Issue #12: where will Q4 land?
Ask for a month-by-month Q4 forecast, with its track record and your ad budget built in. Plus what shipped in 0.8.17.
Same shape as always: one skill to try, what we shipped, one question for you.
Try this this week: where will Q4 land?
The problem. For a lot of Amazon sellers, Q4 makes the year, and it has already started. Every client is asking the same question: where will Q4 land for us this year? The honest answer usually comes from a spreadsheet trend line, with no read on how accurate past guesses were and no clean way to fold in the budget the client just approved.
The solution. Forecast Max gives you an answer you can defend: what the account's revenue should be in each month ahead, built from its own sales and ad spend history, with a range and how far it has missed before. When it computes the forecast from history, it asks for your planned sponsored ads budget, so the forecast runs on the spend the client actually approved.
Try this: update to 0.8.17 first, then open Claude with the MixShift plugin and say:
"Where will [brand] land in Q4? Forecast it through December."
The account needs twelve complete months of sales and ad spend. If it isn't there yet, Forecast Max tells you what's missing. It's a forecast, not the plan: use it to check the plan. More on the Forecast Max page.
This week in MixShift
Friday's 0.8.17, plus one from 0.8.16 we haven't covered yet. Full notes at mixshift.ai/releases.
1. Sessions counted once per product
Amazon's SKU-level report repeats each product's sessions on every SKU of that product, so adding SKUs together counted the same visits more than once. Sessions and Unit Session % are now counted once per product (ASIN) per day. Account-level sessions don't change. Products with several SKUs will show fewer sessions and a higher Unit Session %. Search Query Performance volume gets the same fix, counted once per query per week.
Now you can: compare conversion across products on the same basis Amazon uses. If you saved product-level comparisons from before Friday, ask Claude to re-run them.
2. Four more live questions for Amazon
Ask where your FBA inbound shipments are and what's stuck, what customers praise and complain about in a product's reviews (Amazon's own summary of the top review topics), how your Subscribe & Save program is doing, or what Amazon requires to list a type of product. Claude asks Amazon directly and reads the answer for you. For seller accounts.
Now you can: confirm holiday stock is on its way to FBA before it runs out, not after.
Current version is 0.8.17. To check, open the plugin and say "update the plugin" and the mx-update skill walks you through the steps for your surface.
What can we solve for you?
Reply to this email. It goes to MixShift, and every reply gets a personal answer. Running your first Q4 forecast before a client meeting? Reply and we'll help you read it. If we already solve your problem, we point you at the skill. If we build it, we ship it with your name on the release note.
Don't have the plugin yet? Get it here.
Talk next week.
MixShift