeners? Have your own story of entrepreneurial success? We’re working on an episode that features our listeners! Leave us a voicemail at (317) 721-6590 with stories or questions about your Amazon business.
CAMERON YODER:
Getting reviews for a product on Amazon is becoming increasingly difficult. Amazon continues to implement new programs and Terms of Service, limiting seller’s abilities to Elicit reviews.
One age old strategy for capturing customer reviews is sending follow up emails to customers and skillfully asking for product and seller feedback. Today we dive into the data that has resulted from thousands of split tested email follow ups on Amazon. I’m Cameron Yoder
CASEY GAUSS:
And I’m Casey Gauss, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 29,000 product launches and our experience working with 6500 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, more importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.
CAMERON YODER:
In today’s episode, we sit down with our in-house email copywriting guru, Brandon Stewart, to talk about the best practices for writing email follow ups. Although this tactic for generating reviews typically only provides a minimal return, we believe that reviews are way too valuable to discount any method that produces results. In other words, if you can leverage these tips to get even one review, we believe it will have been worth it.
Let’s jump in
Okay so today’s topic, we’re talking about reviews. It’s a very good topic to talk about, and Brandon is here with us to give us the low-down on reviews with Amazon. So first, before we jump into Amazon, maybe Brandon, maybe you should touch on the email landscape in general, so outside of Amazon. What is the landscape of emails like?
BRANDON:
Yeah, so typically people sign up to get emails from companies like Nike or Disney or Southwest Airlines, you name it, and all the emails are a little bit different because people sign up for a particular reason, right? So Nike it might be because they want to see the new contest Nike has or the new videos or the newest shoes or sportswear. And the same thing with Southwest, they may want to see what are my mileage or points or how can I gain more points or how can I double my points, or … they’ll send a happy birthday email to them, and Disney you’re looking at new toys, new videos, new movies coming out: things like that. That’s really what the email landscape is today. People sign up to a particular company, and they’re receiving content from that particular company.
CAMERON:
Because they wanted to go there in the first place, right? So they chose to go the website, and they chose to sign up for their email. Right?
BRANDON:
Yes, yes just like that. Probably, for most of these, they probably signed up online. Some of them, like for example if you’re in a store, they may have you sign up for that for some free coupons or something like that in that store.
CAMERON:
Wouldn’t it be nice as Amazon sellers for people to come and want to sign up for our email follow ups. So that’s the … that’s the general email landscape right now. So compare that to then what Amazon is or what’s present on Amazon.
BRANDON:
Yeah, so Amazon it’s … so I don’t know, you probably buy a lot from Amazon. I know I do.
CAMERON:
Sure.
BRANDON:
I’m sure Casey does as well.
CASEY:
Oh yeah
BRANDON:
And whenever … I don’t always buy a repeat item on there. Many times they’re one-off products. I needed a new phone case for my newest phone or a car case … a case to keep my phone in my car to hold it there, and things like that. And many times they’re from private sellers, from these private labels. I don’t know who they are. I didn’t sign up to be a part of their email program or anything. I know nothing about this brand. And really it comes down to … you have to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. If you were to send them an email, they don’t know you. They don’t know anything about you. And so you gotta, you gotta make things sort of small and brief.
CASEY:
I’ve been hearing about a lot … or I’ve been hearing about a lot of people saying, unsubscribing from Feedback Genius, FeedbackFive, whatever email follow up service provider because less and less emails are being sent out, I’m paying a monthly subscription, and I’m just not getting very many reviews from it. I have two thoughts there. One, listen to this podcast like you are so that you can get some tips on how to improve your email follow up sequence overall. And then two, anything that is driving any amount of reviews, I’m talking about one review a month, whatever, is worth however much money you’re spending. As reviews seem to be from our perspective, from our data, kind of the currency to driving success or driving sales on Amazon, you need every review possible. And so if you’re getting one review a month from your email follow up sequence, that’s one review more than if you weren’t. And honestly looking at the flip side, if you’re not using email follow up sequences, what are you using? Sure you may not be getting a satisfactory rate, but you are getting some kind of rate, and that rate is contributing to the top-line sales that you are or will be seeing in the future. So …
CAMERON:
It really is a refining process. It’s a process that you need to be involved with pretty heavily and keep a close eye on, and Brandon, today … today we have a pretty good handful of comparable steps or kind of tips in general for you guys to follow. And so Brandon, if you could start out, what is the first thing that you would recommend with the idea of revising email follow ups or things that you’ve seen work extremely well. What’s like tip number one that you can give our listeners?
BRANDON:
I’d say tip number one would be don’t … you have to write in such a way that gets their attention, so if you go in there, and you write a story such as “We’re a small seller, and we would love to have a review, and we thrive and depend on your reviews.” Well, you have to understand, people receiving this email, they honestly don’t care about your company, they don’t care about your business. And that’s kind of how you have to look at it. So you want to provide them something that’s worthwhile.
CASEY:
Not only that, but I know that when I see just a wall of text in an email, I’m not even going to read it because who knows how long it’s going to take me. It’s not interesting to me, right?
BRANDON:
And that’s usually what it is too. It’s 3 or 4 paragraphs of all about the company and all why they need your review. They must have a review to survive or if they don’t have a review from you they may go out of business the next day.
CAMERON:
How detailed would you say people need to be then? Because I’ve heard you talk about drama, being dramatic with emails where companies will write maybe not their whole company story, but they’ll try to maybe draw out this big story or somewhat of a story in their email. How detailed do people need to be or how dramatic do people need to be if at all?
BRANDON:
I mean, look at the emails you get from Amazon. They’re very simple; they’re plain, right? And you … it would be best … it’s, from what we’ve seen it’s best to mimic that style. Having something simple: here’s your package, it’s on its way. Things like that.
So number one is not writing all your story out. Now if you have an amazing incredible story—I was a broke college student, and now I’m doing well on Amazon, and hey leave a review—that may be okay, right? That’s a cool story to have. But don’t write something that is basically begging them to leave a review, which is what we see all the time.
CASEY:
I think it’s also important to qualify Brandon, I don’t know … I don’t think we’ve done that so far. So Brandon has … so we used to have this package, we are removing it from our site right now. It just doesn’t make business sense to have Brandon time there, we need Brandon focused on things that we’re doing internally at Viral Launch. Not launching products, I mean like writing emails to our Viral Launch customers. Anyways, Brandon … we had this service, we called it Review Booster, and one of the packages there was management. And so essentially, we would … Brandon would write the emails and then we would go in, implement them for you and then we would manage the subject lines or the structure or different language in the emails to make sure that we were optimizing your open rate and then click-through rate. And so Brandon literally did this for thousands of emails, brands doing everywhere from 40 million a year to people just putting their first product up on Amazon. So this guy has seen it all. He’s used all of the email follow up services. This guy has experience like, you know probably nobody else in the industry, which is pretty awesome. How’s that make you feel Brandon?
BRANDON:
Oh fantastic. All warm inside.
CAMERON:
So this tip was really centered around simplicity, right, and being simple.
CASEY:
Could you give us like an example?
BRANDON:
Of …
CAMERON:
Of being simple. What does being simple look like specifically in an email sequence?
BRANDON:
Yeah, so first one is the let’s say let’s squash negative reviews. Let’s go to another tip. And this is part of the simplicity, of that.
CAMERON:
So this is tip number two.
BRANDON:
Yes, let’s say tip number two. Here’s how you can squash negative reviews before they happen. So when you … so two things first. So Amazon sends out a thank you email or an email that you purchased a product. So you don’t have to do that. They also send you an email when your package ships. So you don’t have to do that. So what I would say is … what we’ve found works best is sending out an email when your product is out for delivery, and you can do that in specific email marketing platforms, email services for Amazon. And inside of that, it’s gonna have something just really simple. It’s gonna have something like “Your product is on on the way,” and it’s going to have an image of a product, right? And then it’s going to have a few tips and tricks about your product, depending on what you need to do. Say it’s a workout product, well you’re probably going to have to have a PDF or an ebook or a gif or a gif, whatever you’d like to say in there, of someone using that product, and it doesn’t have to be very detailed at all. All you’re doing is showing them how to use the product, that it’s on its way, and if there’s any issue at all, please leave me … please contact me right away, and then have a little contact link in there.
CAMERON:
So this is a primer, this is like a primer email. So they haven’t received it yet, it’s on its way, and this is email one of …
BRANDON:
Of two
CAMERON:
Of two.
BRANDON:
I would say three at the most.
CAMERON:
Okay.
CASEY:
So yeah, I think this is important for people to know. A lot of people just look at email follow up sequences as just a way to drive seller feedback or product reviews, but you know, as Brandon has seen, and you know as we think that you should be doing, you should be leveraging this to avoid negative reviews and potentially, as Cam is talking about, prime them for a good review. Show them how to use the product. Show them how to get the most out of the product. You know, at that point, you’re just improving the overall customer experience for them. And when Brandon talks about leaving a link so somebody will contact you, definitely you know, this is not the “Hey if you had a good experience, click this link. If you had a bad experience click this link.” This is something very simple like, “Hey if there’s anything you know we can do for you … maybe Brandon wants to share the exact language, shoot us an email, here’s the email link here.” Nothing more. No buttons. No tricking people to go where they’re not entirely sure they’re trying to go. This is very very simple, people. We wrote email follow up sequences for people, and I think they were expecting us to write, you know, a couple novels for them in these emails, but it’s like the data is showing us that the very simple, and again if you look at Amazon, they have an insane amount of data. This is how they’re writing their emails, just very simple, very to the point, using very simple language. You know, it can be tempting to use sophisticated language or something so that your brand appears very sophisticated, and I understand that, I think you need to take those things into account, but for the most part what the data shows us is that what works is very simple language. Brandon, you know, Brandon studies copywriters all the time. And you should be writing to the what? What grade level or something?
BRANDON:
Yeah, typically the eighth grade level. Um, I think what is it Ernest Hemmingway’s book The Old Man and the Sea, which won a, I think it won a Pulitzer Prize, was at the fourth grade level.
CASEY:
Oh wow.
CAMERON:
Really?
BRANDON:
Yeah
CAMERON:
Oh man. Well, okay so this … this second tip, you’re … just to summarize what this email, this initial delivery, this primer email would look like, again. So it would involve something like “Hey, your product’s on the way.” Right? And then it would involve, if there are instructions needed or if there are instructions involved with the product, including those with something like a video or a gif or gif, however you pronounce it. Right?
BRANDON:
Yes, to an extent, but with Amazon’s terms of service, you … you’re not really supposed to include a video. You can include attachments up to 10 megabytes. There’s nothing in there about video. We’ve seen it happen before … I haven’t heard of anyone being delisted because of that.
CASEY:
Or suspended.
BRANDON:
Or suspended or anything like that. It … you know, you’re more than welcome to try it. But according to Amazon’s terms of service, don’t do it.
CAMERON:
Right. So the … your product is on its way, possible informational thing, and then the third part, which I want to touch on again is the contact us button.
BRANDON:
Yes
CAMERON:
So this, the main tip is to squash negative reviews. It’s to basically put yourself ahead of those negative reviews. I think this contact button is what a lot of people miss. Where they try to or they get negative reviews for their product, and maybe they ask themselves “Oh, another negative review! How do I get around this or how do I prevent this from happening? This, I see as a really preventative step of making that happen.
CASEY:
The downside is that it’s hard to quantify the effectiveness, right?
CAMERON:
Right.
CASEY:
It’s not like Feedback Genius is sending you a report of, yeah, you know, you stopped five negative reviews this week.
CAMERON:
But it’s one of those things to have in place just in case. It’s like a Why Not?
CASEY:
Yeah, it’s a Rather-Be-Safe-Than-Sorry.
CAMERON:
Right
CASEY:
Especially if, you know, you’re just launching this product, getting one negative review right off the bat, you know … no good.
BRANDON:
Yeah, and it gives them a … essentially it stops them from doing that, right? It stops them from going “This product sucked, and I’m going to leave a bad review.” It says something to the effect of … I think the copy I use is, “If there is anything wrong with your order, please contact us or please let us know, please inform us.” And then there’s a big bold “contact us” link they can click on, and it goes right to their email.
CASEY:
And that way they know if something goes wrong throughout the process, hey, here’s who I can reach out to. Versus going straight to the review page.
CAMERON:
Review page, writing a one-star review, bringing your overall rating down.
BRANDON:
It’s essentially telling them we’re here for you, and we’ll take care of your problem for you, not a problem, not a big issue.
CAMERON:
And it’s not a guarantee, but it’s a chance, and if reviews is all about taking as many chances as you can get to improve your rating or to improve your overall score, and this is one of those opportunities that you would not want to pass up.
So, okay let’s move on to the next tip, tip number three. Brandon, what do you got for us?
BRANDON:
Well, for the third one, a lot of people want feedback, but what we’ve found is that feedback does absolutely nothing for your sales.
CAMERON:
Right, right
BRANDON:
And it’s really the review. So the second email to send out, third tip, is to get a review. And the best way to grab that review is not to ask them outright, “Hey, leave me a review.” or go back to that …
CAMERON:
Wait, hold up. Say that again.
BRANDON:
Hey leave me a review!
CAMERON:
So but you’re saying that’s not the best way to ask for a review.
BRANDON:
It’s not the best way to do that because if you think about you and I, or anyone in general, we want our opinion, to share our opinion, right? You want to say to someone, Hey what’s your opinion on this or what do you think about this? How did you feel about that product? Right? And that’s probably, from what we’ve found, is the best question to ask. So the email setup looks a little like this. At the top, it’s going to have something to the effect of: Thank you for purchasing or thank you for ordering and then the name of the product …
CAMERON:
Just to reiterate, this is email number 2. Right?
BRANDON:
Yes, that’s correct.
CAMERON:
Okay.
BRANDON:
And the best time to send out email number two is whenever they’ve used your product. So if it’s, say, a workout product, it may take them a week or two to even begin using it. If it’s something like a phone case, they can probably use that right away. In general, we’ve found the second email to send out, the best time is roughly five days after delivery, after they have that product in their hand and they can use it.
CAMERON:
So just to … I want to jump back a little bit. But the first email, the delivery email, is that after they’ve ordered your product?
BRANDON:
That is when it’s out for delivery.
CAMERON:
When it’s out for delivery.
BRANDON:
Yes
CAMERON:
Okay
BRANDON:
When it is going to be in their mailbox that day.
CAMERON:
Okay, so when it’s going to be in their mailbox that day is email number one.
BRANDON:
Correct
CAMERON:
And number two is …
BRANDON:
Five days after delivery
CAMERON:
Five days after delivery. Recommended.
BRANDON:
Recommended.
CAMERON:
Okay, okay good. So touch on that aspect again. It’s not asking for a review. It’s asking for their opinion.
BRANDON:
Correct
CAMERON:
Okay, tell me more about that.
BRANDON:
Yeah, it’s it’s … you can ask them to leave a review, it’s almost as if they have to do a solid for you. It’s like Hey, here’s a favor. Can you do this for me? Can you take time out of your day to tell me what you thought about this product? Well, more than likely they’re just going to click out of that.
And the best language we’ve found is something along the lines of “What is your opinion?” or “What did you feel or think about the product?” or “What did you feel about … and then you name the product.”
CAMERON:
So do you think people have a stigma against being asked to leave a review. Like, do you think sellers are aware enough to where that creates like a …
CASEY:
You mean buyers?
CAMERON:
Oh yes, sorry, buyers! Not sellers. Where buyers are … where buyers have this … have a negative feeling towards being asked, like Hey leave a review for this product. Do you think they feel that negative? Or they’re just not aware of it?
BRANDON:
I don’t know if it’s a negative feeling. It’s more of Oh I’ve got to do this other thing. I have all these things I have to do today. I just got home. I just sat down. I’ve got to feed my kids now, or I’ve got to eat myself. And I’ve got to go work out, and I have to do dishes. I’ve got to do the laundry, and now there’s this other thing this company wants me to do, someone wants me to do. Why would I want to do this for them?
CAMERON:
And so the opinion is not necessarily asking … asking them to just … that word that verbage is not necessarily not asking them to do another thing, it’s inviting them into something that they want to give, which is their opinion.
BRANDON:
Yeah, right, who doesn’t want to be asked their opinion on something, right? And that’s really what it comes down to. You try something out, and you say What did you think about that? What is your entire opinion on that?
CAMERON:
Do you think, people, listeners right now with all their email sequences set up, do you think it would be a simple step to simply replace the word review with opinion? Or is there specific wording or verbage that should be built around the idea of asking for an opinion?
BRANDON:
I think the best thing to do that is to help them with their opinion. And I don’t mean that in a negative way or a … some type of …
CASEY:
A manipulative way
BRANDON:
… influencing them in a certain way. So from what we found and the best way to do is to show them some reviews, some actual reviews from the product itself. So you can even have two five star reviews and a four star review. And you know, not everyone is going to have all five star reviews. You want to show them that people … you want to show them that you are not perfect, right? Not everyone thinks you’re perfect. I mean, someone may have left a four star review. And then give them one or two sentences, show them one or two sentences of that review. Make sure you put it in quotes. Make sure they know it’s a real review. And then after that, or before that say: Here’s what a few people have shared with us or here’s what a few people have told us about … and then the name of the product.
And then after that is where you ask, What is your opinion? What do you think?
CASEY:
And we do want to make sure that we again stipulate we’re not telling them to say these things.
BRANDON:
Correct
CASEY:
We are not writing reviews for them, anything like that. We are essentially just showing them, hey here’s what some other people have said. What do you think? And again, we’re not saying if you had a good experience, what’s your opinion. We’re not saying anything like that. We’re just asking what your opinion is. I do think that there is some level of inherent risk, one, just with sending email follow ups and maybe potentially with this language. So again, just wanted to stipulate: do this at your own discretion. Use whatever … however risk tolerant you are, assume that risk. But just know we are not saying this is 100% you should do this. We are saying we have never had a seller get in trouble for this kind of language, and yeah …
CAMERON:
I would also recommend … so part of one of Brandon’s recommendations, which was to have a contact us button, really helps you field negative feedback. So ideally, in a perfect world, you would have a great product that works all the time, that does not show up damaged at all, that doesn’t malfunction in any way. But having, having something like the contact us button does really helps you get ahead of negative feedback, number one, but number two, you should really look at the negative feedback that you’re getting if you’re getting any, to ask yourself Okay how can I improve my product. You should just be … you shouldn’t just have negative feelings towards negative reviews and say, Oh I’m just not going to pay attention to them; they’re all wrong. No, you should ask yourself if what they’re saying is true and/or how you yourself can improve your rating or how you yourself can improve your product, which will then in effect improve your overall rating as people review your product. Okay Brandon, we went over those tips. Those are three main tips. There’s a lot of stuff in there, but what … if someone was to come up to you, if a seller was to come up to you and ask, Brandon what’s the biggest … what’s one main tip that I can use right now to improve my review follow up, what would you say? The one, like the biggest thing.
BRANDON:
I thought I just gave them away.
CAMERON:
You gave … you gave … but even I would say if it’s one of these, pick one of them. But I’m asking you for the biggest one.
BRANDON:
Yeah, I think …
CASEY:
Which of the tips that we’ve given is going to have the largest impact?
CAMERON:
Right
BRANDON:
I mean, they’re both going to have a massive impact because if you’re going to stop negative reviews and then if you’re going to at least hopefully gain a review, those are both great things. Obviously, getting a review is going to do more for your business, hopefully, than anything else. than even stopping a potential, well … not stopping a potential negative review I guess, but … if you can get a review, I think the second email is the most important. It really is the most important one that we send out because you’re gaining a review from that person who just purchased, just tried it out, just used it, whatever you want to say. And now they’re going to give their honest opinion about it.
CAMERON:
Brandon, could you … could you go over with us, so we’re talking about Amazon Terms of Service, right now. Could you go over just what, what people should … what is not allowed from an Amazon Terms of Service perspective, what is not allowed in review follow ups.
BRANDON:
Sure. A few of the things that we see the most is linking to some kind of outside … website or your own site or even to Hey check out our Facebook page, or like us on Facebook. Those are all not allowed. Or linking to a YouTube video. Anything that goes outside of Amazon is not allowed. Amazon doesn’t like that at all. They want to keep the money going to themselves.
CAMERON:
Of course. Of course.
BRANDON:
So that’s one of the major things that we see. The other thing is including some sort of incentive to leave a review or even … not even saying Hey leave a review and we’ll give you a coupon. But putting a coupon code inside of a request for a review, right? That’s definitely frowned upon. That goes against Amazon’s terms of service.
Some other things are … if you hire your own HTML coder to create your email follow ups for you, doing something that is prohibited inside of an HTML tag that Amazon says on their website don’t use these HTML tags, or here’s what’s allowed don’t do anything else with that or CSS class, things like that.
We’ve also tested graphics before inside of emails. So if you’re going to make an amazing and beautiful graphic or some type of beautifully designed template for your email, it … from what we’ve seen it doesn’t do as well as … for example Nike, you get a … you receive a email from Nike. Alright, cool, great, awesome. And it’s going to be beautifully designed. It’s going to be that brand’s layout, and you’re going to identify with that because Nike has spent billions of dollars on advertising. In general, and so that aligns with the advertising you’ve seen online, on video, on TV, on YouTube, wherever you may have seen that, inside of magazines. And that email newsletter, or that email template aligns with that. And with people signing up for … buying your product, on email, that graphic, you know they don’t really know your brand all that well. They don’t know your … this is your color, and this is the exact font you have to use. They don’t know any of that. So keep it as simple as possible. Use large buttons that are yellow highlight … yellow background with a black text or a white text, just something like that.
CASEY:
Why yellow?
BRANDON:
That really stands out. What’s that?
CASEY:
Why yellow?
BRANDON:
It’s what Amazon uses, right, and it really stands out. It really helps to stand out, and I think it makes people go, Oh this is still in the Amazon ecosystem. I can feel that this is a part of Amazon.
CASEY:
It’s the little things guys.
CAMERON:
It is. It’s the little things. What about … what about tips or overall strategy for utilizing feedback services. So services that optimize your email sequences for you. Do you have any words on that or any mistakes that people make. What things aren’t people doing well with those services?
BRANDON:
Yeah, I mean it really is very basic. It really comes down to not making it easy enough … for example like Casey was talking about earlier, including a lengthy amount of text and then … or having multiple links inside of that email, you know. At the most our delivery email has one link in it: contact us. At the most, our review email has two in it. It’s got a what is your feedback … what did you think about this product, and the second one is Hey, if there’s any problems or anything we could have made better, please let us know. That’s another link, and that just goes right to your contact us.
CAMERON:
Gotcha. So the theme that I’m getting a lot is really keep it simple. Keep it simple. Have a well thought-out plan while keeping simplicity in mind. Have a contact us button. That’s pretty much it right?
BRANDON:
Basically! That’s really it. If you think about opening an email before, for example you’ve probably opened a Best Buy email. And they have 1,000 different products on there. Well, that email’s not going to have a very big, what we call a click through rate, where they click on something and go and buy that product because it’s overwhelming, there’s so much to look at that people will just instantly delete it or just go to their next email. So you want to make it as simple as possible. No excuses. One simple link in there.
CAMERON:
One simple link. Keep it simple. Simple link. One simple link, and asking for people’s opinion.
BRANDON:
Yes, and white background, black text.
CAMERON:
White background black text.
BRANDON:
You can make a big headline.
CAMERON:
Yellow.
BRANDON:
Yellow button.
CAMERON:
Yellow button! To mock Amazon.
BRANDON:
Yes, and I’ve seen in the past people using Amazon Seller, having that image at the very top of an email. I believe it is allowed. I’ve seen it used. I have not heard of anyone having …
CASEY:
Sorry, what was that?
BRANDON:
Using a small link or an image that says Amazon Seller on it inside of the email itself. And it’s actually using Amazon, the Amazon seller logo inside of that email.
CAMERON:
Interesting.
CASEY:
Yeah, I haven’t heard of it.
CAMERON:
I haven’t heard of anything like that either.
BRANDON:
And some good subject lines like that are asking them about their Amazon order. It’s not just How was your order? Or did your order arrive? It’s did your Amazon order arrive? Or how is your Amazon order? What did you think about it?
CASEY:
Again, you have to remember that a lot of consumers or a decent amount of consumers still think that Amazon is the one selling them these products, not, you know, brand XYZ.
BRANDON:
And that’s why it’s always good to not have your brand at the very top. Like thanks again for buying the name of your brand and then your product. Like, no they just want to know the product, and make sure you put an image in there so they can identify with what they just purchased.
CAMERON:
I think that’s really important to reiterate, the brand thing. So again people don’t associate with the brands that are on Amazon. They associate with the product, assuming that it’s Amazon selling them that product.
CASEY:
You know, I totally get it. The brand is your baby. You care about that, you want to push branding and … but you have to remember a lot of people don’t pay attention to the brand. They’re just buying whatever your widget is, and so if you say Thanks for your brand-whatever purchase, they may be confused. They may not know what’s going on.
And so always pushing it kind of from the context that they understand, which is I just bought this from Amazon, will provide better responses through open rates, click rates, and then also Brandon mentioned including an image, and the reason here is maybe you buy … you just had five things delivered throughout the week, you had ten, fifteen things delivered. I mean … it’s a lot, and so you need to easily show them so they can quickly identify, yes, this is the product you’re talking about. This is the product that I just got.
CAMERON:
Would you rather have your brand name in the email follow up or a better follow up percentage rate.
CASEY:
Yeah, would you rather get reviews or for some brand … or some customer to see your brand name again?
CAMERON:
I’d rather have reviews.
BRANDON:
But that doesn’t mean in the signature you can’t put your brand. Or probably the best thing to do is to put your actual name in there or the name of someone in your company. Humanize it! Not just hey this is your team at, and then the name of your brand and then a logo. Just try to humanize it. Like thanks again, and then your name and then the name of your company.
CAMERON:
That’s good. Well …
CASEY:
Thanks so much Brandon
CAMERON:
Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for giving us these tips. We will utilize them.
CAMERON YODER:
That’s all for this week. Thanks for joining us on Follow the Data. For more insights and reliable information that will help take your Amazon business to the next level, subscribe to the podcast, check out the Viral Launch blog at viral hyphen launch dot com, and look for us on YouTube. We have a handful of Product Discovery walkthroughs that can really help you leverage the tool. Just go to our YouTube page, and look for my face!
CASEY GAUSS:
Don’t forget to rate the show and leave us a review on iTunes. We’re talking about reviews. WE all know reviews are tough to get, but they definitely help us all out. So we’d love them, and honestly just as a company was love honest feedback. So we’d love to hear what do you want us to talk about? What do you want us to avoid talking about? Or what is … maybe you don’t like the format of the podcast. We want to hear it all so that we can be better for you. So please tell your friends, spread the word, and share the show with other Amazon sellers if you think it would be advantageous to them.
CAMERON YODER:
Thanks again so much for listening, really we so much appreciate all of you taking time to listen to this podcast, as always if you listened to the last episode you heard people’s feedback and questions that they had. If you have any feedback or questions, feel free to leave us a voicemail. Our number is 317-721-6590. Until next time, remember: the data is out there.
“Amazon Product Data: How to Interpret & Analyze” is an excerpt from Viral Launch’s Ultimate Guide to Sourcing Private Label Gold Mines ebook. Download the full ebook at the bottom of this post.
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Interpreting and Analyzing Amazon Product Data
Sourcing tools provide A LOT of information! Having more data, assuming it is accurate and relevant, is always going to help sellers make better sourcing decisions as they research products on Amazon. However, that is assuming those sellers know how to interpret and leverage that information to inform their decisions. Here we will do our best to highlight all of the available data, what it means, and how it should influence your sourcing behavior.
Doing Amazon product research using Market Intelligence begins when you run a search for the product you have in mind. We highly recommend that you search the product’s most relevant yet basic term. For example, if you are searching for a vitamin c serum, don’t search “Vitamin C,” which is too broad, or “Vitamin C Serum for Women,” which is too specific. Simply search for “Vitamin C Serum.”
Identify what customers are purchasing for this search term
Knowing what is selling for a search term and/or product market is crucial. Imagine you wanted to sell some gloves to cover your hands while grilling, and you had a product like this in mind:
Well, when you search “grill gloves” or “grilling gloves”, you’ll find that more customers are actually looking for a five finger glove made of either silicone or another heat resistant material.
Sourcing the wrong type of widget for the search term you’re researching can have major implications. Sure, you can still sell the widget with different positioning that is more relevant to what is actually selling (in this case you would need to position your “grilling gloves” as oven mitts), but the market landscape for oven mitts may be completely different than for grill gloves.
You may have to sell at a completely different price point in a market that could be far more competitive. We’ve seen instances, much worse than this example, of sellers not knowing what is already selling when trying to enter a market. Most of the time, it ends with a much lower ROI than anticipated.
In conclusion, know the proper positioning of your widget, and sell a product that is very similar to what the market is already purchasing.
Identify Outliers
When it comes to analyzing a market, you may come across a listing that has abnormally high or low sales and/or reviews. Generally, in your market considerations, we suggest dismissing those listings as outliers. In our experience, these listings are not worth taking into account when performing your analysis as they are not representative of the market or what you should expect for your product. As you can see in the image above, the highlighted row has an astronomically high number of sales relative to those listings around it. Market Intelligence will automatically flag those outliers for you when you display Amazon product data in the Filtered View.
Product Category
When it comes to Amazon product data, knowing the product category is crucial for estimating sales. Sales are estimated based on a product’s Best Seller Rank within its respective top-level category (ex. Home & Kitchen). Knowing the product’s category may also help you understand how other sellers are positioning the product. Finally, you’ll want to make sure that you know the requirements for certain categories and products requiring approval. Sourcing a product in a gated category without proper preparation will set you up for a headache down the road.
BSR (Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank)
What is it?
The Amazon Best Sellers Rank is a metric of a product’s sales relative to the rest of the market within a particular category. The top selling beauty product would have a BSR of 1. The second best seller would have a BSR of 2. This is very important for sourcing. Amazon product research tools use this metric to estimate a product’s sales by leveraging a proprietary algorithm that translates BSR to estimated sales. Market Intelligence shows a sparkline of BSR over the last 30 days to help give a quick view of how sales have trended for that product over the last 30 days.
Clicking into the BSR 30 sparkline will present a popup that shows how the Best Seller Rank has trended over the last 3-4 months for the product.
Source Smarter
Looking at how BSR has trended for a particular product can help explain certain scenarios. For example, a sudden drop in BSR could indicate a promotional giveaway. In combination with the price trends, you may be able to explain fluctuations in BSR with fluctuations in price.
Monthly Revenue
What is it?
The purpose of this metric is pretty obvious. Monthly revenue is calculated simply by multiplying the monthly sales metric by the current price point. Knowing what other sellers are grossing in the market is important for knowing what the top line revenue potential is for the market.
Source Smarter
We strongly suggest not basing your expected sales on what the top 1 or 2 sellers in the market are selling. This suggestion goes back to not basing your expected results on any particular ASIN. We suggest taking an average monthly revenue from a few of the listings you feel confident you could compete with on ranking position, price, reviews, etc.
For example, I would expect to start-off selling around $10k/month in gross revenue based on this screenshot versus the $100k+ the top two sellers are selling at because they have very high review quantities.
Underestimating monthly revenue will do you much better than overestimating when calculating sales projections. It’s great to be optimistic, but this is an area where practicality will serve you well.
Price
Price is an important metric for informing your sourcing decision in two ways: 1) If you have a revenue/profit goal in mind, knowing how much you can charge per unit will help you know how many units you will need to sell each month. 2) Price will allow you to determine your product’s unit margin.
While some markets are more price sensitive than others, price can be a major lever in increasing/decreasing traffic, but can also have a major impact on profitability. We’ve seen so many sellers source “higher quality” products which forces them to charge much more than the average market price. There is certainly a time, place, and strategy for doing this. However, from our observations, this tends to end up being a mistake, and the product struggles to match projected sales volume.
Source Smarter
Make sure you can match the average market price with plenty of margin!
Unit Margin
What is it?
Unit Margin is the amount of money Amazon will pay out for each product purchased (considering no returns and promotions). The unit margin takes into account Amazon’s marketplace referral fee (Amazon’s fee for selling on their platform), the short term inventory storage fee (charged based on the product’s dimensions), Amazon FBA order handling fee (calculated based on the product’s weight and dimensions). You also have the option to input your landed unit cost to get an accurate representation of associated variable costs. The bottom line “Margin” figure offers a glimpse into what you can expect to be paid out by Amazon per unit. Tip: Changing the landed unit cost for one product will apply the landed unit cost to all products shown in the “Top Sellers View” for your convenience.
