Author: Team Zonmaster

Phil Smy, a passionate software developer and tech entrepreneur with over 25 years of industry experience. Phil’s journey has taken him across diverse industries, from online gambling to kids toys, providing him with invaluable insights and expertise.

Categories
Updates

[New Marketplace] ZonMaster Supports Amazon Japan

Amazon FBA Japan Support

A lot of you have requested this and now we are happy to report that ZonMaster supports all you Amazon Sellers who are selling on Amazon.co.jp (Japan).

All our features including review matching and seller feedback support are available in this new marketplace. All ZonMaster accounts have access to this new territory.

How To Add An Amazon Japan Account

The process is that same as other marketplaces.

  1. Go your Stores page (find it here)
  2. Click ‘Add New Amazon Store‘
  3. Select ‘Amazon JP‘ from the Select Marketpalce dropdown
  4. You’ll see instructions on how to get your Amazon JP MWS auth token and give us access. Make sure you save the auth token they give you.
  5. Fill in a clever store name
  6. Enter your Amazon JP Seller ID
  7. Enter your Amazon JP MWS Auth Token (that you got in step 4)
  8. Click Validate

We’ll go off and make sure everything is hunky dory and if it is (which it should be) you’ll be prompted for the sending email information.

We’ll start pulling down your Amazon Japan info as soon as possible.

Please Note

If you want review matching and seller feedback pulled down you need to give us the addition Seller Central permissions (see the video here about that), but this time for sellercentral.amazon.co.jp.

That’s it!

Then you too can start seeing reviews like this!

Categories
Instruction Updates

Receive instant SMS/Email Alerts on Negative Feedback and Reviews

You know, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – our customers are the best source of ideas for new features!

This one came directly from a group of you that wanted a better way to hear about negative seller feedback and reviews. So we came up with this one: how about we notify you instantly via email, Twitter or even SMS?

So we did it!

Great Amazon FBA Customer Service

We think that for any serious Amazon FBA Seller – indeed for anyone serious about business – customer service is really important. Here at ZonMaster we treat it as priority #1 and I’m sure you do the same. Getting negative feedback from a customer is an opportunity to find out where you went wrong and to try and fix the situation. That’s why we think getting this notification as fast as possible is a good thing. Also, the faster you respond the better chance you have of rescuing the relationship with your customer. (Oh, did I just give a lesson on customer service?! Sorry!).

Anyway, now in ZonMaster you can configure notifications to be sent out on a store by store basis. Below I’ve got a video, but, I just want to make this point clear:

If you sell in Amazon US and Amazon EU (or India or wherever) you can (have to) configure these notification settings on a store by store basis inside ZonMaster. That means that notifications for a negative review in Europe can go to your European support team and the US ones go to your North American team.

Again, there is a video, but, the basics are

  • Log In To ZonMaster
  • Go To You Stores Page
  • Choose a Store
  • Edit the settings for Notifications. These are ‘inline editing’ fields, so just click on the values you want to change

 

Here’s a full video of making the changes

[youtube id=0vsCGaKat3Y]

Categories
News

3 Metrics Everyone Selling on Amazon FBA Should Track

You’re selling on Amazon FBA, and you want results.

For example, when you decide to stock a new SKU, you expect orders to roll in tomorrow—not a week from now. You want to own the Buy Box for that item—not share it with a multitude of other vendors.

You’re not screwing around here!

When it comes to feedback solicitation, however, are you measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns?

Simply sending emails to customers offers little value unless there is a definable, measurable outcome. In this post, we’ll discuss the three email metrics merchants should keep an eye on, particularly when it comes to ensuring satisfaction with Amazon customers.

1. Open Rates

Remember the days before the Amazon marketplace? To measure customer satisfaction, you basically had two options: ask in person or send a mailed survey. As with any type of direct mail, most pieces ended up in the trash can. Some were opened, but you had no way of measuring success until responses arrived.

Luckily, those days are gone and selling on Amazon FBA is here. In addition to leveraging the world’s most advanced seller reputation system to collect feedback, savvy users utilize a feedback solicitation service such as our ZonMaster system (click here for a 15-day trial). Based on your preferred delivery settings, ZonMaster automatically sends feedback request emails to your customers. The emails can be customized with subject lines, SKU-specific copy and eye-catching graphics (and more than a dozen other variables) that match your company’s branding and messaging.

Once deployed, your great content and ZonMaster’s flexible timing should result in a predictable open rate. While open rates vary based on product category and demographics, top merchants tend to experience open rates between 10% and 15%. ZonMaster aggregates this open rate data and presents it in a digestible format.

 

open-rates

For each email template, users gain access to a wealth of open rate data, including:

  • The number of recipients who opened (or did not open) an email
  • Percentage of emails opened vs. unopened
  • Month by Month history for the lifetime of the email

Armed with this information, you’re ready to tackle your next challenge in selling on Amazon FBA: optimizing click-through rates.

