Is Jump Send the Solution to Kick-Start Your Amazon Sales and Reviews?
Note: As of May 22nd 2019, Jump Send has now become part of Jungle Scout, renamed “Launch”
… We will provide a more comprehensive update to this review once the transition has fully been rolled out for some time, but just know that is the current situation.
The premise to this post is still helpful and still explains the service, so please read on:
It’s no secret that one of the biggest challenges of launching an Amazon product is getting those initial sales and reviews for your product.
Launching a product on Amazon is a catch-22 situation:
The less sales you get, the lower your ranking will be.
The lower your ranking is, the less sales you will get.
The less sales you get, the less reviews you will get.
The less reviews you have, the less sales you will get.
On the flip side of that situation:
More sales = higher ranking
Higher ranking = more sales
More sales = more reviews
More reviews = more sales
This is a continuously repeating cycle that either makes or breaks Amazon products when they launch. If you don’t get those initial sales and traction then your product can get stuck in a downward death spiral that can be difficult to escape from.
The solution to this problem is obviously more sales. Getting sales will start to increase your rankings which will lead to more organic sales, which will lead to more reviews, more organic sales and higher rankings. If you can get those sales, then you can escape the death spiral that will eventually kill your Amazon product. It’s a significant part of an effective Amazon SEO strategy.
If you can master that, ultimately the most time-consuming part of your Amazon business will be keeping up with all your sales as you sleep on the bed of money you’ve created. 😀
Table of Contents
So, How Do You Get Those First Sales and Reviews on Amazon?
Understanding how it works is simple enough, however, the difficult part is actually getting those initial sales and reviews. So what can you do?
It terms of generating sales, you could:
- Run Facebook ads to drive people to your Amazon product listing or landing page
- Run Amazon ads to drive Amazon buyers to your product
- Run promotions and giveaways
In terms of getting reviews, it’s a little more difficult. As discussed in our post, How to Legally Get Amazon Reviews, a popular strategy is to use an autoresponder that sends an email to people that purchased your products, asking them if they enjoyed it and encourage them to leave a review.
As worthwhile as this is, not everyone will leave a review and in fact the percentage of people who do will be quite low as there’s no incentive.
Instead, there’s a more efficient alternative. And that alternative, is Jump Send.
What is Jump Send and How Does it Work?
From the same respected creators of the Jungle Scout Web App and Chrome extension, Jump Send offers a solution to both getting sales and reviews.
Here’s how it works:
Jump Send has a marketplace with an existing audience of over 100,000 shoppers who are actively looking for deals, whom you can promote your product to. It also has an auto-responder to communicate with those shoppers after they’ve purchased your product.
To clarify, you can jump start your sales by selling at a small discount to Jump Send’s existing customer base of real Amazon shoppers looking for deals. You can then communicate with those shoppers after they have purchased your item which increases the chances they will leave you a review.
A problem you will become aware of if you haven’t already is that when you launch your Amazon product, you will set the price you want to sell the product for but you won’t necessarily get natural sales right away at that price. For example, you might list your product for $20 to shoppers on Amazon but if your product is new and has no reviews, it can be difficult to sell that $20 product when there is a lot of competition around that same price.
Likewise, people that pay standard price for a product are unlikely to leave a review if they like it, however, people are more than willing to jump on Amazon and leave a one-star review if there is even the tiniest problem with their order.
Many Amazon products have failed because the first review on the product is a one-star review.
Whats’s annoying is that a lot of reviews that Amazon customers leave are unjustified or unrelated to the quality of the product, for example, “Box was left outside and got wet in the rain – 1 star”, “I ordered the wrong one, I want to return this – 1 star”. And unfortunately, very few potential new customers will read the details of these reviews; they just look at the star rating on the results page and then decide which products to look at in more detail based on that.
You could reduce the price of your product to $10, however, this will significantly reduce your profit per unit. You will then need to sell more units to make money, and if you’re not careful this could result in you running out of inventory before you can restock which can kill your Amazon rankings by itself.
The solution and how Jump Send operates, is like this:
Amazon allows you to generate discount codes and give those codes to shoppers you select. You don’t have to reduce the price of your product on your Amazon listing, you only need to discount the price for the shoppers you give the discount codes to. The discount sales still boost your sales figures, which boosts your ranking on Amazon. The increased ranking on Amazon leads to more organic sales which further increases your ranking.
