Good morning, eCommerce leaders.

You’ll receive these emails on Wednesday now because Beehiiv told me that will increase my open rate by .15%, and as you know, every little bit counts. 😀 

– Josh Rawe

In Today’s Episode:

Deep Dive into Virtual Bundles and How to Create Your Own (below)

Pacvue Releases their Q4 Benchmark Numbers (direct link)

Amazon’s SKU Economics Report Shows Your FBA Costs by SKU (direct link)

The Virtual Bundle Opportunity

Virtual Bundles: More Sales, Higher AOV, More Real Estate

Why You Need To Create Virtual Bundles

Here’s what we’ve seen for our clients:

• 10% average increase in total sales

• 2x increase in average order value

• Zero operational changes required

• 30 minutes to setup a bundle

• Increases your above-the-fold real estate

Quick Case Study from a Client

Here is an example from one of our clients, Playground. They sell sexual lubricant for post-menopausal women. They’re a relatively new brand and they wanted to expand quickly, while getting their bottles in hands. We created a bundle combining their hero product with other styles that we saw customers buying together.

We saw a 9.87% increase in incremental revenue and the virtual bundle order value was 208% greater than the typical order.

How to Pick the Perfect Pair for Your Virtual Bundle

The key to successful virtual bundles is choosing products that compliment each other. For example, shampoo and conditioner, face wash and moisturizer, protein powder and pre-workout supplement, or toothbrush and toothpaste all make great bundles.

The key is finding items customers already tend to purchase together and making it convenient for them to buy as a set.

3 Ways to Find Complimentary Products

1. Pull your DTC data. Start by looking at your own frequently bought together. If you have a Shopify site, download your order history and find your most popular bundles.

2. Look at Amazon’s Frequently Bought Together section. This section is determined by an algorithm that looks at purchase histories to determine what products customers are buying together.

3. Create a Market Basket Analysis report. Use the #1, #2, and #3 purchase combinations data to figure out what people are already buying together.

   1. You can find the report here.

   2. How to read the report here.

How to Set Your Price on the Virtual Bundle

Your pricing will depend on margin and goals, but there are general rules of thumb you can use.

3 Pricing Rule of Thumbs

1. Give a discount. No discount results in little uptake on the bundle offer.

2. 10 - 20% seems to be the best range for driving sales while maintaining margin.

3. 40%+ discounts will drive heavy adoption and can be used for new product launches (hero + new product) or getting rid of discontinued product (hero + discontinued product).

   1. Don’t do the discontinued product if you’re dropping it because it’s a terrible product.

How to Optimize Your Bundle Content

Your Price, Main Image, and Title are the 3 most important pieces to optimize.

Most people find your virtual bundle on the product detail page of one of the components.

Your Click-Thru-Rate will sink or swim based on your Title, Price, and Main Image.

Here’s how to optimize:

1. The Title should be short and simply list the 2 products. You don’t want to keyword stuff these titles as they don’t seem to index in search. For example, if you’re selling a moisturizer and facial mask, you want to use the literal product words Moisturizer and Facial Mask. Minimal adjectives, they use “Men’s” here which is ok. The reason is you want the customers to know what’s in the bundle right on the PDP and not post-click.

2. The Main Image follows the same principles, you want to show the two products they will receive in the bundle. Example here.

3. You can choose any Price for the virtual bundles, but the discount and strike-thru price you see here will be based off the combined list price of the two individual products. For example here, you can see the list price of the two products combined is $53.90 and the bundle price is $48.02, so the discount is 11% percent.

Do this right and optimizing the rest of the bundle product detail page is easy.

Bullet Points

Bullet points should explain the value of getting both products. For example, if you are selling moisturizer and a face cream, talk about the benefits of using both products. Use natural language and don’t keyword stuff because I don’t think these pages are indexing in search.

Supplemental Carousel Images

Supplemental carousel images are straightforward, you can use your images from the individual listings, but you should have a few images that show the combo so customers know they get both products.

How to Track Performance

Virtual bundles don’t show up on the traditional revenue reports, at least not AS A BUNDLE. Amazon captures and tracks the sales on your reports, but it’s captured as a single item purchase.

You will receive an EMAIL from Amazon every week with a link to download the sales data of your bundled ASINs from the past 90 days.

This report will give you the details of your virtual bundle performance and looks like this:

Common Questions

Can I run ads on Virtual Bundles?

You can run ads on virtual bundles, but you can only run sponsored BRAND ads.

Do I need a UPC for Virtual Bundles?

No, Virtual Bundles have their own SKU in seller central and do NOT require a UPC.

Can I Edit the Virtual Bundle?

Yes, you can edit the title, images, bullet points, description, and price. You can NOT swap out the bundle products though. You’ll need to create a new virtual bundle.

How Many Products Can I Bundle?

You can bundle 2 - 5 products together. Keep it simple and start with 2 product bundles and then expand from there.

Bottom Line

Virtual bundles are a low-effort way to boost Amazon sales and order values.

Implementation requires just 30 minutes of setup time and no operational changes.

To succeed:

1. Use your DTC data or Amazon's "Frequently Bought Together" to identify winning product combinations

2. Price bundles at a 10-20% discount for optimal sales/margin balance

3. Keep titles and images simple and product-focused since these listings don't index in search.

4. Track performance through Amazon's weekly bundle sales reports.

Create Your Virtual Bundle in Seller Central Here

Read Amazon’s Guide to Virtual Bundles Here

🎁 Help Your Friends