2. Click-Through Rates

Even a 100% open rate offers little value if your click-through rate is stuck at 0% (or near 0%). To get more customers sharing their experience via the Amazon feedback system, you need to first get them clicking on your solicitation links.

By using ZonMaster, you can monitor and compare which emails are yielding the most engagement. ZonMaster makes it easy to track:

  • Click-through percentages
  • Total number of unique clicks
  • Emails with high open rates but low click rates
  • Percentage of opened emails with clicks

If you’re experiencing unusually low click-through rates (below 2% would be considered low), perhaps it’s time to make a few template adjustments. For example, you might try:

  • Testing a different email template
  • Re-positioning the placement of your call-to-action
  • Reviewing your copy for potential issues
  • Adjusting delivery and email templates rules for optimal engagement

3. Conversion Rates

For most online retailers, the word “conversion” equals a sale. This is of course true when sending a traditional email newsletter or purchasing keyword advertising.

When it comes to reputation management, most people Selling on Amazon FBA could argue that a conversion involves receiving seller feedback. Remember, the goal of feedback solicitation is first and foremost to ensure satisfaction. The natural byproduct of such satisfaction could come in the form of an Amazon feedback. If you provide an amazing interaction, ship ahead of schedule, show customers you care, then ZonMaster will take care of the rest.

As we’ve pointed out numerous times, even the most satisfied customers will only leave feedback about 5% to 10% of the time. ZonMaster helps ensure that your most satisfied customers are prompted to do so at exactly the right time.

Start Tracking Feedback Solicitation Metrics

If you’re ready to take your feedback management to a new level, it’s time you start tracking open, click and conversion rates. Sign up for ZonMaster today.

Categories
News

Make Smarter Decisions With Better Data Visibility

Big Data, Not Just For Big Businesses

Big businesses aren’t the only ones making data-driven decisions.

With the advent of open APIs and SaaS platforms such as ZonMaster, Amazon merchants are now gaining access to information only dreamed about in years past.

In this post, we’ll look at how ZonMaster helps you to make more data-driven decisions. ZonMaster is the market leader in giving you access and visibility to your sales data.

Match Reviews and Orders

Consumers trust the Amazon marketplace for a number of reasons. Most notably, they count on the collective genius found within millions of unbiased product reviews. Unlike traditional offline shopping that relies on smooth sales tactics and the shopper’s “gut feeling,” Amazon.com, Inc. limits the buyer’s risk by aggregating word-of-mouth referrals (or critiques) for every imaginable item.

In a similar way, merchants can also gain valuable insight from product review data. Through our interaction with our users, we consistently find that sellers use product reviews for a variety of purposes, including:

  • Determining which products to source
  • Working on SEO for private-label product(s)
  • Monitoring the popularity of items in inventory
  • Improving product quality
  • Helping suppliers improve
  • Deciding when to drop an item

Although extremely useful to Amazon merchants, product review data has historically been challenging to synthesize. While shoppers often enjoy perusing dozens of reviews, sellers aren’t interested in manually tracking hundreds or thousands of reviews for each SKU.

ZonMaster simplifies the analysis of product reviews. We do the number crunching for you. You’ll be able to see important information, such as average review rating, number of recent positive and negative reviews and much more. Sign up today and get unlimited ASIN’s matched (well, all the ASIN’s you’re selling!). We don’t like restrictions.

items-list

Dangerous Amounts of Data!

With the level of data ZonMaster provides you, you’re going to do some serious damage…to your competitors!

In addition to the brief overview about (which is all the most other platforms give you!), we dive deeeeeep!

item-1

I mean, this is a bit silly! Here is a very condensed look at a page for an item. We’ll break it down into it’s component parts.

item-2

First we give you a break down of your current ranking in all applicable categories. And you stock levels.

item-3

Complete Sales History By Month (click to get a day by day break down!)

item-4

A list of all the orders for this item, regardless of marketplace they are sold in. (ZonMaster supports global Amazon, don’t cha know?!)

item-5

Finally all your reviews.

Review Matching Helps Measure Your Impact

Taking analytics one step further, ZonMaster “matches” your orders to reviews left on the Amazon marketplace. The net result is an actionable list of customer data. You’ll get order number, customer information, marketplace and rating. If you click through to the order you even see our patented Order Timeline.

Late Email

Telling you exactly when events happened – purchase, shipment, delivery, your emails… everything!

Make the Most of Amazon Feedback Data

If you’re looking for a way to make more data-driven decisions for your Amazon business, ZonMaster is the right tool for you. Users gain access to a wealth of knowledge, presented in an intuitive, action-oriented format.

Try ZonMaster today and engage more customers, stay ahead of shifting consumer preferences and grow your bottom line.

Categories
Updates

[Updates] Global Sales Map

sales by country

Where in the World?

Carrying on from our update that broke down sales by ‘Channel’ (i.e. Amazon site), we’ve added a further analysis of yours sales – this time by country. You access this chart by clicking on ‘Country Details’ below the Channels pie chart on the Orders overview page (https://www.zonmaster.com/orders).

