Categories
Updates

A Look At Zonmaster’s New Dashboard

Recently we’ve rolled out an update to the main Dashboard inside your Zonmaster account. We are always striving to give you more information faster and clearer and we think this update is a good step in that direction!

Order Information – Updated!

At the top of the dashboard you will find yours orders. Like before, we show you a bar chart of your orders by day for the selected time period (more on this later), which defaults to the last 30 days.

What’s been updated is we now show you those orders broken down by status – Unshipped, Shipped, Delivered, Returned and so on.

The advantage of seeing your orders like this is you can quickly see if there is a delay in shipping or delivery, or if you have a higher number of returns.

Top Tip:

On any chart you can click on legend labels to hide that element. For example, to hide ‘Delivered’ orders from the Orders table simply click on it.

Hide a category by clicking on a label (in this case, ‘Delivered’)

Emails – Updated!

We now give you two views on your Emails queue on the dashboard. The first – called By Date – is the usual breakdown of how many emails have been sent out, day by day, for the current period. We’ve also now broken those bars down into ‘per email template’ so you can see if there is change in what is normally going out.

The second view, accessed by clicking the ‘By Template’ tab at the top of the panel, shows you a pie chart with the breakdown of which templates have gone out over the selected period.

Review Requests – New!

Next to the Emails section is a day by day look at how many Amazon Review Requests Zonmaster has processed on your behalf.

Seller Feedback – New!

We have added a couple of charts so you can more quickly see your Seller Feedback. This previously was not shown on the Dashboard.

Now you can see the usual day by day breakdown of the Seller Feedback you’ve received, with the days broken down by the star rating.

If you click on the By Rating tab in that panel you can see the same time period, but showing you how many of each rating level you’ve received

Customer Reviews – Updated!

We’ve given the same update to the Customer Reviews panel. You can now see a day by day, broken down by review rating.

By clicking the By Rating you can see how many of each rating you’ve received.

Account Summary

We’ve kept our quick view chart that will show you the number of Orders, Returns, Emails, Reviews Requested, Positive and Negative Seller Feedback and Positive and Negative Customer Reviews, broken down by the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 180 days and 1 year

Mail Queue

We have two tables that show you the emails sent in the last 24 hours, and the emails scheduled to be sent in the next 24 hours.

In these tables you can access the actual Mail Queue entry by clicking on the date. You can access the Email Template by clicking on the name of the message, and you can click on the Order Number to see the order details.

Seller Financial Stats

Finally, at the bottom of the dashboard we show you some quick financial stats on your Amazon Seller accounts – how many orders in the current month (month to date), how many units sold, what the total value of the Products sold is and what your average sale was.

Time Period – New!

At the top of the Dashboard is a new drop down menu that lets you change the time period that the dashboard shows you. You can choose the last 30, 60, 90, 180 or 365 days and all charts will update.

We hope you find these updates helpful in giving you more insights more quickly into your Amazon Seller data!

If you’re a professional Amazon Seller and not (for some crazy reason!) using Zonmaster, why not sign up today for your 15 day free trial – no credit card required. You get access to ALL our features, regardless of the plan you choose (yes, even the one that starts at $6.99 a month!)

Categories
Instruction

RSVP: Tips for Using a Product Insert

Product inserts are seen as a low-cost marketing tactic, but are they just that or more?

Are they even effective at increasing sales, like Amazon’s URL shortener?

Should an Amazon seller use them?

This post answers all your questions about product descriptions and explains why you might be missing out if you’re not using them.

What is a Product Insert?

A Product Insert is anything – a business card, postcard, flyer or coaster(!) – that you put in the box with your product. Obviously they need to be IN the packaging, so if you are doing FBA you will need your suppliers to put them in there during the packaging process.

Product Inserts have a lot of good points in their favor – they can talk directly to the buyer about the good parts of your business and product.

Top 5 Reasons To Use Product Inserts

1) Earn More Reviews

It seems like a ‘chicken and egg’ situation – to sell more products you need reviews and to get reviews you need to sell more products.

At Zonmaster we say that the trick to getting more reviews is deceptively simple: ask for them! A simple printed card saying ‘Please leave us a Review’ will have a significant impact on your review count (as does sending an email via Zonmaster or using our Auto Review Request Tool!).

To ensure that you don’t run afoul of Amazon’s Terms of Service make sure that you in no way imply that you only want positive reviews.

2) Promote Your Other Products

Product Inserts are a great way to get your other products that you are selling on Amazon (you are selling more than one thing, right?) in front of more customers, without having to pay for advertising or clicks.

