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Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

sapana@ebay.com
eBay Employee
eBay Employee
Dear Sellers,

We recently introduced Markdown Manager for eBay Shop sellers. Markdown Manager is a great tool for shop sellers to showcase the discount that they are offering and attract repeat buyers.We have received some good feedback from our sellers. Seller veedeedirect will like to conduct this workshop to share his experinece with other sellers on how best to use Markdown Manager to increase sale. he will be happy to answer your questions of any.

Please join this workshop on 20th April, 5 -6 PM on this thread. You can submit your question now by clicking on Post reply button.

Regards,
Sapana

A note from our Legal Department:

The statements and opinions made in this workshop are those of the workshop host only and do not reflect eBay policy or eBay's opinion with respect to such statements.
Message 1 of 18
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17 REPLIES 17

Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

snrama
Community Member
Hi Devesh,

Nice to see that you are helping a lot of sellers.

I have tried Markdown Manager several times and found good sales. Its really a wonderful tool which makes our listings more visible to buyers.

I am planning to giving good discounts every first 10 days of month as the sales will be good.

Since I will be not in town tomorrow (due to personal reason), I am posting now. I will check your posts and it will be nice to share your opinions. ---------------
With Regards,
Navaneeth (snrama) 😉
---------------
With Regards,
Navaneeth (snrama) 😉
Message 11 of 18
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Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

sapana@ebay.com
eBay Employee
eBay Employee
Dear Users,

Thanks for joining us in today's workshop! Today your host for the workshop is seller veedeedirect, who will share his experience on Markdown Manager - the tool for shop sellers to showcase discounted products to their buyers.

The seller will be here from 5 - 6 PM. He will post his content and will be happy to answer your questions post that.

Welcome to veedeedirect and lets get started!

Regards,
Sapana
Message 12 of 18
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Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

Hello, I am Devesh Tanna from VeeDeeDirect. I have been selling online for a long time and have a retail and whole sale business experience of over 15 years. I have been invited by eBay to share my experiences about the Mark Down Manager with the community.

eBay recently introduced a great tool for shop sellers called the Mark Down Manager. I have been using it effectively for the past month and a half to grow my sales on eBay.

The tool allows you to:

“Provide a temporary discount across specific listings, categories or all Fixed Priced and Shop Inventory listings and market the new 'sale' price to buyers.

Sales help add excitement around Fixed Price listings and create an exciting experience for buyers who purchase an item that's "on sale".

The Markdown Manager "Sale" treatment includes:
• Original price shown as cancelled out
• % off icon
• Sale end date (when less than 7 days exist for the sale to end)”

To know more about the Markdown manager, and set up discounts on your listings, Click Here.

My experience with the tool has been nothing short of exceptional. When I first mark downed one of my product, I got double the number of buy orders than I was getting in the previous listings. More important was the fulfillment was 3 times higher than average. My average fulfillment is about 20%-30%, but for this listing it was 80%.

I generally use the markdown manager on my fast moving products. I list most of the product with varying discount between 5% and 25%. I have got the most response from 10% discount. The tool allows you to offer discounts up to 75% or a flat amount as discount. Sellers can experiment with higher or lower discounts and than decide what suits their business model best.

The next question is to offer discounts on which products and when to offer discounts. Offline there are various business formats such as discount stores where all products are marked down all the time. Than there are those department and lifestyle stores which offer end of season sales. Some stores like home furnishing have a curious practice of offering discounts during peak season. Some stores need to clear huge inventories of slow moving products and offer stock clearance sales. Hence a seller needs to define his business model, and than focus on which products he wants to offer discounts on. He may choose to offer a flat rate on all his products or mark some products for discounts while continuing to sell other products without discounts. He may choose to have a sale whole year round or may define specific periods of sale which suits his business model the best.

The important point to note is that having a Sale is not enough to generate sales. You have to let the world (your potential customers) know that a sale is on. You need to advertise your sale to make it effective. The different ways of advertising you sale is:

1) Using shop mailers to your regular customers.
2) Promoting your items using enhanced listings such as home page, featured plus, etc.
3) Cross promoting your items. I have seen a seller doing this very effectively even when the Mark down manager was not available. He has two products which he focuses on every week. He has two templates which he puts on top and bottom of all his regular listing announcing the mark down on the particular product calling it “Deal of the Week” I have seen him generating huge sales through this method.


There are points which have to be kept in mind to save your Mark Down from being a huge failure.

