Newegg & Sellercloud Joint Sellers Webinar – Winning Marketing Strategies

Esther Nierenberg: Hi everyone, it’s Esther here from Sellercloud. I’m here with Marianne. Thank you for joining us today. Today we’re going to be covering different opportunities to better market your items and increase your sales on Newegg. We’re also going to be introducing the SPN, Shipped by Newegg that you could do through Sellercloud. Please feel free to ask any questions that you have throughout the presentation you can ask them in the questions or chat section of the webinar. Today we have Mike and Mark from Newegg that will be doing a presentation today.

Mark from Newegg: Thank you so much for the introductions. Hello, everyone. This is Mark here and I’m joined by my colleague, Mike. We’re from the Newegg marketplace. And we’re actually really excited to discuss with you guys and go over in depth review of the marketplace’s marketing vehicles. And so this webinar is actually a direct result of meeting with sellers like you. And so today we will be addressing how Newegg can help with marketing and promotions.

For today’s webinar, we’ll actually be covering the following topics. We’ll take a brief history of Newegg, our devoted customers and the products that we sell, and then we’ll take a look at who sells on Newegg and the opportunities within our growing categories. And then we’ll briefly touch upon what is Newegg Elite Seller, what is this membership that Newegg offers now, and then we’ll take a look at some of the tailored marketing opportunities. And that’s where the bulk of the presentation will be at. Since we’re addressing that component there. And some of those examples will include email services, banner ads, customizable pages and personalized seller stores. So be on the lookout for that. And in the final portion, we will go over just a brief introduction of Shipped by Newegg and how that’s now available through Sellercloud so they can enable that. And then we’ll have a wrap up. And again, we have a Q&A session. So feel free to post your questions throughout the webinar.

Okay, so before we go ahead and begin the presentation, you will actually go ahead and see a poll here which we would like you to participate in. You should see that now. And it reads as follows, what fulfillment service are you currently using? Fulfillment by Amazon, Shipped by Newegg, or are you fulfilling orders yourself? So we’ll go ahead and give you a couple of seconds to fill out this portion.

Okay. So it looks like a good number of you guys are using FBA. And then the other half, almost 50/50 are actually fulfilling orders yourselves. So we’ll give a few more seconds here. And then I’ll go ahead and close the poll. And we’ll actually be discussing this poll question later on in the presentation. So a couple more seconds here. And then I’ll go ahead and close the poll. I will be closing the poll now. And again, thank you for participating, it was about 50/50. And that’s surprising there. So actually that’s a good, good indicator for us. And we’ll talk about how you can look at alternatives and whatnot to your shipping methods later.

To kind of go back to the presentation here. We’ll go over just some of the corporate stats here now. We’ll be touching back on SBN in the later slides, but a brief history about Newegg – we were founded in 2001, and became the destination for consumer electronics and computer hardware. But since then, we’ve really expanded and started servicing over 36 million customers a year and we’ve grown to expand our product portfolio to 41 million listed products. And then in 2011, that’s when we actually established our marketplace platform. And the whole point behind that was to continue expanding our offerings. And since then, as of 2017, we’ve expanded our marketplace to now over 50 countries, we’ve also increased our reach and significantly boosted our presence as one of the top e-commerce marketplaces. Selling on newegg.com gives you access to basically a loyal and devoted customer base, who pride themselves on being savvy in their passions and their purchasing decisions. The majority of our Newegg customers are highly educated and affluent males who are accustomed to shopping online. You can see the various devices that they use. So they’re accustomed to the e-commerce market. And that’s important to know, because that sets up the customer profiling and some of the expectations that come with that.

And again, this may not come as much of a surprise that the top selling categories on newegg.com are the computer hardware and consumer electronics. That’s what we’re known for. But I doubt that many of you expected automotive, toys and hobbies, office, home improvement, and home living to be on this list as well. And that’s, that’s what I meant earlier by we’ve just really grown and expanded our product portfolio. And recently top growing categories for Newegg have actually been apparel, automotive, electronics, and home automation.

