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.
We’ve updated the Zonmaster website!
When you log in you’ll see that we’ve made some visual changes. All of this sits on top of some big internal changes. But most if not all the features you used should still be where they were, and working pretty much the same.
Please let us know if you encounter any issues.
In the next week or so we will be readying our much-anticipated Automatic Review Request tool. A separate post on here will go into details about that!
We are close to releasing an exciting new feature
Well, you know Amazon has rolled out this new little button called ‘Request a Review’. It looks like this:
This is Amazon’s new way that they want you to use to request a review from your customers. You shouldn’t be doing that via email. The issue is, this is a button on the website. If you’re a successful seller you don’t want to click this a few hundred times a day, of even pay someone to do it.
Let Zonmaster look after that for you. Soon we’ll have a button on Zonmaster to activate automatic review requests. Fully automatic. You turn it on and we send out those requests for you, to the orders you want (default is all orders except returned and refunded).
The thing is, we need some testers! Please apply by sending us a message to contact@zonmaster.com with the subject line: ‘Want To Try Automatic Review Requests’. People who apply – and we’ll just be taking on a few – will get a few weeks head start over everyone else on this exciting development!
DO NOT PUT A COMMENT ON THIS POST. It won’t get answered and that won’t get you into the program.
We have all the testers we need for round 1. Thank you!
In the wake of yesterday’s news, we are STRONGLY recommending (i.e please do it!) you remove any buyer name related shortcodes/variables from your email templates.
These are:
For orders placed after September 4th or so, that data will not be available. Also, to those of you who just signed up to ZonMaster, that data will not be available for ANY of your orders.
Basically, if we have it, we have it, but we ain’t gettin’ it no more!
We realise this is a hassle, albeit not a disaster. All other facets of email templates and the ZonMaster system are working as usual.
This change affects ALL MARKETPLACES.
Some of you may have noticed that Buyer Name (and exact shipping address) are no longer available for your orders.
The reason for this change is because Amazon published a new Data Protection Policy earlier this year. This policy announced that Amazon will no longer provide Amazon seller software companies (such as ZonMaster) with identifiable buyer information (Personally Identifiable Information or PII).
This change affects ALL MARKETPLACES. For what you need to do in response to this change, please read this article.
What is PII Anyway?
Amazon defines PII as “any information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate an individual (customer), or to identify an individual in context. This includes, but is not limited to, a customer name, address, e-mail address, phone number, gift message content, and purchases. As such, ZonMaster no longer has access to the buyer name information and can no longer populate this information for you within your ZonMaster email template.
Why Did Amazon Take Away Access To Buyer Names?
One of Amazon’s goals is to preserve the buyer experience and to shield their customers’ privacy and security. In order to do so, we believe they are taking these measures to prevent sellers from violating customers’ privacy and security, thereby maintaining Amazon’s reputation as well as your reputation as an Amazon seller. Amazon takes maintaining their customers’ privacy very seriously so it is important that you abide by the Amazon Terms of Service (TOS). Violations of TOS could potentially result in losing your Amazon selling privileges and seeing your account suspended.
But It’s Not ALL Bad!
You can still create a stellar customer experience without having the buyers’ names. Think of it this way…Every business begins with a customer. But every successful business begins with a happy customer. So use our Amazon email automation tool to create an exceptional customer experience to help you STAND OUT from the rest of your FBA competition. You can still create a personal, excellent buyer experience even if you don’t have the buyer name.
How To Create Excellent Customer Service
Like many busy Amazon sellers, you may not have the time or process to effectively communicate with your customers at pivotal moments and after specific triggering events. Knowing this, we designed ZonMaster to help you easily streamline your email follow-up strategy, enhance your customer relationships AND maintain a healthy seller reputation with Amazon with the power of automated communications. ZonMaster is a customizable, streamlined, and effective mechanism to communicate with your customers at pivotal moments and after specific trigger points. And as a busy Amazon seller, this is one less task you have to remember so that you can focus more time on growing your business and skyrocketing your sales.
Use ZonMaster To Provide Excellent Customer Service
ZonMaster gives you the ability to effectively communicate with your customer, obtain invaluable and honest client feedback, and better manage customer issues and expectations to really enhance your customer relationships.