Quite often, you very much need these initial discount sales to launch your product and that’s where Jump Send comes in. With Jump Send, you can put your discount codes from Amazon into their system and shoppers can search for products and request a code. When a shopper is approved for a code, they can use it on Amazon to purchase your product at the discount offered.
As mentioned already, Jump Send has an existing marketplace of over 100,000 genuine Amazon shoppers, so you don’t need to spend money on Facebook or Amazon ads to get shoppers to buy your product. On Jump Send there are thousands of shoppers looking to purchase your product.
Jump Send Review
Now that you understand the problem, solution and concept behind Jump Send, let’s take a closer look at how good the service actually is and whether or not it works as intended.
We’ll cover the pros and cons.
The Good
It provides an existing marketplace of shoppers
This is one of the biggest advantages of Jump Send; that it has a massive marketplace of buyers already looking to purchase Amazon products at a discount.
You don’t need to spend money on facebook ads, Amazon ads or anything else to find shoppers that might be interested in your product. Jump Send already has the platform and marketplace with shoppers ready to purchase your product.
Shoppers are already familiar with how to use Amazon coupon codes
Another big advantage of the Jump Send marketplace is that the shoppers already know how to use Amazon coupon codes.
A problem you may have with offering coupon codes to shoppers that don’t know how to use them, is they complain or leave a negative review when they can’t use the code correctly. Or you may also just find yourself wasting time explaining to shoppers how to use coupon codes which can be an additional hassle.
With Jump Send, shoppers know how to use the coupons codes and in if they don’t, they can contact Jump Send themselves for any assistance they require.
It’s the easiest way to get genuine shoppers that are interested in your product and boost sales ranking
Jump Send is one of the easiest ways to get genuine shoppers that are interested in your product to purchase your product
Shoppers on the site are real Amazon shoppers that are looking for deals to buy; they are not waiting to research products or just add them to their cart to consider later.
Shoppers on the site are eager to snap up deals as quickly as possible before other shoppers get them, or the coupons expire.
It’s one of the best ways to get consistent sales for your product
Many Amazon sellers use Jump Send as a way to maintain consistent sales for their products
If they need 10 sales a day to rank for a competitive keyword or niche and they are currently only getting 7, then they can give away 3 products a day on Jump Send to maintain consistent sales to ensure they continue to rank.
If they didn’t have those 3 additional sales a day, their rankings would decrease which might mean they would lose those 7 organic sales a day.
Boost keyword and sales ranking
The benefit of getting more consistent sales for your product is that your rankings for keywords will increase as a result, as we outlined right at the beginning of this Jump Send review.
Amazon uses sales to rank products, so the more sales you get for your product, the higher your sales ranking will be.
This means you will show up higher in the rankings when people type in keywords to search for your product.
Saves money on Facebook and Amazon ads
There is no need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on Facebook or Amazon ads to get shoppers to buy your product.
Your ad spend on these platforms can accumulate quickly and is still doesn’t guarantee a result in sales.
Sellers only get the discount code if they purchase the product
While you may create 100 coupon codes, if only 50 shoppers use the coupon codes then the other codes will expire and you can create new ones.
This means you aren’t at risk of discounting all of your inventory as you give you out codes. Just make sure you create the codes correctly by following the instructions provided by Jump Send.
It gives you a competitive edge when launching a product
When launching a product, it’s essential to have initial traction and sales on your product.
If you don’t get those initial sales, you will have no velocity on your launch and your product will drop down the rankings and make it very difficult to get sales in the future.
It may help get more reviews
There is no guarantee that you will get more reviews for your product, however if you are getting more sales, there is a greater chance of getting a review.
The autoresponder incorporated into Jump Send also helps communicate with buyers and provide them value. This may also help increase the chance of a review through increased communication with the buyer.
If you already have other autoresponder software set up with your Amazon account, you can still use that instead of the one offered within Jump Send.
It’s created by the same creators as Jungle Scout
Jungle Scout is the leading market research tool for Amazon sellers and they have a strong reputation for quality with their web app , Chrome extension and other software products.