So what does this all mean for you guys? We’re seeing that our maturing marketplace is finding success for sellers who sell complimentary products. And so these complimentary items dovetail with our core products and provide additional value and convenience to new customers. There’s ample opportunities for sellers like you to take advantage of these different categories. So whether you are selling laptops or t-shirts, or books or arts and crafts, whatever it may be, there is a place for you within the Newegg marketplace.

And so now that we’ve shown you just how ancient we are in dot com terms , and how we are cultivating our loyal customer base, we actually want to touch on how your business can leverage our platforms to grow more sales. And so due to the success of our Newegg marketplace platform, it’s grown into every faction of the Neweggs business as illustrated here. So from breaking into the China market through TT Hago to supporting educators in government and healthcare with Newegg business. The Newegg marketplace seller has every opportunity to grow their business alongside Newegg. However, in an effort to focus ourselves today on today’s webinar will zero in on sellers specifically on newegg.com who have the best market to these customers.

Now that we’re going to be focusing on newegg.com, there are a few things that you need to be aware of. Sellers on newegg.com you can select a variety of different engagement paths, as illustrated here between standard, professional, and enterprise. And again, there is no one size fits all method for your business. And that is why we created this tiered modeling here, which we call Elite Seller. And so based on business’s needs, each offering features low commission fees, access to a massive customer base, marketing tools, international capabilities, shipping programs, and fraud protection. So pretty much everything you need to maximize your online sales. Also because we are an invite only platform, we are providing you a more competitive marketplace where you can focus on building your brand and not racing to the bottom in price.

What are the benefits to an Elite Seller for both the professional enterprise levels? Here you get enhanced seller stores, discounted fulfillment services, access to post purchase emails and dedicated account managers. And so that’s that’s the perks there should someone opt in for the professional or enterprise levels.

For the first half I just wanted to cover a brief overview of Newegg who we are, the service offerings, and whatnot. But before we move on to the bulk of today’s presentation, which is the marketing and the fulfillment side of things, I do want to preface the marketing section that before you consider placements, and everything else like that, we want to be sure that you guys are fully aware that priming your listings is the biggest thing that you can do to enhance your marketing placement. And what I mean by priming is optimizing every listing that you plan on selling during the q4. And so the thing there that I want you guys to be aware of is if you’re not showcasing all your offerings, you’re going to be showcasing your best offering. So that could be a limited SKU count whatever that is. But that means you should focus on optimizing product titles, incorporating high res imagery, and also completing the overview descriptions and trying to optimize it for search engine optimization as well. So I do want to go ahead and put that there, you can take advantage of several Newegg services. The A plus content is a great way to do that, as well. We also provide SEO optimization support should you need it for your listing. So before we even touch that, I do want to put an emphasis that this is an important aspect before you jump right into marketing. And with that being said, I’ll go ahead and hand it off to my colleague Mike, who will go ahead and speak on the marketing opportunities available for you guys. Mike.

Mike from Newegg: Thanks a lot, Mark. So we’ll be seeing Mark again, as we talk about shipped by Newegg. But I want to touch on something a little bit more close to me and my expertise and that’s going to be our marketing channels. So Mark has been alluding to why selling on newegg.com is the best choice for your business. But now I want to dig a little bit deeper into the solutions that we feel here make all the difference. So in the coming slides, I’m going to do a deep dive into the marketing solutions and Shipped by Newegg. Heads up, you will notice just how often I mention our dedicated staff. Newegg strongly feels that the changing marketplace landscape isn’t conquered with smarter algorithms, but with smarter account management and planning from staff that cares about your success. So that being said, let’s explore the unique newegg.com marketing channel offerings first.

I’ll discuss the tailored marketplace marketing vehicle that allows our sellers to reach their focused audience. Our dedicated staff can list sellers’ products and targeted seasonal stores, create categories centric banner campaigns, and even develop custom promotions such as minimum order promotions, rebate campaigns, and Newegg sponsored rewards programs. With Newegg’s Marketing channels, the only real limit to promoting your brand is your own creativity. But we’re here to help with that too.

