eBay have revealed to Tamebay that UK sellers have applied the relatively new eBay Multi-Buy pricing feature to 13.8 million listings since its launch last November – a rise of 1.8 million (15%) since December. UK sellers are rapidly embracing the feature which can be applied to multiple quantity fixed price listings.
eBay Multi-Buy pricing enables sellers to easily offer discounts to buyers when they buy multiple quantities of the same item. What’s not quite so well known (or obvious to buyers) is that if multiple products are set up in the same campaign by a seller, they can also buy multiple different items and still see discounts. This is a great sub-feature and it would be nice to see cross listing multi-buy discounts more highly promoted to buyers.
This feature is ideal if you generally offer free postage and wish to discount multiple purchases or if you have the ability to ship multiple items in a single parcel without increasing the postage cost. It enables you to discount the postage already built into your selling prices without losing margin on the sale of single item orders.
eBay Multi-Buy Pricing Features
The benefits of using eBay Multi-Buy Pricing are:
- Extra visibility for offers in the View Item page – with discounted prices in a prominent position
- One-click Multi-Buy experience, with easy to understand discounts
- Potential savings on postage costs for Multi-Buy sales – as repeat buyers buy in multiple quantities, so sellers can send items in one go.
“It’s great to see the ongoing success of the Multi-Buy feature in the UK. Buyers love it and sellers are using it to sell more. We look forward to seeing it go from strength to strength this year.”
– Kit Glover, Senior Director of Seller Experience, eBay
eBay have shared extra guidance on how to add eBay Multi-Buy Pricing to eligible listings. Sellers can now also set-up rules to apply Multi-Buy promotions on all inventory under a selected item price, item condition and/or categories.
When are eBay Multi-Buy Pricing discounts applied?
As an example, if your Multi-buy promotion campaign contains “Item A”, “Item B”, but not “Item C”:
- The discount is applied when a buyer purchases multiple quantities of any item in your campaign. For example, buying 2x of “Item A”, in a single transaction will trigger the discount you’ve selected.
- The discount is also applied when a buyer purchases different items in the same campaign. For example, buying 1x “Item A” and 1x “Item B”, in a single transaction, will trigger the discount, also known as Mix & Match Multi-buy.
- The discount will not be applied when a buyer purchases different items which aren’t in the same campaign. For example, buying 1x “Item A” and 1x “Item C”, in a single transaction, will not trigger the discount.
Top tip
In order to avoid the Mix & Match Multi-buy discount being applied, you can set up your promotions on an individual item basis or use the feature in the Seller Hub listing flow.
If you’d like to limit the possibility of “Mix & Match Multi-buy”, it’s recommended that you set-up campaigns containing items of similar sizes and margins. However, if you’re happy to offer the discount for bigger orders across your whole inventory, you can use the “all inventory” feature to include all your items in one campaign.
How will this impact my other eBay promotions?
If your item is in multiple promotions, this is the order of visibility:
- Multi-buy
- Coupons
- Order discounts
- Sale event + markdown
- Shipping discounts
With Multi-buy, Targeted coupons and Order discounts, only the best discount will be applied based on what’s in the buyers cart, regardless of which one is shown to buyers.
If you’re also running a markdown sale, the Multi-buy offer will be applied on top of your discounted price.
If you’re also running a shipping discount, the Multi-buy discount may also be applied.
9 Responses
I use this tool and it is very useful. However, the first time, if you click Help and Contact on Ebay and then search on Multi-Buy to find out how to install or use, Ebay tell you they have nothing on the subject, which is about as useless as it gets. If it is any help to others here is the relevant page, and you can find where to set up Multi-Buy on Marketing/Promotions tab on Seller Hub
https://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/business/multi-buy#finding-setting-up-multi-buy
I use this tool and it is very useful, as well as lasting far longer than the standard promotion options on Ebay. However, if you are new to it and go to Help and Contact at the top of the Ebay page, then Search on Multi-Buy, guess what, it says it has no info or relevant article on the subject. How useless is that?
If it helps anybody, here is the correct page on Seller Hub
https://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/business/multi-buy#finding-setting-up-multi-buy
and in any case it is easy to just go to Marketing/Promotions/Create a promotion and it is the second option on the drop down list.
If a buyer buys three and immediately returns two, does eBay still grant them the volume discount or does the refund get calculated around the buyer now paying for just one unit?
I’m guessing that the discount is not clawed back – which would be one small drawback of this scheme.
If I offer paid returns (which I do) can I use the 50% discretion that eBay gives me on the amount I refund to true-up the discount to the “correct” level?
Giving it a go as the “Buy 3 Items and save £5” does not seem to be getting many takers at the minute
I got caught out with this, I chose all listings and offered a 3%, 5% and 10% discount.
I didn’t realise that it was not item specific and customers soon caught on that if they ordered a £350.00 item, then 2 x £2.50 items, they ended up getting 10% off all items including the £350.00 item.
My bad, didn’t read the small print properly.
I am happy to offer multibuy discounts but the only other way is to make a separate campaign for each listing, we have 11k listings so not really feasible for us.
Ebay could have made it a bit easier in my opinion.
I have just created a campaign with 169 different products in it.
Using a different screen name, I then added 1 of the 169 products to my basket.
I was disappointed to see that eBay simply pointed out that I could receive a multi buy discount if I added another 1 or more of the SAME item to my basket.
I was hoping that there would be some kind of cross promoting to encourage buyers to look at the other products in the campaign.
I’m probably missing the point somewhere, but it all seems a bit of a waste of time if buyers have no idea that the discount is available on the other 168 products in the campaign.
I telephoned Customer Support, but I think the guy was struggling to understand my question. He eventually said it would sort itself out in 24 hours, which I guess was just a fob off.
Not using it.