Podcast transcript
Introduction
Hi, everyone, and welcome to a very special live episode of Marketplace Masters.
Paul Sonneveld
I am your host, Paul Sonneveld, and today's show is powered by MerchantSpring, the ultimate tool for marketplace analytics for agencies and vendors. Now, today, we are diving headfirst into the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, specifically how we can tackle the challenges faced by brands and agencies in boosting the performance of their Amazon Vendor channels. In fact, today we're going to zoom in on the power of data and how it can truly transform Vendor performance and profits.
Now, I do have some help today to help me do that. Joining me today are two phenomenal guests, Carina and Rob. They're here to shed light on the subject with their deep expertise and unique perspectives. So first off, let me introduce Carina. Carina is at the helm of eCommerce Nurse, a marketing consulting powerhouse dedicated to helping brands scale, especially in the digital realm of Amazon and beyond. With a rich background in retail and a staggering 20 years of experience, eight of which, I might add, were with Amazon, Carina is nothing short of a guru in strategic consulting, listing optimization, marketing, and so much more.
And then, of course, we have Rob. Rob is the Client Services Lead at eCommerce Nurse, who is the go-to guy for day-to-day Vendor account management. He has over 15 years of experience in brand development across various platforms. And Rob is the master of fostering team success and driving practical growth through data-led decisions. Now he's also an avid adventurer, enjoys the great outdoors and even competes in the British endurance championship races. Carina and Rob, welcome to the show. It's absolutely fantastic to have you here.
Carina Mcleod
Thank you. It's great to be here. And I'm really excited to be talking about this topic alongside yourself and Rob.
Paul Sonneveld
Excellent.
Robert Murrray
Thanks Paul, thank you for having us.
Paul Sonneveld
Likewise, likewise, I know it's lunchtime. So hopefully everyone managed to grab a bite to eat. And I guess it's 11am for you guys. 12 or 12pm here in Central Europe. So hopefully, yeah, yeah, let's get straight into it. So we're talking about data and when it comes to Amazon sellers, there's no shortage of analytics and data. And there's always another element to analyze and optimize and do all that. But for vendors, it's not always the case. So let's set the scene here. And can you start by just explaining the significance of Amazon's data landscape for Vendors? I mean, why should Vendors care?
Carina Mcleod
It's an interesting question because the landscape has changed quite dramatically over the last couple of years. Up until recently, as you've mentioned, there's always been a wealth of data available to sellers, but that data has been limited to vendors. They have really just had basic information around sales, traffic. Sometimes some Vendors haven't even had data around their traffic and their sessions. And so it's been extremely limited. There's always been, or for a number of years, APIs linked to the seller account, making it also easy for sellers to get hold of the data, to manipulate that data and put it more in a do the data visualization in appealing dashboards. However, that hasn't been the case for Vendor. It's been very much going into Vendor Central, downloading reports. And it just hasn't been, the data hasn't been available. And what data has been available hasn't necessarily been in the most user-friendly, presented in the most user-friendly of ways.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, I get it. So maybe just paint a picture for us. I mean, there's more data available now than there was, and there's more available via API. Maybe just paint a picture of that. What are the types of information that Amazon provides to me as a vendor? And what's available via dashboard versus maybe kind of API? Just broad-brush strokes would be really useful to understand this complex piece.
Carina Mcleod
Sure. The key pieces of information for Vendors right now is the retail analytics. And so retail analytics are going to look at your basic information. And this is all sales out information. So this is what has actually been sold to a customer. And that's often what gets can sometimes confused with the vendor reports is because a lot of Vendors are interested in what Amazon is purchasing, so the sales in. But what Amazon wants to show is what they've actually sold to the customer, so the sales out.
So, within retail analytics, you have the sales data, you're able to understand your inventory, you'll be able to look at your traffic, net PPM, which is really important for understanding profitability, and we'll definitely tap into that shortly, as well as the forecasting side of things. So those are the basics and the fundamentals of your account and that data being available.