1) The products which are marked down should look genuine to your customer. Do a completed items search and see that other sellers are not offering a better price than you. It would hurt your image if you are selling your product at Rs.800/- after a 20% markdown and buyer finds another seller selling the same at Rs.750/- without any markdown.
2) You need to decide which products to offer a markdown on and not offer it on all your products unless you want to project yourself as a discount store which in fact is not such a bad idea.
3) The quantum of discount should be par with the market. So if your industry works on a mark down of say 10% and you start offering 50%, buyer will think there is something fishy. If it is the reverse case, than the sale may not be effective.
4) Arrange to carry minimum amount of stocks of the markdown products. It does not make sense to generate orders and tell you customers that there is no stock. This may result in huge dispute and negative ratings.


This is a basic insight in the Markdown Manager. Now I will questions from the community.

Warm Regards,

Devesh
Message 13 of 18
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Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

Inconcepts,

Thanks for your question. Its not silly at all.

“I have Items where I offer variable discounts ranging from say 5% to 25%. on regular basis. I specify those discounts in the Listing Title.

Now if I list those Items at MRP and then use Markdown for offering variable discounts .... don't you think it would be quite tedious for me every week ?

All these Listings are Core Listings which end up after 7 days.”

You can create shop categories called Discount 5%, Discount 10%, etc. Every week when you relist the items, just go and create a new Sale. You can choose to include all the listings in one shop category at one go. It should not take more then 10-15 minutes every week. You can create 3-4 or more sales as per you discount structure.
Message 14 of 18
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Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

Mysalesoffer

“i want to offer discount to my repeat buyer only can i give it from this tool”

Discounts have to be offered to all buyers, new and repeat. This tool does not allow you to offer discounts only to repeat buyers.

However, you can choose to mail the specific listings to all your existing buyers via the seller email marketing tool in your shop or plain email. This will help you reward your loyal customers.
Message 15 of 18
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Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

Skygiftworldwide

I have gone through you shop and seen that you have a great CBT business with very high buyer satisfaction. Keep up the good work.

With reference to your question :

“I used this tool of Markdown Manager twice (for 2 weeks) but none of my items were sold at 10% Discount + FREE Gift.

May be it is working for other categories to increase the sale. Sorry to say that for me it is a flop tool.”

I would not be able to comment on the same as I do not know on which listings you used the Mark Down Manager.

However from my initial post, you may have got a few pointer.

For any sale to work well, you have to advertise it well. To repeat from my earlier post, following are the ways in which you can advertise your sale:
4) Using shop mailers to your regular customers.
5) Promoting your items using enhanced listings such as home page, featured plus, etc.
6) Cross promoting your items. I have seen a seller doing this very effectively even when the Mark down manager was not available. He has two products which he focuses on every week. He has two templates which he puts on top and bottom of all his regular listing announcing the mark down on the particular product calling it “Deal of the Week” I have seen him generating huge sales through this method.

I will suggest, use the Mark Down Manager as I have mentioned and it will do wonders for you sale.

Regards,

Devesh
Message 16 of 18
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Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

Ombrass

I have gone through your store and have noted that you are currently have the highest number of listings on ebay and provide a great catalogue of books, etc. You buyer satisfaction levels are also phenomenal. Keep up the good work. You should a great contender for the Business Badshah awards.

Regarding your concern:

“I used this tool of Markdown Manager twice (for 2 weeks) but none of my items were sold at 10% Discount + FREE Gift.

May be it is working for other categories to increase the sale. Sorry to say that for me it is a flop tool.”
Since I do not know on which listings you used Markdown Manager, I will not be able to comment on the success. However, I can give you some pointers to make your sales work better for you.

1) You can decide to have sales during specific periods on your entire catalogue as offline retailers have once or twice a year where they offer phenomenal discounts. Advertise such a sell as much as you can by following some of the methods I have mentioned.
2) In the books trade sometimes books are available at discounts upto 75%. You can invest in such stocks and offer good discounts say upto 50% and make a killing. Ensure to cross promote your other books in the Mark Down Lisings.
3) Also, don’t forget to promote your sale to potential buyers.


Happy Selling.

Devesh
Message 17 of 18
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Increase Sales with Markdown Manager by seller veedeedirect (5-6 PM 20 Apr)

sapana@ebay.com
eBay Employee
eBay Employee
Hi,

I hope you found some helpful tips in today's workshop. We will be locking and archiving this workshop for future reference.

If you will like to conduct a workshop, please feel free to write to me at sapana@ebay.com

Also, a huge Thank You to veedeedirect for taking time out for this workshop!

Warm Regards,
Sapana
Message 18 of 18
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