This information is very enlightening because Sales Channel does not really give you the full picture.

The above seller’s Sales Channel pie chart looks like this:

screen-shot-2016-11-10-at-3-31-52-pm

Not too helpful.

Because Amazon offers you a global platform, you can better serve your customers by seeing where they are. The interesting thing about the country graph is that you can see that maybe you’d be better off listing on Amazon EU directly, if you are getting some interest from customers in Europe.

The other thing is to know if you need to follow up in different languages.

Information is good! The more you know about your sales the better you can increase those sales.

Categories
Updates

[Updates] Sales Breakdown By Channel

Just a quickie here.

We’ve added a pie chart (the tastiest of all the charts!) to your orders overview page that shows you which channels (i.e. Amazon site) your orders came from.

For some of you selling only on Amazon.com this might not be so interesting, but those of you with a more global (or international) view you might find some surprising numbers here!

sales-by-channelMultiple Markets

Did you know that if you use FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) Amazon will AUTOMATICALLY list your product in markets in the same region? That means that items listed on Amazon.co.uk (for example) will automatically show up on Amazon.de (Germany), Amazon.it (Italy), Amazon.es (Spain) and Amazon.fr (France).

The seller who generated these stats knows it now, if they didn’t know it before. You can also see that France and Germany are actually placing more orders than the ‘home’ market of Amazon.co.uk (in this case).

Like we always say, you can never have too much information when it comes to your sales!

 

We hope you find these chart interesting, and there’s more to come!

See there charts in YOUR ZonMaster account here: https://www.zonmaster.com/orders

As usual, these charts are available to all our users, regardless of plan level.

 

Categories
Updates

[Updates] Order Timelines

I won’t lie. We’re pretty excited about this one.

On EVERY order we’ve added a timeline so you can see what happened and when. This includes

  • Purchase Time
  • Shipping Time
  • Delivery Time
  • Estimated Delivery Time
  • Email Sends
  • Review Dates
  • Seller Feedback Dates

No other Amazon Seller tool gives you this much info, so easily accessible.

Order Timeline

 

Hovering over the title of any event will give you the specific timestamp for that event.

What Are the Advantages?

When you know this much data it’s easy to see how effective your email campaigns are being.

Also, you can find out if your emails are going out at the right time.

In the order below we can see that the first email (which was a shipment notification) actually got sent after the item was delivered. This is because as Amazon speeds up their shipment processing you’ll need to update your email template send times.

Late Email

 

Knowledge is Power

Ok, we’re data nerds, but still we strongly believe that you can’t improve if you don’t know what’s going on. With our recently enhancements to show more stats and charts we think we’re giving you the tools you need to optimize your business. We hope you agree.

As always, these tools are available on ALL our plans.

Categories
Updates

[Updates] Order Overview Graphs

More Stats On Orders

In the second of our releases that exposes more stats, this time we’ve got a graph that gives you an overview of your orders.

This graph can be found on the orders listing page: https://www.zonmaster.com/orders

Broken down by month, and going back as far as we have orders for your stores, we show you how many orders, number of items shipped and reviews you received. It looks something like this:

Order Totals

 

Hovering over any of the data points gives you a break down for that month’s stats.

Order Info 2

With this kind of information we hope that you can spot trends and hot items much easier.

Categories
Updates

[Updated] Enhanced Merchant Fulfilled Support

mfn-power

MFN Power

Do you manage your own fulfillment instead of using Amazon’s FBA service? If so, then ZonMaster has an update that adds even more power to your orders.

From today, ZonMaster will offer the same level of tracking packages to MFN shipments as we do for FBA shipments. No more uploading spreadsheets to ZonMaster! This feature is invisible to you, the seller (and of course to the customer!).

For it to work you do need to do the following:

There are various ways you can do the second thing – either by uploading a spreadsheet or manually. You should be doing that anyway as it is the best way to let Amazon know what’s going on with the order.

Once you’ve done those two things ZonMaster will AUTOMATICALLY start pulling and updating shipment information, allowing you to send emails on triggers like Delivered. If you mix and match  – some items are FBA, some you send yourself – no problem. We know which is which and will get the appropriate info.

This update applies to all marketplaces that we currently support (North America, Europe and India) and all our supported carriers.

We’re happy to bring you this update and to finally bring MFN sellers from 2nd class to the first class cabin 😉

If you have already given us the Seller Central permissions then your account – if you are selling MFN – will be pulling the info.

 

Categories
Instruction

[Tutorials] Configuring An Email Template

Creating Your First Template

Sometimes setting up your first email template can be a little confusing, what with all those options!
Here’s a little video where ZonMaster founder Phil Smy walks you through configuring a basic email template.

We take you through all the settings – from when the email template will get triggered, to stop settings – like if the customer has already left you a review on Amazon.

Video not showing? Click here to see it on YouTube.

[arve url=”https://youtu.be/FV6ofcuXKwQ”]