You then have access, if you're a brand owner, which most Vendors will be brand owners, will be brand analytics. So, you have access to understand repeat purchases, which is particularly useful if you're in CPG categories or categories where repeat purchases is a fundamental part of your revenue stream, as well as search terms and market basket analysis. So, understanding how customers are basically working with your products, what else they're comparing products to and purchasing at the same time.
Paul Sonneveld
I understand. I understand. And sort of while we're on that topic, we often get into the kind of sourcing view versus manufacturing view as we sort of touching on retail analytics. I'm just wondering whether it's probably a little bit early on, but I want to sort of tackle that one head on Cause there's a lot of misunderstanding of what's the sourcing view and what's the manufacturing view. So, um, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Robert Murray
Do you want me to go on this one, Carina?
Carina Mcleod
Well, I'll let you. I've done a lot of talking, so of course I'll jump in because this is a hot topic and something I talk about a lot as well.
Robert Murray
Yeah, absolutely. No, it's a super important one in terms of sourcing versus manufacturing view. Sourcing view is Amazon's purchases from you as a vendor specifically. Manufacturing view, just to clarify, is your product sold by any vendors to Amazon. So, if there are other Vendors selling your products to Amazon, this view, the manufacturing view will show you the sales of all of those products. So specifically for your own reporting, you'll want to make sure you're using the sourcing view when you're running your retail reports.
Carina Mcleod
Awesome and I'm just going to jump in and add to that because the challenge with a lot of that is assuming that data is correct in your catalogue and what can often be the case and we often see this when we work with new clients we start trying to look at the data, and then we're like, well, you're the brand owner, but your manufacturer data doesn't actually align with your sourcing data or they don't even have access to manufacturing data, even though they're the brand owners.
So one key tip here for any Vendors is just making sure that the numbers do make sense and do add up. And if they don't, signing a ticket to Amazon and letting them know that certain ASINs if they're not coming up in your manufacture data but they are in your sourcing letting Amazon know that you're the brand owner. Now it might be because the brand name hasn't been set up correctly and you may need to correct that in the catalogue but it may just be some mapping in the back end on Amazon's side that they just need to map that correctly. So then those products will appear under the manufacturing view. So we often see that.
Or instead of an ASIN level, sometimes it's an account level where the system, for some reason, doesn't see that you're the manufacturer. So, you only have sourcing view available, which actually limits the amount of data you have, such as brand analytics, et cetera. And so, it's really important then to assign a ticket to Amazon and let them know that you are the brand owner, and you should have full manufacturing rights for the products that you're selling.
Paul Sonneveld
Can I just highlight to everyone this is a fantastic tip because we know like we probably get 20 questions a day from Amazon Vendors on this specifically this you know like the ASIN is not in my manufacturing view and we're actually find there's actually a lot more issues with the Amazon catalogue even ASINs being linked in the background to the wrong brand you know seeing lots of lots of challenges there so Unfortunately, it's work to resolve it, but it does get resolved. Actually, to me, it's surprising how many brand owners can't even see their manufacturing data to start, right? And they have to log a case and do all that. So, it's watch out.
Don't assume it's correct because it probably is not. I mean, it sounds a little bit pessimistic. I guess just looking at our own help desk and support queries on that front. That's really good tip, Carina. Thank you for that. Okay, so, you're managing lots of vendor accounts you really built a business around doing this, and are doing that very well. What are the things that you look at? Or, you know, what are the things that you would encourage Amazon Vendors to look at from a data point of view, in terms of what do you encourage them to look at a couple of times a week for maybe once a month in terms of managing and steering their business?
Carina Mcleod
I'll hand this one over to you, Rob, because you're managing the day-to-day with vendors, and then I'll jump in at the end.
Robert Murray
Yeah, absolutely. For clients who work with us specifically, we are looking at, we're checking the buy box, we're creating and uploading promotional activities and that kind of thing. But some of the more sort of fundamental things to look at maybe even initially when a client joins is I like to sort of look into the profitability of an account. So essentially looking at products within their listings, and running through those with the client to make sure that those listings are actually profitable. I know Carina mentioned we'll touch on that PPM later, but in terms of the day-to-day checks, really we want to make sure that top-selling items have the buy box, are buy box eligible. If the buy box has, or rather the featured offer has disappeared, raising cases of Amazon on that kind of thing, but really for the day-to-day running of the account it really is just making sure that those products are actually featured available and raising cases with Amazon if they're not for any reason.
