When learning how to enforce MAP pricing while dealing with unauthorized sellers and buy box losses, many brands seek immediate solutions. However, not all MAP enforcement strategies are created equal. The key differences between email enforcement and platform enforcement are often misunderstood, leading to poor results and frustration. This post will clarify how to enforce MAP pricing effectively, highlighting why platform enforcement is the gold standard for tackling unauthorized sellers.
Table of contents
How to enforce MAP Pricing: Email vs. platform enforcement explained
- The Importance of Effective Brand Protection
- Email Enforcement: Common, But Often Ineffective
- Difficulty in Finding Seller Email Addresses
- Low Email Delivery and Response Rates
- Email Enforcement Is Viable in Limited Situations
- Platform Enforcement: The Most Effective Brand Protection Strategy
- How Platform Enforcement Works
The Importance of Learning How to Enforce MAP Pricing for Brand Protection
Unauthorized sellers on platforms like Amazon can undermine your pricing strategies, hurt your brand’s reputation, and disrupt authorized sales channels. These sellers often disregard policies such as minimum advertised price (MAP) agreements and sell grey market goods at significantly lower prices. Learning how to enforce MAP pricing is essential for brands to combat these issues. Brands frequently rely on electronic Cease & Desist (C&D) letters to remove violators, but how to enforce MAP pricing—whether through email or platform enforcement—can drastically affect success rates.
Understanding the pros and cons of each method is critical for choosing the right MAP enforcement strategy.
Email Enforcement
Common, But Often Ineffective
The majority of brand protection solutions available today rely on email-based enforcement. On the surface, email enforcement might seem like a straightforward and effective option. The brand protection provider (or the brand itself) locates the email address of an unauthorized seller, sends a Cease & Desist letter, and waits for a response. Unfortunately, in reality, email enforcement often leads to poor outcomes for several reasons.
Difficulty in Finding Seller Email Addresses
Unauthorized sellers—particularly on platforms like Amazon—employ sophisticated obfuscation techniques to hide their identities. While Amazon may provide mailing addresses for sellers, they do not disclose email addresses. In our experience, knowing how to enforce MAP pricing effectively is crucial, especially when standard investigative techniques for identifying unauthorized seller emails fall short. Basic Google searches or standard database tools only uncover about 20% of email addresses for sellers, and most of these are for sellers who aren’t actively hiding their identity.
Without accurate and up-to-date email addresses, it’s impossible to contact the vast majority of unauthorized sellers. Even when an email address is located, there’s no guarantee that the message will reach the seller, let alone that it will be acted upon.
Low Email Delivery and Response Rates
Even when email addresses are found, enforcement letters are often ineffective. Many email addresses are outdated, inactive, or invalid. Worse yet, Cease & Desist emails often end up in spam or junk folders, meaning they are never seen by the seller. Even if a seller does receive the email, they may ignore it, especially if they check their inbox irregularly or view the email as unimportant.
For example, let’s say you have 100 unauthorized sellers to contact, and you manage to find email addresses for 20 of them. Even in the best-case scenario, you’re only able to reach 20% of violators. From there, the success rate depends on whether those emails are seen, read, and acted upon. This low reach and engagement are why many brands experience poor removal rates with email enforcement, often leading them to seek out new brand protection providers or give up on enforcement efforts altogether.
Email Enforcement Is Viable in Limited Situations
There are some platforms where email enforcement can still be effective. Walmart.com, for instance, historically provided email addresses for all sellers and employed a powerful spam filter to ensure that Cease & Desist emails were delivered to inboxes rather than junk folders. Though Walmart no longer publicly provides seller emails, Brand Alignment has developed an internal database of seller email addresses that allows for successful email enforcement with a 95-99% success rate.
However, in most cases—especially with platforms like Amazon—email enforcement simply doesn’t work. The low success rate makes it an unreliable strategy for brands looking to remove unauthorized sellers from online marketplaces.
Platform Enforcement
The Most Effective Brand Protection Strategy
Unlike email enforcement, platform enforcement offers a direct, reliable way to reach unauthorized sellers. With platform enforcement, Cease & Desist letters are sent directly through the seller contact system provided by the marketplace (like Amazon), ensuring that every message is received and acknowledged.
