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Danny and the team cover ranking factors and lift the lid on this current spate of suspensions and the ‘real’ factors that are driving them as the data unfolds on discount levels and sales velocity.
- Running a poll on Facebook Live in the Ranking Sessions webinar
- From the poll 100% that No-one can prove that promotions or URLs are causing suspensions
- Are rebates within terms of service poll got a 50/50 vote
Amazon’s view
- Danny was at Amazon a week ago and they said no-one has ever been suspended for a URL or a promotion
- It is always something else that’s caused the suspension
- People in the groups don’t give all the information
- Does not mean that Amazon won’t change ToS in the future
Casey’s view
- Bias as run a launch service
- Launches are 8% of the business currently
- Focus is giving sellers strategies
- Suspensions we’re seeing:
- Largely new accounts
- Sales velocity limits has been around a while
- The way AMazon is now enforcing is different
- When a seller hits this 30 day limit or sales history and if the cap is exceeded then it triggers a manual review and this drives the suspensions as things get uncovered
- Biggest factors includes ‘collusion’ with people using multiple buyer accounts to grab multiple discounts from one single promotion and then use arbitrage off these products sell them on and this looks like gaming the system and colluding
- Also when Amazon go into the account they are looking at email followup sequence – it is these factors that are driving the suspensions
Discount Level Trigger?
- Not figured out if there’s a significant portion of sales are at the 90% or significant discount
- Viral launch have moved all promotions to 65% off and had no issues
- Could be:
- a barrier around 70% + discount coupons driven sales volume is significant which triggers a manual review that finds something else that triggers the suspension OR…
- the hijackers are no longer incentivised to make all these purchases because the margin is being eroded by the less significant discounts
- Seen people get in trouble for using canonical URLs and ranking factors – don’t think it’s anything to do with URLs
Liran’s view
- Pretty much agree with Casey’s view
- Seen suspensions from people just running Facebook ads too, so not just Launch Services
- Liran seeing people who opened in last 6 months and giving 90%+ discounts
- These factors seem to be triggering Amazon looking into people’s accounts
- Use multiple strategies and not just 80-90% off giveaways
- Use PPC first for ranking factors and then once ranked in page 2-5
- Then try a search-find-buy and a backend promotion should work well
Dan Ashburn’s view
- Got the Buyers and the Buyer history
- The promotion and the level of discount in the bigger picture of the entire promotion (of 100 units how many were 90% off?)
- Also then the velocity trigger as well
- Are these buyer accounts impacting your listing and what’s their history
- Don’t think it’s the link – to Amazon it’s just a session
- When running your promotion you can’t be a one-trick pony
- If Amazon see a big spike in velocity and every item is 90% off then of course it’s going to raise flags
- Then if all the buyers have two years of buying 90% off products then it’s bound to set alarm bells off
- Dan was in China recently and two Sellers got hit with suspensions, they were new sellers and had high velocity from using a launch service and another service – it was the spike that triggered it
