Even after the big Christmas sales push, the hustle never stops on eBay. Now is the time to put all of your efforts into re-marketing to all those expensively won customers and start generating repeat revenue. But how do you do this on an online marketplace where you don’t own the customer relationship? You cannot use standard email marketing techniques enjoyed by retailers operating their own eCommerce stores. However, you can use eBay’s dedicated email tools to target and engage shoppers with highly personalised messages.

eBay Buyer Groups

Buyer Groups is a new email marketing service available to eBay sellers in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, France, Italy and Spain. It allows them to segment their buyers and send highly personalised messages to specific groups to drive more repeat business.

A buyer group might include:

Buyers that bought from a seller’s store in the past month
Buyers that purchased in a specific category from a seller’s store (e.g., “golf equipment”)
Buyers that are following but have not yet bought from the store

As part of the initial launch of Buyer Groups, sellers can:

Create segmented groups of buyers with filtering criteria such as most recent purchases and categories.
Create segmented groups of followers based on whether they have previously purchased from you or not.
Engage with buyers and followers of these Buyer Groups in bulk by sending them coded coupons via email and push notifications.

A Spam Free Zone

eBay has been cautious and put checks and balances in place so that buyers are not bombarded with marketing messages. Sellers can only send coupons twice in the first month following a purchase. If the buyer does not engage with the seller, the seller can then attempt to retain the buyer by sending them an additional coupon after a period of three months. After a period of 12 months, the seller will no longer be permitted to send more coupons.

The Buyer Group service follows hot on the heels of eBay’s successful Offers to Buyers programme, which was launched in 2019 and drove more than $1 billion in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV).