New Marketing
Opportunities - Amazon Pages and Amazon Posts
We are pleased to announce two new free, self-service marketing opportunities from Amazon, called Amazon Pages and Amazon Posts.
Amazon Pages allows you to create a
customized landing page to give you increased exposure on
Amazon.com. You can create pages to
capture your core brand message, as well as to serve as one-off, campaign-driven landing pages. This product comes in two tiers: afree,
self-service solution and a paid, fully managedcustom
solution.
Self-service allows users who successfully register to use a set of templates to build brand pages designed for the brand by uploading a variety of creative assets to define showcased products. Brand pages can also link to your Facebook and Twitter pages. All self-service users will receive daily updates that include metrics on performance and audience engagement.
Fully managed is a custom solution that includes everything offered for the self-service solution plus more, for a fee. The custom solution is not limited to the templates we offer. You can create a truly customized look and feel, as long as the brand pages comply with our content guidelines. This offer also takes advantage of Amazon's personalization functionality so you can customize your page for different audiences. Lastly, the custom solution comes with a full-service support and maintenance option.
Amazon Posts allow you to engage your
customers with timely messaging that describes your products, showcases offers,and announces events that are significant to your brand. Use Amazon Analytics to understand the impact of your social marketing by examining reach, engagement, and conversion of Amazon Posts. Both Amazon Posts and Analytics are free of
charge. With these tools, you can:
Publish messages with text, images, or highlights of your existing Amazon products.
Measure
and understand the value of your social marketing efforts using Amazon Analytics.
Syndicate
your Amazon Post content to an expanding list of destinations, including Amazon Pages and Facebook.
1 Comment
I’m writing on behalf of your vendor manager for
Amazon Grocery products. I want to communicate a change to your payment terms with Amazon.com that will start at the end of this month. Effective February 1, 2013, Amazon's payment terms for your products will be 2% 30, 60 NET against all new purchase orders. This change is necessary to establish more consistent payment terms for similar Grocery vendors. Your current payment terms are: 1% 10, 30 NET. I order to better serve our customers we continuously strive to provide them with excellent selection, pricing, and convenience. This strategy has resulted in unprecedented growth for both our company and ourvendor partners. Your continued support will help us improve our customer experience, allow us to continue to grow our business together, and drive increased sales of your products. If you have any questions, please provide us with your feedback by January 22, 2013. Best Regards, Brendan Fortuner | Amazon Grocery e: fortuner@amazon.com Amazon.com | AmazonServices.com Limitations on A+
Reviews and Flash Content As of January 1, 2013, our Health and Beauty, Grocery, and Baby categories will no longer accept A+ content in HTML from external content providers; however, we encourage you to continue to submit assets, including copy and images, that our internal A+ Services team can code and publish. Our in-house A+ Services team is available to create and publish A+ content at a price that is competitive with external content providers. Our services include creating authoritative copy, designing layout, coding, and publishing. By bringing this service in-house, we ensure that your content is optimized for our Web pages, follows internal best practices, incorporates SEO optimization, and is HTML-compliant. Additionally, the A+ team offers a 10-14 day turnaround time from submission to publication. To work with our A+ Services team or to inquire about pricing, please click Contact Us at the bottom of any page in Vendor Central, then Promotions and Merchandising (CoOp, Vine, SPA, etc.) > Videos and other digital content for Detail Pages. December 31, 2012 is the last day to submit any HTML content created by external agencies already in development, but please refrain from launching any new projects with external agencies. Central Freight vs. Central Transport Recently, we've seen a number of escalations regarding shipments tendered to Central Freight but physically shipped via Central Transport. While the confusion is understandable, it is extremely important that your distribution teams use the contracted/preferred carrier, Central Freight, rather than Central Transport, which is not a contracted/preferred Amazon LTL provider carrier. If you use Central Transport, the following happens:
To mitigate these issues, please use Central Freight; however, if you choose to use Central Transport, to ensure that your shipments move with as little delay as possible, contact Central Transport to arrange one of the following:
Contact information:
Thank you for your attention to this issue. Amazon Vendor Questionnaire - Help us help you
Amazon strives to build close relationships with our vendors. To do that, we need to hear from you! For 2013, we've identified two exciting opportunities that will allow us to work more closely with you to better communicate and optimize the way we do business:
Please take a few moments to take a short questionnaire that will help us design these programs to be most beneficial for you: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VendorQuestionnaire. Thank you! Amazon Coupons -
