How Your Brand Can Benefit from Amazon Virtual Bundles

What Is Product Bundling?

Product bundling is a marketing strategy that involves selling multiple products as one. Commonly used as a promotional activity, some businesses even bundle products that have been sitting in warehouses longer than expected just to get rid of inventory.

With the Amazon Virtual Bundles Program, you can easily bundle 2-5 complementary ASINs and sell them on one product detail page. This allows brand owners to offer bundles without packaging items together or changing FBA inbound inventory.

How Amazon Virtual Bundles Can Increase Your Revenue

Product Bundling is a great strategy for increasing sales and winning the Buy Box on Amazon. Though it looks complex from the outside, setting up your bundle offers can be easy given the right tools. Here are a few ways product bundling benefits your Amazon business:

Amazon Virtual Bundles can increase your customer’s order value

Bundling allows you to cross-sell your products.

Let’s say you own a yoga brand that sells mats, towels, blocks, and pants. Your customers need all four products for their daily yoga practice. By bundling products that complement each other, customers would find it more affordable and convenient, vs. buying products from different stores or missing out on a discounted rate by buying each product separately.

This strategy increases your average order value because it encourages shoppers to spend more. For example, if you sell your products individually, customers would probably just spend $45 per transaction. But, if you bundle several products, your shoppers’ average order value would most likely go up to $150.

Decreases your customer acquisition costs

In the world of eCommerce, it can be difficult to acquire a new customer nowadays, so it’s no surprise that customer acquisition costs are increasing by the minute. By increasing your shoppers’ order value, you increase your revenue at lower cost leading to higher ROI.

Helps you get rid of slow-moving products

Carla sells essential oils. She has no problem selling sweet and calming scents such as vanilla, lavender, chamomile, ylang-ylang, and jasmine, but she has a hard time selling diffusers and stronger scents, such as grapefruit, patchouli, tea tree, oregano, vetiver, frankincense, and peppermint.

To get rid of her slow-moving products, she decided to sell her essential oils in bundled boxes. Each box contains a combination of three sweet-smelling oils and three strong-smelling ones. Each bottle costs $30. But, if the customer decides to buy a box, he’ll pay only $140 for 6 bottles plus a diffuser. This means that he’s only paying $23.33 per bottle and saves a total of $40. He also gets a diffuser for free. 

Bundling creates a win-win situation. The customer gets a huge discount while you prevent losses due to slow movers. 

It increases your visibility in the Amazon SERP

Bundles usually have a separate UPC (universal product code). This means that they appear as an independent listing in the search results page.

For example, if you optimize your existing listings for the keyword “coffee”, your grounded coffee and coffee bean products would appear in the search results. Now, let’s say that you decided to offer a bundle that’s also optimized for the keyword “coffee”. This gives you more opportunities for conversion, optimization, and visibility. 

Improved efficiency

When a customer places an order for different products, you have to package, send inventory, and ship separately. Through virtually bundled packages, however, you don’t have to worry about any of that on top of having to create a new UPC for bundles – thus saving you time and costs on logistics.

A good opportunity for product line expansion

Bundling allows you to place an order value threshold which enables you to expand your product lines and offer multiple solutions to your customers. 

For example, let’s say that you own a company that produces yoga mats. You want to produce mat cleaners and calming room sprays, but you’re not sure if your existing customers would buy them. Bundling your products allows you to experiment, create more products under your brand, and expand your product lines without having to worry if the new products will sell or not. 

The Amazon Virtual Bundles Policy

Remember to keep Amazon’s Virtual Products Bundle Policy in mind to avoid removal of listings and/or account suspension, prevent duplicate listings, and to help customers locate your listings easily. Here are a few of the basic policies to take note of:

1. All products in the bundle must comply with Amazon’s selling policies. All products within the bundles must adhere to the guidelines for each category, including images, features, and descriptions.
2. Bundles must consist of items that are highly complementary, either enhancing the use of the other items or providing convenience for buyers looking for items frequently bought together.
3. Bundles consist of multiple single items with their own unique ASIN/UPC and are sold together as a single offering. A pre-packaged kit or pack with multiple items that are identified as a single ASIN/UPC is not considered a bundle.

Example: A bundled pair of socks and a shirt – each having their own ASIN/UPC is considered a bundle while a pack of 5 pairs of socks is not. Similarly, if an item is a variation of a parent product, list it as a variation within the parent product’s family and not as a bundle.

4. The bundle (as a whole) must have its own UPC.
5. Do not include generic products in a bundle as it may mislead customers. Generic products are identified as items with no brand whatsoever on the product or packaging.
6. A bundle can be composed of different brand items, but as a whole must be branded according to the highest-priced item in the bundle.

How to Format Your Amazon Virtual Bundles Listing

• Bundle title length – maximum of 200 characters
• Include the word “Bundle” and the number of items

[Main Product Title] “Bundle” (3 Items): Item 1 + Item 2 + Item 3

[Main Product Title] + “Bundle with” + Bundle Components

[Main Product Title] + “Bundle with” + [Bundle Component Summary} + (No. of items)

• If the bundle includes only a few items, list them in the title

Example: Kodak EasyShare C143 12MP Digital Camera Bundle with Rechargeable Batteries & Carrying Case – Blue

• If a bundle includes lots of items, list the primary and secondary items in the title along with the total number of items in the bundle. Remember to list the entire bundle component information in the bullet points

Example: Yamaha PAC112J Sunburst Guitar Bundle with Bag, Stand, and Accessories (11 Items)

• Bullet point 1 must state what products are in the bundle and how many
• The description must state that the product is a bundle and identify the products in the bundle (color, size, etc.)
• The main image in the bundle must include all the products in the bundle and nothing else. Images representative of other items and not of the actual product aren’t allowed.

Additional Bundling Tips

1. Take advantage of the additional space for indexing relevant keywords.
2. Bundle complementary products such as products often bought together or products that enhance the use of the other.
3. Market your product bundle outside of Amazon.
4. Create unique bundles or bundles that are not currently offered by your competitors. An example would be selling wine with cheese and crackers if most of your competitors are already selling wine with wine glasses.
5. If you have your own eCommerce store, you can offer a “build your own bundle” feature that allows customers to customize their bundle components for a discounted price.

Final Thoughts

Product Bundling is a great strategy for slow-moving inventory, increasing customer order value, winning the buy box, introducing new product lines for existing customers, and much more. This strategy, however, isn’t just about picking any best selling product you see.

Though easy to set up assuming you are enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, bundling still involves research and forecasting to assure long-term viability. Contact us if you need help in creating the best bundling strategy – including which products to bundle, the best price to sell them for, and the optimized content to go along with it.

You can also read How to Avoid Amazon Copyright Infringement and Other Complaints