This Issue's TLDR...

• Steal my super simple, and super cheap, approach to dynamic pricing
• How to calculate your customer lifetime value
• Can we be done with the Amazon Accelerate recaps now?

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If you're not dynamically pricing your products on Amazon, you're falling behind.

I might not have said that a year ago, but after a year of experimentation, I firmly believe this to be true.

Many sellers -- particularly those in the WS, OA, and RA worlds -- have been dynamically pricing (or, "repricing") for years.

They had to.

Because they always competed for the BuyBox on price, and needed to stay ahead of the other sellers on hundreds (or thousands) of listings.

But dynamic pricing for private label? Where you own the listing and rarely have offers from other sellers?

I was skeptical.

Despite my skepticism, roughly 18 months I started experimenting with dynamic pricing on my largest brand. First, by way of different softwares; and eventually, using my own method, which I call "The Poor Man's Approach to Dynamic Pricing."

Where did that name come from?

Basically, after experimenting with different repricing tools -- and incurring the cost of subscribing to the software -- I saw trends in how the tools were dynamically pricing my products.

I had to zoom out from the micro one- or two-cent changes to realize it but, essentially, every tool that I used was pricing lower on my low traffic, low CVR days, and then higher on my high traffic, high CVR days.

So, I thought to myself: I can replicate this and save myself hundreds of dollars of software fees per month.

Which led to...

The Poor Man's Approach to Dynamic Pricing

(I want you to steal this, by the way.)

Here's the step-by-step:

1) Look at your daily sales data. At minimum, you want to identify the days of the week where you have high CVR, and the days of the week where you have low CVR. In my experience, for most brands, Sunday-Wednesday tends to have highest CVR, and then from Thursday-Saturday, it's lower. For my brand, Sunday and Monday were my peak days. (My friends at Ad Advance once looked at a large dataset to identify typical day-of-week trends)

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2) Next, in Seller Central, you're going to go to Catalog>Add Products via Upload and then download the Price & Quantity template.

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3) You're going to create (at least) two versions of the file: Peak and Off-Peak. The "Peak" file should be the one that has your higher prices (for me, this was +$1 vs my historical "normal" price); the "Off-Peak" file should be the one that has your lower prices (for me, -$1 vs my historical normal price). Once you've populated the Excel file, move the "template" worksheet to a new Excel file and save as a txt file.

4) Now, you have two price loader files -- one for your high CVR days (the Peak file), and one for your low CVR days (the Off-Peak file). If your Peak days are Sunday-Tuesday, you simply log in to Seller Central on Sunday morning (or Saturday night), and upload the Peak file. Then, on Wednesday morning (or Tuesday night), you upload the Off-Peak file. I did this myself for about a month, and then delegated to my team. The uploads literally take 30 seconds, tops.

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And, there it is. I told you that it was super simple and super cheap.

You can, of course, get more scientific and clever with it by experimenting with different price points and segmenting your intra-week trends in a more granular way.

But, my experience is that this is Pareto optimal (i.e., satisfies the 80-20 rule).

Test it out, and let me know your results!

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PS: If you haven't seen or read this thread before, it's worth a read now. Chad has been in the Amazon game long enough to see different strategies ebb and flow, and I think he's spot on with his view that we're entering the age of the "Algorithmic Brands."

Chad Rubin @itschadrubin We’re witnessing one of the biggest shifts in the Amazon ecosystem: The Rise of Algorithmic brands. What does it mean, and most importantly, how does it affect you? Let’s discuss… In the past decade, Amazon has matured as a marketplace. ⚡ First came the shift from FBM to… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1778099755698000079 11:36 AM • Apr 10, 2024 1 Retweets 11 Likes Read 2 replies

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BEST from LinkedIn

I've spotlighted Demian in this newsletter before.

And, for good reason: He puts out incredibly detailed and insightful posts on LinkedIn ALL THE TIME.

This time, he's sharing some knowledge on customer lifetime value.

Which is sort of a a big deal if you are in a consumables category or otherwise want to dial in your marketing for first- or second-order profitability.

Anyway, go give Demian's post a read. And, pair it with my newsletter issue from a while back talking about CLTV.

BEST from X

In case you missed it, I live-tweeted updates from Amazon Accelerate last week.

It was fun!

I usually put some degree of thought into what I put out on social media.

But, at Accelerate, it was pure stream-of-consciousness tweeting.

Which, arguably, is what Twitter/X was designed for.

In any event, it was a refreshing change of pace for me in terms of my content creation.

Bearded Egg FBA 🛠️ @guyfosel Live Updates from Amazon Accelerate 2024 👇 11:28 AM • Sep 18, 2024 2 Retweets 21 Likes Read 2 replies

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Bearded Egg FBA 🛠️ @guyfosel Live Updates from Day 3 of Amazon Accelerate 2024 👇 11:37 AM • Sep 19, 2024 2 Retweets 26 Likes Read 7 replies

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Oh, and make sure you also read Molson Hart's Accelerate recap.

A lot of the Accelerate recaps that you've probably already read are just "reporting on the weather" (borrowing this phrase from my good buddy Paul).

Molson's recap offers real perspective on the (in)significance of all of the Accelerate happenings.

molson 🧠⚙️ @Molson_Hart Here’s what I learned from attending the conference Amazon puts on for its sellers: 1. There’s a ton of talent at the company and lots of great people. I knew that abstractly, but when you talk to people face to face you learn it on another level. They are smart. They are… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1836565279209631980 https://twitter.com/wtjern/status/1836500648667578619 Will Tjernlund @WTjern At #amazonaccelerate seeing @Molson_Hart in his element 7:37 PM • Sep 18, 2024 4 Retweets 124 Likes Read 23 replies

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Speaking of fun, here's something fun to take you into the weekend (actually go to the tweet and watch the video)...

Bearded Egg FBA 🛠️ @guyfosel When Amazon Seller Support resolves your issue correctly after only one support ticket 12:55 PM • Sep 25, 2024 5 Retweets 116 Likes Read 8 replies

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I often hate lists like this, but SMB Attorney (aka Eric Pacifici) is spot on with all of these.

If you're still figuring out if ETA is right for you, give this a read.

FUN FACT: Eric was my attorney in my most recent ETA deal.

SMB Attorney @SMB_Attorney The 50 most important things you need to know about buying a business: Part 1 1. The better you are with finance, the more you need to do a quality-of-earnings (QoE). Everyone should do a QoE. 2. Certainty to close is the most important factor when choosing a lender.… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1694124597002527028 6:9 PM • Aug 22, 2023 24 Retweets 287 Likes Read 29 replies

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