External Traffic (from Amazon) - the latest tools & strategies for optimization⎜Seller.Tools⎜EP 140

Ryan Cramer: What's up, everyone? Welcome to my corner of the internet. I'm your host Ryan Cramer and this is Crossover Commerce presented by Ping Pong Payments. The leading global payments provider helping sellers keep more of their hard earned money. Hey, what's up, everyone? Thanks for tuning in once again to another episode of Crossover Commerce. I'm your host Ryan Cramer and this is my corner of the internet where I bring you the best and best and brightest. I won't negate the brightest part, because everyone here is bright. The best and brightest experts in the Amazon and eCommerce space to this corner of the internet where I talk to them to share their insights on the most important aspects of selling online, whether it be advertising, whether it be branding, whether it be product listing, whether it be just sourcing, logistics so on and so forth. There's so much that you as an entrepreneur need to know. And that's where we're going to start helping you on your journey. This is episode 140, which means that there's 139 other episodes out there. How do I find that? How do I listen to them? Well, go check them out on your favorite podcast destinations or you can actually subscribe to our social media channels, which are, of course, on YouTube. Just search Ping Pong Payments and there's a whole playlist of different kinds of content, curated library where you can listen to past guests, friends of the show, and then people who have returned on the guest, which were returned as guests on the show to talk their updates on what's going on in the space. And we have that today with our guests of course, but before we get started Crossover Commerce is presented by Ping Pong Payments. Ping Pong Payments, what are we? We're not a table tennis company. Let's get that out of the way right now. Crossover, or Ping Pong Payments helps, has now helped over 1 million customers worldwide, Amazon sellers, eCommerce sellers, entrepreneurs, businesses grow when selling or repatriating their money and getting it back to their local currency, whether it's paying out your VA suppliers manufacturers overseas and getting their money back on different marketplaces, whether you're selling on Amazon Mexico, Canada, Australia. We're going to help you save money when it comes back to your local currency. And it's free to sign up. Go ahead and sign up for today. That link is going to be in the comments section below, or if you're listening to this, it's going to be in the show notes section on the podcast. Just go ahead and click sign up and start using Ping Pong today. It saves you money. You to make sure it goes to your bottom line, and use it for different things like advertising more products, whatever that might be. Make it yourself more profitable going forward with Ping Pong today. That being said, we're talking about traffic. I think we're not talking about like sitting in a today traffic, we're not talking about going to work in 45 minutes sitting in a car to car bumper to bumper traffic. We're talking about driving eyeballs to your listing or talking about different kinds of ads and driving it to make sure that a customer can find your products online where that might be. On Amazon, that might be on different kinds of platforms, but of course, we're talking about from Amazon external traffic and the latest tools and strategies for that kind of optimization. That being said, want to bring on the friend of the show, Troy Johnson from Seller Tools to talk a little bit about what he's seeing, the tools that they're building, but also what the ecosystem is looking like nowadays. And I always, he's one of the people that has his pulse, ear to the pulse of the industry. So, that being said, let's go ahead and bring in Troy of Seller Tools to back to Crossover Commerce. Troy, what's up, man? How are you?

Troy Johnson: Hey, Ryan. Good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ryan Cramer: Of course. You're like, gosh. I want to say like SNL, I want to say, hey, like the Three- Timers Club or the Five- Timers Club, I need to create jackets for people who like to make constant appearances on my show so-

Troy Johnson: Oh, nice. I'll have to hold you to that.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. Now, that it's out there I need to talk to my boss and say, " Hey, we need to put some budget into marketing swag for people who keep coming back and providing great content." But, hey, thanks for joining us again. inaudible your own show, the 100th show, and now 140. I feel like there's all these little markers that we have to constantly check in with you because there's so much changing constantly.

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Absolutely. I think even from the last time we talked, there has been so much change, a lot of new updates, and things that we've got to, as sellers, as providers, as SaaS solutions where I've got my hands on a few different things. Change is the constant, right? That's the fun of Amazon where if you can stay on top of it though, you get a really nice advantage in terms of your results.

Ryan Cramer: Exactly. Well, I mean like you said, if you want to be an industry that's boring, go into accounting or something like that where you're just looking at numbers, not to slight any accountants out there. It's almost expectations, but nowadays it just feels like you have to kind of keep your head on a swivel and constantly look around, re- educate yourself, but since we last talked I think the last things on your specific episode that we launched, which is now on audio format. We talked about the different aspects that Amazon is not allowing access to, which is sellers information. It was a lot of customer data knowing where they're coming from. That actually was getting shut down completely. It was just, you're no longer can get that data. So, you guys have actually developed some tools to find out how to drive more customer segmented data, understand where they're coming from and really develop that customer avatar. Is that pretty similar to what we were, the path that we were going on in that regard?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Absolutely. That's a big part of the equation because I mean as a solution, Seller Tools I think really shines in terms of supporting brands and how they can own more of the customer. So, how they can reliably capture information, manage that information, reach back out to re- engage or support that customer. And so, that's been a little bit of the table that's been set, which has been the mainstay on Amazon. Really they continually, the whole philosophy is you're transacting with an Amazon customer. And you're just supposed to kind of come in and out of that equation as opposed to when that customer transacts, they become yours. And then, they have a interest in continuing that relationship with you and your brand. And as we know, when you get into LTV and a lot of the other kind of more traditional D2C metrics, if we can fold that into the Amazon equation, it's just really powerful. So, that's what we think about and kind of brainstorm as ideas for our feature set is how can we make sure that brands find ways to arrive at more customer ownership where, again, we see some of the challenges with PPC, some of the shortcomings, the increased costs. It tends to be the other big piece of the equation that sellers and brands think about. But I think it can be the antithesis at times of customer ownership. It can be purely transactional, which really falls flat. And it's very cost intensive too when you have to consistently just throw money at, and pay to play to be able to scale up on Amazon and drive more revenue and more growth across, hopefully, a growing brand and product mix.