How Platform Enforcement Works
In the past, most brand protection firms relied on platform enforcement. They would log in to Amazon, use the “Contact Seller” feature, and send Cease & Desist letters directly to the violators. However, several years ago, foreign trademark hijackers began abusing the seller contact system by sending fake enforcement notices. These takedown notices confused sellers, eroded trust in the platform, and led to widespread misuse.
In response, Amazon implemented a powerful spam filter to block most keywords related to brand enforcement from being sent via the seller contact forms. While this solved the issue of fraudulent messages, it also made it nearly impossible for legitimate brands and brand protection firms to send Cease & Desist letters via Amazon’s platform. As a result, many brand protection firms abandoned platform enforcement altogether.
Brand Protection Firms That Found a Solution
Not all firms gave up. Some brand protection providers, like Brand Alignment, found ways to work around the spam filters and continue using platform enforcement. This allows brands to send Cease & Desist letters to nearly 100% of unauthorized sellers on Amazon. Moreover, Amazon requires all sellers to respond to messages within 24 hours, ensuring that each enforcement notice is seen and acknowledged promptly. This is an effective strategy for how to enforce map pricing, providing brands with the tools they need to protect their pricing policies.
Compare this to email enforcement, where only a small fraction of sellers can be reached, and even fewer will take action.
Why Platform Enforcement Is Superior
Platform enforcement offers several key advantages over email enforcement, making it the most effective method for removing unauthorized sellers.
Higher Success Rates
With platform enforcement, brands can reach 100% of unauthorized sellers on Amazon. This is in stark contrast to email enforcement, where brands are lucky to contact 20% of violators. With platform enforcement, there’s no risk of emails being sent to the wrong address, ending up in the spam folder, or being ignored for weeks. Sellers are required to respond within 24 hours at the risk of their account health score, meaning that the Cease & Desist letter is guaranteed to be noticed.
Graduated Enforcement Techniques
Platform enforcement also allows for a more sophisticated approach. With graduated enforcement techniques, Cease & Desist letters can be sent in escalating degrees of aggressiveness (first warning, second warning, final notice). This strategy is essential for how to enforce map pricing, as sellers who may initially ignore a Cease & Desist letter are more likely to take action as the severity of the notices increases.
Additionally, most Amazon sellers are wary of any marks on their account. Receiving a Cease & Desist letter via Amazon’s platform puts pressure on them to remove unauthorized listings, even if they’re uncertain about the legitimacy of the notice. This tactic is a crucial aspect of how to enforce map pricing, as many sellers, worried about their account health, will voluntarily remove listings and avoid restocking the brand in the future.
Removal Rates of 75-100%
Due to these advantages, brands using platform enforcement can expect total removal rates between 75-100%, depending on factors such as supply chain control, the types of unauthorized sellers, and the industry. This is far higher than the typical removal rates seen with email enforcement, which are often around 20% or less.
The Final Verdict
Platform Enforcement Is the Best Option
For brands serious about tackling unauthorized sellers, there is no better option than platform enforcement. Email enforcement, while useful in a few specific cases, is unreliable and ineffective on marketplaces like Amazon, where seller obfuscation and spam filters make contacting violators nearly impossible.
Platform enforcement, on the other hand, guarantees that every unauthorized seller is contacted, that messages are seen, and that sellers are required to take action. This method provides the best results and ROI, ensuring that your brand is protected, and your products are sold through the correct channels.
At Brand Alignment, we are proud to be one of the few brand protection agencies that offer platform enforcement, helping brands achieve high removal rates and ensuring long-term protection for their products online.
Thank you for reading our post, “How to enforce MAP Pricing: Email vs. platform enforcement explained.” We hope you found it helpful.
Turn insights into growth
Now that you’ve learned something new, it’s time to apply those insights. Start making impactful changes in your MAP Monitoring and Enforcement strategies to better protect your brand’s integrity. We’re here to help you every step of the way.
Emmanuel Frost 