Digiday.com, out of the UK, are reporting that Amazon is changing the way they purchase stock.
Looks like Amazon is exerting more control over how companies sell on their platform.
It does seem targeted at certain brands for now, but who know what the future will bring!
You can read the whole article here
Seeking more control over brands, Amazon pulls the plug on thousands of vendors
If you have included a date variable – order_date or package_eta – in your emails they date will now be formatted in a way that is correct for the marketplace they purchase from.
That means:
Amazon North America (Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.mx): mm/dd/yyyy
Amazon Europe (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it): dd/mm/yyyy
Amazon Australia : dd/mm/yyyy
Amazon India: dd-mm-yyyy
Amazon Japan: yyyy年mm月dd日
We’ve added a new way to filter (or target, depends on your point of view!) customers.
This filter is found at the bottom of the ‘Stop On…?’ dropdown in the ‘Exclude’ section while editing an Email Template.
Remember this is an EXCLUDE not include function so this is what they do:
1) ‘Is Subscribe & Save Customer’ means: this email will NOT go to S&S Customers
2) ‘Is Not Subscribe & Save Customer’ means: this email will ONLY go to S&S Customers
Perhaps a little backwards, but we didn’t want to clutter the interface with more options!
As always, this is a new feature so please give us your feedback on its effectiveness. And if you have any other suggestions for filters or other improvements we are always keen to hear them! Use our ‘Contact Us‘ page to get in touch.
On your store’s settings page, you can set up notifications that will tell you when reviews and or seller feedback have come in.
You can update some of these, and configure other settings, on your Amazon Store’s Settings page.
To get there go to the ‘Settings’ menu and select ‘Store Settings’ (or click here)
Then click on your store’s name.
The optimal settings are these below:
You will get notified about negative Seller Feedback and products Reviews. Because Amazon is currently making it very difficult to match reviews to orders, we suggest setting the ‘notify on matched’ to ‘All’.
Then click on your email address or your SMS number (or Twitter name) and we will send you notifications.
When you signed up with Zonmaster you gave us your Amazon Seller info – Seller ID, MWS Auth Token, Send From email address etc.
You can update some of these, and configure other settings, on your Amazon Store’s Settings page.
To get there go to the ‘Settings’ menu and select ‘Store Settings’ (or click here)
Then click on your store’s name.
You’ll end up on a details page like this:
To edit your Send Email From Address click on it and a small popup window will appear where you can enter the new address.
PLEASE READ THE ‘About the ‘Send From’ Email Address’ section on that page before editing the address. If you change the email address to an email that is not authorized with Amazon your emails will be sent to Amazon but not to your customers and you will have credits removed from your Zonmaster account.
If your email address has not yet been verified by you with Zonmaster you can ‘resend’ the verification email to your address. The verification email will come from Amazon Web Services and you’ll have 24 hours in which to click the link.
Please note that it can take up to 30 minutes for the email to sync with us after you have verified it.
Amazon expires the Auth Token once a year. They will send you an email warning you that it is coming to an end. When you renew the Auth Token the token MIGHT change, so please paste the new token into this page. Just like with the email address, you click on the Token text and a popup will appear. Once you have saved it a ‘Recheck’ button will appear and you MUST click on that to complete the update.
Technically you don’t HAVE to do this, but, it is strongly (x 1000) recommended. Edit your email template and go to the “For Orders Placed Between The Dates:” section under “When?”. Click in each field to show the date picker and choose a start and stop date.
(of course, you have to fill out the rest of the template. We’re just talking about the specifics needed for Force Send here)
and click the “Send It” button (which doesn’t really send it, but takes you to a confirmation screen)
We will tell you the rules of who will get your email template. Read them carefully.
This is so that you have to pause and think!
This would queue up your emails
OR
Click “Get me out of here” to go back to the email template details page.
You can upload and insert an image into your email by using the ‘Insert Image’ icon in the toolbar. Unfortunately, there are two of these! You need to use the rightmost one (if you hover over it it will say ‘Insert an image from your computer’).
There are also some image resources in our shortcodes. Things like product images should NOT be uploaded and manually inserted. Instead you should use the %%product_image_small%%, %%product_image_medium%% or %%product_image_full%% (we strongly recommend small!) shortcode.
