Demo Mondays #40 – Teikametrics Flywheel

January 16, 2019

Teikametrics Flywheel is a Retail Optimization Platform (ROP) that uses Big Data to help sellers and brands automate and optimize advertising on Amazon. Flywheel provides visibility into key metrics coupled with powerful machine learning and data science technology which takes action to help brands scale – all in a seamless, intuitive interface.

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Teikametrics is presented by Director of Partnerships Jason Magee.

List of features covered in this video:

04:02 Retail Optimization Platform
04:24 Retail Optimization Platform Features
04:57 Average Revenue Growth after using Teikametrics
05:37 Teikametrics core mission
06:02 What is a Retail Optimization Platform (ROP)
06:32 The Flywheel Effect
07:59 Teikametrics homescreen
08:50 Total Advertising Cost of Sale – TACoS
10:09 Machine learning in Teikametrcis ROP
11:04 Flywheel Bid Change
12:18 Product Metrics Page
13:56 Ad Metrics Dashboard
14:40 Keyword Actions – Explore and Exploit method
15:49 Automatic to Manual set
17:04 Change History and importance of it
17:52 Custom Analitics Reports
18:57 How long does it take to pull data once Teikametics is connected?
19:07 Human assitsant SaaS
20:21 Expert Services
21:10 How to get help?
22:34 Teikametrics Flywheel pricing
23:35 Offer – Teikametrics Free Trial for 30 days
24:26 What kind of features Teikametrics are going to enroll in the future?
25:50 Jasons contact in case needing of support.


Transcript – Walk-through of Teikametrics Flywheel

[00:00] Augustas: Welcome back to another session of Demo Mondays. Demo Mondays are video series where I invite creators and founders of different software for Amazon sellers and I ask them to present their products just like this on the screen. And today my guest is Teikametrics.

[00:21] Augustas: Teikametrics is presented by the director of partnerships Jason Magee. Hello Jason.

[00:27] Jason: Hi Augustas, how are you? Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this.

[00:32] Augustas: Yes, I am excited to have you here. Actually I’ve heard that Teikametrics is quite a big company, but it’s not so known for my audience so I’m happy to present it. Can you briefly tell how big is your company and what solutions do you provide?

[00:50] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Teikametrics – we’re headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts in the US, we actually cover most Amazon marketplaces globally: US, Canada, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, UK, and India. And more to come as well. So at this time of this recording, we have over 70 employees probably around 75 or so and we have thousands of sellers to use our platform and we are managing over $5,000,000,000 of GMV that’s running through our platform. I believe that represents 2.5 – 3 % of Amazon’s total GMV that we’re touching. So a lot of data to pool from, which helps us do our job better. But I know at some point even just maybe a week from now when when folks are looking at this recording, we may even have more employees. So we’re growing quite fast. And I believe the second thing you asked me is that what we do, right?

[01:53] Augustas: Yes, so what solutions do you provide and what we’ll be talking today about?

[01:57] Jason: Yes, absolutely. Teikametrics is a data science company that actually uses big data to help Amazon sellers optimize their business for profitability. We help sellers understand the key metrics of their business, such as, the business metrics as well as product level metrics and profitability, and then we use all of this data and funnel it into actioning that and how you advertise on Amazon. So that’s what we’re going to be taking you through today. And I’ll take you through a few things we’ll be covering in a deck before we hop into the tool just to provide some context. We’re really excited to do this and it’s funny because a lot of times instead of spending a ton of money on marketing, we’ve been really investing in our technology and we have some of the smartest folks in the world who have come together to help build this over the last few years. Sellers who use it are extremely satisfied and we’ll talk more about that.

[02:54] Augustas: And your solutions work in which marketplaces of Amazon?

[03:00] Jason: Like I said, it will be all in North America, US and Canada, UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, India as well. And we’re constantly adding more marketplaces for Amazon and even potentially exploring off Amazon as well, so a lot of exciting things, but that’s something that makes us unique is having that coverage globally. And it caters your audience, I know. What is it – 40 % of your audiences is outside the US, correct?

[03:27] Augustas: Yes, I have more or less half US and half non US. So it’s really a very international audience. So let’s jump to the presentation. You have a very short presentation about your solutions and afterwards we’ll follow with a demonstration of your software. Right?