This is a great way to highlight slow-selling products, or related products. And your customer is much more likely to buy from you a second time. if you are careful you can even offer a discount (more on this later) to help you shift some of those slow sellers!

3) Customer Relationship Building

We all like to feel special, and maybe it seems obvious to you but customers like to be told ‘thank you’ and how important and valued they are.

To build the customer relationship (or any relationship, really) the first thing is to be open. Highlight that you are interested in hearing any complaints the customer might have. This also has the added benefit of somewhat deflecting any negative seller feedback.

Aside from a simple ‘please comment’ card, put other little surprises in the box. Customers love it.

4) Buyer Targeting

You already know what the customer is interested in – the just bought it! A great leveraging tool to use here is to include free samples of other products (if possible). As mentioned in point 2, related products will have a much smoother road to a purchase here.

5) Low Cost Marketing

Product Inserts, when compared to PPC and other channels, are a huge bargain. The hit rate is much higher and the knock on positives can’t be duplicated with just another online ad.

How To Stay on the Good Side of Amazon’s TOS

1) Promote the product, not your website

Amazon is all about keeping the customer. So do not include a ‘call to action’ on your printed materials either. Do NOTEVER! – ask the customer to buy from your website.

2) Neutral Language for Reviews

Another big no-no in the eyes of Amazon is in any way asking for only positive reviews. Don’t say things like ‘if you love this product leave a review’.

That being said, it is a good practice to encourage buyers to contact you directly in case of questions or complaints so that their issue may be resolved and a negative review can be avoided.

3) Don’t Mention Reviews and Discounts in the same place

Don’t ever say this: ‘Leave us a review and get a 10% discount!’

Not unless you want to see Amazon go crazy.

What you can do is, preferably on the other side of the paper from where you ask for a review, have a ‘no strings attached’ coupon code.

4) Make Sure They See The Insert

If you’re going to go to the trouble of putting the insert in the box make sure they see it! Use bright colors! Or special paper. And use some imagination.

The next best thing to a product insert is to use the tools on Zonmaster! Our powerful email templating system lets you set up custom emails that can go out to just the right customers at just the right time. Or save yourself the trouble of writing emails let Zonmaster automatically trigger Amazon’s own Review Request feature!

Start your free trial today! Learn more over at the Zonmaster website!

Categories
Updates

Introducing Zonmaster ASIN Monitoring

When you are selling on Amazon it is vital to stay on top of your listings…for several reasons!

Listing hijacking – multiple offers being added to your listing – is a real problem for sellers, as is losing control of your own listing and having someone else change the title of your product. Not to mention the simple problem of knowing when you’ve lost the Buy Box.

Now Zonmaster has a new tool that helps you combat Hijacking, listing changes and helps you also keep on top of incoming reviews.

Sorry, this is a beast of a blog post covering a huge new feature. It’s a bit long!

The Zonmaster ASIN Monitor

To access the ASIN Monitor, go to the Products Manager by select ‘Products’ under Products menu.

The Zonmaster Products Manager Overview

In addition to the charts and labels at the top of the page you’ll see a listing of all your products.

We have added a small ‘bell’ icon in the rightmost column of your product listing. Clicking on that will open the settings panel for the ASIN Monitor for that product.

ASIN Monitor Settings panel

Here’s a list of what you can presently monitor

Reviews

You can choose to be notified of All Reviews, Positive Only or Negative Only.

Please note that this settings REPLACES the preview review monitoring you could configure in Zonmaster.

Hijack

One of the most serious issues facing Amazon Sellers is losing control of their listing. With this setting you can be informed when the number of offers on a listing changes at all, Increases or Decreases.

Buy Box

Be alerted as soon as your Buy Box status changes – either you gain it or lose it!

Title

Be alerted as soon as Zonmaster detects your title has changed!

Description

Be alerted as soon as Zonmaster detects your product description – including brand – has changed!

Image

Be alerted as soon as Zonmaster detects your main image has changed on a listing.

Price

Be alerted as soon as Zonmaster detects your price has changed either above or below the level you have specified.

Dimensions

Be alerted as soon as Zonmaster detects either your item dimensions or packaging dimensions have changed.

Category

Be alerted as soon as Zonmaster detects the main category (or categories in some cases) has changed on your listing.

Best Seller Ranking – Coming Soon

This is coming soon, but you’ll be alerted whenever your BSR changes beyond a certain threshold.