Remember that images are not guaranteed to arrive to your customer. They may have images switched off on their email client or device. Images should be seen as SUPPLEMENTAL to the message of your email, not vital. This means ALL images – logos, products, buttons, clever memes, etc etc. Don’t depend on them.
One of the things that makes a system like Zonmaster so powerful is that you don’t have to write an email for each and every product and customer. By using shortcodes you can substitute in things for the current order automatically. Back in the old days we used to call this ‘Mail Merge’. It adds great flexibility to te emails you can write.
All Zonmaster shortcodes take the form of %%short_code%%. The shortcode is the whole thing – from the opening %% to the closing %%.
In some shortcodes – like %%review_link%% – you can enter in your own text. So, the shortcode looks like this: %%review_link:your text here%%. What that means is that after the shortcode name (in this case, review_link) there is a colon (:) and then you can write your own text. So you can have %%review_link:click here to leave a review%%. Try to avoid using punctuation inside your text (sorry about that. We’re working on it)
DO NOT style the text in a shortcode. i.e. DO NOT bold, italicize, color etc etc a shortcode tag.
To personalize your emails to the customer, Zonmaster offers a range of ‘buyer related’ shortcodes. For example, to use the buyers first name in a greeting you can write
Hi %%buyer_first_name%%
and in the resulting email that will come out as
Hi Bob
(assuming their name is Bob of course!)
We always always always recommend that you use the %%product_nick%% shortcode when you want to include the name of what the customer ordered in an email. This way, if you’ve created a nickname (a shortened or different name for a product) it will substitute that.
Thank you for buying %%product_nick%%
Will result in
Thank you for buying World’s Best Widget
If you uploaded your store logo to your Amazon Store’s settings page on Zonmaster then you can include that in any email by using %%store_logo_small% (or medium or full).
Thanks again!
Bob from My Store
%%store_logo_small%%
Will result in
Thanks again!
Bob from My Store
You can find a full list here (always available under the ‘Emails’ menu as ‘Email Variables Help‘)
Amazon has taken more advanced measures to prevent services like Zonmaster from matching reviews to orders. We are working on a fix for this but temporary we are suspending the matching of reviews to orders.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
We’ve overhauled the orders listings page (here) to give you more power and more info.
Now you can filter on more fields specifically, which lets us perform faster searches. We’ll break them down in a minute.
In addition, on relevant search fields, you can also filter your results even further.
Let’s cover the filters first, because they can apply to many fields.
Pretty obvious here. We default to selecting both.
Additionally, you can ratchet down to only those orders that used a promotion, or have already given you SELLER FEEDBACK (note: not reviews)
Here you’ll see what marketplaces are relevant for you. If you only sell on Amazon.com then it will be the only thing in here.
NOTE: In this section (and in other subsections), choosing none is the same as choosing all.
We default to all except canceled.
NOTE: In this section (and in other subsections), choosing none is the same as choosing all.
*: For this to work you need to be forwarding your emails from Amazon to us. Please read this article about it.
NOTE: In this section (and in other subsections), choosing none is the same as choosing all.
NOTE: In this section (and in other subsections), choosing none is the same as choosing all.
That covers the filters!
With Date Range selected in the first drop down, you are given a variety of options to choose from in the next drop down. Most, we hope, are self explanatory. If you choose Exact Dates you are then given the choice to enter a date range. The format is YYYY-MM-DD.
NOTE: Filters can/are applied to date range searching
You can enter all or part of an order number here. E.g “113-4137396-0344548” or just “0344548” (or any part).
NOTE: Filters ARE NOT applied to order id searching
Enter a COMPLETE ASIN.
NOTE: Date Range AND are applied to ASIN searching
Same as ASIN. You need to enter an ENTIRE SKU.
NOTE: Date Range AND are applied to SKU searching
Enter all or part of the Buyer name or Amazon customer email address.
NOTE: Date Range AND are applied to SKU searching
You can enter all or part of any of the above info (depending on what you’ve selected from the drop down)
NOTE: Date Range AND are applied to Shipment Info searching
We also give you some quick stats on the order
NOTE: For Review Ratings to show you need to be matching reviews, which requires the Seller Central Integration. Please see here for more info
