#564 – Amazon Product Inserts 101

Unlock the secrets to boosting your Amazon sales without crossing the line with product inserts as we team up with our Freedom Ticket instructors, Kevin King and Rafael Veloz of Share It Studio. This episode is your ticket to understanding how to legally and effectively use product inserts to build your brand and keep customers returning for more. Ditch the confusion and stay ahead of the competition with actionable insights and real-life examples, including Kevin and Rafael’s success stories with calendar sales and customer-retaining newsletters.

Prepare to transform your customer experience and drive repeat purchases with inventive strategies that resonate with your audience. We’ll reveal the power of no-code apps as lead magnets, the smart use of QR codes, and how to craft calls to action that balance immediate sales with long-term loyalty. Rafael’s Telly award-winning expertise shines as we navigate the nuances of customer engagement, ensuring your marketing efforts are not only effective but also compliant with Amazon’s stringent policies.

Wrap up with a toolkit of marketing finesse, from leveraging QR codes for product-related apps to utilizing calls to action that truly speak to your buyer persona. Whether it’s offering warranties, discounts, or even prize draws, we’ve got you covered with legal and effective strategies that hook customers in. This episode is brimming with tactics and takeaways tailored to help you master the art of Amazon product inserts and skyrocket your e-commerce success.

In episode 564 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Kevin, and Rafael discuss:

• 00:00 – How To Build An Unbreakable Brand With Product Inserts
• 00:59 – Advanced Amazon Product Inserts Discussion
• 08:57 – Leveraging Mail Leads for Calendar Sales
• 09:09 – Maximizing Sales Through Package Inserts
• 13:59 – Strategies for Amazon Product Insert Cards
• 18:10 – Enhancing Customer Feedback With QR Codes
• 26:35 – Amazon Review and QR Code Guidelines
• 27:15 – Prohibited Methods for Soliciting Reviews
• 31:02 – Generating Effective QR Codes for Customers
• 34:45 – Dog Treat Sample Pack Promotion
• 36:34 – QR Codes and Call to Actions

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Is it okay to do product inserts on Amazon? If so, what can and can’t you put on those? We bring on Kevin King and expert guest Rafael to answer these questions and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we have our monthly special. This is called Seller’s Edge, and this is actually a unique one, a new thing that we’re doing, where we recorded live a module that’s actually going to go mainly in the Freedom Ticket program about advanced Amazon strategy, and this one’s going to be all about Amazon product inserts. There’s a lot of misconceptions out there and so we brought on some people to talk a little bit about it. Now, the main core of this workshop that we did is actually in Freedom Ticket, all right. So. if you guys don’t have a Freedom Ticket, any Helium 10 paying member has access to it. So, if you’re a Platinum member, make sure to go into your Freedom Ticket account or your Helium 10 account and then hit Learning Hub. You can get the full details.

Bradley Sutton:

What we’re going to have here is some clips from that training and then we’re going to have a lot of the Q&A. What we did we did this live, where a lot of people were watching this training and they were giving a lot of questions like hey, what’s okay to put in inserts, and can I send people to another website, and can I do this and can I do that? Kevin King got a little riled up there a little bit on some of the questions we were asking. So again, we’re going to just give you some of their presentation just a little bit, and then mainly focus on the questions that you guys were answering. I’m positive. A lot of these questions are the same exact questions that you might have on inserts as well, so let’s go ahead and hop into it.

Kevin King:

So I met today’s guest Rafael around 2019, maybe 2020. But it was in 2020 where I really first got to know him. The guys over at PickFu actually came to me and said, hey, we’re going to run this contest with like four different agencies and we want to feature your product. And at that time I was doing a hand sanitizer as a company called Germ Shark and I said I’m sure they said these guys are going to compete, they’re going to create videos, they’re going to create images, they’re going to create A plus content. And then you get to go through it all, Kevin. You get to decide which one you like the best, and then it’s up to you whether you want to go with them and pay them or not, if you, if you like it enough. And so, uh, Rafael’s company, uh, Share It Studio was one of the winners. There was two, two companies that actually kind of came close uh, real close to each other, and one of them I liked one of their things and then them I liked the other thing, but a Share It Studio did the best job overall and they ended up creating a really a kick-ass video for us and a whole bunch of really cool content. So that’s where I got to know him and you know this guy. His background wasn’t necessarily an Amazon seller. He was a three-time telly, award-winning marketer and filmmaker, and then he decided to go out on his own and he saw this need in the Amazon space, where there’s just not a lot of good agencies creating good, good imagery and video content. So in 2018, he founded Share It Studio and as a marketing Amazon specific marketing agency.