Bulk Settings

If you want to see the same ASIN Monitor settings on multiple products the easiest thing to do is use the Bulk Monitoring tool. Select the rows you want to affect and use the select dropdown to choose Bulk Monitoring

You’ll be presented with the same ASIN Monitor Settings box as described above, but it will just apply to multiple items.

Be Aware: It will create multiple ASIN Monitors!

Marketplace Support

Like pretty much everything in Zonmaster, all of these features are available in ALL MARKETPLACES. You will be alerted individually on a marketplace by marketplace basis. So if your product is listed across Europe but only changed in – for example – Germany and Italy – you will get 2 emails, notifying you of those changes.

ASIN Monitor Limits

You know we at Zonmaster like to give you the most for the least! But ASIN Monitoring is an expensive and time consuming process, even for the poor bytes inside our servers. So we are setting some limits.

Note that these are limits on ASIN monitors, not Marketplace limits. So if you monitor a product that has the same ASIN across all marketplaces that is just one ASIN Monitor.

Here are current limits.

Mini Plan10 ASIN Monitors
Mini Plan + Attachments10 ASIN Monitors
Basic Plan50 ASIN Monitors
Power Plan100 ASIN Monitors
Zonmaster Plan500 ASIN Monitors

If you need more monitors but not more Emails or Review Requests please let us know.

Notification Settings

In addition to the settings about WHAT to monitor, you need to be able to set HOW you are monitored, right?!

To do that, pop over to our (new) Account Settings area and go to the Notifications selection (or click this link here)

Here you can control individual email settings.

The reason you need this? Because now you can have multiple notification email recipients WITHOUT having to add multiple Zonmaster users.

So you can have Email1 get the notifications about Seller Feedback and User 2 get emails about Hijacks, etc.

Adding More Email Recipients

On the right hand side of the Notification Settings are you’ll see a place where you can add additional Email Receipients.

Once added, each of these Recipients will have the same set of possible settings, individually customizable!

We’re pretty proud here at Zonmaster of this new feature.

As always, it is available on ALL PLANS at ALL LEVELS (given the limits set out above). So start your free trial today and level up your Amazon Seller power!

Categories
Uncategorized

Beginning’s Intro to Starting Your Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) Business

Starting your own FBA business can seem like a pretty big mountain to climb. After all, Amazon is such a big company and there are so many components to making it work.

To get started, there are a few things you need to know. To make the transition to your business as smooth as possible, we’ve put together an easy-to-follow guide to help you with everything you need to do to succeed.

If you are ready to start making some money through your FBA business, read on…

1. Invest in Supplemental Programming

Since all business must be conducted online, it is in your best interest to invest in some complementary programs. These programs will help you get up to speed and make it much easier for you to succeed.

FBA businesses require a lot of research in order to be done correctly. You can read this blog post to see how certain keyword programs and online search tools are geared toward helping your business stand out among the competition and thrive as an FBA.

Although some of these investments may seem large at first, we guarantee that they will save you a lot of time and give you a faster income than if you tried to do it all yourself.

2. Choose a Niche

Then choose a niche market or a product you specialize in. When it comes to FBA, buy a large amount of one product rather than a small amount of many products. This will save you time and money.

If you choose a niche early on, you can develop a brand voice and create a reputable online store that you can use to build trusting relationships with repeat customers. Do your research and make sure this niche is right for you, then commit to making the most of it.

3. Know Your Market

Along with having a defined niche, you also need to do some thorough research on the market you will be selling to.

Just as it is important to know your customers in an in-person business, it is also very important that you know how your customers work in an online setting. You can figure this out by doing research about the products you are selling as well as who is most likely to buy them.

This will also help you to prepare and know whether the market is trending in a good or bad direction. It is up to you to do this research, and it should be done well before you make any product purchases.

4. Keep in Contact With Amazon

At the end of the day, your FBA is a part of the Amazon Marketplace. You need to be available at all times to communicate with representatives in case there are any issues with your products or store.

The faster you are available to solve a problem, the better you look in the eyes of Amazon. Do your best and be accountable for any issues, and you will be on your way to success in no time.

Conclusion

Starting out with an FBA business can be quite hectic if you don’t know where to start. We hope that this simple guide will give you a better idea of what to expect as you are starting out.

Follow the basic ideas listed in this guide, and you should be on your way to owning a successful FBA business in no time at all.

If you are going to sell on Amazon there is no better tool than Zonmaster to help you squeeze the most profit out of your experience. With industry-leading customer contact features as well as unlimited landing page generation, product and profit analysis and much more you can’t go wrong with Zonmaster. Zonmaster is available to FBA and MFN sellers in ALL Amazon marketplaces.