For the upcoming slides, I’ll be going over all of our on site marketing opportunities. But first, let’s discuss the most popular and effective on site promotion that we offer – our homepage. So averaging it has more than 16 million monthly unique visitors. Advertising a newegg.com’s homepage is an exceptional opportunity that gets your product and brand in front of our actively engaged audience. So I just want to quickly call out some of our most popular homepage placements that we like to suggest for our marketplace sellers. The first one is our leaderboard located on the top of our homepage, it’s our scrolling leaderboard banner. If you’re looking to introduce your brand or products to a wide audience, there really isn’t a better opportunity for you on newegg.com. It commands significant attention and boasts strong click through rates. The leaderboard often features the latest trends, hot promotions, and seasonal campaigns. Towards the left, we have the Shell Shocker. When a merchant comes to us and they have a killer deal to promote. This is where we always suggest it. We support the Show Shocker with a daily early access email blast. And like I said this is probably the best way for you to promote your absolute best deal. I was featured on the Shell Shocker seeing almost tenfold increase in average daily sales. And because everyone loves a huge deal this is certainly the best place for you on Newegg to host.

And then on the right is Spotlight. It is a marketplace seller centric promotion, so only our marketplace sellers. And it excels in strengthening your brand recognition and boosting your products’ visibility. Products listed on Spotlight offers Steve a two and a half fold increase in average sales and is one of the best tools for marketplace sellers to attract sellers to your store. All these places are available to your customers and we recommend working with your merchandising managers to secure placement on the promotional vehicles that’s best for your products and best for your clients.

For customers who want to see more, the best marketplace deals, they often go from our Spotlight straight into our Hot Deals page. Our Hot Deals page is just for marketplace sellers and often features products that are trending in the right direction. So we always suggest that you reach out to our dedicated staff again, and you work with them and they will help place you with similar products and other seasonally significant advertisements. So once you’ve perfected your listings as Mark described, and found your audience, Seller Stores is the venue that provides a credible professional platform to host your brand and products. We feel that the Seller Store is a core pillar to promoting your brand, and pretty much a necessity for any seller looking to strengthen their sales. By creating a destination for your customers, you’re building brand loyalty and improving the odds that your customers will increase their AOV with your products. So we see this example right here, this seller has decked out their store with eye-catching content such as banners, videos, reviews, and even their logos. With an efficiently laid out Seller Store, you’re ensuring that your page will be a go to for existing and soon to be customers. Here we have an event store. Sellers should be looking at the offerings of event stores. They act as a flexible store for sellers that serve as the go to solution for seasonal and themed products. So here we see an example of an event store that was recently created to offer water and energy bill lowering solutions during the summer months. Our sellers came to us looking for an opportunity to promote their brand and their products. And this was what we came up with. If you have any kind of concept for an event store, we welcome it, let us know we’d love to be able to bundle up our dealers and create something that’s really valuable for our customers.

Here we have category stores. So the first page that newegg.com customers often visit after our homepage is the Category Store. Think of the Category Store as a way to advertise on a more granular level to the customers most interested in your product category. Here’s an example from our Smart Home Automation Category Store. These pages feature up to 70% of marketable space that is rarely updated by our dedicated staff. And these page contents can include product listings supported by new editorial articles, and videos, also scrolling banners. Regarding the Newegg editorial, we will discuss that in the next slide.

So now we’ve shown you where you can be placing your brand and products. What content are you thinking about putting there? A core value of Newegg is speaking to our customers with an authentic and meaningful voice. We’re all fans here and it shows in each of our editorial pieces. The following marketing channels are trusted sources where we discuss products and brands that we know our customers will love. We have three tailor channels that speak to our very engaged audience, the most popular being the Newegg Insider. This is the official Newegg blog that features hands-on editorial content of staff pick products, and upcoming industry trends. If you’re looking to get more granular, more focused channels such as Unlocked, which is our editorial website dedicated to PC building, and the future of electronic devices, and Gamers Crate, which focuses on the voice of fellow enthusiasts, Gamer Crate features news and reviews of the latest games and live coverage of Esports. So if you’re interested at all in having Newegg create an editorial for you, please reach out to your account manager. We love having new toys to play with here in the office.