Kevin King:

Now they do a few things. It’s not Amazon, but they focus on Amazon and it’s they really want to set themselves apart, but not just saying, okay, we’ll create some pretty pictures and we’ll make some nice videos, but it’s data driven. So they’re actually looking at the data, looking at what it is that they actually need to do. What are the trigger points that are going to make people buy? Not just create a beautiful video that looks great, but what can they say, what can they do? What about those first three seconds? And just create a really custom, bespoke package of creative services just for Amazon sellers on the Amazon platform. They look at everything from. They do everything from PPC videos, premium A plus content, images, branding and a whole lot more, and they’re really good at what they’re doing so.

Kevin King:

Rafael is going to be coming on in just a minute and sharing us today specifically on package inserts, and before I bring him on, I want to talk about package inserts for just a second, because there’s a lot of, what I believe, misinformation out there when it comes to package inserts. There’s a lot of people that say you should not use package inserts on Amazon. You will hear that on Facebook groups. You will hear that from some of the people that help fight against Amazon. They say don’t use package inserts, don’t do it, you’re putting yourself at risk. I 1000% disagree with that. 1000% disagree with that. I think there are certain things that you should not do on a package insert. Those anything you know people say well, you can’t direct traffic off of Amazon. Bs, yes, you can. What you cannot do is put your package insert or your URL. If you read the terms of service carefully, Amazon says you cannot direct traffic off of Amazon, but that’s on Amazon. That means that don’t put your URL in your product photos. Don’t put something in, don’t email you know, using the customer follow-up something to take them off of Amazon. Anything on the Amazon platform in imagery or text. You cannot send them off of Amazon to do something that is against the rules. But when it comes to your package insert, all the big brands look at Sony, look at any of the big brands they have package inserts for warranty registrations, for accessories, for different things. It’s totally fine in my opinion. But there is a line you have to draw and this is where a lot of people get in trouble and some people don’t understand where that line is.

Kevin King:

You cannot do anything to influence reviews on Amazon, and that means in the old days people would say please leave us a five-star review, click here and they would take you to the review page. You can’t do that. You can’t put a smile and five stars. Five stars is a kind of a trademark icon of Amazon. That kind of indicates give us five stars. You can’t do that. You can’t say something like if you have trouble with this product, please email us. Don’t contact the buyer, don’t contact Amazon or contact where you bought it. If you have trouble, contact us. Otherwise, please leave us a review on Amazon. That’s directing negative traffic to you, even though that’s a good thing to do. You want to take care of the situation that’s indirectly directing negative remarks that might have been a bad review to you. There’s other ways to say that. You can say something like if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, something like that that has no indication of. If there’s a problem or there’s something wrong, we want to fix it. And I understand you’re trying to steer bad things away and you’re trying to be good, but that can be seen as as as a negative. Or what happens a lot of times is people will have some sort of innocent package insert and then they will, they will send that and send it to a warranty page or some sort of registration page and then in the follow up sequence so everything is clean, but in the follow up sequence there’s something that’s a little gray or shady and that’s where people get into trouble too. So but if you’re doing the package inserts right, and I think you’re totally fine and there is a way to do them you know I get a lot of Amazon packages and a lot of times I throw the package inserts out.

Kevin King:

I mean, it’s one of the first things. I used to look at them to see what other people were doing. But now, obviously, I probably get 20 Amazon packages a week. I probably look at one package insert and that’s what Rafael is going to show you today is some ways to make sure that that yours is the one that I’m looking at, and there’s a reason that I only look at. One is because most of them suck. They’re little business cards or they don’t have good graphics, or they don’t catch my attention or they’re buried in the package in the wrong place. There’s a whole number of reasons that I don’t look at where there’s no value to looking at it. It’s just a bunch of text, or they all look the same. There’s ways to stand out, and I use a package insert, and my calendar business is one example that I like to give, and what I do is I put a four by six card in there and I say congratulations, you’ve won a free calendar. That’s what the package insert says, and what that package insert then says, because I’m selling calendars. Calendars are like selling milk they go bad.

Kevin King:

So right now we’re in May of 2024. Most people don’t want to pay full price for a 2024 calendar. The year started five months ago, so it’s hard to sell them. So if I have extra calendars left over, I got to get rid of them. I can throw them away, I can donate them somewhere, I can try to liquidate them, but what I do is I use my extra calendars as a premium and so I say congratulations, you’ve won a free calendar. Just pay $10 shipping and handling and you can go to my website and get the URL out there and enter this code to get the calendar for $10. Or you can send a check or money order in the mail. A lot of people send checks or money orders in a physical envelope in the mail to my post office box and it works really well and I get a lot of leads that way. What do I do with those leads? The next year I’ve got 17,000 people on this list. The next year, when my calendars come out, calendars are pretty much bought between mid-November and mid-January. That’s the big two months that most of the sales happen. You’re selling 400, 500, 600 a day of some titles, but in September people aren’t really thinking about 2024 like last year, so they’re buying like two or three calendars a day. But that’s where I use my list and I send them out.

