Amazon just concluded the 2021 Amazon Accelerate event where new Amazon seller products and services were announced. This free virtual event provides an update on where Amazon is at and the vision for the future through sessions on topics for sellers on Amazon to utilize best practices as well as new product and service announcements. This post will provide a recap of some of the areas we are excited about as they will help sellers on Amazon increase sales, mitigate risk, reduce costs, and provide a better shopping experience for Amazon customers.
Amazon Customer Engagement
The Amazon Customer Engagement tool (also called Manage Your Customer Engagement) is a new program that will allow sellers to send templated emails to “followers”. Followers are those that click follow on the Amazon Store or Posts. This is a great way to connect with those who are interested in your brand to share new or featured product. Brand Registry and followers are a prerequisite for this program so be sure to start generating followers to your brand as Amazon appears to be using followers in more marketing tools.
Manage Your Compliance on Amazon
There is a new portal within Seller Central called Manage Your Compliance, which will be the hub for all things related to product compliance. We are very excited for this as product compliance is such an important topic to create a trusted Amazon shopping experience for customers, and what often has been a pain point for Amazon sellers. The Manage Your Compliance tool will surface required testing information when listing the product, offer testing and lab services, be a single source for document uploads and appeals and resolutions.
Amazon A+ Brand Story
There is a new type of A+ content available that features a section for about your brand called Amazon Brand Story. There are many available modules to choose from an opportunity to connect with Amazon customers to learn more about your brand. This gets prominently displayed on a product listing page in a section above the A+ enhanced product description in a section titled “From the brand” . Benefits from this program include increased conversion, improved discoverability, increased sales, reduced customer returns and negative reviews, and encouraging repeat purchases
Amazon FBA and Logistics Investments and Improvements
Amazon is a world leader in fulfillment and logistics, and they continue to invest in supply chain technologies and programs to improve seller and customer experiences. Investments include creating 350 new fulfillment facilities in the US alone, which will assist in the compacities constraints seen by sellers. We will touch on a few of the improvements noted in the opening keynote here. New programs include FBA liquidations that allow sellers to sell unwanted inventory for roughly 40% of the retail price, and FBA Grade and Resell which allows sellers to offer different new/used offers. These programs will help improve your supply chain and salvage inventory value.
Conclusion
Amazon continues to invest in in education, technology, and resources to help brands and manufacturers sell on Amazon. The 2021 Amazon Accelerate program was a great online workshop to grasp where Amazon is currently, and the vison for the future. This is not a comprehensive list of all the topics covered, and we encourage you to view the Amazon Accelerate 2021 recap videos, and reach out to Goat Consulting with any questions regarding increasing sales, mitigating risk, and reducing costs by implementing Amazon best practices and utilizing these new tools.