Amazing FBA Amazon and ECommerce Podcast, for Amazon Private Label Sellers, Shopify, Magento or Wooc

Amazing FBA Amazon and ECommerce Podcast, for Amazon Private Label Sellers, Shopify, Magento or Wooc


#343 Rebates for Amazon with Paul Harvey of Seller Chatbot

August 01, 2019

Rebates for Amazon with Paul Harvey of Seller Chatbot
 What are rebates for Amazon about?
In the e-commerce world, rebates for Amazon are another way to get good keyword ranking for new products when launching. It works especially well because the ranking effect of each reduced-price sale is much less than that of full-priced sales. Basically it means giving a customer a rebate after they buy an item.
Are Rebates Amazon TOS compliant?
Back in the day, you could sell products by using incentivised reviews.
Paul played by what he thought were good rules,  but his competition went past him
It took Amazon getting nasty press to change it.
Rebates are similar. Rebates are not against TOS [but they are possibly a grey area -ed.]
However, asking for rebates and then asking for a review IS against TOS and Paul has known a couple of Amazon sellers have their Amazon accounts suspended for doing this.
Amazon are reluctant to change it - BUT it will change!
Rebates are likely to stay for a while. Amazon makes more money off a full-price sale than a discount
Also, Amazon would need to get access to Paypal to prove that rebates are being used.
One day however it will change - so you need to have more tactics than that.

So how does rebate flow work?
You can automate everything eg on Manychat.
There are API integrations with FaceBook - eg automatic PayPal refund, or add another product (Buy One Get One Free deals etc.)
Paul recommends automating everything.
HOWEVER, Paul and Anthony and Steve Simonson were chatting about this 2 months ago.
And Steve said, “hang on, are you wanting to automate a way to take money out of my account? What if your whole flow went viral?"
Yes, you can put boundaries and restrictions in place - but they take work.
Hasn’t Amazon got a stake in Paypal?
Who knows?

What's the best way to talk to customers about rebates?
Paul speaks to customers - who ask "why is it free?". The reason he gives is that he wants to get their feedback about the product and the buying process.
Some sellers choose to follow up later and  ask for a review, but this is definitely black hat.

Chatbot Flow for Rebates
In the flow, when you do search and buy, seller chatbot cycles through various keywords, which helps the searches appear more organic to Amazon.
VA manually handles all the stuff and does rebate. She monitors this and uses customer screenshots as proof before issuing rebates.

Using Chatbots to improve PPC
Eg search and buy - if bidding heavily on a keyword, you will often have your ad appear high in the search results.
You can get Super low ACoS if you combine PPC with Chatbot in the right way.

What URL do you use?
Paul hasn’t used a Super URL for 2 years.
He has used "search and buy" for 2 years.

Why search and buy not a Super URL?
Amazon can see that customers are coming to the home page, typing in the keyword and then clicking on the ad (and in the best case, buying the product as a result).
Ranking and relevancy go through the roof.
There are something like 80 data points that Amazon accounts for in ranking, so it's not the only aspect of ranking, but click rates and sales via Amazon ads are very powerful still in ranking your organic product listing.
Amazon Ads
If the customer types in “baby blanket” and they see your ad, likely to click.
Amazon will reward your organic ranking in response to better CTR, conversions via ads.
Amazon loves ads because that makes them profit!
ACOS drops and relevancy will improve.
Sellers don’t want to spend on PPC but it sends more signals to your listing.