Helium 10 Buzz 2/1/23: Walmart New Seller Bonus | Amazon Advertising Updates | Brand Referral Bonus Tip

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, interview someone you need to hear from, and provide a training tip for the week.

Walmart Announces Launch of Walmart Business To Save Business and Nonprofit Customers Time, Money, and Hassle.
https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2023/01/20/walmart-announces-launch-of-walmart-business-to-save-business-and-nonprofit-customers-time-money-and-hassle

Sponsored ads have now launched in Belgium. Eligible sellers and vendors can now leverage Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Stores on Amazon.com.be.
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/sponsored-ads-launches-in-belgium

New-Seller Savings Gives Sellers a Boost To Grow at Walmart
https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2023/01/26/new-seller-savings-gives-sellers-a-boost-to-grow-at-walmart

Big tech giant Amazon is taking another step to solidify a position in the crypto industry. According to a report from crypto news outlet Blockworks, the company will launch a non-fungible token (NFT) initiative sometime in spring 2023.
https://bitcoinist.com/ecommerce-giant-amazon-to-launch-nft-initiative/

Amazon India has launched Amazon Air, making it the first e-commerce company in the country to have a dedicated air cargo network. Amazon Air will utilize the cargo capacity of two Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by Quikjet Cargo Airlines. Each Amazon Air aircraft will ship thousands of packages every day and fly across Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai.
https://www.aboutamazon.in/news/operations/amazon-air-takes-off-in-india

Don’t miss the opportunity to enhance your e-commerce skills and skyrocket your sales! Register now for Kevin King’s Billion Dollar Seller Summit online event and gain valuable insights from industry experts. In addition, you’ll be able to learn from Carrie’s interview with Shawn Hart from Post Purchase Pro. As a bonus, take advantage of the Pro Training Tip of the Week, where you’ll learn how to set up an Amazon Attribution Link using Helium 10’s Portals Tool.

In this episode of the Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, Bradley discusses:

• 01:15 – Custom Products
• 02:20 – Walmart Business
• 04:00 – PPC Product Page
• 04:55 – Amazon Belgium Update
• 05:40 – Walmart Bonus
• 07:20 – Amazon NFT 
• 08:10 – Amazon Air India
• 09:45 – Sign Up For Kevin King’s BDSS Online Event
• 11:00 – Carrie Interviews Shawn Hart From Post Purchase Pro
• 17:30 – Pro Training Tip: How To Setup An Amazon Attribution Link

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton. This is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you news updates of what’s going on, Amazon and Walmart and e-commerce space. We give you training tips of the week, and also interviews that help give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let’s see what’s buzzing this week. We have a lot of news articles. First of all, we’re gonna catch up last week we had an extra bonus episode, so we didn’t have the buzz. So we’re gonna talk about some new updates in Walmart advertising, or actually Amazon advertising. And then also we’re gonna have updates on Walmart. There will be updates on even Amazon getting into the NFT space, and also some updates on Amazon Belgium for those of you selling in Europe.

Bradley Sutton:

We’ve got an interview with somebody who talks about kind of like what you’re supposed to be doing after your sale. Sometimes we think that the journey ends. A you know, after you sell a product on Amazon, no this person has a little bit different opinion, and it’s got a lot of experience to talk about why, and we got a training tip of the week to help you get a little kickback from Amazon if you’re promoting your products elsewhere. So, let’s go ahead and hop right into the news. The first article is actually coming directly from Amazon Seller Central, and this is for those of you who do custom products. Now you know, perhaps you’re not selling custom products like me, and you didn’t even realize this, but did you guys know that if you were using Amazon Custom that’s where you can like print their name and things on your packages that customers were actually could still get returns.

Bradley Sutton:

Like, I didn’t even realize that, you know those of you who do sell Amazon customer, you’re probably overjoyed at this, but it says starting February 15th, custom and personalized product purchase on Amazon will no longer be eligible for returns. So if you are offering some kind of customization, you’re not gonna have to worry anymore about customers being able to ask for returns. So that’s a, that’s a great update. You guys know how sometimes updates on the Helium or the Amazon dashboard get to like tons and tons of thumbs-down votes. Well, look at this one. This is probably the best one I’ve ever seen. There’s 350 up votes on this and only five down votes. So seems like everybody who’s selling customs is, or custom products is definitely happy about that one. Next article comes from Walmart says, Walmart announces launch of Walmart Business to save business and nonprofit customers time, money, and hassle.

Bradley Sutton:

This was an interesting article that was just directly from Walmart and talking about how there’s gonna be kind of like bulk purchases on over a hundred thousand items. You know, free shipping, 2% rewards, 5% savings on eligible items. Now, what I’m not sure this does involve yet or not, is how much of these might be from third party sellers. There’s actually a B2B, right? A B2B option on Amazon. So is this similar to that one where you can turn that on on Amazon and then you could potentially give bulk customers or business customers discounts? So, I’m just curious I don’t think I’m enrolled in that on Project X. How many of you’re are doing that on Amazon using the business selling, and if that’s what this is for Walmart would you be interested in that?