Carina Mcleod
And I think that that's a brilliant point because I think we spend a lot of time focusing on what traffic have we driven to the listings? How have they converted? But the point Rob has highlighted is, first, you need to make sure the product is available. Because this is sometimes a very obvious point, but sometimes it gets missed because there's so much information on everything else. And so if you can't win the buy box or your product has gone into what we call CRAP, I love that acronym, status.
Paul Sonneveld
It's a genuine acronym, I thought it was something designed by industry.
*(all laugh)*
Carina Mcleod
It's so relevant as well, so Can't Realize A Profit. Because effectively, Amazon aren't going to reorder any inventory once it's gone into that status. And it can go into that status in many ways. It may be a profitable product, but all of a sudden, if they've price matched a product, it could be incorrectly, or you've got another retailer clearing that product, it drops into that. So it's really interesting, like you say, Rob, is that net PPM report, understanding profitability because that is what's something really vital to Amazon.
Amazon, gone are the days, so my background, very much vendor management. I was a vendor manager at Amazon from 2004 up until 2011. Profitability didn't mean much to us. We were growing the vendor site. We were growing, I was working in new categories and so the focus was growth. Then all of a sudden it became profitability and now it is all about profitability. So that's the first thing that Amazon is going to be looking at. They're not going to want to push any of your products if they're not generating the right net PPM for that category.
Now You'll probably, when I say that, the next question that people ask me is, what's that net PPM? And there is no specific number or magic number that you need to hit. It varies across category. It varies across brand. But you will see a pattern. And it's about, that's another thing with the data is understanding those patterns. And if you have a vendor manager, sometimes that vendor manager might be able to give you some insight into what PPM they expect. But that is something that's not always, always clear.
Paul Sonneveld
And just to help me understand, Carina, let's assume I know very little about Amazon Vendor. As an Amazon Vendor, where would I go to actually find out what is my current net PPM? Am I up or down? And I think it's a portfolio effect too, right? Like how do I get this at an ASIN level too? So I understand, what are the ASINs that are dragging me down in this overall measure? Or maybe it's more of a question for you, Rob. I know you're on the tools a lot more. So where do I find this as a vendor?
Robert Murray
Yeah, you should have access to the Net PPM data under your retail analytics and under the menu within Vendor Central, under retail analytics, there should be a tab for Net PPM. So, there you can actually go straight into the full list. You can compare your data from a prior period or year over year and see whether your net PPM is up or down. That can be across your whole catalogue and then you can narrow that down by ASIN as well so you can really dive deep into that data and sort of check which of your products are providing a reasonable profit for Amazon and which ones are potentially less profitable and you might even consider dare I say it removing those products from your catalog making those obsolete so that your PPM can be increased.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, and I thought I just want to add that I think correct me if I'm wrong but unless you've got manufacturing view of the data, you won't be able to get your net PPM
Robert Murray
Correct.
Paul Sonneveld
So if you were trying to click around there and say there's no tab for net PPM and vendor central. It's a good sign that actually you don't have access to the manufacturing view.
Robert Murray
Absolutely, it's based on manufacturing view.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, great. So I'd love to get into some practical things and specifics, right? And I'm sure there's a lot of Vendors here that just want to sort of tap into your knowledge, which I'm going to do unashamedly here.
*(all laugh)*
Paul Sonneveld
What are the pieces of data or insights that you love to dig into when you get a new client on the vendor side, in order to look for opportunities, quick wins, what would be your top five that you've come across that the data has tended to highlight for you. And of course, I'm thinking about like, you know, if you position such a way that others can replicate it even better, right?
Carina Mcleod
Yeah, definitely. We always will order an account. A key thing for me, and we're probably not necessarily going to be going in order of priority here, but one big thing for me is looking at that product mix and the product portfolio, because what can often happen is we get a new client that's got 100 products and we're like, whoa, 100 products, what ones do we focus on etc. etc. But actually first we want to understand are those 100 products actually selling because what often happens yes you've got the 80/20 rule but so we want to actually look at the share and sometimes what we find is we end up with this big catalogue but let's say 100 products, but five products are driving 80% of revenue.
