What are Automated Price Offers?

 

‘Automated Price Offers’, an extension of the 🔍'Make An Offer' mechanism, enables automated responses to buyer offers on your listings.

 

It allows you to save time by letting us manage offers 24/7 on your behalf, for free.

 

Responses are delivered to buyers within minutes, as quick response time will help you sell your items faster, and you can choose a discount option tailored to your preferences.

 

Automated offers can only work when you enable offers on your listings, and it requires sellers to opt-in in order to be activated. 

If you disable price offers for a specific listing, no automated response will be possible on that item.

 

How are automated responses provided?

 

When ‘Automated Price Offers’ is activated, our system will automatically respond to all buyer offers on your listings. You can choose between different discount options, which also vary based on price and live age of your listings, so you can adjust the feature to your own preferences.

 

The automated offer sent to the buyer will be calculated as follows:

[price at publication] * [1 - discount rate].

Where price at publication = price originally set when publishing the item.

 

If you use our bulk tool listing solutions, refer to paragraph ‘Automated offers for Bulk Listing Tool and API users’ below.

 

Currently, you can choose one option which will be applied to all your listings, from the following:

 

STANDARD

Choose this option if you’re able to provide standard discounts across your entire catalogue. Sellers that chose this discount pattern usually experience an increase in conversion thanks to more aggressive markdowns. Items online for a long time are less visible on the platform, therefore higher discounts are important to drive sales.

 

 

HIGH-END

Choose this option if you only sell high-value items (e.g. watches and jewellery) and exceptional pieces and can only offer limited discounts. If you don't focus exclusively on high-end pieces, we recommend avoiding this option, as your sales might suffer.

 

 

HYBRID

Choose this option if you’d like to improve your sales by offering growing discounts on your less expensive items, but prefer to offer lower discounts on the higher priced items. Sellers that choose this discount pattern usually have a very diverse catalogue with items across all price ranges.

 

 

Example if you chose the STANDARD option: For an item which has been live for three months with an original listing price of 4000€, all offers above 3,400€ (15% discount rate vs 4000€) will be accepted. All offers below 3,400€ will receive an automated counter offer at 3,400€.

 

If an item’s price has been reduced and it’s now lower than the minimum resulting offer price (offer rate applied to price at publication), no automated response is provided.

 

Example: If the above item, originally published at 4000€, had a price reduction and is currently selling online for 3,200€ (<3,400€ which is the minimum resulting offer price), no automated responses will be provided to buyer offers.

 

Automated offers for Bulk Listing Tool and API users

 

If you’re using our 🔍Bulk Listing Tool or API solutions, you can benefit from an additional aspect of Automated Price Offers: ‘floor price’ (the lowest price you’re willing to sell at through negotiations).

 

By providing a floor price for your listings, you enable Automated Price Offers to send offers at the floor price level. The automated offer price sent to the buyer will always be equal to the floor price set for that given item, regardless of the original listing price, the current live price or listing live age of the item giving you complete control and flexibility of your margins. 

 

Example: For an item at an original listing price of 4000€, with a floor price of 3,500€, all offers above 3,500€ will be accepted, whereas offers below 3,500€ will receive a counter offer of 3,500€.

 

All items listed via Bulk Listing Tool or API can be created with a floor price by providing a ‘floorPrice’ in your protool CSV or API request against an item. You’ll be able to update your floor price or add a floor price to an item which has already been created at any time. You can also remove a floor price attached to your product.

 

Example (continues from above): Later on, you decide to change the floor price to 3,200€. Now, all offers above 3,200€ will be accepted, whereas offers below 3,200€ will be countered at 3,200€.

 

Setting a ‘floor price’ is optional: you can still activate Automated Price Offers but not provide a floor price, in which case the system will send automated responses based on the discount option chosen (see ‘How are automated responses provided?’). You can also provide a floor price for certain items, and not for others.

 

Example (continues from above): You also have another item, published 3 months ago at 4000€, which you decided not to provide a floor price for. If you chose the STANDARD option (see ‘How are automated responses provided?’), the applicable discount is 15% off the original listing price. Therefore, all offers above 3,400€ (15% discount rate vs 4000€) will be accepted. All offers below 3,400€ will receive an automated counter offer at 3,400€.

 

Important note: In order for the floor price to be taken into account, the floor price must always be lower than your item's live price. If the item live price (after price reduction actions you performed since publication) becomes lower than the floor price, your floor price will not be considered and the base discount option chosen will be applicable.

 

How can I activate/deactivate Automated Price Offers?

 

You can activate or deactivate Automated Price Offers at any moment.

You’ll receive an email communication every month, with a link to make your choices (activate the feature, deactivate the feature, or move to a different discount option). This link is always active, so you can either save it or check the latest email to modify your preferences at any time during the month.

 

Please note that it can take up to seven business days for your decision to be reflected on your account.

 

Once the feature is activated, it will be applicable to all items eligible for offers. This means you can also keep Automated Price Offers activated on part of your listings while deciding not to receive offers on the others, by deactivating offers on selected items (refer to 🔍 this page for more information on how to deactivate offers on selected listings).

 

If you requested Automated Price Offers to be deactivated, you can also deactivate offers on all your listings temporarily while you wait for the changes to be effective.

 

What if my current markdowns are bigger than the automated discount rates?

 

As Automated Price Offers utilises the price at publication as a reference to provide discounts, if the item price has been already reduced by the discount amount, no automated response will be provided.

 

The seller can always intervene in these situations and provide a response manually to the buyer's offer.

 

Alternatively, if you are willing to provide bigger/further discounts on a regular basis, we recommend choosing a more aggressive discount option (see “How are automated responses provided?”). This will ensure counter offers are sent even when you’ve already lowered your prices.