Kevin King:

If I have their email, I send an email and I also send a physical postcard through the mail to them and says hey, the new calendars for 2024, or, in this case coming up 2025 are out. You can buy them directly from me and pay $9.95 shipping and handling, or you can go to Amazon, if you’re a Prime member, and buy them on Amazon and get free shipping. And what does that do? It allows me to launch my product completely with no PPC, no launches, no having to do Vine reviews, no, nothing. Because people go and I have four different titles and a lot of them. They buy all four, so that gets them in the frequently bought together. And then they also buy other calendars so they might buy a motorcycle calendar or something like that. So then I start showing up on these motorcycle calendars as customers who looked at this or viewed this or those sections. And I started this flywheel going and I’m selling two or three a day in September and I just ride that wave all the way up and I do zero PPC for these calendars. I do zero launch and that’s the power of a package insert. And then I can sell these guys other calendars that are not available on Amazon.

Kevin King:

I do it for my dog products with a dog sample packs. I do it with a lot of things, but in nowhere in there and no my emails, nowhere do I ever ask for a review? Do I ever indicate five stars? Do I ever indicate anything that’s manipulating the system? It’s all above board and I’ve been doing this for 20 years and there’s nothing wrong with it. Usually, if you dig deep and someone says I got in trouble for package inserts, I didn’t do anything, look deep into their package insert or into their funnel and you’re probably going to see that there is something that’s a little on the edge there. So if you keep your nose clean and do this right, it can be powerful. And so Rafael is going to come on right now and he’s going to spend some time showing you some really cool ways to actually do package inserts. Hey Rafael, how are you doing, man?

Rafael:

How’s it going, man? Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s an honor.

Kevin King:

Appreciate you coming on and doing this man, this is going to be great. I’m looking forward to seeing what you got. Learn a few things myself, hopefully.

Rafael:

All right guys. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. I am the Founder and CEO of Share It Studio. Actually, my background was in law. I went to law school. I did four years of law school in Venezuela and then I went to filmmaking because I hated law so that’s like a really little fun fact. And then I started working and I graduated from filmmaking. I started doing filmmaking, I moved to New York, etcetera. I worked in a lot of companies CNN, Nickelodeon and then in 2018, I was working for Nickelodeon and I decided to quit because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to get out of that rat race, which I think a lot of us maybe were there and wanted to escape. So, yeah, so let’s get started.

Rafael:

So this is a little bit of what we do at Share It Studio. I just wanted to give you a glimpse. I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m just trying to give you a glimpse of what we do. So we only focus on creating content. Why I feel like a jack of all trades is a master or none. We like to specialize in one thing, one thing only, and anything that has to do with visual and visually enticing or visually manipulated. You could say a little bit that buy or that conversion, so anything that has to do with videos, listings, et cetera. So what are product inserts? You can read this, I know you can, but in my own words it’s a way to give the customer more experience, right, to give them more value. The more value you give, the more value you’re going to get in return. So it’s a powerful tool, obviously, to enhance the customer’s experience. You can request feedback, you can promote your repeat purchases. It’s all going to depend on the product itself. It’s the same thing to have a product insert for supplements for a hand sanitizer than for a garlic press, for example. Those are consumables. You can repeat them. The garlic press, you can probably buy one when it breaks. But if it breaks too fast, it means the bad quality garlic press, right? So, depending on your product, I would say try to steer and try to analyze and strategize that product insert.

Rafael:

Okay, let’s keep going. So do’s. Some basic do’s. Deliver value. This is like just a general thing in life. Let’s go into newsletters. I don’t read newsletters. I find newsletters actually very boring or they’re all the same. But I came across and I’m trying to plug this in in any way. But I came across one a few months ago which is Kevin King’s newsletter right, the Billion Dollar newsletter and there’s so much value that I actually enjoy reading them. That’s because it’s given me value, like a bunch of value. If it wouldn’t give me value, I just would discard it, archive it or read it or delete it, et cetera. So make sure you deliver value. It’s the most important asset. If you do not deliver value, you’re not going to get anything in return. Some ways you can deliver value additional usage guidelines, care recommendations, general insights, coupons, customer experience. There’s a lot, a lot of ways. Right, make sure you maintain informativeness, meaning that you are talking about your product’s advantages or attributes on the product. That’s dependent on the product. Again, these are all dependent on the product that you have. It’s gonna. It’s not a, it’s not a one. It’s not a cookie cutter, it’s not a cookie cutter template, it’s more of a. What do I have? What fits into this mold type of situation from my point of view, at least in my experience?