So then that highlights a couple of things. It highlights opportunity for the rest of the catalogue, as in, why are these only five products? But it also means that's the start of us then starting to understand the reasons why. And as I mentioned, it could be that the rest of the range isn't optimized. It could be that those products have actually fallen into CRAP status. They're not profitable, et cetera. So that's one key thing is just understanding the mix. So that would be the first one. I'm going to hand it over to Rob. So we could probably go in one, two, three, four, five and share each of our points.
Robert Murray
Yeah, no, that's a really good point in terms of the revenue on each product as well. So, a really simple thing to do initially for our team is just to look at the overall revenue for a product mix. Obviously, we're helping optimize products from titles, bullet points, descriptions, and back-end search terms, review, and update. So we can immediately jump into those products and start optimizing those products and help driving the growth further for those. Obviously by doing a review of the infographics and the APlus pages and fully optimising those as well. Those will drive the growth of the products which were already popular within the vendor listings.
But then we'll obviously dive deeper into the product mix as well and start looking at products which could also be missing out currently based on the fact that they're not fully optimised and working through that list. So it's not necessarily a case of just fully optimising the most profitable listings or the highest revenue listings, but actually looking through that mix and seeing which other products, based on search term analysis actually have an opportunity and you can actually pull those out. And it can surprise you, but you can actually be pulling products from much further down your sales revenue list and optimising those to get results for your account.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, that's a great tip, especially to those that are really already maybe converting quite nicely, but low page views or vice versa, right?
Robert Murray
Absolutely.
Paul Sonneveld
Sort of segmented that way. Yeah.
Carina Mcleod
And that's when, with the part of looking at some of the key data points, so traffic is really important of understanding, there's a couple of things. If there's lots of traffic going to a listing, but that listing isn't converting into a sale, it's understanding why. So a lot of the initial stages, you can see it's all about being curious. It's about diving deep, looking at the data points, and then asking why. Why a few times, not just kind of surface why. And then really identifying the reasons for it. So it might be that there's lots of sessions, but it's not converting. So if it's got the traffic already, brilliant. Why isn't it converting? Is it because it's got negative reviews? Is it because the image isn't great? Et cetera, et cetera.
So really starting to look into that. It could be that a listing then is converting really well, and then you're thinking, OK, this has got a great conversion, but there's hardly any traffic. So why isn't there much traffic? Are we not pushing that? And then there's bringing in the Ad side of things as well. So a lot of it is looking at those data points and then trying to understand what looks a bit unusual, what doesn't look right, as in high sessions, really low conversion, or really high conversion and low traffic as well.
Now, I talk about conversion this is a very important metric that doesn't appear on Amazon's reports. It did appear on Amazon's reports, and then it vanished. And hopefully, it will come back, because you should probably see Amazon is streamlining the reports, and the reports are looking more similar to the Seller Central reports. But that is something that you'll need to manipulate in terms of to be able to understand your conversion. So, you will need to look at your traffic and do a calculation to understand out of your shipped, what has actually, your units, what has actually converted.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, this is a really good point, actually. I'd love to, we actually do this in our tool, unashamed to plug here, but I was going to say we do it, it's AI powered, but actually all we do is just take the units and divide it by either sessions or page views, depending on what metric you like.
Carina McLeod
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
It gives you a great view of how things convert on an ASIN level. And you can compare that to the rest of your category that you play in, or maybe, you know, if you operate across multiple categories, or you count average, and that will highlight some like where you're like completely under indexing. And maybe that's highlighting some opportunities. So yeah, not sure why they took it away. But clearly they did. A final insight from you, Rob, on this question.