[03:44] Jason: Great, thank you. So let’s spend a few minutes going through a few slides just to understand the context because I think if we just hop right into the solution, some of the context is missing. Our solution is called Teikametrics Flywheel which is a retail optimization platform. So it’s important for folks to understand our vision. We use big data to help sellers and brands optimize their business for profitability. So who is our solution built for? Any seller or brand large or small who has advertising on Amazon, leveraging sponsored products or sponsored brands, you stand to benefit greatly from our solution. So the features we are going to cover today, and again, a lot of folks try and put us into a PPC tool. It’s much more robust in that and we’ll get into it. So we’re going to talk before we talk about the PPC component. I mean we’re talking about business metrics and understanding those metrics and being able to go down to the product level and look at your product level profitability. Then we are able to automate advertising with price where algorithmic bidding eliminate inefficient Ad Spend and then capitalizing on Top Performing Keywords as well.

[04:57] Jason: So, what does the data show? Sellers who deploy Teikametrics software see an average revenue growth of 34 % within the first 60 days while maintaining a consistent ACoS . You know, with ACoS, sometimes they want to lower the ACoS. So that’s just one example of what you can see. This is a testimonial I wanted to share really quickly: “before Teikametrics we were averaging $25 k/month in sales. We had a good grasp on our business other than advertising”. Since using Teikametrics, within six months they’ve almost tripled their sales to $65-70k and the main reason has been the use of Teikametrics. So diving in a bit further here, our core mission is to use data science and machine learning to help sellers be more efficient through advertising. And over the last three years we’ve been helping perform this with thousands of sellers and we are a part of the marketplace developer council. We have a very good relationship directly with Amazon so we know about things as they’re happening and we then deploy that within our solution.

[06:02] Jason: So what is a retail optimization platform? Well, it’s not just advertising, it actually is bringing in inventory, your conversions, your levels, etc, and then your pricing. We sit at the middle, the epicenter of all three of these things. And we’re pulling in all this data, not just on the Amazon advertising side, but we’re pulling in the MWS data, your product, your sales, your order history, your conversions, organic sales. We’re one of the first folks to really do this and then provide actions to do with it.

[06:32] Jason: Our solution is called Flywheel, the reason why it’s called Flywheel, because it all starts with having really good data science and understanding the data that we’re pulling from our sellers, the context of each seller’s account. So if we’re able to lower costs, improve advertising, which increases your sales and drives more reviews and increases your sales rank, it’s going to drive more organic traffic, which just gives us more data. The goal of advertising isn’t to get advertising revenue. It’s to increase your organic traffic and organic sales as well.

[07:07] Jason: We take a very analytical approach, which is always going to win. We first help sellers understand how their business is performing, and then we take the next step and help them action this with how you can leverage this to advertise more optimally and see a better ROI. So the questions we ask before we talk about advertising: how is your business doing overall from a business metric perspective? – Step one. Step two is: okay, now let’s review your profitable products and least profitable products and which ones are really making the most money and what opportunities exist. Then it goes to advertising: all right, now we understand how you’re doing on a business and product level. Now let’s advertise. So these are some of the questions that we’re going to be asking you. We’re not going to go through them. So right before we jump into the tool, it’s okay, now we understand this information. Let’s actually start to advertise this.

[07:59] New Speaker: Jumping over into our tool, what you’re going to look at here is: this is our home screen, this is the epicenter of the Teikametric solution. This is mission control, if you will as well. So within the homescreen: you’ll see that we’re pulling in things that you wouldn’t expect from somebody who focuses a lot on advertising. We are pulling in Estimated Gross Profit. We’re actually pulling in and calculating your Amazon commissions and fulfillment fees, your Advertising Costs, your costs for storing on FBA, FBA costs of those products as well. We’re actually pulling in your costs of goods data as well to give you an estimate of gross profit. And you can set this from whatever date range you want, but the one I want us to really focus on, I wish I had a highlighter here, actually, there we go, I highlighted here – TACoS. We’ve created a metric called Total Advertising Costs of Sale. The reason why this is so important Augustas, is this actually shows you the relationship between the Ad Spend and how that drives organic revenue. So what you want to see is a flat TACoS or even a decrease in TACoS while you’re organic revenue was going up. This is showing you something that most folks don’t calculate or don’t know how to. And even if they are, it’s a rolling calculation. They have to do it manually. So that’s something that we’re able to show you something that you really aren’t able to do on your own without cross referencing a lot of reports.

[09:24] Augustas: So what’s the formula of TACoS?

[09:27] Jason: I’ll hover over it. It’s a percentage calculated by dividing total advertising sales. A total of dividing your spend by your total organic sales.

[09:36] Augustas: Okay.