Ryan Cramer: Well, that's the kind of scary trend I would say like we look at bar graphs nowadays and a lot of people have very sensitive natures when we look at bar graphs or any kind of like upper trends of when it comes to money or I'm kind of alluding to COVID, but anyways that's a very stupid thing. But people are sensitive to the nature of when you look at upper trends depending on what the subject is, it can mean a lot of different things. Obviously, sales if you're looking at your bars going up that means a lot more sales, more revenue, things like that, but in the avenue of cost, container costs have gone up significantly. I want to say anywhere from four to eight X from what it was a year ago, even two years ago. There's so many different costs that are starting to pile on, as new people into the marketplace, but even as older sellers try to, more mature sellers try to grow their business. There's so many different avenues to, they can't grow as fast as they once were able to do. So, what are those kinds of challenges that we have to overcome now? What's the low hanging fruit that is easy to pivot and kind of move forward if you will?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. And honestly, that's such a huge point. And you think about the political, the geopoliticals, the whole landscape now that we have to sort of grapple with is physical product sellers and brand owners is that with costs mostly going in the direction of increasing is extracting as much value as possible for each and every individual unit of inventory. And so, that really brings in the question, what is your ROI? And it dovetails back into customer ownership is if I can come back to that customer and drive up, and double the LTV or even incrementally increase the LTP, that lifetime value of that customer, I can begin to offset what I may be realizing in terms of, oh, in order to earn a sale I've got to be able to expend three or four dollars per unit. Then, I've got my referral fees, and Amazon fees. And then, I've got the shipping fees, and freight and logistics challenges that are incorporated in that as well. So, it really forces the question of doing the math and the analysis to figure out on almost a per unit basis or maybe what makes sense. And this is where you, I think when you do that analysis, it's maybe shaking up the status quo of what your process looks like for restocking and inventory readiness. For us, some of our brands we've revisited we have little scripts that we run where it triggers if it's sent, email goes out, all of those things in automations are great, but we've also revisited the use of 3PL. And then, how that dictates our numbers. And then, that type of relationship and partnership that we have with our manufacturers to be able to say, " Hey, how do we earn priority maybe where we give away some short- term gain for the purposes of the bigger picture?" Because I think that fits into this ROI equation. And again, I'm a big advocate, because this is what we are in all the time of the customer ownership that when you look at the entirety of the picture and really the landscape that brands on Amazon have to tackle just to have a unit of inventory land at a fulfillment center. It's really looking at the whole thing and saying, " How do we extract as much value out of this and not just maintain that status quo, even if it's systematized?" Which I'm a big systems person where it's like you almost don't want to mess with it, but then you start seeing, okay, well, this is cost prohibitive or this is too cost intensive or this unforeseen delay, because there's no padding or extra to our restock process in sequence. It's really revisiting that. And so, you can see how there's a lot that comes into this. I mean when you sell on Amazon, if you're a solopreneur, small team operator that makes up a good amount of our user base is usually they're using tools for data and automation is how can I get insightful data, but then how can I keep a very small team, and then go up against the big team members or the big team brands that may have a little bit more bloat and overhead. But that's, yeah. If it wasn't a thing before, the analysis and the quantification of a lot of that I think has become that much more crucial.

Ryan Cramer: I think the thing that's fascinating me about these kind of data points you're talking about. I think when we were talking about sellers who have entered the, who are best sellers, the BSR rank, and how long that they have a product that sits on some of these like bestseller categories. You see a lot more new sellers coming into it and only having it for a short amount of time like maybe a day or two or three. And then, it incrementally starts to really dive off when you get to an established brand. So, you're starting to see these new sellers come into a category make a really big splash, and then all of a sudden they dive off and they're no longer that top of top 10 or what for their product. And that's concerning because it's a lot of these tools that either launch you and get you to the front, and then the quality or just the consistency or the nature to keep them there doesn't necessarily last. So, I'm curious, are you guys seeing that in terms of data of it's just a quick flash in the pan, and then they kind of like trickle away and kind of the more nurturing, the more experienced people kind of just take over and are there consistently?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. I mean it's a really good point. And when you look at, you sort of gather together as much in the way of anecdotal insights for that type of use case where you have these brands that are just able to hop on page one, get their most important keywords, and then they just taper off that performance or lose their respective market share just because they can't maintain that sales velocity, driving that external traffic or as you alluded to, if they're using let's say a different type of launch service, well, maybe that gives them some of the important rank factors, but then over time there may be welcoming a lot of lower quality customers. Let's say buyers that are or more deal chasers, so in Amazon's eyes, they may not be weighted as heavily as if you are driving let's say your established D2C brand that has YouTube videos and has great social presence. And then, they have these full price buys from a variety of higher quality customers where they're just going to be smooth and steady versus this massive uptick where, okay, you've got the honeymoon period as a ranking factor, you have relevancy so if you're truly optimized for that listing, and you're sort of your Amazon SEO. Sure. It's easy to rank relatively speaking. It's the maintenance of that rank that I think that is one of the biggest challenges. Because you sort of have to take those same rank factors and think about, " Okay, what's the sustaining element? What am I going to tell Amazon that shows that I have the relevancy, I have the volume, I have the page interactions, I have the higher quality customers?" All those things that we know make up ranking, but do so not just in a temporary window. It's a sustained impact that we're seeing on those factors.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. I was listening to Danny McMillan on talk, on one of his show. It was just like a 10- minute blurb. And I've been involved with ranking in the past with clients at my former company, but what he said made so much sense. And it was you look at Amazon's algorithm and when you first launch a product, you're trying to get people to convert, right? That's the number one thing in your mind, but what Amazon sees is not just conversion, it's not just the ranking of which, or the keywords of what you're using or the amount of which conversions are happening. They're looking at the win rate and win rate would be like if someone a … It's the same as a conversion rate for any sort of brand out there if you're confused by that. So, the conversion rate is if I have 100 people go into my product page, how many of those 100 people are going to purchase my product? In the beginning when people launch a product, it's going to be a crazy high percentage win rate. It's going to be like 80%, 90%, closer to 100%, because those are your valued customers, friends, and family, people you've built rapport with. You're telling them, " Hey, go purchase this." Amazon sees that as a crazy unsustainable growth albeit they're converting. That's not a consistency factor that you will get every single person at 80%, 70% even that hits your product page is going to convert at that rate, which is if you think about that as an entrepreneur you're like, " You're right. That's going to be a drop- off as well as the quantity of which I'm selling through." So, both hits are going to just completely put a hole in my boat basically, and just completely drop me off the ranking path. Why don't more people think about win rate and how do we, not manipulate win rate, but how do we consistently keep that factor throughout so the Amazon rewards win rate versus the amount of sales we're doing in the matter of three weeks or so?