Bradley Sutton:

You know, depending on how that’s worked out for you on Amazon. You know, I can’t imagine too many people wanting to buy coffin shelves and things in bulk, but I actually did sell bulk a lot of egg trays. It was, it was funny. There was, it was a realtor who does, who sets up houses and used to buy our Gui’s Chicken Coop Project X egg trays like 20-30 at a time. And since I wasn’t involved or enrolled at the time in that business plan. I would just like give her some, like a discount coupon code, but then this way she could have been registered as a business on Amazon and then gotten that discount. Maybe that’s what this Walmart update is as well. Alright, back to not really a news update, but just something that you can see inside of Seller Central.

Bradley Sutton:

On some accounts, not on all accounts, but if you go to your advertising and you go here too, they have a new beta tab, one for budgets which is new, and then one for products. Now, this product page will show you your advertising performance at the product level. So check if you have this it might be interesting to see how you’re doing at the product level instead of the campaign level. And then you can make some actions based on that. If you don’t have this yet, don’t worry if you have Adtomic you’ve had access to this for years. If you go to your dashboard and then you go to your analytics page inside of Atomic, you have a tab called product. And then, so you can see all of your analytics on PPC at the product level.

Bradley Sutton:

So soon, hopefully, everybody will have that in Seller Central, but those of you who’ve been using Atomic, you’ve had this for a couple, couple years. Now speaking of advertising, there’s another new announcement from Amazon that’s sponsored ads and stores launched in Belgium. So there’s Amazon Belgium has been up for a little bit, but now you can do sponsored ads and also have your brand store in Belgium. Alright, so it says online shoppers in Belgium. This article says are expected to reach 8.6 million by 2025. And so now you can start advertising with Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and you can build a store. Alright, so vendors or just regular sellers are able to take advantage of this. How many of you guys, I’m just curious, how many of you have started any products in Amazon Belgium yet?

Bradley Sutton:

Let me know when the comments below if you’re watching this on YouTube. Now, back to interesting article. This is going back to Walmart. This is a press release they did last week, and it says, new seller savings give sellers a boost to grow at Walmart. So this is for people who have not yet jumped in to sell on Walmart. Alright, it says, our limited time offer and rapid growth make now the perfect time to launch on Walmart marketplace. So basically, if you hit this link, and this link will be in our YouTube and also our our podcast page here, there’s this link for all of you who have not yet started selling on Walmart, that you are going to be able to have a 25% commission rate for 90 days while trying selling on Walmart. And you are also gonna be able to get $500 of Sponsored Products ad credit.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s Walmart’s advertising. So a $500 credit to start in addition to up to 25% off referral fees, Just by, like for example, if you fill out the new seller survey, you get 10% off. If you ship with WFS, which is like their FBA, you get 5% off. So there’s a lot of details on this link. So make sure to, to check out this link that’s in our description to get more details. But if you haven’t, for whatever reason started, it’s 2023. Guys, if you haven’t started selling it on Walmart yet this is the time to go ahead and do it. And now Walmart is giving some bonuses. Don’t forget that we have a complete A to Z training in our Freedom Ticket program with Carrie on how to sell on Walmart.

Bradley Sutton:

And we’ve got Project W Carrie and Shivali are working on something else as well to, to kind of give you an update for 2023 on selling on Walmart. So if you decide to sell on Walmart, you’re not completely blind. You’re gonna be able to have a step-by-step instructions on how to do that. Alright, next article, we’ve been talking a little bit on the Serious Sellers Podcast and also the AM/PM Podcast lately about NFTs. You know, we just had Kevin King on, Kevin King had Liran on, and there’s other people who are all in NFTs these days, even myself I talked about the Bulls and Apes project before, but now Amazon is getting into the NFT space. This is an article from bitcoinist.com, and it’s entitled E-Commerce Giant Amazon, to Launch NFT Initiative. Now, there’s not that much details as far as what this is going to include, but it says here that Amazon has partnered with over 10 crypto projects to support its NFT initiative.

Bradley Sutton:

So, pretty interesting stuff here on what this is going to involve. Alright, next article is going to be about Amazon India, and this is a press release from Amazon saying that Amazon Air is gonna be the first market in Asia for India. So Amazon Air has tons and tons of airplanes. Let me see if I can find the actual number here. Yeah, in 2016, it was launched in US Amazon Air, which is like the Prime Air, the airplanes and stuff. 110 aircraft are going around the world, but no, like e-commerce kind of company has, has its own dedicated aircraft in India. Amazon is the first one. And so there’s a couple of planes that’s that’s starting to join this, and they’re gonna go to select cities such as Deli and Mumbai.

