eBay are running another 15% off eBay promotion for selected sellers running from 10:00am today, Monday the 29th April, through to 23:59pm on Thursday the 2nd May 2019. This time there are rather more eBay sellers than usual included in the promotion – 61.
Yes that’s 61 sellers out of 200,000 registered businesses on eBay UK. It’s hard to fault eBay for doing marketing to attract more buyers to the site, but the deals are always limited to a tiny proportion of the seller population and that got us thinking – would you want to be part of such a promotion and if so why aren’t you included?
The ‘why aren’t you included’ part is perhaps the easiest to ask – eBay’s marketing team have to contact sellers and sign them up to any promotional deals such as today’s 15% off eBay promotion. Not only does that take time but it also involves contacting sellers who might not be interested in giving deep discounts across their entire range.
So, could a solution be for sellers to sign up in advance and give eBay permission to discount their products in major promotions with no further permission needed? Would you be willing to be heavily promoted alongside today’s 61 sellers because you previously ticked a box giving a maximum discount you’d be willing to offer and then leave eBay to decide on the frequency and suitability of promotions? One caveat might be that you would want any other promotions you have running turned off.
There’s never going to be an easy way for eBay to include thousands of sellers in a promotion unless the process is fully automated, but I do know some sellers who would happily offer deep discounts if it meant their products has been automatically included in today’s eBay promotion.
If you’re interested, the terms for this week’s 15% off eBay Promotion are minimum spend £25, maximum discount £60, one redemption per user and the discount code which you need to enter at checkout is PERCENT15.
4 Responses
It wasnt 61. We were invited to this as well by the “commercial initiative team” it was for specific categories we where invited as part of the “car care and cleaning” category so its specific to businesses that have trending seasonal products on the homepage.
You can nominate products so this is not the full range, sadly 15% off the retail is just a margin killer in such a highly competitive market.
I don’t recall a single time where eBay have contacted us about anything to do with increasing sales on the platform in the 8 years and £1mil+ of selling, apart from the seller release emails.
Amazon, on the other hand, email and call me at least once a month offering assistance and programs to actively drive sales. Up until the last 24 months or so, Amazon sales were circa 10% of eBay. Now with SFP, Amazon Renewed and a customer support department with direct contacts in the UK that you can actually speak to, Amazon outstrips eBay.
So yes, eBay could include more sellers, but as far as I can tell, they don’t give a damn.