Troy Johnson: Right. Yeah. And one of the ways that we tackle it is we sort of structure our launches to be able to obtain that organic rank, but not, more often than not I think sellers and brands are anxious to sort of turn off, if they're running some sort of sales velocity initiative where they're driving up an impacting rank, as soon as they hit that top spot. They're like, "Oh, well, I'm there. Let's shut this off. Amazon sees and has rewarded me for my efforts to be able to rank that product." But we'll structure our launches to where we'll sort of have a natural organic increase. And then, we'll maintain that sales velocity, welcome those page interactions, and then sustain that organic rank before we then taper off. And it's more of a taper off instead of a off the cliff.

Ryan Cramer: Right.

Troy Johnson: Yeah. And so, crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: So, I was going to say, is that something that not manipulation, but more you have to cultivate that? It's not launches don't take place in 7 to 14 days now, they could take 21, 28 even for the course of months. And I know that's not what a lot of people like to hear, but isn't that, in your mind is that the smart way to play now instead of the quick instantaneous, " Hey, burn through products at an obnoxiously high rate, and then even longer term if you're still looking at time wise, you still have to cultivate that over the course of time?" Is it easiest to kind of build that slow rate, invest in PPC or some sort of offsite traffic to your listings consistently instead of the quick hit, like shoot up like a rocket, and then obviously peter out?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. And I think this is where the onus is really on the brands, because Amazon has been a moving target in that sense where we have a launch platform, we run launches regularly for our own brands, and obviously, have a lot of insight into launches at scale. But there was a time where one day launches, massively effective. Give a huge spike in sales velocity, rank on page one, and then manage that new organic rank. And then, three- day launches were really effective. They worked really great where it was just sort of like a, it was still very steep, but it was over a slightly distributed window of time. And now, today I mean you're spot on, Ryan. I mean we even measure our launches in 30- day windows. So, we look at 30 days or possibly 60 days that will create that nice little steady perceivably organic activity to our listing against some of our most important keywords. We'll try to diversify some of those external traffic sources as well. So, we give all of these different signals to Amazon that says, " Hey, there's a high level of interest to these highly relevant keywords from a number of sources. It's very …" I think right now where we're at in terms of what works for ranking is probably the most intuitive, I would say, where you would expect Amazon where they normalize things a little bit. One day spikes aren't effective, but they just want to see, " Hey, there's a sustained level of interest from a variety of sources, ideally high quality sources." And that would deserve, you would sort of earn the ranking for what keywords that you're relevant for. And this, again, assumes that you've done the keyword research, your listing is optimized, you're really well positioned to where if you welcome page interactions there's more time on your detail page. So, you have all your media sorted out, you have all your conversion readiness in place. You welcome those add to carts, all those different factors that impact rank, but that sustained sort of model that we see working right now. I think we've kind of arrived at a very intuitive one. Yeah. That makes sense. That's what I would expect if I was in Amazon shoes of like, " Yeah. This is what I would reward and want to see continually over time."

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. You're rewarding more of a consistency rather than just a shot or a big rocket like we talked about earlier. Rewarding one of those brands who are trying to do it right instead of this flash in the pan, if you will. So, external traffic, you talk about sources in optimizing kind of your listing. What is Amazon rewarding in terms of going to your listing? Are they rewarding outside traffic more, inside traffic? What's kind of that external traffic, if you will, of the topic we're kind of covering today? crosstalk cover.

Troy Johnson: Yeah. No. Absolutely. And when it comes to external traffic there's two things that really sort of stand out. And it's almost like the quality and the quantity where you think about the variety of sources. So, the organic or perceivably organic, if we can welcome that to where let's say we direct a customer from Pinterest. And then, we direct a customer from a YouTube video or a Google link, in addition to YouTube. So, we have these really nice diverse sets of traffic sources where we're showing Amazon, " Hey, there's buyer intent from these other sources, hopefully, in a keyword rich way so we can use an optimized link to kind of pass that through." That's a really great way to kind of check off the quantity side of things. The quality is when you think about domain authority and potentially prioritize most notably, and this has remained the case from what we've seen is that Google and YouTube with their immense domain authority gets disproportionately rewarded for ranking so-

Ryan Cramer: Really? Okay.

Troy Johnson: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: So, are you talking about like ads or organic blog content or anything organic that would pop up? If I'm clicking on article, it would drive me to their listing. That's what's being rewarded?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Both.

Ryan Cramer: Interesting.

Troy Johnson: Paid and organic. The beauty of paid, of course, is that you can impose a lot more control when we talk about, when we put that in the context of a sustained launch and sustained sales activity for a listing based on a specific keyword, but the paid side allows us to really manipulate that a little bit more. And so, we actually just recently did a training, and it's a strategy we call link laundering. It kind of sounds a bad-

Ryan Cramer: Its sounds dirty like secretive.

Troy Johnson: I know.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. Let's stay away from our black hack tactics, strike them off. I'm just kidding. No. The term makes sense. Yeah. Go ahead.

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Because it's the same concept where we want Amazon to see, " Hey, if a customer, potential customer watches our YouTube content, and then hops over to our listing and spends a little bit of time there before buying, that's a win- win- win." Right? Customer funds relevant, useful, high utility product that they're interested in buying from us. Amazon gets external traffic, they validate it, they see that referral source with a great domain authority. It ties into now in the short term what they're trying to do, and in many ways incentivized for driving that external traffic through the, their new brand referral program So, that's a big piece of the equation as well, but it's immensely effective. Again, this is where if you put yourself, put your Amazon hat on your Amazon, this is another thing where you're like, " Oh yeah." If we take seller strategy that's just doing A to B where he is just from a single, he's running Facebook ads, single source, referral source right to Amazon listing. That's very predictable very A to B, even if we're paying for that. There's not as much inherent relevancy, I would say, because we're sort of forcing the system as opposed to showing Amazon, well, shoot, as opposed to one source, we have five sources of external traffic coming in with a high level of relevant interest. Again, if we have our Amazon hat on. We're like, " Yeah." This listing this product deserves the rank, should have the relevancy, because the profit mode that really drives inaudible is saying, " Well, we want as conversion ready, potentially revenue generating listing to be present to win the rank for that given keyword?" So, we try to utilize and we use strategies with ManyChat and other ways of owning that customer journey to where when we can make that very seamless that's a really great way of owning that customer engagement, supporting them, getting ahead of any negative reviews or feedback, getting this ranking benefit. And then, we automate some of the review capture as well. And that's really where you just tie in all of these Amazon objectives, check off the external traffic box, but then like I said, if you have your Amazon hat or lens or whatever knowledge you want to use, you sort of said, " Yeah. That makes sense."