Rafael:

Encourage reviews. You want to avoid 100% encouraging any positive reviews or avoiding getting, or encouraging avoidance of getting negative reviews. Like Kevin said at the beginning, that goes against Amazon’s TOS and, just like the taxman, the Amazon man is also going to find out at some point. Okay, so I would say, steer away from that. So politely, solicit feedback from the customers. As simple as your feedback matters could help. Extend support. Again, it depends on the product, but extend support If it’s maybe it’s a product that it costs I don’t know a hundred bucks, most likely if that product is a little bit faulty or people don’t understand that because it’s hard to assemble, or something you can extend support, maybe a video, maybe a hotline, maybe an email I don’t know something that gives them support. Um, cross selling if your product, you can match it with other products. For example, I’m going to show you an example in a bit of a baby product. But let’s say you sell in the baby category and there’s a lock and you’re selling a lock um securing mechanism for the door for babies, right, and you and you can also cross promote the outlet protector for babies. So you know you kill two birds with one stone.

Rafael:

Don’ts. Avoid soliciting positive reviews, guys. Do not do that. That’s like bad, bad, bad. Referring from cherry picking reviewers, such as what Kevin said, like hey, if you’re having a bad experience, you know, come back and we can help you before you leave a bad review. That’s a no-no. Steer clear from external links. Like Kevin said, Amazon wants everything in their ecosystems. What I’ve seen recently, though, is that they send them to a landing page, but the payment processing takes them directly back to the Amazon page. So what does that mean? That means that, from the product insert, it takes you to the landing page. You gather data from there, like the pixels, the Facebook pixels well, that’s not Facebook anymore, it’s the Metapixel, et cetera. Now you have marketing data from there, and then it redirects them back to Amazon. I’ve seen that recently. Eliminate misleading information, false hesitations, exaggerated claims, deceptive details. You want to be as transparent as possible and as truthful as possible. Remember, giving value is about being real, maintaining real, and abstain from manipulation. Definitely abstain from manipulation, because that’s also you’re trying to cherry pick that review. Okay, and avoid interfering with packaging. This is more on your end. You don’t want to have a package that’s extremely hard to open because of the product insert, because it’s not going to give value to the customer experience, and customer experience is everything. All right. So it’s a simple thank you enough. It could be, but you know it’s there’s not more, so it’s basically wasting your money.

Rafael:

So if you want to win and if you want to actually get results, you should definitely take action. So things you should include you in your insert cards. Things I would include that we’ve included with our clients is warranties, how to guides, how to take care of the product, benefits of our products, guidelines, but it’s going to depend again on the product. I want to make sure that everybody understands that it depends on your product. But, in summary, if you want to get value, you should get value. That’s a rule of thumb in life. Actually, we should all get value in life, so we can get something valuable as well. So type of products, inserts or strategies. So review hunting that’s like the most basic one, right? You want to get reviews. The most reviews you get, the better. I’m gonna show you some examples afterwards. You can put up a QR code and ask for feedback. You can use jokes, for example. So you put the joke and then you put the answer. Kevin usually actually does this. He puts stump bases in the beginning of the email newsletter and then at the end, he gives you the answer. This allows him, this allows that you read through the whole thing and then you have a reward at the end, which is kind of cool. So, for example, for this one, this is plainly emotional. Hey, scan this QR code and speak your mind. That’s it. I just want your feedback, and your feedback means the world to us. It’s very important. You’re being sincere, trying to be as sincere as possible.

Rafael:

This is some of the content with this. For this seller, we also did that his packaging and he inserted it. And also, you added more value. He’s not in a lead generator. So if you want to watch this video, it’s time to install this. Watch this video, right? So you scan this QR code. Basically, it takes you to a landing page. It asks you for your email to unlock or to send the link of the video to that email. So, right there, you’re getting more information. A simple joke is cool. So what type of candy is never on time? Chocolate, you get it, I didn’t know. So ChatGPT helped us with that, by the way. So, yeah, so after they peel it, okay, and then, hey, since we’re here, share your experience with our candies, and then they scan your codes. You know you’re asking for it. All right, this is for stickers.

Rafael:

And another type of strategy is free purchase marketing. So there’s a couple of things you can do. You can add custom coupons and you can add also cross-selling. So a coupon is you’ll we all know what well, maybe there’s new or sellers. Here’s coupon is just basically a way that you give them something, a discount or, yeah, a discount for the next purchase or the new purchase or something, and cross-selling or it could be even an external coupon and cross-selling is when you promote something, another product, okay, based on that product, that at least simulates or in some way it connects with the main product that they just bought. So, for example this is the example I was going to give you it’s a baby clear outlet plugs, right, and the baby toilet plug. So, welcome to Parenthood. Since you bought this, we want to help you. Here’s more things that you can get and you’re going to get these products. You head to storefronts and you get some offers from those products. Boom, so they’re buying this, but they’re also, oh, these guys also sell this, because maybe when they get this through their Amazon. They’re like oh, I also need this. So you’re cross-promoting that seller. Okay.