New Features and Pricing for 2012 Holiday Season Amazon Coupons, the simple and efficient way for you to reach Amazon.com customers and drive incremental sales, is announcing new features and pricing for this holiday season. Since Amazon Coupons first launched, millions of customers have used coupons on Amazon.com, and we're only getting started. Today, with the Vendor Powered Coupon (VPC) platform, you can upload a coupon and have it programmatically merchandised across Amazon.com, on the product detail page, in search results, on Amazon.com/Coupons, through our dedicated affiliate network, and more. New Amazon.com features that will automatically become available to vendors who upload a coupon:
Holiday Pricing Coupons uploaded between October 8 and December 22 will be able to receive all the features listed above at the rate of 19 cents per coupon clip and 8 cents per redemption. Amazon.com Merchandising In addition, we are happy to announce additional merchandising opportunities available to support your coupons on Amazon.com/Coupons. Contact us for more information and the rate card. Chargebacks The following chargebacks are live this month:
Amazon's transportation policy requires vendors who have collect freight terms to provide routing requests for all shipments. "We Pay" vendors are prohibited from selecting their own carriers outside of the Vendor Central routing process. Using Amazon-preferred carriers helps to increase inbound visibility, reduce lost shipments in transit, and provide a level of service acceptable to Amazon Fulfillment Services. Shipping with preferred carriers also provides us with greater control of collect shipments, which enables us to properly manage carrier performance from pickup to delivery. For more information, see the following documents in the Vendor Central Resource Center:
For questions about your charges, go to the bottom of any page in Vendor Central, and click Contact Us > Infractions > Disputes - No Routing/Wrong Carrier Infraction. Our transportation team will research and provide feedback regarding your questions. Based on the feedback, you might be directed to submit a dispute through Payments> Dispute Chargebacks. New Print BOL Feature We are pleased to introduce a new feature in Vendor Central that allows you to download a bill of lading (BOL) for submitted routing requests. To print a BOL:
Please note that this new feature is not available for small parcel shipments. New Chargebacks for Fill Rate Infractions
We will begin chargebacks for low fill rates on POs issued after September 15, 2012. Amazon policy requires vendors to ship, in full, the same unit quantity that was confirmed for every ASIN on a PO. A 100% fill rate is important because it allows us to provide great customer service on your items and improve instock positioning, which allows customers to better find and purchase your products. We will notify you regarding infractions starting September 15, 2012, but you will have until October 15, 2012 to make corrections before the chargebacks go live. The fill rate chargeback will be calculated as follows:
Please note that you are in full control of the confirmed quantity, and you can modify that confirmed quantity until you create the Routing Request/ASN. Chargebacks will only be generated if the quantity submitted on the PO is confirmed and not received. For more information about our PO confirmation and shipment policies, search for "infraction" in the Vendor Central Help, or go to Resource Center > Infraction Management Policy and Tutorials. Transportation Chargebacks to Begin October 1, 2012 Transportation chargebacks will begin October 1, 2012 for the following:
The charges for Truckload (TL) and Less Than Truckload (LTL) shipments:
New PO Cancellation Emails and Required Response In mid-September, we will start sending a new type of PO cancellation email that requires your response in Vendor Central. When you receive this new cancellation email, you will be instructed to confirm whether the order has shipped.
Dear Amazon.com Vendor,
Please review the information below and circulate within your organization as appropriate: Prep Chargebacks and Packaging for E-Commerce Beginning September 30, 2012, Amazon will require that you prepare your products for e-commerce prior to shipping them to our fulfillment centers. If products are not properly prepared, we will charge for prep activities, which include bagging, bubble-wrapping, barcode stickering, overboxing, stuffing, and taping, that we do on your behalf. The fulfillment model for e-commerce differs markedly from the traditional retail model. In a traditional shopping experience, customers take products off the shelf and transport their packages home, taking responsibility for damage that might occur after checkout. In the e-commerce channel, packages must be delivered to customer doorsteps safely and without damage. Many products received by Amazon are not packaged adequately for e-commerce fulfillment. As a result, it has been necessary for Amazon to perform prep work on these products, at our expense, to ensure that they reach customers without damage. Our prep work includes repackaging for the following reasons:
Product suppliers need to address the specific needs of e-commerce fulfillment and package their products accordingly. To help you make your products ready for e-commerce, the following options are available:
New Cutoff Time for Routing Requests