[09:37] Jason: This actually is showing you: Okay, for the money I’m spending on advertising, the problem with ACoS and if you’re chasing an ACoS it only shows you how much it’s driving your Ad Sales, it doesn’t show you what you’re cannibalizing your organic business, for instance. This is the metric that we’re really hoping to try and bring to the world because this is what matters. When we talk to sellers, they really wish they had this and or even agencies that we work with, a lot of them, they want this metric.

[10:09] Jason: So scrolling down in here as well, you’ll see this sort of panelized approach. This is our machine learning, acting on your behalf and then pulling in the relevant points that you need to action. So for here, we need you to set a Max Ad Cost per Sale or a specific specific ACoS targets. We may need Costs of Goods Sold. This is just a demo account. We wanted to show you one that actually has some prompts in it. And then below here, this is just a series of quick actions that will populate based on what you should be doing. So we’re going to show you: Hey Jason, you’re running auto campaigns. We’re exploring keywords you use, let’s dump them into a manual campaign, it will also show you wasted Ad Spend when it’s here as well, if the actions haven’t been taken or more refined search terms that you should be doubling down on your manual campaigns as well.

[11:04] Jason: And then the beauty here is this Flywheel Bid Change. We typically are averaging, you know, tens of thousands if not more of Bid Changes per month per keyword selection per account. So what this means is rather than you spend hours everyday going in there and adjusting your bids on the keyword level, we’re doing it for you. And we do what’s called value based bidding. So this isn’t rules based, the problem with rules based solutions is that it doesn’t take into account your sales price, it doesn’t take into account conversion metrics as they go up or down and it doesn’t take into account updated strategies as well. So I think the way we look at this as we are like the nest thermostat rather than a traditional thermostat which only looks at whatever you set it does, we take into account, for instance, the temperature outside or whether you’re in the house or not, this is how we actually go down on a deeper, more ingrained level. So this is your business metrics that you should focus on – number one. The second funnel is: all right, now that we understand your business metrics and whether you’re profitable and this relationship between Ad Spend and your organic revenue, let’s look at the product level and look at your profitability.

[12:18] Jason: So on this product metrics page where you’re pulling in on a parent and child skew level: what your total sales are, what your gross margin is, what your gross profit is, unit sold Ad Sales, Ad Spend, and then, just as equally important, what campaigns this is tied to. So this allows you to do a few things, if you see that you have a very good margin, but for some, and you can even set a margin even by timeframe or margin percentages as well, but what this allows you to do is a few things: you could identify products that you should be advertising but you’re not; you can identify products that have a lot of sales, but maybe their gross margin isn’t good or the opposite. You have a great margin but no sales. So you should be focusing on these products. Then most importantly, your gross margin. Based on your gross margin and where your product is in the lifecycle, whether it’s being launched or you’re liquidating or you’re optimizing for profitability, you should be using this data to action how you set your Max Advertising Cost of sale targets. So you can import costs of good very easily, via CSV or manually on a per product level. And then diving in here: so now we just want the funnel business metrics: how is your business performing? Number two, how are you performing on a product level? And then now that we understand this data, let’s talk about advertising. This is the bread and butter and this is where we actually help provide context and value where others fall short.

[13:54] Jason: So you go into our dashboard, we give you the Ad Metrics, you know, Total Revenue, Total Ad Revenue, rolling ACoS, Wasted Ad Spend as well, which we’ll talk about. You can even see over previous comparable period how the success has been on these metrics. Again, this is a demo account that I’m taking you through. We don’t want to obviously show you somebody’s account. So now we’ve looked at the Ad Metrics that you can set by any date range. This is where you actually set your Max Advertising Cost per Sale. This is mostly you’re willing to give up, to achieve a sale directly from advertising. This is what we use to then go out and do the automated bidding and using these data points.

[14:40] Jason: So going on to the next tab. This then goes into the automated workflow that we do from an advertiser perspective. So number one, once you set your targets and you have your campaign set up, we also recommend a mirrored campaign structure, which is: you run an auto campaign and for every auto campaign you run at least one manual campaign associated with it. This is the explore and exploit method. You explore by running auto campaigns, which is essentially allowing Amazon to pull keywords they think are relevant, and then actually testing those for you. Then you’re able to exploit those keywords and drop them into manual campaigns, which we’ll talk about. So step one is we recognize that we’re driving a lot of impressions and clicks based on a search term, but it’s costing you money because they’re not converting. We will tell you: Hey Jason, eliminate these key words because they’re not making you money. Unless there’s a strategic reason you’re doing it such as you want to bid up on a competitor’s listing. So that would be Negative Keywords and again, these will come to the home panel as well.