Robert Murray
Yeah, I mean, and just on that point, don't forget to track the conversion as well. Obviously, it's great to run conversion at a specific point in time, but now looking at that over a period of time and seeing whether it's improving or whether it's decreasing as well, but keeping a track of that data.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, great point. So I want to ask you the reverse of this question. It's not technically the reverse, but as you deal with vendors, particularly in the early stages of your relationship. My question was, you already mentioned, Carina, that many Vendors don't even look at this data or they're very, like, purchase order focused, right? They don't really care too much about the sell-outs or the sell-in, and I guess that a lot of brands traditionally have been incentivized that way. Stuff leaving their factory, their warehouse, I get it. But, you know, at a more granular level, when it comes to using data, I mean, where do you see Vendors make the biggest mistakes or maybe, you know, not looking at certain data and therefore missing out on opportunities? I mean, where are you finding yourself having to educate them on specifically?
Robert Murray
For me, probably the most, I say surprising one, but it's an easy one to overlook. If you're typically a B2B business, then providing Amazon with a trade price might seem like the logical conclusion, but actually what you need to take into account is all of the fees associated with selling on Amazon. You might even want to go down to taking into account your shipping cost to Amazon, if the cost is on you to ship to Amazon. And take that into account when you're running your profitability analysis on the products that you ship to Amazon.
It might turn out that most, you know, some of your products are not even profitable enough to sell to Amazon once you take into consideration all of those fees. And so for me, the starting point is profitability in order to be able to scale the account effectively going forward as well. We could spend a huge amount of time optimizing products which make no money for you. So it's worth checking into that profitability first, making sure we've built that on a solid foundation.
Paul Sonneveld
Yup.
Carina Mcleod
And that's a huge thing because you do realize that you think that all Vendors are going to be on top of their numbers, but they're not necessarily on top of their numbers. And then you've got to take into account all these other charges that come into things. So profitability is key. I think the other thing that we often see is how manual vendors are work, basically, they're not automating a lot of the reporting. And so I see it where they're downloading, exporting the Excel, manually manipulating the data to figure it out. And there's no automation.
And one key thing there is anything that you're doing multiple times every week or every day, that should be automated because you're then spending so much time trying to automate it, you're not leaving enough time to actually look at the data. And that is vital is if you can have an automated solution for as many reports as possible, great. That time should then be spent into being curious and looking at the data and understanding what isn't working, what you can what is working, what you can scale up on. And so that's something really is really important.
And also, aside from automate, there's another point is don't isolate either the data that you're looking at, what can sometimes happen is Vendors become very fixated on the data with Amazon, but lose the bigger picture. Because Amazon is one channel, within the online world or within the retail world. And it's really important that brands and Vendors are understanding what's going on in the overall market as well. Understanding their market share, understanding where they sit with the competition as well.
So it's really important that Vendors are not only looking at the Amazon data, but they're looking at wider data outside and then taking into account those market insights as well. But also looking into that on Amazon to really understand you could, we've had it where Vendors have these crazy targets, but you've got to make sure that those targets are achievable within the channel that you're working in and what market share is going to be possible, what sales are possible, understanding what top sellers are doing within that category and understanding the opportunity there as well.
And whether or you know, I won't go on to mix, but there's all sorts of product development that you can do that Vendors also don't look at in terms of being very focused on selling the same product across all platforms, whereas actually Amazon also, you should be looking at it as an opportunity for being creative as well with your product range. That's a whole other subject, and I realize I've just been talking quite a bit, so I will leave it there.
*(all laugh)*
Paul Sonneveld
I hope you had a really great talk on that. I dropped off. Hopefully we'll be all right before the end of it. We're still live, so luckily you've tuned in. As you went by, I don't know what happened in the last 20 seconds, but nothing happened. Hey, as we finish up, and there's a couple of questions that I'd like to pick up as well, but what Amazon vendor data, you know, if you sort of draw a trajectory, yes, lots of investment on Amazon seller, lots of APIs, Amazon vendor, you know, a lot more than we used to have. So the trajectory is definitely positive, where do you think, you know, if you had to sort of read the mind of the Amazon vendor data team at Amazon, what do you think is spinning up there?
Carina Mcleod
Oh I love this, the speculating on where things are happening. I think I touched on this briefly earlier, like if you start looking at, I find it really interesting because my background from my days at Amazon was, I was part of the launch of Vendor Central and it was never plan to be where it is now. So it's really interesting to see the dynamics change. But Vendor almost was kind of taking the lead if you see it as a, not that it should be seen as competition, but then it took a real back step and Seller just boomed basically. It was not expected, it boomed, they had all the right tools in place and it's almost like Vendor got forgotten about.
