Power Sellers Unite

MyStoreRewards · Joined: 23 Aug 2006 Posts: 15

Hey folks,

I'll bite -- we have a 30-day free-trial, so you can check our service in detail, but let me give you a quick overview. MyStoreRewards was built for small sellers who sell on or off-eBay.

The service is pretty simple -- we help increase your opt-in rates to your own email list by facilitating a frequent buyer reward (usually 1-2% of the purchase price) for your opted-in buyers. In return for getting the initial reward and any loyal buyer cash-back reward (think Discover Card) for a repeat purchase, your buyer agrees to get opted-in emails which promote your other items. We generally see 18-20% average opt-in rates and we generally double repeat sales to opted-in buyers. Sellers get reports on all email response rates and can see exact stats on repeat sales, rewards issued, etc.

Once opted-in, our system automatically sends emails to your opted-in buyers. Each email cross-promotes your available sale items (if you are on eBay -- the cross-promotion is automated based on key word and category match). You can also create a custom email where you target specific buyers based on how much they spent with you, how recently they bought from you and how frequently they buy from you (known in direct marketing parlance as Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value).

To give you a sense of our cost, if a seller gets about $20,000 in PayPal payments in a month, our fees average about $20 for that month.

Time wise, the program is self-operating. You set-it up in about 15 minutes and then you can let it run by itself. Everything is fully automated -- most sellers spend about an hour a month on the program after they set it up. Of course, we strongly urge our sellers to test different ideas in the program as well.

One of the coolest things we just launched is our custom campaign tool which allows you to cross-sell items to any opted-in buyer from any location. For instance, you can cross-sell items from your website to your opted-in eBay buyers or you can cross-sell items from eBay to your opted-in website buyers. You get to write the copy and you can target different reward levels to different opted-in buyers. Very cool stuff.

We've been an eBay Certified Solution Provider since they first launched that program in 2003. Our references are on the soultions.ebay.com site.
We have done millions of transactions with our sellers. We don't release our seller count, but we can say we serve over 1,000 sellers in over 28 countries around the globe. We recently moved to the PayPal platform (May, 2006) and received PayPal's Star Developer Award at eBay Live for the most innovative application of 2006.

Would love to hear any input or can answer any questions. Thanks in advance.

sullix · Joined: 14 Aug 2006 Posts: 1

I used old "my store credit" on my auction listings for a year. That was back when it was a flat 29.99 a year to use. It was and may still be well worth it. I did see an increase in repeat sales using the program. I backed out right before the change to "my store rewards". I didn't do the math. To be honest I just thought "fees" and ran.

beckysthisnthat · Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1577 Location: Texas

How do you figure your fees?

MyStoreRewards · Joined: 23 Aug 2006 Posts: 15

Becky, We have three fees and there are no hidden costs for MyStoreRewards.

First, we charge a monthly service fee of $7.95 per account. This covers unlimited transactions and you can have multiple seller IDs on one account.

Our second fee covers emails we send to your buyers. We charge $0.01 per email, when we send the opt-in email and when we send marketing emails cross-selling your items. You choose the frequency of the reminder emails (every 15, 30 or 45 days). You will receive monthly reports detailing every email sent to your buyers. Reports will show opt-in rates, email open-rates and buyer click-through rates.

Third, MyStoreRewards charges a flat $0.10 for each rebate reward we issue for you.

We bill our fees monthly. You incur no fees during the free trial. We bill through your PayPal account. Because our service is integrated with PayPal, we do not currently accept any other payment methods except PayPal.

In addition to our fees, you will incur the cash reward amount you give your buyers. In most cases, we suggest rebate rewards equal to 1-5% of the payment amount your buyers pay you. Rewards cannot exceed $10.00 or equivalent currency for any buyer in any 24-hour period. Rebate rewards are issued ONLY after a buyer pays you.

Finally, PayPal charges a flat 2% fee on all reward amounts offered. We process all your rebate rewards directly through PayPal so you will need to keep enough balance in PayPal to cover rewards.

An example: If you offer a 1% reward on a $100.00 purchase, your total cost would be $1.12. $1.00 would go to your buyer (1% of $100); MyStoreRewards would charge you $0.10 to issue the reward and PayPal would charge you $0.02.

On average, if you do $20,000 a month in PayPal payments, we estimate your monthly fees to us will be $20.00, or only 1/10th of 1% of your total revenue.

You also should consider your time in using our program, or any other email marketing program. Our program is 100% automated -- that is from start to finish. When you start your program it will automatically run. 100% automatic. You have the option of customizing campaigns, but even if you do, you set up a custom campaign in 15 minutes and it runs automatically from that point forward.

The flip side to the cost is the benefit. On average our program doubles repeat purchase rates for opted-in buyers.

In fact, because most sellers are too busy to do their own analysis, when you sign-in to your account on your first screen, we provide a marketing dash-board showing all relevant statistics so you can see just how effective the program is for you. You will see the total amount you paid to us, the total rebate rewards you gave to your buyers, the total repeat sales amounts and repeat sales transactions plus the average statistics for your email campaigns (opt-in rates, open rates, click-thru rates, etc).

You will also find the majority of your buyers really love the program.

Brian

MyStoreRewards · Joined: 23 Aug 2006 Posts: 15

Sullix,

Thanks for posting. We did offer all existing MyStoreCredit (our predessor service) a free six-month trial if they upgraded to MyStoreRewards.

Since you were one of our prior customers, if you are considering trying it again, let me know and we'll see if we can set you up for that: blawe(at)MyStoreCredit.com

Thx,