Additionally, Newegg Studios is our in-house digital production crew available to create original content focused on forming and engaging shoppers with your products. Our all new studio deploys professional multi camera production that develops video segments targeted to enhance brands and drive audience interests. Featured here is a behind the scenes look at our weekly Newegg Studios YouTube series – Newegg Now. The show is dedicated to informing our fans, the latest in tech and the hottest deals and promotions on newegg.com. Each produced video boasts several 1000 views and garners significant plays long after the release date due to interesting and relatable topics. So make sure to work with your account manager again and get your product lists and get your products in the hands of our editorial creatives.

So everything that I’ve mentioned for advertising has been located on newegg.com. But how do we draw customers to your store and products when they aren’t on our site? Let me now discuss one of our strongest marketing arms – promotional emails. We have over 15 and a half million email subscribers and it’s only growing. We have a huge variety of email types that go out to a very targeted customer base. These customer bases include home automation, office furniture, refurbished, consumer electronics, or they can appeal to seasonal shoppers, such as back to school, Black Friday, and even Cyber Monday. The list goes on and on. Participation in emails is often free, all you have to do is work it out with your account manager.

We’re also specialized in driving traffic back to you through the use of external marketing channels. So examples of this would be our social media, we have over 3 million social media fans. And it’s our goal to make interactions unique, fun and informative with the use of videos, sweepstakes, promotions, and more. We also have a great affiliate channel. It’s one of our highest converting channels, the affiliate network gets serious eyes on your products and campaigns. Our affiliate marketing works by getting your product seen on some of the most popular deal sites such as Slick Deals, Deals Plus, Retail me not, Ebates, and many, many more. Also, we invest heavily in Google Shopping PLA. As a strategic marketing tool, this opportunity gives added exposure to the exact products that customers are specifically searching for, putting your Newegg listings in prime position to convert.

Mark from Newegg: Alright, so Mike has covered briefly just the different marketing opportunities available. And again, we want to reserve enough time for questions and whatnot at the end. So if you have questions, please, again, continue to post them within the chat or the question box. But right before we get to that part, we’ll actually be shifting gears now to fulfillment because we feel like fulfillment is still an integral part of the entire customer buying experience. And so a poll will actually be launching shortly here for you guys to participate in. Okay, so you guys should be able to see it now.

And the question goes, based on your previous poll answer, what were the most influential factors that led you to selecting that particular fulfillment service? Was it cost efficiency, convenience? Convenience, in the sense of it was user friendly, it’s easy to access and integrate and whatnot, the return on investment, meaning buy box visibility, increased exposure, whatever that may be, we want to understand that portion as well. And then customer service, did you need an extension of your business arm, did you need logistics help with returns or even handling customer services as volume increases, because we know in a holiday season, for example, that’s going to be required. So this poll will be up again for a couple of seconds more here.

It looks like cost efficiency was one of the big reasons at 42%. And then return on investment. So buy box visibility, peering on search more frequently or higher within the SERPs, as well as customer service at 19%. And then convenience right now at 8%. So if you haven’t voted, go ahead and do that now. But if I’m going to be closing this in about five or so seconds here, so here I go. I’m going to close it. And again, thank you for participating in the poll. And we’ll actually be discussing a little more about SBN now, because that’s the thing that’s been recently introduced through Sellercloud and is available to access. For the folks on the phone who don’t know what Shipped by Newegg is, or we call it SBN. It is essentially a fulfillment service that reaches 91% of North America in two days with your ground shipping. Then 99% of our orders are actually fulfilled on the same day by strategically being located near fulfillment centers across the country. And so your customers can choose up to eight different shipping methods that fit their time and budget. And because we have been doing such a deep dive into our marketing efforts with Sellercloud, we thought it’d only be appropriate that we now discuss Sellercloud’s latest fulfillment option – Shipped by Newegg. Okay, so how does it work? In e-commerce shipping costs can really make or break your profit margins. And so teaming up with a trusted fulfillment service is really important.