Ryan Cramer: Take out their manual that's like this thick and we're just going to like flip through real quick. So, what you said makes sense. I think it ties into the biggest thing we've seen in 2020 and '21 brands have this inaudible where Amazon used to reward flash in the pan. They are no longer there. It's just their traffic reviews, things like that. They're now shifting into quality focused of brand registry, doing more of diverse traffic like you said, multiple sources, companies and brands that are trying to, either if they're sending traffic away or bringing traffic in, whether it's using their resources like DSP or it's driving traffic back to Amazon. That's kind of this well- rounded, almost like a well- rounded kid. Right? You're playing sports, you're in the arts, you're doing all these things, and you're like, " Oh, that's a great kid. You did a good job and you're going to graduate ahead of your class or something like that." I think that makes sense in Amazon's eyes as well to know that it's a great referral source. That's unique and interesting that it's rewarded highest from Google and YouTube instead of something else. Why do you think that's the case from those sources and stuff like a Pinterest or Facebook is because those are more manipulative sources?

Troy Johnson: I think it's the domain authority. I mean I would love to speculate and say that the Amazon and Google relationship of like, and this is where, again, the brand referral program where Amazon wants to own search and buyer intent from wherever it arrives from. And obviously, Google largest search engine on the planet and Amazon largest commerce platform on the planet where if they can gobble up the search results, we're both paid and organic, it's highly visible for Amazon products. It makes a lot of sense for them to then reward, and that's a little bit of what they're doing now with the brand referral program where they're giving you kind of a little bit of an incentive if your brand registered. Mostly to offset your costs. Obviously, as we know with referral fees and that type of thing, it's not a substantial way of generating revenue, but it's a great way of saying, " Hey, if I want to substantiate my Amazon presence, let me take up more real estate and market share through these external channels with Google and YouTube." And YouTube like I said, because it's media rich, its videos. I think it also, if it wasn't just the domain authority, it was slightly more subjective. For me, I think it makes sense in terms of … This is purely speculative, but it's just-

Ryan Cramer: It's what we do here on the show. Don’t worry.

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Here's absolute speculation. But I mean you offer more media, more insight, more substance, let's say, before driving someone to Amazon. And I think with what we've seen with Facebook ads, which was really such a tried and true way of directing, because it was such a find them where they're at, customers, potential customers. Targeting was much better before the iOS update, if you didn't have your customer list or custom audiences. We could speculate that that's been devalued in a way where because it became so A to B at scale, Amazon kind of just took that weight down a little bit and sort of said, " Well, give me more quality, give me more quantity and we're going to reward that through the algorithm." So, I will wholly admit that is still very speculative. The ability to … We crowd source insights. We see, again, across as many categories and brands as we can, but nobody is Amazon, nobody gets to rightfully put that hat on other than Amazon themselves so.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. I can't wait to get that insider source that can tell me all these things. So, I can say per referral source or something like that and just breaking news or something like that. This kind of ties into, Rob, I think joining us from Miami if he's still there. Crazily traveling all over the world still, but anyways he asked, have the new rules on Facebook, which I believe what he's referring to is Facebook has come out and roughly said, " We're going to stop sending traffic," or there's something with Facebook, Amazon tension of sending traffic from one to the other affected the rules, and the use of ManyChat and Seller Tools at all. Does that make sense to you?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. That's a great question. I think Rob, if you're alluding to the iOS update, it was pretty substantial to where the ability for iOS users to opt out of apps for more tracking, more visibility at the customer level that really tapered off considerably. So, on the whole, not really great if you're running Facebook ads. Now, for us, as Amazon sellers, the really great thing is if it's kind of tapering down for everyone else, if we can find advantage we sort of have a whole blue ocean to take advantage of. And so, there's actually tools that we integrate with at Seller Tools to where we take our known data and they take their known data, and we say, " Hey, this starts to paint a picture of what that audience can look like, a custom audience based on purchase activity, what takes place for your account or brand." So, one of those is Zontracker that we work with it, yes, Zontracker. And it really helps to offset what has taken place where because those opt outs in mass, I've done it myself where if I have the option I'm not going to have everybody watching me, tracking my activity that type of thing. But the beauty is, the really bigger than silver lining I would say is that that's the case for most, but then if you can tie into these integrations and solutions and we can start to map some of this data, you can utilize custom audiences from some of your existing customers. And then, you can also through a solution like Zontracker, you can actually get the analytics and the metrics for how that performs when you start running some of those ads. So, it's actually been really bittersweet. So hopefully, that was your question, Robbie. I know when it comes to ManyChat, you can create custom audiences right there too natively in ManyChat. One of the big things using ManyChat is a chat marketing solution that ties in heavily to Facebook is just making sure that you're compliant and meeting their policies, adding tags, mostly they just want you to not be spamming customers which makes a little sense. We don't do that anyway, but just making sure that you are compliant with a lot of their steps and that way you can use ManyChat effectively.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. He's messaging me right now. Oh my. I don't have the message app up right now, Rob, because we're doing a show here, man.

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Come on, Robbie.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. Come on, you have to put it in the official forum for me to answer these questions. No. He's Wizards of Amazon Expo down in, or Wizards of Ecom, excuse me. I know Wizard of Amazon changed to Wizards of Ecom. So, down there with Carlos Alvarez and people in Miami. So, he's actually in Florida. Everyone's in Florida right now.

