Categories
Updates

[Update] Did they or didn’t they? ZonMaster adds mail open tracking

It’s one thing to send of an email and know it arrived, and something completely different to know that it was opened.

That’s why we’ve added the ability to track whether your emails were opened or not. Go to your Email Queue and you’ll see your a list of emails that have been sent or are waiting to send.

Emails that are queued up to send in the future show in blue, with a clock icon. Like this:

waiting mail

Mails that have been sent show in white with a check mark. And opened mails show in beige with a eyeball!

mail open

 

Clicking on a mail (in this case an opened mail) takes you to the very bland looking (really must spruce that up!) details page where you can see info and links to the customer, order, and email template along with the dates of when it was sent and opened.

mail q detail

If the mail hasn’t been sent yet here is where you can click on the ‘Delete from queue’ to get rid of it.

These changes are all moving us in the direction of letting you know which templates give you best success rate for getting more reviews. Watch for more informational improvements to come in this area!

 

Categories
Updates

[Update] Big Changes to Email Templates – #3 Review level triggers

Our other addition to email templates for reviews is the ability to send an email based on a review being left. To do this look in the ‘Send Trigger’ dropdown.

New Review Triggers

After the old triggers of Confirmed, Shipped, Delivered and Returned we’ve added a group of levels (similar to the ones in Stop On Review). Check that posting for an explanation.

PLEASE BE AWARE: for these settings to work you need to be actively matching orders to reviews by going to our Seller Central Prep page and clicking the big red button. If there are no reviews matched to the order then these settings will not go into effect and your emails may not be sent.

Categories
Updates

[Update] Big Changes to Email Templates – #2 Stop On Review

If you’ve been following along with ZonMaster updates you know that we have been working hard on tying customer reviews to customer orders.  Now the next step is to let you do something with that info. The first of two features on the email templates to use customer reviews is ‘Stop on Review’ (found in the middle of the lower line of settings).

If you click the dropdown you’ll see the list of possibilities.

Stop On Review

We think they’re pretty self explanatory, but, for the sake of clarity:

  • ‘No, Keep Sending’ (the default) means that this email template will get sent out, even if the customer has left a review
  • ‘Stop on Any Review’ means that this email will NOT go out if the customer has left any sort of review for this order
  • Stop on 1 Star- don’t send if the customer left a 1 star review
  • Stop on x Star OR BELOW – choose a star level (eg 3) and if the customer has left a 3, 2 or 1 star review for this order don’t send the template
  • Stop on x Star OR ABOVE – choose a star level (eg 2) and if the customer has left a 2,3,4 or 5 star review for this order don’t send the template
  • Stop on 5 star – if the customer has left a 5 star review for this order, don’t send the template.

 

PLEASE BE AWARE: for these settings to work you need to be actively matching orders to reviews by going to our Seller Central Prep page and clicking the big red button. If there are no reviews matched to the order then these settings will not go into effect.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments!

Categories
Updates

[Update] Big Changes to Email Templates – #1 Goodbye Backdate, hello Order After!

It was driving us crazy and it was driving YOU crazy. What, exactly, does ZonMaster’s ‘backdate’ feature do to an email template.

Everyone seemed to have a different interpretation, so, for clarity (and sanity) we got rid of it.

In it’s place we now have ‘Send to orders placed after’ (for brevity, let’s call it ‘Order After’). You can find this setting on the last row of the header section when editing an email template.

send to orders placed after

If you click on the little calendar icon you’ll get the following popup, which let’s you choose a date (and a time, if you click the little clock icon at the bottom of that window)

date-picker

Setting a date and time will tell the template to only send to orders placed after that date. This allows you to more accurately move from another provider to ZonMaster by controlling the cutoff/start date when you want ZonMaster to take over.

We hope this improves your experience with ZonMaster! Let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Categories
Updates

[Update] Revised Template Editing page

We’ve restructured the template editing page a little bit to group things together in a more logical flow (we think!).

Editing Template 1

So first we have the NAME of the template. This is an internal name that your customers won’t see, so you can call it anything you like to remind yourself what it does (e.g. “Order confirmation”).

After that we have a check box to activate the template. By default templates are created inactive, so you can save them while they are incomplete and not worry about them going out! Templates can be activated and deactivated on this editing page, or on the template’s details page or even just from the list of templates.

Next we have the SUBJECT, which is what will be seen by your customers. Remember that you can use our email variables in the subject line as well, so you can do something like “Thank you for your %%product_nick%% purchase”, which will substitute in the nickname (or if you haven’t filled in a nickname, the full listing title) of the product they bought.

The next line is where you target orders and set triggers.

First is ‘SALES CHANNEL’ where you can choose Amazon.com, Amazon.ca or Amazon.com.mx if you have a North American store, or Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.it or Amazon.es if you have a European store.