Excellent customer service
Along with a reputation for quality software, the Jungle Scout team also provide exceptional customer service on all of their products.
If you have an issues or questions about using Jump Send, you can rely on their knowledgable customer service to help.
The Not So Good
Jump Send isn’t perfect so here’s what you should be aware of:
It doesn’t work with all products
Jump Send doesn’t work with Kindle ebooks, Merc by Amazon and some other product categories.
You can only promote products that you have listed in your Amazon seller central account.
Jump Send doesn’t work in all marketplaces
Currently Jump Send only works in the U.S.A and U.K marketplaces.
These are the main Amazon marketplaces for most sellers so this likely isn’t an issue, however, Canada, Germany and the other European marketplaces are growing in popularity and the Australian Amazon marketplace just launched, so if you have a product in these marketplaces, Jump Send unfortunately isn’t an option for promotions at the moment. They may introduce other marketplaces in the future.
You can’t select the shoppers
Amazon changed their rules to disallow providing a discount code to shoppers based on their Amazon profile or the likelihood of them leaving you a review.
Instead, when you send a coupon to a shopper, you have no way of knowing who the person is that receives your coupon code. This typically isn’t likely to be a problem expect for the following possibility…
There may be resellers using the site
As you can’t select the shoppers, you may provide discount codes to “shoppers” that intend to resell your products on eBay for a profit.
This is less of a risk with Jump Send as they have requirements for shoppers to install a Chrome extension which makes it difficult to set up multiple accounts. It is also less profitable for resellers now discounts aren’t free or 90% off as they would be with similar services in the past.
If you are offering 20% to 70% off your product on Jump Send it is less of a risk, however, be aware that any discounts above 70% could result in people reselling your products on eBay or even Amazon for profit.
No direct incentive for shoppers to leave reviews
You may sell a lot of products at a discount but not get many reviews.
This is due to the change in Amazon’a rules that applies to all Amazon promotion sites, whereby you can’t explicitly give away a product simply for a review.
The main purpose of giving out discount codes with Jump Send is to receive a boost in sales, however, those sales may not result in reviews. And there is also no incentive for shoppers to leave positive reviews. If you have a bad product then you will likely get bad reviews.
Fortunately, Jump Send shoppers are quite active with leaving reviews but it should be said that there is no guarantee.
Purchases with discounts over 50% (approx.) don’t count as verified reviews
This is not a stated official Amazon policy but it interestingly appears to be the case for most sellers.
If you provide products at a discount over 50% and buyers leave a review then Amazon won’t show the “verified review” text on the review.
It’s not clear how Amazon’s algorithm treats these sales in terms of rankings, however, you should be aware of this difference in terms of the “verified review” text not showing.
You don’t get access to customer data or emails
Jump Send has an existing marketplace of over 100,000 shoppers. However, those shoppers belong to Jump Send.
You don’t get access to the email address or any other other data about the shoppers that receive your codes, so you can’t communicate with them via email or build a mailing list for your product or brand from this source.
FAQ’s: Common Questions About Jump Send
Can I select the shoppers I give vouchers to?
Amazon changed its rules in 2016 to disallow you from selecting individual shoppers based on their profiles. In the past, naturally shoppers that only left 5 star reviews could be favored but this is no longer allowed or possible.
With Jump Send, you can set your promotion to automatically approve a certain number of shoppers each day or you can manually approve shoppers. However, even when you manually approve them, you won’t see their Amazon profile or be able to select shoppers based on whether they have left 5-star reviews in the past.
Do shoppers that get my product at a discount have to leave a review?
No, there is no requirement or incentive for shoppers to leave a review anymore. When you offer your product at a discount, you are getting more shoppers to purchase which increases your chances of getting reviews, however there is no requirement that they must leave a review.
Will reviewers from Jump Send always leave 5-star reviews?
No, even the shoppers that do leave a review will not always leave a 5-star review. If you have a great product, then getting more shoppers to purchase your product will likely result in more positive reviews. If you have a terrible product, then this is not a trick to get fake reviews for your product. If your product is bad, then the more shoppers you get, the more likely you are to get bad reviews.
Start with a good product, that’s the key to longevity and success on Amazon.
Is this within Amazon’s Terms of Service (ToS)?
Yes, using Jump Send is within Amazon’s ToS.