Troy Johnson: I know. crosstalk

Ryan Cramer: Guys, it is August and it is hot. Why are you in Florida? That's my question to you. You willingly going to the hottest most humid place in the world. Get out of there. No. I'm just kidding. No. But yeah. Go check out that event. Just a free shameless plug. If you're in Miami, go check out that event, Wizards of Ecom and talk to either Rob or Carlos. That'll be a cool event. I think it's happening tomorrow. So, shameless plug for you, Rob, since you're bothering me while I'm doing the show. Anyways, back to more serious matters and we're talking about Amazon. You mentioned multiple times a referral quicker, I'm a big dummy. I don't know all the nuances of the program and how that's actually affecting sellers versus services. So, walk me through the basics of it was a big thing, it was a big announcement by Amazon and it was very well received from what I could tell. What's the referral program? It should be a nuanced like affiliate program in my mind, that's what it sounds like of rewarding people to drive traffic to make purchase on Amazon. Is that the nuance of it? Is that long and short of it basically?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. In a nutshell, its affiliates for brand registered brands. So, assuming as a brand on Amazon, you've gone through the brand registry steps, you're trademarked, you've got everything knocked out. Then, on the other side you have, of course, the ability to use attribution which is a key part of the process that you can now use the brand referral program to be able to direct traffic, you dictate the source, you add in the URL, what they call a click- through URL. And then, what's different than affiliate, point of clarification is you can't just send that traffic to any product on Amazon. It needs to be to your brand registered brand and products. It's kind of a nice little olive branch that they're extending to where they're rewarding to a degree driving external traffic to your brand. At approximately, it's an average of 10%. So, it is category specific what your return is.

Ryan Cramer: Always is.

Troy Johnson: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: Always is.

Troy Johnson: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: They reward higher what, electronics? I mean higher dollar value items typically get a little bit more percentage points. But, yeah. Home and garden or home and kitchen not very high. It's always like clothing or stuff that's wear and tear and you would buy more of it and stuff like big- time purchases or one- off things. That's how I've always seen the affiliate world of how they measure metrics in that regard. So, is that very similar in that capacity?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. And then, there is a drop off, let's say, I believe it's$ 10. If it's under$ 10 it drops off to like 5% for your-

Ryan Cramer: Make sense.

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Referral commission there. So, it is kind of a sliding scale. Some of the most cynical brands and people as I've talked with more sellers about it are sort of like 10 is probably a little bit on the higher range. And you can just wait for them to start dropping that down, as we normal … We add these systems, and think, " Oh, yeah. We can use this to offset referral fees." And other commissions and fees that we pay, but it's like a 60- day delay in terms of when you receive the return of the commission on that referral.

Ryan Cramer: Queue for pay outs would be in February essentially?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. It's not exactly like, it's not something that you really can hang your hat on and say, " Oh this is going to be a substantial return." Now, if you do a lot of volume and you are confident with external traffic and running a variety of paid ads and are comfortable with Amazon attribution, a lot of those different strategies. This can be a great way to offset costs. Because, again, if we kind of zoom out the macro context with PPC getting more expensive, it's just getting more cutthroat and Amazon just getting more visibility by virtue of the capital and the interest that's coming into the space. We'll take it too. So, I mean anything that helps to offset costs, even if it maybe tapers down over time, which I think it's better to have that expectation. It is something. So, that there is something to be said for it.

Ryan Cramer: Well, that's the thing too. I always see these promo codes that you get from directed consumer brands, 10% isn't going to cover too much. You're not getting a significant cost savings, but, hey, it might cover your shipping or it might cover your taxes. Same thing with brands. But I saw this yesterday too. I thought it was kind of unique and they tagged it as an affiliate fun opportunity, but that it sounds more like the brand registry opportunity. You're talking about aggregators and money coming into space. Perch actually sends something out. I try to keep my ear to what they're doing and all the new fun stuff that they're coming out with. They actually had tagged … It was Perch who had said that Halle Berry had made a quote for a specific brand. Like let's talk about, oh this amazing vitamin D serum or vitamin C serum. They were … She was talking about how great it was and how nice it was. It was posted in New York Post online, clicked on and drove them to that specific brand. All of this kind of tying back to, it was tagged as an affiliate, but I wonder if that's part of that referral program, that brand registry program, because these more often than not, these companies or these aggregators will probably have brand registry products, more often than not probably, if not all of them. So, I'm curious if that actually is a bigger win for them maybe that can kind of play with these little or a lot bigger PR strategies and try to implement those, and then get some of that win back in that regards. Is that maybe a fair assumption or is that an interesting thing of the bigger you are maybe the more opportunity you can have all these things pointing to your one brand in that capacity?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Absolutely. Because I mean influencers is another, I don't think I've even mentioned that, but when we talk about the more or perceivably organic, if not depending on the relationship and the way that you can, or ambassadors, micro, nano influencers that can that a number of different shapes and forms, but when you have that much throughput and volume and you have a Halle Berry mentioning your product. That's a great way of thinking, " Hey, how do we get a little bit more value in this equation?" Maybe offset, let's say you're working with a substantial influencer and that comes at a pretty high cost. That can be another great way to offset it as well. So, as long as you're directing it back to your product. One other thing to note is if there is a purchase made, if that customer comes back and re- buys within 14 days, you also get attribution for that as well. So, if you can imagine the volume, the scale, if you have a bunch of people coming through into your branded products that can add up. It really can be substantial.

Ryan Cramer: Right. The cookie length and I think … So, hearing that, in part point of clarification, it was Drew Barrymore. I said Halle Berry. Halle Berry must be on my mind for some reason today. Who knows why? Gosh. It makes me want to watch the movie Swordfish for some reason. But anyways, just really cool action movie with Halle Berry in it now. Anyways, this is where my Friday is at this point. Moving back to you, all these different kind of nuances of repeat purchases. I almost want to think that it fits perfectly for grocery or something like, as something consistent. I wouldn't think supplement would fit in 14 days. That doesn't seem like a really tiny bottle of supplements that you're going to get, but something that's either a quick use, something that you need a lot of in terms of that capacity. I wouldn't think it would be bulk. I would think it would be more, it would fit grocery perfectly in that capacity, I would think.

