In the age of texting and live chat, email still holds a place at the top as one of the best ways to communicate with your buyers. It’s quick yet still allows for thought and deliberation, can be customized any which way with some simple HTML and CSS, and can be sorted into various groups and lists for marketing campaigns.
To learn the best and most effective communication techniques when using Amazon seller emails, FeedbackExpress has put together this handy list.
1. Always Keep Amazon’s Terms of Service in Mind When Emailing
When you’re shooting off a quick email to your friend through Gmail, pretty much anything goes. But when you’re using Amazon’s seller email, you have to abide by their Terms of Service. In a nutshell, you’ll want to make sure you’re following these rules:
- Direct Email Addresses: If you’re emailing a buyer through Amazon, the content of the email should circle around an order, fulfilling that order and/or any required customer support.
- Inappropriate Email Communications: You can’t use Amazon’s email service for things like marketing purposes, so as long as you stick to communicating about an order or necessary support, you should be good.
- Attempts to Divert Transactions or Buyers: This is a really big point. If you’re emailing back and forth with a buyer, you cannot get them to visit your own site or make a purchase there. This means no advertisements, marketing messages, calls to action, hyperlinks, URLs or anything else that could divert them off Amazon with the aim of making a sale.
With that being said, how are you supposed to gather enough emails to put together a list for a marketing campaign? Simple — get the buyer’s email through Amazon, and get it before the sale is made.
Once you’ve done that, here’s what you need to know to be effective at communicating through them.
2. Start With a Warm and Welcome Initial Email
This email is the first one a person receives when they sign up for your email list. It’s an important one, too, as it sets the tone for what your brand is all about and why it matters to them.
Although your potential buyer might have been interested enough to sign up, they’ll still need a bit more convincing of why they should purchase from you.
To get that conversion, focus on the following areas:
- Personalization is a really big first impression to concentrate on, so put in the time and effort into reaching out to them on as personal a level as possible.
- Why and how your inventory can appeal to them. You could talk about your brand’s story a bit to show there’s a real person behind the business, as well as how you stand out from everyone else.
- The offers and deals that await specifically them. You should definitely have extra perks reserved for those on your email list that the general public wouldn’t have access to, like coupons or early alerts to upcoming specials.
- A call to action that’s clearly and persuasively written, along with a link that takes them to your shop. Make this as easy for them as possible. If they have to complete too many steps, they’ll lose interest and move on. For example, if you have current specials in three particular areas, you might want to include a lifestyle or product image on a clickable block that takes them directly to that landing page.
3. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Your Buyers for Referrals
You never get what you don’t ask for, so another effective email communication technique is to ask your buyers to spread the word to their friends and family.
One of the most common ways of doing this is offering a discount or coupon for every direct email signup they can procure. You should have a special link in place to track this so you can reward those buyers accordingly.
And above all else, make sure you have a sterling social reputation so there’s no hesitation on the buyer’s part to refer you to others.
4. Make Sure Buyers Know You’re Grateful for Their Continued Business
One of my personal pet peeves is when I see my phone or internet company promising new customers amazing deals. What about me? I’ve been with them for years and trying to get a discount on my rates feels like pulling teeth sometimes. It feels like the companies don’t care too much about my loyalty, even though it’s easier to keep a customer than it is to find a new one.
Don’t take that route in your emails with buyers. Offer them special promotions or offers periodically as a way of saying thanks for their continued patronage. There are a few different ways you can do this:
- Seasonally around the big holidays. It’s almost ingrained in a buyer’s nature to expect some sort of deal around the big shopping holidays, which makes it an easy time to toss in something extra for your regulars.
- When you’re releasing new products. Your buyers have already shown they’re happy with your products, so capitalize on that by offering them an exclusive first-look at your latest releases.
- Different specials for different buyer personas. A millennial man doesn’t have the same shopping habits as a middle-aged woman, so why would you offer them the same promotion? Narrow your focus down based on buyer persona, especially if that impacts when and how you present the offer (e.g. Mother’s Day, Prime Day, back to school, etc.).
Final Thoughts
If you’ve put in the work on building solid email communication with your Amazon buyers, it’ll be much easier to increase your sales and gather more review from them. But even then, it’s not a totally smooth road and that’s where FeedbackExpress comes into play. We’ll take the load off your shoulders with proven techniques that greatly increase your chances of getting valuable customer feedback. But it only works if you use it, so sign up now and kick things off with a 14 day free trial.