Next comes the SEND TRIGGER, which tells us after what event in the lifetime of an order do you want to send this template out. Values can be Confirmed (meaning the order was completed and paid for on Amazon), Shipped, Delivered or Returned.

DELIVERY SETTING – the last option on this line – is to say when after the Trigger to send this email. ASAP, or a set number of hours, days, weeks or months. If you choose anything but ASAP you have to enter in a DELIVERY TIMEFRAME (eg 1 to go with your ‘hours’).

On the next line are some extra goodies – REPEAT BUYERS lets you choose if you want to send to Everyone or just new customers or only repeat customers. SHOW UNSUBSCRIBE LINK will put a quick link at the bottom of your emails so customers can blacklist themselves (don’t forget this is a legal requirement to have this link in Europe).

Finally is the rather confusing – and soon to be phased out – BACKDATE. We suggest leaving this active.

Choose Template Items

After you’ve set up all your administrative stuff you can choose which of your items will trigger this template.

Choose an item from the left list of all your items for sale and move it over to the right. Or you can click ‘Select All’ to choose them all.

Please be aware that if you add more items for sale, and you’ve chosen ‘select all’ in the past, those new items will NOT trigger this template. You’ll have to come back and edit the template.

Enter Template Text

Finally you can get down to writing the text of your email. For more sophisticated control, under the TOOLS menu you can VIEW SOURCE and edit the raw HTML source of the email.

Under the INSERT menu is INSERT TEMPLATE that will let you pick from our list of EMAIL VARIABLES.

We hope this breakdown of the page will help you create exciting templates to send to your customers!

Categories
FAQ

[FAQ] Does My Message Meet Amazon Guidelines?

We aren’t Amazon. We can’t answer this question with certainty.

We would urge you to consult the Amazon Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions found here to ensure that the content of your message meets Amazon standards.

Categories
FAQ

[FAQ] How Do I Stop Sending To A Certain Customer?

There are 2 ways you can stop sending to a customer about an order.

Blacklist the customer

Go to the Blacklist management page and click ‘Add New Entry’. Here you can type in one or many (one per line) Amazon seller email addresses (you know, those crazy qw2smy2gutcr61k@marketplace.amazon.com type addresses). After clicking ‘Create Blacklist’ your entries will be added and those customers will never get another email via ZonMaster again. Ever.

You can also blacklist a customer from their detailed info page or from one of their order detail pages.

Stop Sending For The Order

If you don’t want to go all nuclear and blacklist the customer you can also click the red ‘Stop Sending For This Order’ button on any order’s info page.

Categories
FAQ

[FAQ] What Do The Different ‘Send Trigger’ Values Mean When Setting Up An Email Template?

Confirmed – the order has been placed and payment has been received (order has been made official)

Shipped – the order has left the warehouse and it is on its way to the local office which will deliver the order to your customer

Delivered – the order has been delivered and is in the customer’s possession

Returned – the order has been returned by the customer

 

Categories
FAQ

[FAQ] How do Variables work?

The “email variables” are essentially information placeholders for your messages.  For example, placing the %%buyer_first_name%% variable in your message body (ex. “Hello %%buyer_first_name%% !” – a greeting at the beginning of the message), will replace the variable placeholder with the first name of the customer who placed the order.
For any of the link variables (see the full list of system variables on the ZonMaster site), you can specify the text that should appear hyperlinked by adding a colon after the word “link” and typing in the text that you would like hyperlinked.  For example, if you want customers to contact you through Amazon and don’t want to use the web URL (ex. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact/contact.html?marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&orderID=FAKE-ORDER-ID), you could instead use the Contact variable like so: %%contact_link:Contact us%% The recipient would see the words “Contact us” as a clickable link that redirects to the Contact page on Amazon. This makes the email more visually appealing and easy to follow.
The most useful variables are %%buyer_first_name%% (replaces the code with the customer’s first name), %%feedback_link%% (link for your customer to leave seller feedback – specific to their order), and %%review_link%% (direct link for the customer to leave a product review on the product they purchased).
Remember that variables can be used in the subject of your email too!
Categories
Updates

[Update] Virtual Assistant accounts!

You asked for it, we did it!

You can now create special accounts for your Virtual Assistants (or anyone. Your mom if you like!). Under the ‘User’ menu (top right) there should now be a ‘Manage Admins’ entry.

Be going in there you can invite other people to come and admin your ZonMaster account. You can set them to be an admin (same as the account owner’s privileges) or a Virtual Assistant.

A VA account has the following restrictions

  • Can’t see the sales statistics summary on the dashboard
  • Can’t see anything related to the blacklist
  • Can’t create or edit ‘Amazon Stores’

We are unsure if you want other restrictions. Some of you mentioned limited the creating and editing of Email Templates, but, I also know some of you want your VA’s to do that. Perhaps we need another permission (Editor?).

Let us know! Now that the framework is in place, changing the permissions around should be easy enough.