Source Smarter
Pay close attention to this field. For example, having the potential to drive top line revenue of $100k per month is fantastic, but let’s say the unit margin is close to $0, then that $100k top line figure is worthless as it won’t actually contribute to your bottom line. Another factor to be cognizant of is that the margin across markets can decline over time. If you find a market and product that allows you to have a comfortable margin, you will essentially have insurance for a profitable future.
Monthly Sales
What Is It?
Estimated monthly sales is an estimation of the number of orders a product has had over the last 30 days. Based on an enormous amount of aggregated market data, both historical and current, we’ve created a custom sales estimation algorithm that is updated and improved nightly. By observing a product’s Amazon Best Sellers Rank within a top level category, we are able to estimate the number of orders a product has seen. Part of our superior accuracy is our Composite Estimate. Looking at historical data, we provide estimated sales volume per day for the last three to four months.
Source Smarter
Knowing how other sellers in the market are performing is critical to identifying the sales potential. Sales volume is the largest indicator for success in a market. Products with high sales volume are performing well, those with low sales volume are not performing well. Estimated sales act as an indicator for many scenarios:
Product Type: By being able to observe how each individual ASIN is performing in estimated sales volume, allows you to identify which types of products are performing well. For example, looking at a Fish Oil, observing which pill counts have higher estimated sales will help inform you which pill counts you should consider sourcing and which you should avoid.
Sales Potential: Let’s say the top 10 sellers are driving less than 100 estimated sales per month, is this a market worth getting into? Yeah, maybe if each unit is selling at $100 per unit ($100 * 100 = $10,000), but if you can only charge $20 per unit with a top line revenue of only $2,000 it’s likely not worth getting into.
Inversely, let’s say that the top 20 sellers are averaging over 1,000 sales per month (excluding other factors). That means there is high potential and considering other factors, this could be a great product to get into so long as you can cashflow the inventory.
Review Quantity
What Is It?
Review quantity is one of the largest barriers to entry for a market. You must definitely pay attention to the review quantities of top performers. We’ve observed plenty of instances in which sellers enter a market due to high sales potential, but do not take into account the significance of the competition, and struggle to ever hit that sales potential.
Source Smarter
Pay close attention to how review quantity impacts sales.
Do all top sellers have a high relative review quantity? If so, this is an indicator that you will need a comparative number of reviews in order to sell at the same volume.
Are there plenty of ASINs with low relative review quantity that are selling at a high volume? If so, you may have the opportunity to sell at a decent volume with a low review quantity. This is generally a great thing, but you want to be careful to know this definitively.
Are there only one or two ASINs that are selling well with a low relative review quantity? A warning to the wise, we would identify those listings as outliers, and would suggest not taking their performance into account. If you want help identifying outliers, we suggest clicking on the “Filtered View” where we attempt to programmatically identify outliers for you.
Average Rating
What Is It?
This metric displays the average review rating for a product.
Source Smarter
While it is important to source a high quality product, knowing how other products are performing is an opportunity to know how your product needs to perform in order to stay competitive. For example, finding a product market with a low average review quantity (ex. Market average of 3.5 stars) could be an opportunity to source a higher quality product that customers are going to be satisfied with.
The savvy sellers will be sure to click in and read the reviews of many products in the market to learn what customers do/don’t like about current offerings as well as potential deficits and opportunities to provide a better experience. With that said, be mindful that your product updates/alterations do not cost too much on a per unit basis so as to drastically diminish your unit margins.
Who Owns the Buy Box
What Is It?
Here we denote what fulfillment method is being used, or identify if the product is shipped and sold by Amazon.
Source Smarter?
At the time of writing this piece, we feel that this metric should not have much of an impact in sourcing decisions. There are benefits to knowing what the competition is doing, for example, if many listings are fulfilling via FBM, are not Prime eligible, and economically it makes sense for you to fulfill via FBA, this may be an opportunity as shoppers and keyword ranking favor Prime eligible listings. There are also some concerns with trying to enter markets that are dominated by products sold by Amazon directly. These ASINs typically perform well and can be a bit more difficult to compete with.
Sales to Reviews Ratio
What Is It?
This is a simple ratio calculation of estimated monthly sales divided by current review quantity. We call this the “ROI Ratio”. We explain the importance of this metric later in extensive detail.
Net Profit
What Is It?
The Net Profit is an estimation of the payout the product produced over the last 30 days based on the calculation of estimated sales multiplied by the unit margin. (ex. $5.50 per unit *100 units sold = $550)
Get the Complete Guide
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Crucial concepts
Amazon Product data vs. market data
Interpreting and analyzing market data
The key metric to ROI
Plotting your course for success
And more…
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Amazon Product Research: Interpreting and Analyzing Market Data
