1. Exciting news! Brand Tailored Promotions are coming…
Available already on Amazon.com, we’re all eagerness for the European rollout of Amazon’s new targeted promotions scheme…
What is it?
Brand Tailored Promotions will let registered brand owners on Seller Central create bespoke discounts and offers for customers, potential customers and followers.
Who will we be able to target?
Brands will be able to tailor promotions to any of the following audiences:
- Repeat customers (ordered your products more than once in the last 12 months) – discounts to these customers reward their loyalty, deepen their relationship with your brand and spur repeat purchases.
- Abandoned Carts (in the last 90 days) – discounts here are a brilliant way to improve your conversions.
- Potential New Customers (clicked on products or added to cart in 90 days, but not bought in last 12 months) – likely to make their first purchase from you with a nudge, targeting these high-affinity customers with acquisition discounts helps to convert them into buyers.
- Your highest-spending customers (the top 5% of purchasers over the last 12 months) – encourage repeat purchases and reward long loyalty with customised discounts.
- Your recent customers (the most recent 5% based on purchase date) – deepen their relationship to the brand and cross-sell products with tailored offers.
- Brand followers (interested, but never converted) – entice sales with discounts on popular items and attract new followers with follower discounts
What are the benefits?
These exclusive discounts can be used to foster stronger brand loyalty, to nudge on-the-fence purchases and to increase conversions overall – all while maintaining or even reducing overall promo costs.
And when are Tailored Brand Promotions coming?
While we don’t know exactly, we do know that Amazon doesn’t tend to hang around once a new initiative is live in the US, so watch this space!
2. Have you seen our new Amazon Sector Insights?
Wondering how to launch, grow or dominate a new category on Amazon? Looking for the opportunities that others – including the big names – are missing? Want to explore what revenues are there for the taking? Our new sector insights are for you…
We’ve been tapping the big brains of our Amazon experts, pulling their specialist knowledge and insider tips and compiling them into sector white papers, each a deep dive into a popular Amazon category.
To date, we’ve covered Health & Beauty and Toys & Games, with Homes to follow very soon.
So, if you’d like to uncover information like:
- Which subcategories within the sectors are showing the strongest revenues and most rapid growth?
- What are the average revenues?
- What are the key market trends?
- What are our tips for success in each sector?
… grab a cuppa and head over to our blog using the links below!
3. FBA Small and Light to end in September – here’s what comes next…
In our July update, we covered the end of Small and Light in the US and predicted that the same would be rolled out across all Amazon markets soon – and guess what?
Yes, we were right – sadly for some.
The Small and Light programme will close on 26 September 2023, to be replaced with new, low-priced FBA rates for small items.
The Good…
The price thresholds will remain the same as for Small and Light, and Sellers will benefit from FBA delivery speeds.
… and the (potentially) Bad
A low-price FBA fee rate card will be applied to eligible products, and some Sellers might find themselves paying a bit more under the new programme – not ideal in this low price range, where margins are super-tight.
All eligible products will automatically receive the new rates.
What are the thresholds for low-price FBA?
Including VAT:
- £10 in the UK
- €11 in Germany
- €12 in France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands
- SEK 140 in Sweden
- PLN 55 in Poland
So in summary…
- If your products were enrolled in Small and Light and qualify for low-priced FBA rates, your fees might go up.
- But your products will benefit from fast FBA fulfilment.
- If your products were not enrolled in Small and Light and are priced below the thresholds, this change will mean that you will pay lower fees and get fast FBA fulfilment speeds.
- But you were missing out already by not being enrolled in Small and Light.
How can we prepare?
If you think fee hikes will squeeze your margins, we see your options as:
- Absorb the fee increase and operate with thinner margins.
- Resize your packaging to hit a lower size tier, making you able to ship more units per pallet and reduce shipping and storage costs.
- Increase your prices to cover cost increases.
Want to chat through with our fulfilment experts? Click here to speak to the team.
4. Those Base Reserve Policy updates are hitting Seller cashflows hard
Another flashback, this time to our June update, where we reported on Amazon’s planned unification of their Base Reserve Policy, which sees pre-2016 Seller accounts moved from a shipment confirmation date reserve policy onto one based on delivery dates.
And we also talked about how there was the potential for the change to disrupt those Seller’s cashflows while the new reserves are built up.
Well, it seems that the impact for some Sellers is worse than they feared, with one ink cartridge seller telling the BBC that their amount on reserve is “growing daily by about £40k per day” since the changes hit their account!
So, with more accounts to be switched in the first week of September, it’s crucial to start planning if you think you’ll be affected.
This is us! How can we minimise the impact?
Amazon has confirmed that this is a one-time cashflow disruption until the new reserve is built up and “funds become available for disbursement according to the estimated or confirmed delivery date.”
To keep impact to a minimum, it’s key to ensure that your tracking is uploaded to Amazon as fast as possible.
If you use an integrated shipping provider, FBA or Amazon Shipping…
Amazon will use the actual delivery date of the order.
Sellers using FBA next day shipping, for example, should find there’s no more than a day between their old shipment confirmation date and the new delivery date.
Without valid tracking data…
Amazon will use the least optimistic estimated delivery date.
And when will funds be available for disbursement?
Funds will be available 7 days from the delivery date of the order.
Think you’ll be adversely affected?
Now’s the time to look at covering the potential hole in your cashflow, whether through lining up temporary funds or seeking out financial support options if you think you’ll need them.
It could also be worth looking at alternative fulfilment options, if you’ll find you’re always struggling with your slower delivery estimates.