Troy Johnson: Right. Yeah. I mean this is where my mind starts to go to is if you own the post- purchase. And again, we do this with ManyChat or if you have a landing page, you have some way of re- engaging that customer, you can do so in a kind of a promotion specific window. So, let's say you know you're going to all of a sudden have 50,000, 100, 000 eyeballs coming through your listing, factoring in the conversion rate. And then, you have these purchases at scale. Well, if your post- purchase sequence is really dialed in for a short period of time, you may say, " Okay. I've got this 10% to kind of play with, could I give a really specific short- term promotion that incentivizes inside that window more repeat purchase activity?" And then, instead of a single purchase, maybe even if you've discounted it 25%, 30% to where it's enticing enough and you're playing with that 10%. Well, now you have somebody who's bought two of your products and you have potential for increasing that LTV. So, I think post- purchase strategies, that and customer ownership I think is what's going to take us in terms of the advantages where there's going to be a separation from really I think the best brands on Amazon coming into the end of this year, it's getting the logistics right, making sure the inventory readiness and that piece of the equation, but post- purchase strategies and customer ownership I think is really where you're going to find the brand start to remove themselves a little bit more. See great greater ranking, more reviews, because that to me is always one of the litmus tests is can you reliably rank, and without customer ownership and being able to send out an email or a text message in 20, 30 minutes, and relying on just throwing a ton of money at PPC, it's … I know which one I would pick in that equation.

Ryan Cramer: Exactly. I think a lot of people would rather keep more of their money than, and rely on just the goodwill that they've built up and the strategy they built up rather than just throw money at it. Again, it does take strategy to use PPC and all that regards, but there's cost effectiveness in terms of keeping it, going they have to work together, not just rely on one solely. I think in the capacity of just, does a person have to repeat the same product or can it be something a part of the suite that you own, like part of your brain registry? If I have a hundred inaudible and I had to purchase one. Can I say like, " Hey, by the way, we have this great like little caddy for your books or that you purchase from us or like a gift item or a gift pack?" Can you get creative with that and that still count towards the referral program?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. I can. As long as it's in that window for that brand, registered brand, you're all set.

Ryan Cramer: That seems maybe a little bit better to do. Like almost like, " Hey, you purchased this, did you know that we also offer X, Y, Z gift packs." Something closer to Q4 inaudible saying, " Hey, bundle them together." It almost makes the nature of frequently bought by a little bit easier to kind of make that known to Amazon. Like, " Hey, you purchase gift wrap, maybe you need scissors and you need gift wrap caddy," or something that they're also selling. So, they would naturally organically bundle together, but you're kind of not manipulating, but pushing that to kind of appear more, if that makes sense? So, interesting how that could, like you said, post- purchase that you can get really creative in terms of the capacity of which you utilize that. Interesting. What about you said brand registry is getting more and more important. In those regards, you have to be part of brand registry in order to be part of this referral program. So instantly, I would go back to, okay, brand registry, at what point am I good enough, qualified enough to be a part of brand registry and get accepted? What's the nuance? We haven't really talked about in the show of the genesis of brand registry and what it really means for you as a seller. So, is there some background you can offer?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. No. Absolutely. Often the biggest hurdle is going through the trademark process. So, you really confirm and give to Amazon and what used to be reliable and a great way of using the IP accelerator program, which isn't essential, but the trademark piece is. And so, looking at how to take care of that in an expedited way. And now, with pending trademarks, Amazon is still approving brand registry. Essentially they're seeing if do you have enough information, you correspond quickly, everything looks good in that process. You can still receive approval for brand registry. So, it's really kind of authority and validation is what they're trying to see is if you're willing to walk through that step and sort of substantiate your brand via a trademark, brand registry can be pretty quick. And this is where I think there are solutions out there that we've used across brands. Steven Pope is one that comes to mind, my Amazon guy. There are providers out there that help to expedite that process, but it's usually that one, two, and then if you use a provider, you can move that a little bit quicker through and try to get it done in 7 days, 14 days as opposed to a much longer window of time. And now, Amazon is making brand registry, it's getting to be more and more powerful in terms of the suite of features and data that you can tap into, brand analytics, Amazon Live, you can see customer reviews, you get different sponsored brand, PPC options that you can tap into. So, they're giving this really nice suite of additional features that they're sort of saying, " Okay. You've validated. You've provided the authority to say,'Okay, this is a reliable brand that's jumped through just enough hoops, we're going to give you that much more in the way of value add.'" And it's getting to be more and more valuable, for sure. So, we'll see if, and in terms of brand referral program, again, nested underneath this as well as Amazon attribution that, hopefully, knock on wood, it's free. That you just get it by virtue of going through the brand registry process.

Ryan Cramer: Is anything really free when you work on Amazon? That's the thing.

Troy Johnson: I know.

Ryan Cramer: Well, hey, it is perfectly fine. But you talked about data and having that access too, it reminds me that you guys have come up with really cool data sets to help people actually understand who these people are and where their nuances of, if they're a great customer, maybe not so great customer, how you can actually point into repeat customers. Tell me a little bit more about that, because I thought it was so fascinating when you release, I didn't think there was any other tool or people were talking about, how do you understand what the … Like me if I'm buying your product, am I going to be a great repeat customer or not?

Troy Johnson: Right. Yeah. And I mean we have the benefit and the team that makes up the Seller Tools and a lot of the leadership as sellers themselves, we've been launching products for three four years now. So, we have a lot of really great insight, both the data and experience that we sort of bring to the table when we look at how to answer that big question. That's kind of how we looked at it is we know Amazon buyer quality, how much that can factor into the equation? As an example, and a potential sort of a hypothesis that we have is when you see these review sweeps across brands and products. One of the hypotheses that we have is that may point to or Amazon may see a high volume of relatively low quality customers, different deal chasers, different, as I call them, not so affectionately, but when you have these Facebook groups, hundreds of thousands, 200,000 plus people all buying a lot of deal products, creating a bunch of different accounts, trying to figure out different ways of just getting essentially free products with sellers knowing what works for ranking. We want to offset and mitigate that, but then also get more cost- effective and reliable launches. And so, the way that we've done this, the way that we've tackled buyer quality is we look at two … We look at a number of different variables, but the two that we sort of flesh out is identifying what is the score … We actually give a rating for each individual customer, is we take a high confidence data point, in the form of a phone number, customer's phone number. I've had my phone number for more than a decade, it's as close I think as having somebody's name. It's really like this sticks with you for a very long time-

Ryan Cramer: crosstalk or Social Security number inaudible sometimes. Like when these babies nowadays are getting their cell phones like right out of the womb. So, anyways, continue.