Rafael:

So list building it’s extremely important as well. As we all know, Amazon is their own ecosystem and they have the last say in everything. So, like Kevin was saying about his calendars, it doesn’t matter if he sells them on Amazon or not. He has a list. So Kevin doesn’t even need PPC because he has a whole list already. So that’s one of the things that you should be doing list building. So it’s basically just as a gift.

You can create a strategy. Number one is a gift. Basically, you create a lead magnet from your website or app and you just tell the customer like hey, you want this, we need this in return, and they gave you this, which is this well, you can ask for several thousand information, email, phone number, et cetera. Or strategy to a newsletter. You know, create a newsletter with interesting content to promote, to promote it and put it in your insert card. You’re giving value. For example, we have a client that he sells bonsais. I didn’t know this, but bonsais are very much. It’s like a culture, like there’s like a thing for bonsais and people are really into it. So they read newsletters, they read articles, they see videos, they watch videos. Part of this newsletter is giving value to them, so that’s how they’re building their list, also through social media.

Rafael:

This is, for me, the best strategy up to date, which is an app. Why? it’s also going to depend on the type of product you have. But why the app? Because the app you’re always going to have them there. There’s nothing more intimate right now, technology-wise, than the phone for a human. It literally holds our work, our life, our secrets, our laughs. Like, if you leave your house without your phone, most likely you’re gonna return back home just to get your phone, because it’s literally a third arm that we don’t have. So by having that, you have so much access to that particular buyer. For example, this is QR an app that it’s going to help you, you know, work out and it’s going to give you a workout. It’s a workout app, right? This is the one I’m using for to get ready to for BDSS in Hawaii soon Kev. I’m just kidding, I don’t have a six pack, so this app is going to help you that and there that you can promote also other types of products. For example, I have another app which is a scale. I bought a scale and that scale helps you track your weight through the app. And through the app, sometimes I get push notifications which is hey, we just launched this product, would you like to look into it? Or hey, we saw that you’re hitting your fitness goals. We have this new product that can help you reach those fitness goals, et cetera. So there, you’re going to give a lot more value. And what are they doing? They’re just cross promoting, they’re cross selling. So that’s, I mean, I think that’s brilliant.

Rafael:

Remember, one step at a time. It’s depending on your level of being a seller. If you’re in stage one and you just launched your product, focus on reviews. If you want to do everything at the same time, great. But if not, if you want to take it step by step, focus on reviews, then focus on repurchase marketing and then build in a list all right, but this is a must at the end. If you want to build a brand, building a list is a must. Another thing if your package is, you don’t want to create it in any way possible, like you know, maybe you don’t want to destroy or interrupt this opening process you can add it to a label like the top, because you all know that it can only be a sticker, for example, every bottle or not every bottle. Most of the bottles have a seal on top right, so if they have a seal, why not put it there? They either way have to open it up, so why not put your discount or give them that value there? For example, these are supplements. Hey, next bottle you get 50% off. If I like them, I’m going to use that 50% off coupon 100%.

Rafael:

So another thing that you could be doing, which I love this one is A-B testing. Marketing, just like life, it’s not one plus one equals two. Marketing is just trial and error. Trial and error. Obviously, you’re spending a bunch of money. You’re investing a bunch of money into your future, so you want to mitigate that fail as much as possible. For example, when we were doing Kevin’s videos for the Germ Shark, we ran like 100 pick food tests. We were actually the company that ran the most pick food tests. Why? Because we want to mitigate the most amount of errors as possible. We didn’t come out of the studio we’re like, oh, let’s just create this, it’s going to be a winner. No, we tried it out a lot of times. So what you could do is, in your packages you can have two QR codes and see which one converts the most, depending on your product. Again, and you know, get creative and that’s it. Um for overachievers, make sure that you’re evaluating your KPIs. So repeat purchasing metrics. Are they buying this again? Is this working? Is it not working? Brand loyalty metrics. Are they going back? Are they not buying back off Amazon influence, Amazon attribution, advertising and sales. Percentage of off Amazon sales. For example, Kevin gets a lot of off Amazon sales because he has that list right and that is it.

