You sell products 24/7. As an Amazon seller, how do you maintain and manage communication with your Amazon customers after a sale in a timely fashion? And how do you do so in a way that will promote positive seller feedback and positive product reviews?! One way is to employ automated, sequenced emails and review requests with Helium 10.
Using Helium 10's Follow-Up tool, you can create, customize, and schedule emails to your Amazon buyers. The tool also helps you adhere to Amazon's Terms of Service (TOS) and Communication Guidelines.
First, ensure you complete all the steps to 1) link your Amazon Seller Central account with your Helium 10 account, and 2) add the Helium 10 Follow-Up email addresses to your authorized messaging section on your Amazon Seller Central account. For more assistance with this, review this video.
To get to Follow-Up, sign in to Helium 10 and click on Follow-Up in the top navigation bar.
Dashboard
The left-hand navigation bar contains tabs that link to all the pages that are available within Follow-Up: Dashboard, Orders, Email Automation, Email Templates, Product Ratings, Blacklists, and Settings.
The Tracked Product Ratings chart shows you statistics on products that you are currently tracking, and how well your orders and review requests are converting into ratings/reviews. You can enable products that will be included in these statistics by going to the Product Ratings tab and clicking the toggle to ON. This will start collecting product ratings/reviews data for each product you enable.
The Reviews Requested chart shows you the number of reviews you’ve requested using Follow-Up, which includes when you request a review using Amazon’s templated email, and when you use your own custom email template to request a product review.
The Messages Sent chart shows you the number of messages you’ve sent, queued (aka scheduled), canceled, those that have an error, and those where the buyer has opted out of proactive buyer-seller communications (meaning your message was not able to be delivered to that buyer).
The Placed Orders chart shows you the number of orders that were placed.
The Opt-out rate widget shows you the number and percent of your messages where the buyer opted out of proactive buyer-seller communications (meaning your message was not able to be delivered to that buyer).
At the top right, you’ll find a widget that shows you the number of messages you’ve sent in the current billing month of your subscription, along with the number of lifetime message credits you have in your account. By clicking that widget, you’ll see an in-depth breakdown of how many messages you get per monthly billing period, when your monthly message limit will reset, how many of your message limit you’ve used, as well as how many lifetime message credits you have remaining and have used.
The date picker on the Dashboard will allow you to change the date range of all of the data you see on the Dashboard, with the exception of the monthly message widget at the top right.
The marketplace drop-down on the Dashboard will allow you to select a specific marketplace, which will allow you to see marketplace-specific data on your Dashboard as well.
Orders
The Orders page in Follow-Up lets you see all the orders Amazon has in its system for the account that you've linked to Helium 10. By default, all placed, shipped, delivered, returned, and refunded orders will be on your Orders page.
You can filter what orders you see using the Filters section at the top of the page. You can use the Order Status filter to only display orders that have been delivered or any other status. You can use the Message Status filter to only display orders that have a message that has been sent, orders that you have sent Amazon’s review request template for, or any other message status. You can use the Automations Used filter to only display orders that have used a particular automation that you’ve created in Follow-Up. You can use the FBA/FBM filter to filter orders by fulfillment type.
To see more details on the messages and review requests you have queued, sent, or canceled, you can click the drop-down arrow next to the product image for an order to see the list of messages you have for this order, along with the statuses and date/times for each.
From the order details column, you can click into the automation templates you’ve created and/or used for an order to view/edit the email template and automation in Follow-Up.
Note: changing automations and email templates will only affect future orders, not the current order’s messages.
To see more shipping details for an order, just hover over the Shipping Details tooltip to see more info.
To manually send a message, request a review, blacklist, or cancel messages for an order, simply click the checkbox next to an order and click the button that corresponds to the action. You can also select multiple orders to do these actions in bulk for more than one order at a time.
You can also use the search bar on the Orders page to search for a product title, order number, or other fields within an order.
Email Automation
The email automation page is used to create automated workflows that will trigger messages and/or review requests to be delivered to your Amazon buyers when an event occurs. For example, when an order is delivered, Follow-Up can schedule a request for a product review to be delivered to your buyer automatically, using an automation.