[15:49] Jason: Automatic to Manual will be the second set. This is where we, what I just said, we pull and explore all of the automatic campaigns and how those keywords are performing and then we go: Hey Jason, this one’s a winner. Augustas, move these keywords to a manual campaign. That way you can have a better ROI because we know that these work. Going one step further, a lot of folks may or may not know that when you have a manual campaign, you can set up a broad, a phrase or an exact match keyword. So an example is a broad phrase may be – boots, a phrase may be – men’s boots. And when exact is – men’s boots round size seven. The more direct you get, the less search may be done for that, but the higher rate will convert. So what we actually do is we go: Hey, we recognize this keyword is in phrase, we know we could be making you more money if you also add this as an exact match keyword as well. So to go one step further, you can make all these changes or you can select them one by one, it’s really up to you. And then obviously we show you: Hey Augustas, here are the keywords that are contributing the most in terms of Ad Revenue and in Ad Sales and what your ACoS is. This is the report you’re able to run directly on that.

[17:04] Jason: The one last thing I just want to check before we go to analytics, is it’s important that you have a log history, a ledger, if you will, to know specifically when you’re making an action like what was taken and why was it done. So an example here is we can show you every single sort of keyword that you’ve changed from a Negative Keyword. We can show you what you’ve done from an Automatic to Manual perspective. We can show you what you’ve done in the targeting improvement perspective and most importantly on Bid Changes we are actually showing you why we adjusted a bid on your behalf and the data science that went into it as well. So this is extremely important for us to know what’s really happening to be able to convey that directly back to the seller.

[17:52] Jason: Lastly, having the ability to run custom analytics reports. We have a few such as Total Sales versus Estimated Gross Margin and how that trends over time, Profit versus Ad Spend, or you can run a custom report as well. So I know we flew through that and this is unique. Usually it’s a dialogue, you know, when we’re showing this to particular seller at and then we can actually pull in their metrics as well as show them what’s happening within their account. Matter of fact, we’ll talk about it, but we’re offering..

[18:24] Augustas: How long does it take to pull the data once it’s connected?

[18:29] Jason: Usually a few hours. General rule is: We just allow you to sync by next day, if not sooner, we’re able to come in and show you specifically how that works. I know we went through that and it was more one sided than I’d like, but I know Demo Mondays probably are like that too, to a certain extent. And us talking to all the viewers at home or their respective offices or locations, but…

[18:57] Augustas: Yes, one of the feature you showed that you can, it shows that you can change Negative Keywords from Automatic to Manual, right?

[19:07] Jason: Yeah, exactly. So you can drop, we can just drop them in a campaign for you. So if you look, the right approach and this is it, like I know some folks they think of automation and they think, oh, there’s no human element. I mean, I think what we call it is we call Human Assistant SaaS, which is there’re certain things that we’re just going to be better at computers are going to be better at for you, which is always working in computing complex mathematical equations that humans aren’t good at. There are things where humans actually are able to add the context and the element, and an example of being the Negative Keywords as we mentioned, or the Automatic to Manual. We want to automate certain things, but we also want to boil it down. Essentially what we do is we take what would really take 6 to 10 hours a week of adjusting bids and downloading reports. Trust me, we know this because before we had the tool, we used to do this manually for our clients. We’re boiling it in to about 15 minutes a week for sellers and brands who are using our tool.

[20:07] Augustas: Perfect. Alright. So there is Expert Services. I see some menus at the very bottom. What does mean Expert Services? So people through these dashboards can also order additional consultancies from you?

[20:21] Jason: Yes, so there’s a few things that we do. One, we have an Expert Launch Service, which is a campaign launch, which is if you want us to come in and just build out your campaigns just to get you started in the right way. We can do that for you. I believe it’s $250, I believe. I don’t want to misquote the Expert Campaign Launch. We do have a managed service as well where we’ll actually come in and run your account for you. Expert Partner Services page. This one is near and dear to my heart, manly because you know, I’m in the realm of partnerships. One of the very most important part…

[21:00] Augustas: Second: Help. We can probably touch help. So I see the help buttons if people need help, how, what’s the best way for them to ask question and get fast answer?

[21:10] Jason: There’re two things. So one of them Expert Partner Services,this is for folks who want help with the solution that we don’t provide ourselves. Like if they want listing optimization, if they want logistics support or something like that, they can get the help directly within our Partner Services page. Then within the help section, we have a really robust help center that actually has all sorts of video guides and walkthroughs about whatever, like for instance, setting your ACoS and you want to figure out how to understand you’re a ACoS and in setting it up in the reason for, here’s just one example here, and we can help you show you exactly how you should be setting up your ACoS or if you have an issue with the solution itself, something, you know, if you have a question about what something is, we have an expert chat picture where we have a new expert support where you can actually chat with us directly via messaging system or even email. And then certain clients that have a certain amount of Ads Spend and they actually have a dedicated customer success manager on top of that as well. So there’s no shortage of support here at Teikametrics

[22:28] Augustas: I see, and that can we cover the pricing model?