To better serve our vendors and improve the flow of inventory into our fulfillment centers, beginning July 16, 2012, we will extend the cutoff time from 10 am PST to 5 pm PST for routing shipments with a freight-ready date of the next day. This change will provide you with a more time time to prepare the shipment and route without impacting the pickup date. As always, please ensure that you are stating the freight-ready date adequately to avoid unnecessary delays and cost. New Chargebacks for Inbound Shipment Defects Amazon's transportation policy requires you to include the purchase order (PO) number on the outside of every incoming carton. This helps reduce item loss and ensures that you are correctly getting credit for shipments. To further reduce problems, we also require that you package boxes with approved packing materials; therefore, we will begin chargebacks for 'No PO on carton' and 'Unapproved dunnage' (Styrofoam or peanuts) on shipments arriving after July 15, 2012. The chargeback amount will be as follows: $10 charge per carton when a PO is missing on the outside of the box $25 charge per carton that includes unapproved dunnage (Styrofoam or peanuts). Bulk Item Template Validation To improve your experience with the Bulk Item Creation templates, we first transitioned all users to the .xls/.xlsx format. As of June 20, 2012, the latest update automatically checks your input and suggests improvements before you upload your file to Vendor Central. This change should not impact any other aspect of the New Item Setup process in Vendor Central. You can find instructions to use this feature in the Vendor Central Resource Center under the Miscellaneous section. Missing Images and Product Data Quality merged for ARA Basic We are pleased to announce that you can now use the Vendor Catalog Listing report to directly access products that have missing images or data quality issues, activities that previously required separate processes in Amazon Retail Analytics (ARA) Basic. This new feature gives you better visibility into issues in your catalog. The merged Vendor Catalog Listing report will allow you to upload images and fix defects from the single report. We have also added two new filters to your Vendor Catalog Listing report:
New Cutoff Time for Routing Requests To better serve our vendors and improve the flow of inventory into our fulfillment centers, beginning July 16, 2012, we will extend the cutoff time from 10 am PST to 5 pm PST for routing shipments with a freight-ready date of the next day. This change will provide you with a more time time to prepare the shipment and route without impacting the pickup date. As always, please ensure that you are stating the freight-ready date adequately to avoid unnecessary delays and cost. If you have questions or suggestions, please let us know via the Contact Us link on the bottom of every page in Vendor Central. Prep Notification-only Chargebacks Pilot and Ecommerce Ready Packaging
Beginning the week of July 2nd, Amazon will pilot notification-only vendor chargebacks for costs related to product prep in our fulfillment centers. This will provide you with visibility into the prep costs associated with Amazon prepping non-ecommerce-ready products to ensure that they reach the end customer safely and intact. The fulfillment model for ecommerce differs markedly from the traditional retail model. In a traditional shopping experience, the customer takes products off the shelf and drives their package home. The customer also takes responsibility for damage that occurs past checkout. The ecommerce channel, on the other hand, must get the package safely to the customer's doorstep. Many products sold on the Amazon platform are not packaged adequately for ecommerce fulfillment, so it has been necessary to perform prep work on these products to convert the packaging so that the product safely reaches the customer. Prep activities include repackaging to protect fragile products (e.g., bubble wrap for glass items), to contain potential spillage (e.g., bagging bottles of liquids), to shield from dust (e.g., bagging plush toys), and to safeguard customers and associates (e.g., bubble wrapping and/or boxing sharp products like knives). For full details, please reference the Amazon Product Prep Matrix in the Operations section of the Vendor Central Resource Center. Product suppliers need to address the specific needs of the ecommerce fulfillment channel and package products accordingly. Providing ecommerce-ready products is a competitive advantage in the high-growth ecommerce market segment. We would like to help you make your products ecommerce ready. Here are the options: 1. Frustration Free Packaging - This program assists you in developing ecommerce-ready packaging that is right-sized, transit-ready, and enables you to maintain brand integrity. Information about Frustration Free Packaging (FFP) is located in Vendor Central. To access, log into your account, click on the Items tab, select Frustration Free Packaging and then click 'Learn more' to read about the FFP program. Amazon's FFP team offers resources for packaging design and provides design feedback. We will also perform transit testing, merchandise certified products in the FFP store, and if a packaging change is made, the product qualifies for a VINE review, all FREE of charge. You may leverage this packaging for all e-commerce sales as the best in class packaging standard. We believe that this is the best option. 2. Do It Yourself Prep - Follow the prep guidelines in the Amazon North America Special Packaging Instructions to prep your own products. This option allows you to control the quality and cost of prepping your product. Vendor prepped items will not be certified as ecommerce-ready (i.e., FFP-certified) and will be placed inside another Amazon box for shipping to customers. This option is less green and reduces the brand visibility on packaging during delivery to the customer. A web search on keywords such as industrial supply bubble wrap will return a list of materials suppliers across North America. 3. Amazon Prep Chargeback Service - Currently we are not charging for this service, but in the future will begin charging those who have not addressed their product packaging via the options listed above. Amazon will perform the prep work to make your products ecommerce ready, then issue prep chargebacks that are viewable in Vendor Central. The chargeback fees will be in accordance with our prep rate card. |
AuthorJohn Dietz Archives
July 2014
Categories |