Kevin King:

That was good, good stuff, Rafael. I want to just do something real quick before we get into answering specific questions. Come and listen to what I’m about to say. You, absolutely positively, can send people out of the Amazon ecosystem. Okay, you do. You can put your social media links. You can put a link to your website. You can do that. Quit following for the misinformation that’s all over Facebook that people are talking out their ass, that don’t know what they’re talking about are doing. Quit it. Quit spreading this stuff. I see this in the chat and it pisses me off because you’re wrong. This is one of the reasons I created Freedom Ticket back in 2017, when Manny Coats came to me and said hey, do you want to create Freedom Ticket? One of the reasons I did is there’s so much misinformation out there. Quit falling for it. You can absolutely do it. There’s certain things you cannot do. Raphael showed you that Bradley just posted in there like you, don’t want some people to go buy this on Target instead or Amazon’s competition, but if you’re going to create an app, that’s a brilliant thing. You can create apps with no code software now, with AI, you don’t even have to be a programmer. You can go and create a very basic app and say it’s a great lead magnet, download this app. You know, he said he showed the example of the one that’s for monitoring your weight. Um, which is probably a little bit more elaborate, but you can create a very simple little app. People are more likely to download a cool app that goes with their product than they are. Um, you know, if I’m doing dog treats, I could do a dog training app. You know it’s got a few videos embedded in it and it’s a great lead magnet.

Kevin King:

You can send people off. What you cannot do is anything around reviews or influencing reviews or something like that. But you can send people off, you can capture information. Just don’t do anything that would hint at influencing reviews. That means putting five stars. That means saying leave us reviews and then putting five stars under it to say, kind of imply that you want five stars To say if you have a problem, contact us. Otherwise, go leave a review on Amazon. Don’t do anything, don’t offer discounts. If you leave us a review or if you do that, I’ll give you a coupon. Don’t do anything like that to incentivize reviews on Amazon. That you cannot do, and don’t even do it on your own website, just so that there’s no gray area there. But you can send people off and they can buy things on your website too. Okay, so I want to get that straight. Okay, so quit falling for the misinformation, quit.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, tell us how you really feel, Kevin. But let me start pulling up some questions. First of all, we answered Oleg. Oleg says Kevin answered my question before I even asked. That’s perfect, all right. So let’s just-.

Kevin King:

No, I think Kane says you can’t. Yeah, they don’t want you sending to other marketplaces, like that’s what Kane just said here. You can go to your own website and they don’t want you sending people over to Target or to eBay or over to a competing website. I would steer clear of that kind of stuff. Saying our product is available and you put the Amazon logo, the Target logo, the Walmart logo, that is a no-no. But taking them to your own website to do after-sale warranty, to get an app, to get some sort of other accessory for your product that’s, an add-on to the product, or to grab a coupon for their next order on Amazon, all that is fine.

Kevin King:

Hope says that coupon codes last for 30 days on Amazon. Then you have to create a new one. So you can’t. What you do is you put a, you create a QR code you can use Bitly or whatever your favorite QR code tool is and create one that goes to a specific landing page and then you update that page every 30 days. You create a new coupon and you just update the page. You update that page so that QR code stays the same. So even if your product doesn’t sell for a year, you’re updating the page, not the QR code to a specific place. That’s an easy workaround.

Rafael:

Yep, and also not even coupon codes. Maybe you want to offer something new now, that QR code that Kevin’s saying that you can update. You can do whatever you want with it. It’s your QR code, basically.

Bradley Sutton:

I have one here. I know what I saw here that would have got this flag, but I just want I’m curious about what Kevin saw. Maybe you saw this one. But Maria says hey, I know somebody who had an insert that said let us know how we did Leave us a review on Amazon. We value your opinion. With a QR code below which said for a free book on the dangers of what their product was working to protect. Scan the QR code and Amazon close the listing, force the seller to remove these inserts. The seller did not ask for positive reviews. Is it not okay to ask for reviews at all? I know what I saw here, that that might have triggered it. What about you, Kevin?

Kevin King:

That’s an incentive. You’re basically I mean it doesn’t directly word for word say it, but that can be read as an incentive that if you leave us a review, we’re going to give you this free book. You can’t do that. That’s a no-no and that right there is an example of you’ve got to keep your nose super clean on anything around the words reviews and you’re tying them together. They didn’t say hey, go leave us a review and we’ll give you a free book, but they tied them together in that same paragraph and you can read into that. That’s kind of what they’re implying. Don’t do that. That will get you in trouble. As far as number of QR codes, I would never do more than two and put them on opposite sides of the page or opposite one at the top, one at the bottom, or opposite sides on the bottom so they don’t get crossed. But I would never do more than two. One is best. You always want people to take one directed action. One action is always better than multiple and confusing them. But if you have a valid reason, you could put two, and I think that would. That would be okay.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Mahak said how do I generate QR codes to direct customers? So there’s, you know, any QR code generator can do it Helium 10 Portals. If you have access to Helium 10, you’ve got access to Helium 10 Portals you can create the QR code there. You know, Rafael showed some examples of QR codes in his presentation, but pretty much any QR code.

Rafael:

And also Mahak, it’s not just creating the QR code. Make sure it’s something like Kevin said, like it’s in their face, like they want to see it, they want to scan it and it’s not just like scan this, because most likely they’re not going to scan it. You want to get, I would say, 5%, 10% of those QR codes scanned at least. If you’re getting less than that, you should re-evaluate how you’re presenting that insert packaging.

