Cobalt Alerts continuously monitor your Amazon metrics and notify you when specified conditions are met. This powerful feature helps you respond quickly to changes so you can take action before issues impact your bottom line.
This resource will cover:
- Alert Data Sources
- How to Create a New Alert
- How to View and Manage Existing Alerts
- Ways to Use Alerts
- Differences between Alerts and Rulebooks
- Current Limitations of the Alerts Function
Alert Data Sources
Currently, you can create alerts using three primary data sources:
1. Amazon Advertising (Integrated accounts)
Monitor performance metrics across your advertising entities:
- Campaigns
- Portfolios
- Keywords
- Ad Groups
- Targets
2. Vendor Central (Integrated accounts)
Keep track of your product performance and inventory:
- ASINs (Sales and Traffic Manufacturing)
- ASINs (Sales and Traffic Sourcing)
- ASINs (Inventory Manufacturing)
- ASINs (Inventory Sourcing)
3. Shelf Intelligence
Monitor your competitive position:
- Tracked Keywords
From these data sources, numerous metrics are available to create your alerts.
Create a new Alert
1. The Alerts feature is located at the top right of your Cobalt screen. Click to reveal the Alerts panel, then select '+Create New Alert' to open the Alert creation flow.
2. Name your Alert
3. In the 'For' section, select the data source you want to use to trigger the alert.
4. Next, use the filtering option if you want to narrow down your criteria even further. This can be helpful if there are multiple connected Amazon accounts, and you want to refine your alert to a specific data set like a singular campaign, product, or keyword.
5. Next, in the 'If' section, define the metric and criteria to be met to trigger the alert.
6. In the 'Over a period of' section, assign a time element for evaluation based on the data source and metric chosen. There are two options to the far right, which are Relative and To-Date.
- Relative - This option lets you choose time parameters based on a number of days, with additional options for attribution (advertising) or lags in data delivery (Vendor Central).
- To-Date - This option lets you choose Month or Week to date time parameters
7. The 'Notification' section allows you to define how you want to receive the Alerts.
The notification options are:
- Notify me in Cobalt -
You will see a red dot by the Alerts in the top right.
Clicking Alerts will open the side panel where you can see recently triggered Alerts.
Click on each Alert to see its Alert history listed by day.
- Email Me (Your Email Address) - This sends you an email where you can then click to be directed to Cobalt to see the details of the Alert.
8. Once you are happy with your configuration, make sure to click Create Alert or Save Changes when editing an existing Alert.
View and Manage Alerts
Once your Alert has been created, you will be directed to the Alerts page. Alternatively, you can always get to this page by clicking 'Alerts' at the top right and '(View All)'.
The Alerts page includes two tabs:
Triggered Alerts - Shows a history of all past Alerts that were triggered
Configure Alerts - Shows a list of all current Alerts.
To edit an Alert, find the Alert by name in the list of Alerts on the Configure Alerts tab.
Click on the name of the Alert to bring up the Alerts page.
From here you can edit your configuration on the Alert Configuration tab. or review the history of when this specific alert has been triggered.
To see the history of when an alert was triggered, find the Alert by name in the list of Alerts on the Configure Alerts tab.
Click on the name of the Alert to bring up the Alerts page.
Navigate to the Alert History tab.
To delete an Alert, find the Alert by name in the list of Alerts on the Configure Alerts tab and click the red trashcan icon to the far right. This page will include any time this alert was triggered for the last 2 weeks.
Ways to Use Alerts
There are infinite ways to use alerts to help you gain a competitive edge and keep on top of opportunities as they arise. Below are a few example scenarios, including the alert configuration. Set these up as is in your account or use them as inspiration to creating your own custom alerts.
1. Alert me when any of my brand's products win an Amazon's Choice or Best Seller badge for my tracked keywords. That way we can quickly increase ad spend to maximize the assumed CVR increase.
2. Alert me when I've utilized X% of my advertising budget for X days in a row. This can help you identify ad accounts, portfolios, or campaigns that are meeting their spend goals or maybe even running out of budget consistently.
3. Alert me when campaigns have an ACoS lower than X% and have a high spend percent relative to their spend goal. This can signal campaigns that are performing well but likely running out of budget.
Alerts vs. Rulebooks: When to Use Each
Alerts are ideal when human judgment and review are needed before taking action. They notify you when specific metrics are met so you can analyze the data and determine the appropriate response.
Rulebooks excel at automating predetermined workflows based on established criteria, eliminating the need for manual intervention. To learn more, please see: Rulebooks → Feature Overview
Example Scenario: New Advertising Campaign
When testing new keywords in an advertising campaign:
Use Alerts when: You want a notification when success or failure thresholds are reached, allowing you to personally review performance data before deciding whether to relocate keywords, adjust bids/budgets, or add negative keywords.
Use Rulebooks when: You have established decision criteria and prefer automatic implementation of these actions when specific conditions are met, saving you time and ensuring consistent execution.
Limitations of Alerts
- Alerts are currently not available for these data sources:
- Seller Central
- Segments
- Keyword Research
This means that Cobalt cannot alert on price changes (outside of Vendor Central), buy box presence, market share change, keyword search volume change, or inventory levels (for Seller Central users).
- Only one person can be notified via email. If more than one person wants to be notified via email, each user must set up the alert in their Cobalt account.