Troy Johnson: That is true. That is true too. We're going to start asking them as soon as they're able to speak. But we capture that information, and usually we tie that in with some way we deliver value or engage with that customer. Again, ManyChat helps us to facilitate that. So, we'll capture the information. We'll then analyze that phone number, and first and foremost we'll make sure it's a real phone number. We can authenticate it. We can look at call activity, text activity. We can make sure it's not a virtual phone number. So, what that allows us to do, we do that thorough analysis, but what that lets sellers who use this type of feature know is that this person is who they say they are and they're not giving you junk data. So, that's important for letting them into things like your offers, but also just knowing that you're dealing with a real person at the end of the day. So, we'll give a rating for that to inform what type of data you're capturing from this customer. And I guess I should note, since we use SMS that's another part of the equation. If you have a junk phone number, not real phone number or one that is fraudulent in any way, that gets devalued, because we love to text our customers 90%, 95% open rates, as you mentioned we're all on our phones way too much, way too early, way too young, but that's the reality and that's a way we can support, engage our customers. So, that's the first part of the rating. And then, the second is we look at all known purchase and buying activity for that customer to be able to see, is there an abundance of let's say cancel orders, refund orders, promotional activity? Do we see that they've ended up … Excuse me. Another feature of ours is a kind of a deny list. So, if another seller. Let's say seller A says this customer is lower quality, we've seen negative activity. We've seen them try to abuse deals. If they're on a deny list for another brand, we can watch, monitor that, and attribute that to a customer. And let the seller know, " Hey, that's impacted their rating. It's up to you if you want to re- engage them via email, via text message." But at least you know that we've given them a rating let's say of a C, because we've noticed that type of purchase and buying crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: They've cheated on their test before, beware they might do it again. Yeah.

Troy Johnson: Exactly. Yeah. And then, this for us, one of the ways that we used to approach things with our deny list is we would just look at people that would … We'd have these really great deals, if we'd launched, maybe run a rebate type of campaign, we'd have people that would try to abuse those types of deals where they try to get as much product as they can. And the spirit of the deny list let's just say, " Well, let's remove kind of those low quality actors, low quality buyers."

Ryan Cramer: Of course.

Troy Johnson: Where this kind of really flips things, and says, " Well, if I want customers that give us a really quality, great phone number that we can validate, confirm, and look as the high confidence metric that it is. We'll give them an A for that rating. And then, if we see really organic quality buying and purchase activity for that customer, we may give them an A rating there." So, they're a double A rated customer. And we may say, " We only want to send out these emails, these offers to double A rated customers." It's a quality focused approach for buyer quality that like I said, on the review wipes and those types of things, mitigating negative activity associated to an account, but then also we'll have to see it scale. This is an open question. Again, where once we roll this out and we see a wide variety of categories, we see a lot of variety of brands using this at a high level that this is going to really prove out. Where we, again, see higher quality customers being important, inherently important. It's something we want as brands ourselves and as sellers, but creating more cost- effective reliable launches is like another big piece of that equation.

Ryan Cramer: Would you be able to, so the data you're capturing obviously, it's so many different data points. Would it be … Is it something in the future where if you got access to a social sign in, for example, when you created an account, you say, " Sign in with my Google account or sign in with my Facebook." Could you in theory pull those data points as well and make, see there's, without being, obviously, very creepy about it, see social activity engagement, things like that, like groups they might be a part of or something in that capacity that would also attribute to the quality score?

Troy Johnson: It could be possible. The way that we approach it right now, sort of the 1.0 is we take the known Amazon data. So, usually, we will tie this in when they provide us their Amazon order ID. And that sort of, it's a elegant opt- in because they've purchased from us on Amazon, we're just simply asking for, " Hey, give us what unique attribute comes out of that transaction." And then, that starts to begin painting that picture of that customer profile. And then, that fingerprint, and this is where it has really cool implications is we're going to integrate this feature alongside launch platforms to where once, as a matter of fact, they see a ton of throughput, a lot of buyers, a lot of purchase activity. Well, if we're fingerprinting all of these customers and it's that simple of a step of just simply plugging in the order ID, you get the opt- ins, you get the customer visibility, and you get the scale that really informs more of that purchase activity. So, I think with future iterations, we'll have to see where we can bolt on other known data, but this is a really easy way of saying, " Hey, these are some of the things that we sort of look out for, anyway. We try to manually do or look in our seller central for just our orders." But because we can sort of crowd source these insights, it paints a more of a picture of that customer and their purchase activity.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. I love that. And like you said, the phone number is probably the most basic number and the most true thing in terms of data that you can get like a lot of us have maybe, I forget what the statistic is of how many different email addresses you have tied to yourself, personal business, all that fun stuff. So, in theory, that true cell phone data that almost every person has can tie back to that customer, in theory, and create that thumb print. Like you said that's really cool. I think that's such a unique look at now that Amazon doesn't give you that data, you can start to work that process backwards. You can start to make it look like, all right, now, that I have this subset of group of people I can create look like audiences, either zip code, and because we have their area code now, zip code, area code, whatever that may look like and really start to see maybe my products doing well in the Northeast or Southwest or whatever that looks like. So, this is really, really neat. Does that work for just United States sellers or customers or is there an international tie into that or will that work for them as well?

Troy Johnson: It will.

Ryan Cramer: Okay.

Troy Johnson: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: Very cool.