Kevin King:

Hope what you just asked is a no-no. Can I ask for an honest review in an email follow-up after they enter the review on a landing page? No, don’t do that. Basically, Amazon will see as like you’re filtering reviews. So you’re saying, go leave us an honest review on our own landing page. They’re typing it and, even though you made the confirmation page, may automatically say, uh, please, uh, you know, be kind and post this to Amazon or somewhere whatever. Amazon could see that as that you’re filtering. Like if they left you something negative, then you’re not asking them to do it, and if there’s something positive, you are asking them to do it. So don’t, don’t do that. You can ask, you can say on your we love reviews, please leave us an honest review. That general wording by itself, with nothing else around it. Any other stuff about a free book or something is like way down the page or somewhere else or not even on there. That should be okay. You got one um.

Bradley Sutton:

Marcy says how many QR codes per insert do you think is acceptable? I’ve got one for my YouTube and one for my Facebook group. I want to add one for man. She wants QR codes all over the place. I want to add one for a 10% off, a coupon with an attribution tag so I can get the brown referral bonus. What do you guys think?

Kevin King:

Uh yeah, I just answered that. I said don’t do more than two, don’t do more.

Rafael:

Okay, I would present it. Marcy, maybe I would present the 10% in a different way. Maybe not a QR code, maybe it’s just like literally just a code. But again, that does expire, like Kevin said. But I’m with Kevin 100%, I wouldn’t do more than two. Like you saw in the light bulb example that I gave you, there was one at the top, one on the bottom. It wasn’t next to each other, because it can get tricky like that. You want to separate. Even the color was separated in the package. It was like a different color in the background. So you want that separation as well.

Kevin King:

Tadara is asking can we add samples of other products and inserts or offer to send free samples? Yeah, you can add samples as an insert, especially with little accessories. Here’s a free. If you’re selling something sewing, here’s a free button kit. Or here’s a free bead kit or something. You know we have 16,000 other colors available on Amazon. Here’s a free sample as a gift. You know there’s little gifts like that work. I mean there’s a video. Rafael will understand this there. Back in the day before that everything was digital, I had to order to do all of our video production. We had ordered beta tapes and we had ordered these big beta tapes, uh, and HD tapes, uh, these, you know, they’re big like squares that you put in the big cameras and we’d order them out of this company in Philadelphia and every time they would send me these, these packages, uh, with my shipment of 10 tapes you know these tapes were like a hundred dollars a piece or something I would get two little packages of M&Ms, like you see at Halloween, the little, tiny, little sample size packages of M&Ms, and during the summer they didn’t put those in there because, but instead they put a note sorry, due to the heat, these might melt, you know, and so they wouldn’t put them in and it would always tick me off that I didn’t get those two little packages of M&Ms. These are, you know, 20 cents. But the fact that I would get those in there was a thing so surprising people with a gift can be great.

Kevin King:

Another thing that I’ve done with a power to insert on my dog products is I’ve offered us I’ve had where I sell antlers, I sell bully sticks, I sell duck treats, I sell a variety of other dog treats, and what I’ll do is I’ll make a sample pack and I’ll say get a free sample pack of all of our seven dog treats on Amazon that we sell on Amazon. I’ll put a picture of the Amazon listing photo and actually you know and put it, put it on there and say we’ll send you a sample pack with this along with a coupon. Just pay $7.95 shipping and handling. It costs me like $4 to send it out. $3 basically covers the cost. I send them a sample pack through the mail. That way. They have to give me their address, they have to give me their phone number because I’ll say this is for how we deliver delivery, updates and shipping tracking numbers is by phone, so give me a valid phone number and then we send that sample pack out and in. There is a sample pack, and then there’s a coupon that says get this on Amazon. I mean 20% off your first order, your first bag, use this coupon, it works really well. And then I capture their name and email address and I’m driving stuff back to Amazon. I’m creating this whole circle and it works really, really well.

Rafael:

Amelia has a good question.

Bradley Sutton:

So Amelia said here can you improve our current package design? If yes, would the insert card and the package design be connected to our current branding design and what would the creative process be behind this?