Jump Send was previously called Review Kick until Amazon changed their rules about providing shoppers with products in exchange for a discount. Review Kick would very much encourage shoppers to leave a review for a product they received at a discount; it was the premise it was based on. When Amazon changed their rules, Review Kick changed its name to Jump Send and removed incentivised reviews. Similar services at the time simply became obsolete; they failed to adapt and went out of business.
With Jump Send, shoppers are not receiving a product at a discount in exchange for a review. There is no incentive for shoppers to leave a review and if a shopper does decide to leave one, it will be a genuine, unbiased, honest review.
Communicating with sellers using an autoresponder is also within Amazon’s Terms of Service, however, you need to ensure that what you include in those messages is allowed. You can’t explicitly request a shopper to leave you a 5-star review even if they liked the product.
Do I need a Jungle Scout account to use Jump Send?
No, you don’t need a Jungle Scout account to use Jump Send. You can sign up for a Jump Send account separately to Jungle Scout and there is no requirement that you need one to use the other.
Does it work in all marketplaces?
No, at the moment, Jump Send only works for promotions in the Amazon U.S.A and Amazon U.K marketplaces.
Does Jump Send work with Kindle Books or Merc by Amazon?
No, Jump Send only works with products in a Seller Central account that you can create discount codes for.
What are the Jump Send alternatives?
The alternatives to Jump Send would be:
- Running facebook ads to send people to a landing page to distribute coupons
- Running ads on Amazon itself to attract shoppers
- Running deals on other marketplaces
- Getting social media, website and influencer reviews
There were a lot more alternative services until the change to Amazon’s ToS in 2016, however, many of those alternatives failed to adapt to the change and have either ceased to exist or are now against Amazon’s rules.
We are currently testing the effectiveness of other alternatives and will update this section when we can be certain other alternatives actually work and are within Amazon’s rules. We will see specifically how Jump Send compares vs Viral Launch vs Feedback Genius vs Vipon vs Zonmaster etc. But just know for now that Jump Send is legit and works.
How much does Jump Send cost?
Jump Send has 4 different plans available and the only difference between them is the product limit for promotions you can run simultaneously.
All plans provide access to the below features:
- Access to over 100,000 shoppers on the marketplace
- Premium analytics on promotions
- Ability to distribute unlimited coupons to shoppers
Where the plans differ is with the following simultaneous product limits:
Starter Plan ($29 a month) – limit of 3 product promotions
Entrepreneur ($59 a month) – limit of 10 product promotions
Business ($99 a month) – limit of 25 product promotions
Enterprise ($199 a month) – limit of 100 product promotions
If you have the Starter plan, you can still run more than 3 product promotions each month, just not at the same time. You can run promotions for 3 products simultaneously, then stop one of the promotions when it has achieved its target and start a promotion for another product.
The Starter plan provides excellent value for most Amazon sellers getting started with less than 6 products. The pricing structure is actually great value, because there is no limit on the number of coupons you can send or the number of products you can run promotions on during the month.
Is there a free trial?
Yes, there is a 3-day free trial. It’s not very long but it’s enough to allow you to test it out with a product and get some sales for an existing product.
So, What’s the Verdict?
Since the change to Amazon’s Terms of Service in 2016 it’s been increasingly more difficult to launch a product and get those initial sales and reviews.
Prior to 2016, there were a large number of alternatives to Jump Send (previously known as Review Kick) that in all honesty were better in terms of getting reviews, as they had larger marketplaces or better reviewers.
However, since the change to Amazon’s rules, many competitors have failed to adjust, or they closed down as they are simply now against Amazon’s ToS.
On the flip side, Jump Send has only gone from strength to strength. During that time, they pivoted quickly, changing their name from Review Kick within 24 hours after the rule change and have only continued to improve their software while others fell behind.
The tool has a great user interface, making it easy to run promotions and distribute coupon codes. And the shoppers are genuine Amazon shoppers that know how to use the coupons to purchase products, so there’s minimal hassle in that regard.
In our opinion, at the time of writing, Jump Send is the best marketplace for Amazon sellers to distribute coupons to help increase sales, boost rankings and launch a successful Amazon product.
It works.
Click Here for a Jump Send Free Trial