Bradley Sutton:

And th this is gonna help get goods faster to the customers to the last mile deliveries so if you’ve been selling in Amazon India, you’re getting probably fast shipping, but now it could be even faster. And so obviously if there’s faster shipping available might influence customers to buy their products more. So, how many of you guys are selling in Amazon India and are excited about this? You know, like if this works out, it’ll probably open up to the rest of the country. They’ll probably buy more airplanes just like here in the States, but you can be looking forward to faster shipping now. Alright, that’s it for the news this week. Now, before we get into the training tip of the week, first of all, you guys should check out the episode that was released last Saturday for the Serious Sellers Podcast.

Bradley Sutton:

It was the first time we’ve had Kevin King on this year in 2023. So he’s got a lot of golden nuggets and he also gave a kind of like heads up that the Billion Dollar Seller Summit is coming back, the online one just in a couple of weeks here. And our own, Carrie Miller is gonna be one of the speakers at this event, she’s gonna be talking about some advanced strategies that have to do with Walmart and other things. So make sure to register if you want to go to that event. To get more information, go to h10.me/bdss, h10.me/bdss to get more details on the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. Speaking of Carrie, she was able to interview Shawn from Post Purchase PRO. Actually I think Carrie actually works with Post Purchase PRO.

Bradley Sutton:

They’re one of the companies in our hub. And you know, sometimes we’re just trying to whether it’s advertising that we’re using, we’re just trying to get to that sale, and then that’s it. Well that might have worked across the board three or four years ago, and it’s still works to some extent today. I mean, me, like, I’m not following up with other than asking for a review for my customers who order Project X coffin shelves and things like that. But you know, it’s important to do a lot of different strategies now even after the purchase or as we say, post-purchase. So let’s see what Shawn says about this with Carrie.

Carrie:

Hey everyone. So we are here with Shawn Hart from Post Purchase PRO, and I know a lot of you probably know him. So thanks so much for joining us here.

Shawn:

I appreciate it, Carrie.

Carrie:

So I wanted to start out cuz you’ve definitely been around a lot in the Amazon space, but I don’t know how many people know your story and your background, so I just wanted to get your seller journey. How did you start out in all of this and Well,

Shawn:

That’s a great question. I often get asked that myself. So I actually cut my teeth in the direct response industry. So we would launch private label products, Carrie, but we used more classic forms of media, like television, radio, newspaper

Carrie:

So, well that’s pretty cool. Well, let’s kind of segue then into what you do now. Cause you are helping a lot of sellers with something that they usually forget, which is the follow up part. So can you kinda give us a little background about what you do with following up with Amazon customers?

Shawn:

Sure. I got lucky and accidentally discovered this because in my previous business, Carrie, before we did Amazon, our entire business, depended on us creating relationships with customers. So when I started selling on Amazon, I was naive in thinking that every Amazon seller was making the customer relationship super important. And if you really stop and think about it, the number one most valuable asset of any business, I don’t care where you are, it’s not the real estate, the brand, the goodwill, the customer connections, none of that. Your inventory, no. The number one most valuable asset is your customer. But the problem is, is that Amazon makes creating sales transactions so easy that we often fall into a trap of forgetting our number one most valuable asset, the customer. So, short story, long, when I started in 2014, we put a tremendous amount of effort into creating a relationship by creating scenarios, Carrie, where our customers from Amazon chose to reach out to us, the brand so that they can reengage us to enhance their product experience or register an extended warranty just depending on the product. So when I started comparing notes with other sellers, we realized that we were doing better, we were ranking faster, and we were more profitable. It wasn’t until we discovered, and this is something I want you to remember, that 41%, 41 cents on every dollar, 41% of our sales came from our existing customers. Wow. Through our follow up marketing. And hence the name was Born post-purchase marketing, meaning everything after the initial purchase. Now we do that as a service for hundreds and hundreds of sellers all over the world in just about every category.

Carrie:

Okay. And so I wanted to kind of move on to some another service that it kind of relates to it I forgot what it’s called, but where you kind of have different lists that you email and kind of expand

Shawn:

That’s the best-kept secret. That’s called Audience Alliance. You really wanna put that out there?

Carrie:

Yeah. Talk about that.