That's no longer the case and you are starting to see reports being more streamlined in the sense that there's more consistency in terms of the look and feel between seller and vendor. The platforms are looking very similar as well. So in terms of that direction, hopefully Amazon is also realising, they're providing more data, especially on the advertising side, you've got Amazon Marketing Cloud, all of these different things where Amazon is providing more data. So hopefully Amazon starts providing more insights on the vendor side to make it almost an equal playing field with Seller. But that's really sort of, that's my penny's worth as in providing more data. They've got the APIs now, having more consistency between how reports look on Seller versus Vendor and almost having similar amount of data available. But I'll let Rob, Rob, do you have a speculation as well?
Robert Murray
I don't think I do really. I mean there's so many changes happening all the time. I think for me us taking control, I mean I'd say this is slightly pedantic probably, but us taking control of what data we do have and providing snapshot reports for our clients is the most important thing that we can do so that we can help grow the account with the data we currently have. And staying on top of any changes that we see on Amazon Vendor Central and making sure that we incorporate those into reports as soon as they go live as quickly as we can and roll that out across our clients as well. Yeah, so we spend more time on what is available and just jump to it when Amazon make a change that we can add to reporting.
Paul Sonneveld
Excellent. All right. Well, we're at half an hour, which is usually like a cutoff point, but we do have a couple of questions in the chat. Some of them are like slightly outside the topic, but I know we're sort of, you know, given your expertise, we should probably just have a crack at them anyway.
So let's start off with The one that's just come in from Francesco. Thank you very much for your question there, Francesco. He actually has two. So he likes to challenge us. One, what's your perspective on giving Amazon a selection of exclusive products? Is it profitable and useful in terms of channel management? And two, taking more of a pan-EU management perspective, do you think that the RSP should be the same in all countries? So maybe just start with the exclusive product question first, and then we'll talk about kind of RSPs on a pan-European basis. Who wants to take the first one?
Carina Mcleod
I'm happy to take it. I mean, in terms of exclusivity, it's very case by case. It depends why you're going exclusive. If, for example, you are finding that you have products in lots of different retailers, and you are finding that there are challenges on the pricing side of things, as in pricing is basically Amazon is price matching other retailers, prices are dropping, and then Amazon is ending up not being, your products aren't being profitable, potentially products are going into CRAP status, then you do need to rethink your range, because if you can't get a profitable range on Amazon, then it may be that you need to look down, look at exclusives. It also just gives you that.
And so a lot of the reasons why many brands will look into exclusives is down to that profitability, but also not having that conflict with other channels and other customers and retailers. So, a lot depends on sort of what your setup is. There's never a yes or completely no answer. It’s very much case by case is trying to identify the reason why you want to do exclusive in the first place and what your overall objective is and the challenges that you're currently facing on Amazon to decide whether exclusivity makes sense for your brand.
Robert Murray
Just to add to that as well, I think a lot of the time with some brands they approach the idea of exclusives because they don't necessarily have as much control as they'd like over their supply chain, so perhaps there's other third-party sellers selling their products etc. Always best in that situation to take control of the supply chain if at all possible and limit supply through potential third-party sellers if you can.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you. Thank you both. Let's get into the second part of that question, which was really around PAN EU pricing, right? And should the RSP be the same across all countries? Sounds like a yes or no question, but I suspect it might not be.
Carina Mcleod
I would say the part here is you're setting retail prices based on certain margins that you need to achieve. And I guess the big question is here, can you achieve the same margin by having the same pricing across all marketplaces? Because you know, it's going to be, it really depends where you're holding inventory, what country you're going to have holding that inventory as well. So again, there's no sort of yes or no answer. I think you always have to analyse and look into it in different ways, but also identifying, okay, if we don't have the same retail price, but we're able to keep the right margin, what's the impact of that? Does that mean that Amazon's then going to start sourcing product from another marketplace instead of our marketplace? How does that work? Will that cause conflict across territories, et cetera?
So it's understanding the pros and cons to both sides. The same as if you have the same price across all countries, then it may eliminate the need for Amazon to be sourcing in different countries. But at the same time, are you impacting profitability and your margins in a certain marketplace as a result? So always these questions is down to, and this is what's really important for us to find, is understanding your setup, your infrastructure, how you're managing it all, and also your goals and your objectives as well. And that's why there's always never a yes or no, because it's like, it's me always wanting to dissect everything.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, for sure. So actually, my last question here, sort of slightly off the kind of data analytics piece, but I think it's interesting in light of what you just said before. And it's something I've wondered about. It comes from Emil, and he's asking, I'm just trying to bring it up here. Can you explain global listing settings as an alternative to a PAN EU account? Can you sell across Europe using the global listing setting instead of enrolling in the PAN EU program? Slightly off topic in terms of today, but I'm sure you have a view, so I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
Carina Mcleod
Yeah, just done that. And I'm not sure if that's relating more to vendor or seller. But I'm a fan of taking a bit of the slow approach and making sure that the listings are completely right. Not that I don't trust the tool, but any automation that you get, you set up one listing and things will automatically be translated into another language doesn't always work out right. You've got to also factor in costs and everything. So, I'm always one of take a slow approach, manage those accounts all separately and get it right from day one. In terms of and I assume that's what the question sort of relates to in terms of the setup. I might be reading that incorrectly. But unless Rob, do you see that question from a different perspective?
Robert Murray
No, I took the same view on that as yourself, the slower approach as opposed to just applying listings changes across all locales. Actually, it's better to take control of that by locale.
Carina Mcleod
And just to add to that, just in terms of international, because this is a big topic of mine as well. Amazon sells a global dream as in making it really sound very easy to go into all marketplaces and to list your product in all marketplaces but really every marketplace is different and it's just really important that there is no blanket approach to global, you are going to need to treat each marketplace differently if you really want to get full results from that specific marketplace. You could try using these tools and get a few sales here, there in these marketplaces, but if you want to do a great job and really master it in that marketplace, you need to treat it completely as separate. Yes, there'll be a little bits of overlaps in terms of strategies, but and that sort of also links to our slow and get it right approach as well.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you very much, Carina. That's unfortunately all we've got time for. So we're going to have to leave it there for today. But I want to just thank both of you, Carina and Rob, for really joining me today. Appreciate your insights. They've really illuminated the complexities of Amazon Vendor and data and analytics. And it feels like we're just sort of touching the surface here. Your contribution is certainly being invaluable. Now, I always ask for those that are listening, tuning in either live or watching this on demand later, they want to get a hold of you, maybe explore some of these topics at a deeper level. What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Carina Mcleod
Yeah, the best way is to go to our website. So if you go to ecommercenurse.com, click on contact us and just ask your question or just say that you want to chat with somebody at eCommerce Nurse and somebody will get back to you and set up a call to talk further.
Paul Sonneveld
Fantastic. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Carina Mcleod
And thank you so much for the invite and for all listeners.
Paul Sonneveld
Till next time. Take care.
Robert Murray
Thanks Paul!
Paul Sonneveld
Well, that is a wrap for today's Marketplace Masters. Sincere thank you to everyone who tuned in today, especially those who asked us questions. Apologies, we didn't get to all of them. There were a couple left there. We've unpacked a lot of content around Amazon vendor operations, driving sales, and we hope that today you're walking away with some really actionable insights.
For more deep dives like this one, don't forget to visit our on-demand library on our website, that's merchantspring.io. It's brimming with knowledge and content and available free of charge for anyone who's interested. And of course, remember, if analytics is your next frontier, we are here as MerchantSpring to guide you through some of the metrics we spoke about, we provide through our platform, and we'd love to talk to you about how we can help you on that front.
Lastly, I'm always keen to hear from you. If you've got a great Amazon vendor topic, or you know a great speaker or expert, please drop me a note on LinkedIn and I'm sure to get in touch. Until we meet again, thank you and continue to push those boundaries and continue to innovate. Take care.
