Contact buyers who left bad reviews on Amazon

Reach Out

Contact Your Reviewers

Our fairy godmothers at Amazon finally heard our wishes.

Sellers now have a chance to contact customers who left a bad review. This is a recent feature, so if you encounter any problems just like Helium 10 did, know you’re not the only one.

Here’s what you need to know about this new messaging ability:

• It’s only for members of Brand Registry.
• Qualified sellers can contact reviewers who left 1- to 3-star ratings.
• You can see the order ID of the review.
• The email you’ll send will be using a default template that you can’t edit.

To use this feature, log in to your Seller Central account, hover over Brands, and click Customer Reviews. You’ll see an option to contact the buyer if the rating is 3 stars or lower.

Many Amazon sellers have been waiting for this for years. What other changes do you want the platform to prioritize?

iOS 15 and Email Marketing

According to 99Firms, more than 40 percent of consumers read their emails through mobile devices, i.e., smartphones and tablets. And 38 percent of email opens are done on iPhones.

After the crippling update to iOS 14 that our boy Mark Zuckerberg eventually saw as beneficial to his company, Apple is now going after email marketers with the goal of protecting their users’ privacy.

iOS 15 will be pushing the following privacy features:

• Hiding IP addresses
• Hiding actual email addresses by generating a random one
• Disallowing email tracking

For those of you who, like us, are sending emails to subscribers regularly, this means that reported open rates will likely no longer be accurate.

The good news is, email marketing is still very much alive—and open rates don’t really equate to more revenue.

Texas Court: Amazon Not a Seller

If you happen to sell a product that results in a liability suit, Amazon will likely be sued as well. But whether or not the ecommerce giant will be liable just like you will depend on which state the suit is going to be filed.

Recently, Texas’s highest court decided that Amazon cannot be held liable under the state’s law for products from third-party sellers. This is contrary to the case of Bolger v Amazon that was decided in California.

So is Amazon really a seller or just an intermediary?

Different courts have different opinions. Although for the sake of the buyers, it’s better if Amazon is deemed a seller so they can go after damages much easier.

A lot of these third-party sellers who are sued for defective products are from other countries, which makes it harder to make them answer for the defects.

Prime Day

Amazon proudly announced that the latest Prime Day helped fuel the success of small and medium-sized businesses. In fact, according to the press release, third-party sellers grew even more than Amazon’s own retail business.

Over 250 million items were purchased by Prime members worldwide, with the following best sellers in the United States:

• Waterpik Electric Water Flosser
• Orgain Organic Plant-Based Protein Powder
• 23andMe Health DNA Test
• Instant Pot Duo Plus 6 Quart 9-in-1 Pressure Cooker
• iRobot Roomba 692 Robot Vacuum

Amazon did not reveal the exact numbers, but Morgan Stanley estimates the revenue for the latest Prime Day to be about $6.8 billion, with nearly half of the amount coming from third-party sellers.

How were your Prime Day sales?

Advancements

What do Kodak, Blockbuster, and General Motors have in common?

They were once the biggest names in their industries that failed due to innovation lag.

The 21st century isn’t called the Information Age for no reason. Keeping up with the latest ideas and technologies is crucial for businesses to survive and thrive.

Decades of being in the ecommerce industry taught us that we always have more things to learn. There’s always something new and change is constant—often, unexpected.

This is why we made it a point to include our Secret Sauce webinars in our Premium subscription. It allows our members to talk to leading industry experts about the latest and most pressing concerns in ecommerce.

Now, we’re offering non-Premium members a chance to experience Secret Sauce for less than $100. We’re even throwing in two more videos to the bundle.

Get the sauce.