So what is Shipped by Newegg? SBN is a cost effective fulfillment method that picks, packs, and ships on your behalf. And we also handle customer service and returns. So similar to the leading fulfillment services that you guys selected within the market we also like I mentioned, provide customer service and handle the returns on your behalf there. So in fact, Shipped by Newegg, when you take a look at the cost, sellers who are using this service actually average up to 18% more savings than leading top competitors. And so because Shipped by Newegg exemplifies trusted shipping and reliable customer service, these are aspects that weigh heavily into helping sellers win the buy box because that also affects their performance. And in the reviews that customers submit shipping is often the same, they’ll tell if they had a negative experience with. But if they had a positive one that works in your favor, as well. So that’s something that we do factor into, at least in the buy box- what are customers saying and your overall performance there. And so we know that if you give SBN a consideration that you’ll actually see significant value there. That’s why we partnered up with Sellercloud to get that integrated.

And in the next screenshot here, you’ll actually see again, we want to thank Sellercloud for their collaboration with us on this. Following this webinar, we’re actually producing a step by step guide for Sellercloud users on how to integrate Shipped by Newegg on their listings and how to enable it through Sellercloud. So it’s easy. It’s all within that one platform. So please be on the lookout for that content in your inbox in the coming weeks. Because I think that will be a really practical guide for you guys. So this is just a peek of what you’ll be seeing within that video for the upcoming presentation.

So a couple things. I know we kind of covered quite a lot. And I do want to leave time for questions. I’m sure there are people who are on the fence of whether or not I should join Newegg. And there are people who are integrated and they’re looking at Okay, I’m particularly interested in the marketing section. What are really the advantages here, we’re an established platform, invite only. So it’s not as saturated as other marketplaces. So that’s the one thing that you might want to be mindful of. If you’re considering even just global expansion, we have access again to over 50 international markets. We did touch on our loyal customer base and the passionate group there. They are an informed base. So that’s why we want to ensure that the customer experience from beginning to end is done right? Because that’s what they expect. And they’re loyal to that if you’re able to provide that. And that’s why Newegg has provided the Elite Services with the Elite Seller and all of that membership that it has to offer for that particular reason. And then non tech categories are growing, and they’re one of the top opportunities for sellers to take advantage of. And the cool thing about this is that you’re not doing it alone. Really, with all the other major marketplaces, you’re left to figure things out yourself, have to talk to an algorithm and try to figure that out. We strongly believe that the best way to help any business grow is to do it hand in hand as a partner. And that’s why we have dedicated support staff, in different parts of your business that can serve you guys depending on what you need. And that’s really the big advantage there. Because you can pick up the phone, and someone will be there to help you right away. We have different marketing channels and vehicles available and certain optimization tools for you guys to take advantage of. That’s A plus content for your listing, where even if you need help with some of your search engine optimization, we can do that also. And we can provide some suggestions on Hey, this product is exclusive. You might want to consider pushing this into other external marketing channels, or even consider the new editorial opportunities there. So these are all different opportunities available both inside and outside of newegg.com. And finally, we touched on Shipped by Newegg. And this is something that you may want to consider. As Q4 comes around, profit margins get a little squeezed. So you do want to find the most cost efficient fulfillment service out there that will serve both your business’s needs as well as your customers. So there’s that fine line of balancing, meeting what customers want, which we know is fast shipping, which is good, or free shipping. Free shipping is good, fast shipping is even better. And guess what? SBN does all of that for you guys. And it’s a cost effective solution to consider.

So with that being said, we’ll actually go into the Q&A now. If you want more information, you can contact us by sending us an email, you can contact your Sellercloud representative, if you need more information on Shipped by Newegg and how to enable that now like you can’t wait for that video and you need to do it now. We can certainly help you with that. And if you want to find more information about Newegg and the different platforms and services that we spoke on today, you can visit us at newegg.com/sellers. But in the meantime, I’m actually going to go ahead and table some of the questions here. So if you can just go ahead and let me know what questions we are receiving, and we’ll go ahead and answer them.

Esther Nierenberg: Okay, thank you very much. Okay, so here are some of the questions that came in. How do we take advantage of the SEO that Newegg can offer?