At the top of the page, you’ll find the Filters section. The Automation Status filter allows you to filter by active and paused automations. Active automations mean that they will run all the time. Paused automations mean they will not run until they are set to active. The trigger filter allows you to filter on the trigger event that your automations use: Order Shipped, Order Delivered, Order Returned, or Order Refunded. The Tags filter allows you to search for automations that you’ve manually tagged yourself - this is a helpful way to better organize your automations, if you choose to have several.
You can create a new automation by clicking the New Automation button at the top-right.
You can select from the following options:
-
- Create Automation from Scratch will be a blank automation for you to custom build on your own
- Request a Review will allow you to edit Follow-Up’s premade automation, which is built to request a product review 12 days after an order is placed
- Returned Orders will allow you to edit Follow-Up’s premade automation, which is built to send an engaging message to all buyers who have returned an order
- Refunded Orders will allow you to edit Follow-Up’s premade automation, which is built to send an engaging message to all buyers who have gotten a refund for an order
- Generic Returned Orders will allow you to edit Follow-Up’s premade automation, which is built to send a message to all buyers who have returned an order that was not highly discounted
- Refunded Orders will allow you to edit Follow-Up’s premade automation, which is built to send a message to all buyers who have received a refund for an order that was not highly discounted
The Order Filters can be used to filter on or filter out the orders that you want your automation to work for. To add a filter, click Add New Filter and choose which filter you’d like to apply to your orders for your automation.
Click to select the filter you’d like to apply, and then click Add Filter to see what options you have for each filter type.
The filters you have selected and applied to your automation will appear under the Order Filters section in the automation editor.
The Automation Timelines is where you’ll select the trigger you want to use to tell your automation to start, the wait time you want to apply before an action and the action you would like the automation to perform for you.
You can choose from four different automation triggers:
-
- Order Shipped will trigger your automation to start when one of your orders goes from placed to shipped status in Amazon’s system.
- Order Delivered will trigger your automation to start when one of your orders goes from shipped to delivered in Amazon’s system.
- Order returned will trigger your automation to start when one of your orders has been returned.
- Order refunded will trigger your automation to start when one of your orders has been refunded to the buyer.
You can apply a wait time between the trigger and the action you’d like to take by clicking Add New Action, selecting Wait, and then Add Action to confirm.
You will have the option to select how many days you’d like your automation to wait before taking action.
Note: The Request a Review action requires that you wait between 12 and 29 days after the Order Placed date that Amazon has in their system. Don’t worry, Follow-Up will only let you select that range for the Request a Review action.
Lastly, you can select what action you’d like performed in your automation by clicking Add New Action and choosing between Send Mail (meaning, send a custom message) and Amazon’s Request a Review. You can create your own custom messages in the Email Templates tab in Follow-Up, which can be used in the Send Mail action in your automations.
To save your automation, click Save and Exit. This will bring you back to your list of automations.
Note: by default, an automation will be Paused. To get your automation to start running, click the Status toggle to switch your automation from Paused to Active.
Email Templates
The Email Templates page allows you to create custom email templates, which can be used in your automations as a Send Mail action.
You can filter your list of email templates by template type and language. There are two template types: your templates and premade templates. Your templates are email templates you’ve created yourself. Premade templates are Follow-Up’s email templates that you can choose to use instead of creating your own.
Below the New Email Template button at the top right, you’ll find the Product Short Names section. This is an optional configuration you can set up - if you’d like to include the product name in your email templates but don’t want to use the long-tail product name most Amazon products have, you can set what you’d like the Short Name for that product to be and appear as in your emails to your buyers.
In your list of email templates, you’ll find a preview, template name, template language, template type, and any tags you have added within your email template.
To preview a template's appearance, click the screenshot image in the list view. To edit a template, click the pencil icon to begin editing.
New Email Template
Template Tags: You can add dynamic "tags" or pieces of information that will automatically update based on the order or product information in Seller Central.
Once you create a customized email template, you can insert these coded tags by clicking the ‘insert tag’ button.