One of the keys to building and maintaining a positive seller reputation and brand is to promptly address customer concerns or issues and to thoroughly answer client questions quickly. Think about the last time you had an issue with a product and the manufacturer promptly resolved the issue for you. Would you consider buying more products from this manufacturer? If you’re like most people, you remember a good experience and sometimes customer service is just as important as the quality of the product itself. Now think about the reverse situation where you received poor customer service or a delayed response to your issue. If you’re like most people, you also remember a bad experience. And you’ll probably share this bad experience with most of your friends and family. Yikes. This is every seller’s nightmare.
So don’t be that seller…. Use ZonMaster’s fully automated capabilities to efficiently deliver proactive service to set yourself apart from the rest of the sellers on Amazon – maintain a healthy Amazon seller reputation!
Keep on crushing it sellers!
We’ve had Sales Rank tracking in Zonmaster since the beginning, but, finally we have gotten around to bringing it more up to date. The first step in these improvements – there are more to come! – is improving the tracking and display for those of you selling the same SKU in multiple marketplaces (we’re talking to you, Amazon EU sellers!).
On each product’s main page we now show you the marketplace in addition to the description and the latest ranking.
The ‘breakout’ links (after each Category name) will take you to that page on Amazon. The exception are these ‘display_on_website’ pseudo categories that Amazon has. We are working on a fix for that.
To see historical graphs, click on the small ‘See History’ text.
That will take you to a page showing you your Sales Rank histories.
We hope you like these more detailed charts and the better breakdown by marketplace.
Seller Central Integration (SCI) is a way for Zonmaster to connect to your Seller Central account to import key information.
Order imports, negative feedback imports and email sending use your MWS credentials and do not require SCI.
However, the following features do require Seller Central Integration:
To initiate SCI, you will invite Zonmaster to become a “secondary user” on your Seller Central account and then grant it user permissions to view positive feedback.
Please be aware that it can take up to 24 hours for Zonmaster to accept your invitation.
Amazon will send you two emails to notify you that Zonmaster has accepted the invitation. First, you will receive the email below saying that you must “approve the authorization.” Please take no action until you receive the second email.
If you click the link in the email, you will be asked to fill out the “Secondary User Information” form. This will be completed automatically within the day, so no action from you is required.
Within 24 hours, you will receive a second email once Amazon has verified the new user’s “Secondary User Information”. The second email will look like this and tell you that you can now grant permissions:
Simply click on “Click here” to proceed with granting permissions on Amazon. The link will take you back to the “User Permissions” page.
In the “Current Users” list, find the Zonmaster email address and click “Manage Permissions.”
Please follow the instructions on the Seller Central Integration page on Zonmaster as to what permissions need to be set.
Click the “Continue” button at the bottom of the page. You will be notified that the new permissions have been modified successfully.
You will begin to see positive feedback on the Feedback page within 48 hours.
It’s been a long time in development, but we’re finally almost ready to take the wrapping off our Landing Pages service – and we’re looking for people to give it a try and give us their advice on how it works.
If you’re interested please use the Contact Us form to request access to the Beta Landing Pages area.
In just a few clicks you can have a landing page up for your product. Customize if you want to!
You will be able to update your Claim Codes and have them displayed to the user to be used on checkout.
Collect emails from people who hit your page
Zonmaster Landing Pages are fully SSL/https compliant – meaning Google friendly!
An article in “The Street” reports that at long last Amazon has changed one of it’s more painful pricing policies – that third-party sellers have to have their lowest price available on Amazon.
The clauses prevented sellers who listed on Amazon’s marketplace from listing their products more cheaply on other websites.
See the full article here
A recent survey puts Amazon as the place that over 70% of respondents go to to buy beauty products. Especially interesting is the statistics that 65% use Amaon’s search to find the products.
Read the full article over on RetailDive.com.
https://www.retaildive.com/news/amazon-is-the-top-destination-for-buying-beauty/549830/
Amazon has allowed some companies to send out samples to buyers that Amazon determines might be interested in their products.
It looks like maybe Amazon is stepping up those relationships, if this NBC News article is anything to go on. BSN North America, makers of protein bars and such, sent out 100,000 samples just last week.
Looks like the program is quite limited for now, but this might be something to keep an eye on as Amazon explores new sources for marketing.
Read the full article here
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-knows-what-you-it-can-send-you-samples-boost-n978386