Mark from Newegg: First thing, what we recommend is visiting that site, and then downloading our SEO optimization ebook for reference. That’s a great tool that breaks down every detail on how you should optimize your listings within doing. So if you want to do that yourself, you’re certainly open to doing that. But if you need additional support, you can actually go ahead and email us at marketplace marketing. And then we have a team here that can walk you through that also should you need additional assistance. So those are two things that are available so that they can take advantage of it. And then we’ll actually try to kind of give you guys best practices on how parts of the site reads what and what not. So that’s that’s what, that’s how we would at least answer that part.

Esther Nierenberg: Okay, here’s another question – What additional banner exposure is available on site?

Mark from Newegg: I believe Mike had covered one element that was within the Hot Deals page. That’s where you saw I don’t know if you guys remember and you can take a look at the recording which will be made available. Within the Hot Deals page, there is a railing on the left and right hand side where additional banners are placed. Mike has also covered within your Seller Storefront This is a thing that we want to advise you, sellers or the folks on the call to take advantage of because that is your storefront. So you want to populate that with your banners, your collateral and branding, if you’re a brand or random manufacturer. But again, that’s the storefront of the Category Store. We do put some banners up there as well provided it makes sense. If it’s like a brand, that’s a great place to put it there. Events, the Event Stores so this is for your seasonal items or seasonal campaigns. That’s another place to put it on. Our merchandising team will actually also support banner creation when it comes to the promotional emails that we talked about. We basically have four different segmented slash targeted emails that go out monthly. And those targeted segments I think Mike had mentioned were consumer electronics and computer hardware, general merchandise so under that umbrella you have smart home items, automation and home automation goods, their small home appliances, toys and hobbies, apparel. So anything within those categories falls under the general merchandise category. And then we have car electronics, anything with automotive and hardware will fall under that automotive hardware email and then for refurbished goods we have that also. And on top of that, we have additional email campaigns that go out. So all that being said, there’s a plethora of banner placements that you can take advantage of. And that’s just a limited scope. The thing that I want to advise you guys on, that we kept pushing during this webinar is get in contact with your merchandiser, and then create a tailored strategy so that you know, okay, they know exactly where you should be placing your SKUs and what products should go where and what campaigns and they can go ahead and create those banners. And they can work with you guys to ensure that your brand story is told properly within those different placements. And so aside from these there are so many different opportunities, a targeted approach is something that your merchandisers can support with and then they can follow up with you to say, hey, let’s try this or let’s consider doing something else here. Or if it’s an exclusive, let’s go ahead and put additional support behind that.

Esther Nierenberg: Is there a list of countries that you are in like for Shipped by Newegg. Does it work overseas?

Mark from Newegg: Right now, we are in the process of making Shipped by Newegg available. Like I said, we just expanded to 50 additional countries so that you can take a look at our seller site. By clicking that link I mentioned there, going under platforms and then selecting Newegg Global and you’ll see all the different countries that sellers can sell into. There are certain countries that we are using localized fulfillment there. So there’s a different service called Newegg International Shipping Program. And the gist of that is if you’re shipping globally, we’ll take care of local fulfillment or what we call here the last miles portion of it. All you have to do is make sure you send your products that you’re listing or selling internationally to one of our Newegg warehouses, and we’ll go ahead and complete the rest. That’s how we’re handling shipping for international orders at this moment.

Esther Nierenberg: Okay, what is the breakdown of B2B sales versus B2C sales?

Mark from Newegg: For a breakdown on B2B sales and B2C, I don’t want to misquote figures, so I would have to sync up with our B2B teams and get that information to whoever’s answering that. So I can go ahead and do that offline. And then we’ll submit that over to the rest of the group here, because we’ll follow up with that question. But I don’t want to misquote that. So I do want to check before answering that.

Esther Nierenberg: All right. Okay. So that’s all the questions that we have here. Thank you so much. It was very informative.

Mark from Newegg: Great, thank you for having us. And again, feel free to reach out to us if you have any additional inquiries, we’re here to help and be on the lookout for the follow up items. So this recording will be available for you to view again, the presentation as well. And you’ll also have in the coming weeks a recording on how you can enable Shipped by Newegg through the Sellercloud interface. So thank you again, Sellercloud.