Here is an example of a customized email template where Order- ID and Link – Product Review tags were used:
Below are the following template tags and their usage:
| Product-Related Tags | |
| Product – Name | Displays the name of the product |
| Product – Short Name | Displays a shorter version of the product name, as specified for your product. |
| Product – SKU | Inserts the product’s SKU. |
| Product – Price | Shows the price of the product. |
| Order-Related Tags | |
| Order – ID | Populates the unique Order ID for the buyer’s order. |
| Order – Quantity | Indicates the quantity of items purchased. |
| Order – Purchase Date | Uses the international date format (YYYY-MM-DD) for the purchase date. |
| Order – Estimated Arrival | Uses the international date format (YYYY-MM-DD) for the estimated arrival date. |
| Link Tags | |
| Link – Feedback | Directs buyers to your Amazon storefront. |
| Link – Contact | Opens Amazon's messaging system, allowing buyers to contact you directly with concerns or questions about the product. |
| Link – Product Review | Directs buyers to Amazon’s product review page. |
Please remember that template tags will only function if the email is associated with a logged-in Amazon account and a verified order for one of your Amazon products. Hence, you may notice that some tags, such as review and contact links, do not work from the test emails that you sent.
Product Ratings
The Product Ratings page will list all of your products, separated by marketplaces. If you have an ASIN across multiple marketplaces, that ASIN will appear multiple times in your product list, once for each marketplace it is in.
The Product Ratings page is used to track products and their ratings and reviews over time, in order to see how they are performing. This can also help see if Follow-Up automations are working to get you more product ratings and reviews.
To get ratings and reviews data on your products into Follow-Up, simply click the Enablement toggle to switch it from Disabled to Enabled. Once you turn the product ON, Follow-Up will start pulling in ratings and reviews data every day while it remains ON.
To view more detailed information on a product’s ratings and reviews, you can click the graph icon to the left of the product image. This will bring you to the details page for that product on a specific marketplace.
At the top of the Product Ratings details page for a product, you’ll find a date picker. You can pick a different date range to view how your product ratings and reviews have changed over time.
The top-left widget will show you the current rating, the number of ratings, and a breakdown of your product's star ratings.
The three widgets to the right will show your product’s rating score, number of ratings received, number of orders that have been delivered, and number of reviews you’ve requested using Follow-Up for Yesterday, the Last 7 Days, and the Last 30 Days, respectively.
Below that, you’ll see the Ratings Conversion Breakdown. This will show you the number of reviews you’ve requested during the selected date range you have selected at the top of the page, as well as the number of reviews received, the rating score for your product, the number of delivered orders, returned orders, and refunded orders in that time frame. The other two metrics to the right will show you the request to review conversion rate and the order to review conversion rate for this product. This is helpful to better understand how well your review requests are converting into a rating left by a buyer and how well your orders are converting into a rating overall (even if you’re not requesting a review for all orders).
Below this, you’ll find the Ratings chart. The Ratings chart will show you the total counts of reviews requested and ratings received over time, with a breakdown of 1-5 star ratings.
Next, you’ll find the Review Statistics chart. The Review Statistics Chart will show you the comparison of orders delivered, ratings requested, and ratings received over the selected timeframe.
Lastly, you’ll find the Rating Velocity chart. The Rating Velocity chart shows you the rolling 30-day volume of ratings received. This is a good indication of the rate of ratings you are receiving, and if it is going up or down.
Note: This should also be compared to the chart above - if you have fewer orders, chances are you may have fewer ratings that you are receiving.
Blacklists
The Blacklists page shows you the orders and Buyer IDs that you have blacklisted either automatically or manually.
You can automatically blacklist refunded orders on the Settings page (last tab in the Follow-up side navigation). To manually blacklist orders, you should go to the Orders page, select the order(s) in the list you’d like to blacklist from delivering messages to, and click the Blacklist button. All blacklisted orders/buyers will not receive any communications from Follow-Up once they have been blacklisted - Follow-Up will cancel any queued messages that have a blacklisted order/buyer.
Settings
The Settings page allows you to configure and manage the Follow-Up tool for your account.
The Connected Marketplaces will display all available marketplaces based on your connected seller account(s).
The Advanced Settings allow you to enter a default test message email. You can use this in the Email Templates editor to see what your emails will look like before sending them to buyers.
Here, you can also select whether or not you’d like refunded orders to be automatically blacklisted or not.
You can also choose to disable Follow-Up mail delivery. When clicking Disable Follow-Up Delivery, you will be asked if you would like to clear all queued messages or just pause all automations.
Comments
Article is closed for comments.