Troy Johnson: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: Well, that's good to know. Of course. So-

Troy Johnson: Yeah. And it ties back in too to Robbie's question, because it's like once you have all that information, you may prioritize quality customers and say, " Well, this is a really great look- alike audience." And again, if we know a lot of people are opting out, you're having no visibility. And so, Facebook becomes this kind of uncertain landscape. Well, if you have all this known data that's customer specific that informs a great custom audience, lookalike audience, really effective way, and again, we've got brands that do retargeting as part of their post- purchase strategies. So, that's kind of how that ties into is that once you build all this data, how do you want to utilize it? What's another way of supporting, getting in front of customers, more promotional offers, reliably ranking? It opens up a number of doors.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. And you're adding to that win rate, which is, again, it was so unnaturally high, but then you can actually create that consistency win rate and keep it even higher. That floor becomes a lot higher, if you will, of people converting on your listings. So cool. I think I'm such a data nerd in this regards. I'm sure that's where I get a lot of our great feelings from what you're talking about here of what you guys are doing moving forward, is that kind of like the main focus going through us this year? As we're running out of time. Hey, creating quality candidates for you to help that loyal customer and brand grow, is that what you guys are focusing on most?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. Absolutely. Customer ownership is how do we build sort of solutions around that? Because I think a brand that has customer ownership and one that doesn't, that first brand is going to win every single day of the week. And that's really what we want to be able to support, but also some of the Amazon objectives that come with that, of negative review mitigation. So, we know negative reviews really crush, you do your review math and see when you get negative ratings and reviews, it can just wipe out the sustained success or potential sustained success for any one product. But then also the other side is when you can welcome reviews, you can welcome feedback, you can iterate based on customer feedback for new products. It can really start to feed into itself where, and I keep giving PPC a hard time, but you can tie in PPC to post- purchase strategies. What tends to be sort of challenging there is if you just throw all the weight on the front end, and then there is it's crickets on the back end, it's such a missed opportunity. That you lose the value when we've talked about per unit value and ROI, you've effectively experienced a cost to realize a transaction to have no continuity in that relationship. And that is a reality that I think, unless you have a ton of money to throw at Amazon and your brand presence, which most of us don't. It's going to be a shortcoming, a challenge, and something that's going to put brands behind if they don't create a full circle in that buying experience, in the pre and post- purchase strategies.

Ryan Cramer: I love it. Well, I mean I would love to kind of nerd out like this more. But I know we've already had our time limit here. Again, at Seller, seller. tools is the website. New rebrand, fresh looking website, you said there's more coming down the pipeline in terms of apps. Your app scan is going to look different, UI is going to look different. You guys have a lot going on so-

Troy Johnson: crosstalk

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. There's always like … I love inaudible. It has a special place in my heart when people are continuing to iterate. They don't just rely on just the old traditional data. It's how do you make it work best for you? How do you make it so that people can understand this is who my audience is, how can I continue to grow my brand? Those are the kinds of things. Where's innovation happening in SaaS and I think you guys are one of those leaders, for sure. So, if they want to reach out, of course, is that LinkedIn? What's the best way again if a listener wants to touch base with you?

Troy Johnson: Absolutely. Yeah. So, seller. tools. We have a Facebook group, FBA Kings. We're pretty active in there too, a great community for support and anything that we can … We love to riff, talk about a lot of these things. inaudible, we just did a presentation on that. So, would love to have you join us there. And then, reach out if there's anything that we can help you with inaudible at seller. tools. We've got a free Chrome extension, a bunch of other really free, very cool, but also free features. And as you mentioned, Ryan, we've got a lot of new stuff that's about to go live here too. So, we're really excited.

Ryan Cramer: Stay tuned. Yeah. Subscribe to the email list for sure and just keep up to date of all the different things that you guys are launching. Like I said, Troy, thanks again for hopping on as a friend of the show. As always, could talk for hours with you about all these kinds of different things you guys are doing, but anything else that you want to add today? Like you're kind of looking to Q3, is there anything that's crazy on your mind in the space or not in the space?

Troy Johnson: Yeah. I think I would double down on some of the things we touched on of sort of rerunning your numbers, making sure that you have the inventory readiness piece of the equation, because everything we touched on in terms of customer ownership and transactions, physical product business, it doesn't work very well without physical products. So, ironing all that out ahead of a pretty uncertain Q4 I think is really important. And then, stressing post- purchase and customer ownership of where you can really hang your hat on that to where there's continuity with your customer, there's the support. And that actually builds up a lot more brand equity and brand value too. One of the overlooked things is having that VIP list as an asset. That's almost put on your balance sheet when you come to these awesome aggregators, and say, " Hey, here's my value of my brand." Well, if I've got 10, 000 highly active rabid fans giving me feedback, willing to share, ready to take up any offers. That's a lot valuable, a lot more valuable than the opposite or somebody doesn't just have anybody, or doesn't have a community that's ready to engage and to interact with you as a brand.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. And they're higher quality too. They're not just numbers that you just collected. So, exciting stuff as always, man. Well, thanks so much for hopping on Crossover Commerce. And as always, reach out to Troy and connect with him on seller. tools is the website. Definitely check them out and get better data to back your brand up. That's why I takeaway always when I talk with Troy. So, thanks so much for hopping on, man.

Troy Johnson: Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate it.

Ryan Cramer: Awesome. And thank you everyone else for listening and watching Crossover Commerce episode 140. This is, again, my corner of the internet where I bring great minds like Troy to kind of demystify certain aspects of what selling on Amazon is like, but then also taking actionable steps away to apply to your business and move forward in a more profitable and more strategic way, I would call it. So, with that being said, next week is going to be crazy. Let me go ahead and clear my voice, because it's a lot. So, much happening here at Crossover Commerce and Ping Pong Payments. I'm going to have goodness gracious five episodes. My voice is already trembling, because we're going to have five episodes next week, all live, Monday through Friday, stay tuned, because it's going to be value packed with people in the ad space, Amazon space, logistics space. We're going to hit all the gauntlet. So, if you want to learn more about Amazon space and just level up, if that's not your topic, tune in the next day, because there's going to be so much content I'm going to be throwing your way. It's going to be fast, but make sure you subscribe to Ping Pong Payments social pages, either on Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn or you can follow myself, and that's where we will go live on those sessions. And again, you can follow and subscribe to Crossover Commerce on all your favorite podcast stations. Give a great thumbs up or review or share the favorite episodes that you encounter. And of course, rate those accordingly. Again, I'm not going to tell people. I want you to give honest and a fair feedback. So, if you don't like it or you think we can improve, definitely rate it accordingly. But, of course, five stars is always what I'm going for here. So, that being said, have a great weekend, everyone. Be safe out there. And of course, as always, thank you to Troy Johnson of Seller Tools on Crossover Commerce. We'll catch you guys next week. Take care.