Review: MarketBlast for eBay � Part 1

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Automation by Scripts
Script automation is triggered by a passage of time rather than an event. This allows actions set to cause and effect — programming a certain sequence of events and having the software perform them in chronological order, such as re listing a duplicate of a sold item in an eBay Store or the updating of transaction details. This seems particularly useful to eBay Store or auction vendors who continually sell the same merchandise.


E-mail
4D claims to have collaborated with veteran eBay Power sellers in the development of MarketBlast. One of the main complaints is that they see e-mails as time vampires — sucking productivity out of the day due to the time required to promptly respond to questions. In a worldwide, 24/7 marketplace, dealing with e-mails in a timely manner is a critical management issue for all eBay sellers. For bulk-listing Power Sellers who routinely receive a hundred or more e-mails a day — it poses a challenge.


MarketBlast provides a General E-mail Manager that allows the user to deal with e-mails from individual listings, transactions, or contact records. MarketBlast can be set to limit incoming e-mail to new messages that contain eBay ID numbers in their headers or body that match existing MarketBlast listings only; these are stored in an Incoming E-mail Folder. However, inadvertent deletions can hurt: if you delete an eBay listing from MarketBlast you will never receive an e-mail on that listing again.


Outgoing e-mail can be composed new or from existing e-mail templates. The software comes with ‘complimentary’ templates and lets you compose and save your own. It also allows for adding snippets or e-mail postscripts providing information about the business, the seller or promotions following the body of the message. These can be easily composed, stored and accessed.


Tomorrow, we’ll look at how MarketBlast works for a real-world eBay seller.


Adapted from ECommerce-Guide.com, part of Internet.com’s Small Business Channel.





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