[22:32] Jason: Yeah. I’m going to pull this over here. This is our pricing here. So what we’ve done is we preferred to do the model which is: we take a smaller base fee and we really are earning our keep. If we’re hoping to perform better and you’re spending more in advertising, we are able to make more. But at the same time, if you drop an Ad Spend, we think it’s fair that we come down with you. So if you think about it this way, it’s all based on your monthly advertising spend. So if you’re spending less than $15,000 a month in Ad Spend, it will be one $49 base price payed at the beginning of the month and then in the rears over the previous 30 days, we’ll charge 7 % of Ad Spend.

[23:16] Jason: Then the more you spend with us, if you spend up to $15k, 15k – 50k, you have a higher base fee, but we significantly dropped the Ad Spend that we take as well. And this is you’re going to see this on our site very soon by the time this launches as well. And then most importantly, I know we’ll talk about it. We’re offering everybody that comes across from you Augustas and your audience a free trial. We’ve never launched, had a free trial for our Flywheel solution. You all are going to be one of the first folks actually let the world know about this and we want to get your folks into the tool, seeing it for themselves. So that’s what I had mentioned, we’re just going to be giving a free trial to everybody, a part of your subscriber list.

[24:03] Augustas: Thanks a lot for this, how to say, concentrated presentation, your tool looks really promising. I think a lot of people might be interested to try it out, especially if you’re offering a free trial for 30 days. And what can you promise for future or existing customers? What kind of features are you planning to roll out in the next month, for example, or next year?

[24:26] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So there are a few things. Number one, Amazon is always adding a features apart of their advertising program, like Product Attribution Targeting for instance, being on the developer council and having such a good relationship with that, we know when this stuff’s happening and we’re able to incorporate this in our tool very quickly. So you’re going to see whenever Amazon makes a change, including the PAT that we just discussed, we’re going to incorporate that within our solution as well. Obviously sponsored brands is a big one as well. We do a lot with it as well already, but we’re just going to continue to enhance this and make the experience a lot better than our solution. And then again, like the already being live in those regions and being able to help support sellers, that’s a very, very big arrow in our quiver, so to speak, to be able to help these sellers as well. And again, like I don’t want to talk too much about it because, you know, we don’t want to give away the secret sauce, but it’s all around not just understanding your advertising, but it’s also understanding your business as a whole and making sure that we’re able to recognize where you guys need, the sellers, need help and solutions. Being able to make sure that they get the help that they need as well. So a lot to come here in this year and beyond.

[25:43] Augustas: If someone wants to email support team with questions, what’s the best address to approach?

[25:50] Jason: So my email, feel free to email me directly if you have questions as well. It’s Jay Magee. So jmagee@teikametrics.com. So if you can just, I was gonna say I’ve realized I wasn’t sharing my screen, I would type it into the address bar, but yeah, jmagee@teikametrics.com. Feel free to reach out to me and we’ll definitely make sure that you guys are taken care of.

[26:14] Augustas: Perfect. Thank you very much, Jason. Good luck in your business. Bye Bye.

[26:18] Jason: Yeah, thank you. Take care.


About the author 

Augustas Kligys

Augustas Kligys is the founder of Orange Klik and has been delivering in-person and virtual events for Amazon sellers since 2016, including European Seller Conference, Seller Fest and PPC Congress.

Known in the business as the "Amazon Summits Guy", Augustas helps Amazon sellers achieve success through delivering expert sessions and online guides.

Focused on helping Amazon sellers build and scale their business, Augustas has spent the last years developing an industry-leading knowledge base, with over 700 sessions featuring Amazon industry leaders, experts, speakers and tools.

Augustas Kligys is the founder of Orange Klik and has been delivering in-person and virtual events for Amazon sellers since 2016, including European Seller Conference, Seller Fest and PPC Congress.

Known in the business as the "Amazon Summits Guy", Augustas helps Amazon sellers achieve success through delivering expert sessions and online guides.

Focused on helping Amazon sellers build and scale their business, Augustas has spent the last years developing an industry-leading knowledge base, with over 500 sessions featuring Amazon industry leaders, experts, speakers and tools.


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