😵‍💫 Feeling Lost?

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🚀 This Week's Amazon Hack: Stop Cart Abandoners in Their Tracks

Amazon has made it easier than ever to target those annoying cart abandoners. These are those chronic "browsers" who add all sorts of things to their cart and never checkout. Super annoying...

Amazon took their cues from Shopify on this one and rolled out an entire guide on how to target these potential customers. While this is not an entirely recent thing, I wanted to bring some attention to it because it's criminally underrated.

First, what is a "Cart Abandoner"? These are people who have added your products to their cart in the last 90 days BUT have never checked out.

These are the "extra special" customers that need a little nudge.

In a nutshell, you will create exclusive discounts for these shoppers. Amazon groups them into what's called the "Cart Remarketing" audience.

Promotions can be used to bring in new customers and/or be used to cross-sell and target customers who have purchased related products to yours.

This is really a goldmine of data that Amazon has given sellers and very few actually take the time to use it!

To stack on top of this hack, you can use Brand Tailored promotions to re-engage cart abandoners. Follow up with proper tracking and voila! You can now make a pretty accurate prediction on which customer segment will grow in the next year.

A 10% increase in customer retention can boost your profits by 120%. Yes, you read that right. But it's not for the faint of heart. There is a ton of data analysis that has to happen to make this hack viable.

I have seen some brands nail these promotions down and realize 5-figure sales numbers. The reality is that there is a ridiculous amount of money sitting in someone's cart.

Amazon's guide that I have linked above is a bit long so save it for some nice, relaxing evening reading. Get ready to nerd out.

🔥 Hot Amazon Seller News: Amazon Raises Fees AGAIN

But it's not in the way you expected. It's much more sinister. Amazon promised not to raise FBA fees in 2025 but what they never promised was not to raise fees in other creative ways.

I'll be honest, I think you should sit down to read this. You might get pretty upset.

So, what happened? In a nutshell, deals and coupons just got freaking expensive. The only winners in all of this are low-volume sellers.
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In a stunning money grab, Amazon is letting the world know that they want small sellers gone and only want larger brands to stick around. Can’t pay the mafia? Tough luck.
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👉 The details:
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😭 Lightning Deals: Used to cost $150 fixed, now $70 per day + 1% of sales (capped at $2,000).
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😭 Best Deals: Used to cost $300 for 7 days, now $70 per day + 1% of sales (ouch!) And there's no CAP!
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😭 Coupons: Used to be $0.60 per unit redeemed, now $5 per coupon + 2.5% of sales.
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😭 Prime Discounts: Doubled from $50 to $100 per PED.
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If you’re slightly depressed after reading this, that’s OK, we all are.
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What’s crazy about this is that their FBA arm produces almost no meaningful profit for Amazon. Their money printer is AWS. So why is Amazon squeezing sellers like never before? I chalk it up to bad leadership completely disconnected from the average seller on their platform.
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I also think that Amazon is spoiled by the fact that most of their sellers are Chinese and never complain about anything. Maybe Amazon assumes that their silence has more weight than that of American sellers. Who knows.
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Whatever the case may be, this is a margin game. Sub-$20 players are in serious trouble. If you have read any of my posts in the last 4 years you’d know that I recommend $50-$200 products with healthy margins to soak up these “X factors.”

This is one MASSIVE cash grab by Amazon. There's no other way to word it. Andy Jassy is coming for your margin.

🤜 How to fight back:

• More math. Before running deals, you're going to have to do some extra projecting and double-checking to see if the ROI is worth your time and money. In other words, you need to be more calculated going forward. Focus on your hero listings. Amazon is going to punish you for high-performing deals and coupons. The modern day mafia strikes again.

It's all of us against Amazon.

Jon Elder

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