Amazon Emailing? I’m Skeptical.
You might have heard this headline making the rounds last week from Amazon’s Accelerate Conference in Seattle.
Amazon will now let brands email their customers through, Tailored Audiences, an enhancement to Amazon’s Customer Engagement tool in Seller Central.
As a consumer, this might make you wary. Take a look at the Amazon orders you’ve placed over the last year. Would you like to be on those brand’s email marketing lists? Personally, and I may be a bit more selective than most, I’d estimate that I’d only be interested in hearing more from maybe 5% of sellers I’m purchasing from on Amazon.
As an email marketer, and someone who has clients selling on Amazon right now, I had questions.
So I did some digging, and here’s what I know about this announcement and what it will actually mean for brands selling on Amazon:
First, this feature is in Beta testing right now and not every brand has access to it. They are planning to roll it out within the next six months.
It’s worth noting that Beta testing serves a few purposes: to see if the feature is functional for sellers, and also to see if the feature is adding value for Amazon. As a “customer-obsessed” brand, it’s very possible that Amazon will receive negative feedback from their customer base on a large scale and determine this initiative is not worth it.
Second, this emailing tool is within Amazon’s Seller Central platform. They’re still not planning to give brands direct access to your Amazon customer data. That isn’t changing. The idea that Amazon will create really great emailing tools inside Seller Central is not impossible, but also not likely.
If you have experience with Seller Central, you know it’s a jungle and almost intentionally difficult to navigate. It’s not clear whether the emails will “look like your brand” at all, but it’s pretty clear you’ll be emailing and receiving responses within Seller Central.
If the features and usability aren’t there, you’ll have to decide as a small business whether you want to send sub-par non-branded emails at all, and I imagine it will be hard to manage responses as well. Of course, it’s doubtful you’ll be able to link to anything but your Amazon listings of course.
Last, this announcement came with other “improvements,” including enhancements to Amazon’s Buy with Prime program. Amazon sellers will soon be able to embed ‘Buy with Prime’ on your own website.”
Wait, what? Why would you send your customers to Amazon?
Why would a brand send a customer to Amazon to make a purchase, when said customer is on their own proprietary website, about to purchase a product? This boggles my mind. Of course, they explain the added reputation and speedy delivery/returns customers are familiar with is an added value, but in my experience that doesn’t come close to the loss of not owning the customer service relationship and transactional data, as Buy with Prime will also manage returns and capture information about viewed products, started checkout, and abandoned checkouts for example.
So whether you’re considering selling on Amazon, or already selling on Amazon and wondering how to rope this into your marketing strategy, please have a discerning look at these features and what your business has to gain or lose before jumping on board.
These features may be presented in a shiny way (they do have great marketing teams, no doubt) but do they really serve your small business? I’m skeptical, as you can tell.
Let’s not forget at the end of the day, Amazon is built on seller’s backs, and while these features may seem like a great way to grow your business, they’re really a way for Amazon to grow their business. Amazon is in competition with your own website and brand. In general, they are mammoth and armed to the teeth. There’s no reason to give them a bigger edge if you don’t need to.
My take is, let’s not get too hot under the collar with this announcement and wait to see how it pans out during the next year. Stay tuned as beta test results come in, and see if you notice any Amazon sellers emailing you too. Then evaluate how those emails make you feel as a customer so you’ll know how your own customers may feel.
If you’re running a small ecommerce business looking to grow organically, our digital marketing agency may be able to help. We use content marketing combined with email marketing and a key eye on data analytics to drive growth for small businesses. Your business may just be the next small business we help grow. Contact us today and book your free consultation.
About Centric Squared:
Centric Squared is a full-service email marketing agency that brings data-centric and customer-centric marketing to small businesses. The company has grown 30% YoY, celebrated countless small business successes, and attracted top marketing talent from around the globe. At Centric Squared, we believe small businesses are sitting on a golden ticket: their customer relationships. We partner with small business owners to help them get the most out of their CRM, which includes understanding their customer data and email marketing.