Shawn:

Sure, I will. This is a true game changer, Carrie, and I wanna make sure we save enough time to talk about ATTRIBUTIONAL links because it’s very important. But within our program, Post Purchase PRO, our clients can choose to opt into something we call Audience Alliance. Now, not all sellers are opted in. It’s not a requirement, but it’s definitely recommended. So let’s say, Carrie, you sell pizza cutters on Amazon, I sell Pizza Stones. Well, if we both opt into Audience Alliance, then that allows you and I to create an alliance where my account manager will reach out to your pizza, will reach out to my pizza stone buyers to offer your pizza cutter. It’s a great fit, right? And it doesn’t compete. And then your account manager will send my pizza stone offer out to your pizza cutter list. This allows you to, to create an alliance with other sellers so you can cross promote putting your product in front of brand new buyers. It’s something that you can’t find anywhere else. And like I said, it’s a game changer. We have almost 14 million, we have 13.6 million real live Amazon buyers collectively in our ecosystem. Your product doesn’t appeal to all 13.6 million of them per se, but there is a percentage that would be willing to buy your product, whether it’s kitchen products, baby products, pet products, we have ’em across the board and it’s just, like I said, it’s a game changer.

Carrie:

Alright. I don’t wanna run outta time before we talk about what you wanted to mention about Amazon attribution.

Shawn:

So in the horse and buggy days, we would track our results through Amazon associate or affiliate links, not because we wanted the commission selfishly, but because we wanted to be able to track the efficacy of our marketing, just to be fair with our clients. At the end of the day, if we can’t get you a return on your investment, we don’t deserve to keep you as a client. And that’s really our philosophy. So thanks to Brand Referral Bonuses and and Amazon Attribution Links, we’re now able to allow our clients to create these brand attribution links inside of their own seller central, provide that to their account manager, who by the way, does all of the heavy lifting for you. And then you, not me, I’m not sending your report of your results. You as a seller go into your Seller Central and you can look at each attribution link individually and see exactly what the ROI is. How many sales are we creating for Carrie through the attribution link that you created and gave to your account manager? Then there’s no question, there’s no fairy dust about it. It’s simply black-and-white return on investment or not.

Carrie:

That’s awesome. Well, everything you offer is just amazing. I think it’s definitely something people forget about and it’s really, really important. So I appreciate you taking the time today to come chat with us and how can somebody get ahold of you if they are interested in just connecting with you on this topic?

Shawn:

Sure. So our main site is postpurchasepro.com. PPP, Just imagine it’s everything that happens after the initial sale, postpurchasepro.com. There’s a cool little chat bot on there where you can find out what your post-purchase marketing could be valued at based on your Amazon store links, and then you can easily book a call to find out more about what we do. No obligations, like we’re the kind of guys, if we can’t help you, we’ll just say, Hey, look, we can’t help you come back next year. Maybe we can do something for you depending on the product you sell and your volume.

Carrie:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Shawn:

Anytime, Carrie, I appreciate you. Take care.

Carrie:

Bye.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, thank you for that interview, Carrie. Now one thing that you noticed Shawn talked about is that Amazon attribution and getting that brand referral bonus, all right, so whether we’re using Post-Purchase Pro or whether we’re just going to influencers and giving our links or pasting our links to our products on Amazon or on Google and Facebook and things like that we should kind of like make sure Amazon knows that this, this traffic is coming from us. Why? Because we get that brand referral bonus up to 10% back on the commission. So I mean, that’s like money in your pockets. So how can you set up that attribution link that Shawn was talking about? Well, you can actually do that directly from your Helium 10 account. So if you’re in your Helium 10 count, you just hit at the very top of your screen.

Bradley Sutton:

This is for Platinum, Diamond, and Elite users just hit at the very top. And then once you get to on the left hand side, what you’re going to want to hit is the Amazon attribution. So once you hit Amazon attribution, this is super simple, you’re gonna hit new link at the very top right, and then from this link, you can do multiple links, but I’m just gonna show you how to do the single link. So just hit single link and then you’re gonna select your marketplace wherever you’re selling and you have brand registry set up, it’ll automatically populate here. I’m gonna select United States, and let’s go ahead and say I wanna do one for our Helium 10 backpack. So I just type in the first letters of the title and I select the backpack, and then I hit the publisher.

Bradley Sutton:

And this means where I’m going to be publishing this link. So I could do Facebook or Instagram ads, Google ads, Microsoft ads, Pinterest ads, TikTok or YouTube or something else. And then basically it just sets up that link. And so instead of just giving a direct link to your product on Amazon, which is totally fine, now you have this link that passes through Amazon attribution and by doing it through Helium 10, now you’re gonna have details from the moment somebody first clicks on it, on who is clicking on these links. And then just remember that if a purchase actually comes through now, Amazon is gonna attribute it to that link, and then you get, potentially get that bonus when you actually make the sale, as opposed to just giving out your link and you get the sale, great, everybody wants the sale, but you’re not getting that bonus back from Amazon. So make sure guys, at the very least even if you don’t have an exact plan yet, go ahead and set it up here with your first link on Amazon attribution so that you know you can start getting that kickback from Amazon. Alright guys, hope you enjoyed this episode. We’ll see you guys in the next one to see what’s buzzing.

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