Rafael:

okay, um, I don’t want to do any sales right now, but yeah, we can help you. But just in case, um, the insert, I would say that you do need to, um, to keep it harmoniously, um, I would say like it should be aligned to your branding. That’s why it’s a branding. It should be aligned to your branding. And if you can actually put it within the packaging, maybe you wanna save money in the insert cards and you wanna put it on top of the lid of the box or something like that. You could do that depending on your budget. So many questions that I have to be able to answer that correctly. But, yes, and the process you do it is what I was talking about. You should have understanding the product, the niche, the buyer persona, their needs, their troubles, their fears, everything that you can gather from them and give them to that, okay. So maybe if it’s a fitness product, I’m trying to get fit for BDSS. Okay. So for me, it was getting something to help me maintain my weight scale, understanding where I should eat, what time I should eat. So when I was looking through products to help me with that, the insert cards or the products like the hero images gave me that it was like, oh, this scale has an app. It was through the hero image. I was like, okay, let me check this out, and that’s how I got hooked on that scale. So yeah, I hope that answers your question, amelia.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, we got a question from Joseph, who’s got a scenario here. He says all right, I’ve got this QR code. Says something to the effect of learn more about the benefits of our product here. Takes them to an about page on our brand website, which website is also a Shopify D2C website that has a shop page. Is that permissible?

Kevin King:

That’s a gray one right there. Um, I would that. That’s a gray one that one could be seen as either way. Um, I would probably, if I would probably, cordon off that Shopify page. Uh, I think Shopify allows you to do this. I think Esther Frystone has a landing page that goes on top of Shopify that allows you to corner off the rest of your Shopify site, like to focus it on a single product. Um, I mean, if they get creative and they hit a bunch of buttons and they might go back to your homepage, but I would avoid any confusion there. That’s a gray one.

Rafael:

A question really quick from Henry. He says that all products need to have warranties. I’m not saying that your product shouldn’t have a warranty, definitely if you want to include warranties. 100%. But what I’m saying is that what’s going to take action to scan that QR code? Is it going to be the call to action for a warranty or is it going to be a call to action to like hey, for your next product, if it’s a vitamin, for example, that you know they’re going to repeat the consumption, here’s 10, 15% off. I’m not saying don’t include it, of course, 100%. If you want to include it, I include it. But when you say the call to action, what’s going to be that action that’s going to make them scan it? Is it going to be the warranty or is it going to be, depending on the product? That’s what I’m trying to say there, just in case. I don’t want to make any confusions there.

Bradley Sutton:

I was just saying Lance is wondering how to get in contact with Rafael. You can be connected directly to them at hubhelium10.com and just type in ShareIt Studio. They’re all over social media as well. Rafael’s on LinkedIn. If you’re in Helium 10, the easiest way is just go to hubhelium10.com and enter ShareIt Studio and you’ll be able to even see. Maybe if you’re a certain member of Helium 10, you might get certain discounts with them as well if you’re logged in on that page.

Rafael:

If you’re seeing this, this is my insert card. If you’re seeing this, if you say Bradley and Kev are the best, we’ll give you a really good discount.

Bradley Sutton:

There we go. I like that. Kevin, you had a question you said you wanted to answer, or was it someone else?

Kevin King:

I just saw one. Someone said they’re doing a. Where did it go? They offer a 100-pound Amazon voucher prize draw each month. It’s an image or video tagged on Instagram or TikTok. Each image uploaded gets one entry in the drawing. Opinions, please. Yeah, I don’t see any problem with that. That should be totally fine and that’s good marketing. Yeah, so you should be totally fine with that.

Rafael:

Angela Reategui. I hope I’m not butchering your last name, Angela. She asked can I include a QR code for free e-book? Uh, yes, we’ve done it with clients, especially in the home and kitchen, like food sector. It’s worked really well with them. Uh, so yeah.

Kevin King:

Kane’s like says can we offer discounts only on Amazon? Can we offer coupons for our own website? Um it, you can offer a coupon for your own website but, like for accessories or something, I wouldn’t do it for the same product. I wouldn’t say, come and buy, you know this exact same product. Or you don’t want to do stuff where you’re putting people into their, into your flow. You know, if it’s a subscribe and save type of product, Amazon’s probably not going to like it too much that if you’re trying to get them to come to your subscribe and save on your Shopify site versus you’re on Amazon, that that’s a gray area, and so I would. I would just stay away from something like that. But offering them a discount hey, you know you just bought this blender. We have an accessory kit. As an Amazon customer, you get 20% off. It’s not sold on Amazon, it’s only available directly from us. Then yeah, that should be fine.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, guys, thank you for all the great questions. We’re going to be back here next month with another guest, Rafael, Kevin. Thank you so much for joining. Don’t forget to reach out to Share It Studio, hub.helium10.com. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed that training. Don’t forget again, the full, actual detail of the training, without the Q and A and all that other stuff, is in the Freedom Ticket course. So go to your learning hub inside of Helium 10. And if you have no idea what Freedom Ticket is, want to get more information, just go to h10.me/ft for freedom ticket. And let us know if you’re watching this on YouTube or somewhere else. What other advanced topics would you like us to do? A deep dive, Q & A and bring an expert on with Kevin? Let us know in the comments below if you’re watching this on YouTube or another place. Until then, we’ll see you guys in the next episode.

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