Manage Your Customer Engagement with Amazon
“Manage Your Customer Engagement” is the newest feature Amazon has released to Brand Registered sellers, proving, yet again, that the future of Amazon belongs to brands.
Note:
Amazon announced at their Accelerate event in October that this feature is again available to all Brand Registered sellers with at least one brand follower.
This new feature will allow brands to start marketing campaigns for their buyers. Allowing customers to directly interact with your brand will improve customer engagement across the platform.
How is Manage Your Customer Engagement helpful?
As we mentioned, Amazon is focusing more on brands and less on retail/online arbitrageurs. Having a good brand is all about customer loyalty, and building a long term community around that brand.
Your new customer engagement strategy should use this tool to create an emotional connection both with past buyers and brand followers you may have gained on the platform. You can announce new product releases with additional templates on the way. Remember, this feature is new, so expect it to get more robust over time. This obviously helps you with product launches by contacting loyal customers who have already purchased from you!
Keep in mind that this is not a replacement for requesting reviews and feedback from your buyers. This is more of a marketing tool than a reputation builder. You’ll still need to utilize a tool like Seller Labs PRO to communicate with buyers after a purchase.
What are Brand Followers?
Brand Followers have slowly rolled out over the last couple of years. In an effort to increase customer interactions, Amazon allowed the shoppers to follow a particular brand. They’d receive email notifications with product updates, sales, new product launches or anything else that was likely to build the customer relationship. However, these notifications originated from Amazon, not the brand itself.
How can I set up a campaign?
Since this new feature is still in the early stages of roll out, it is not available in all accounts. If your account is eligible to set up an email campaign through Customer Engagement on Amazon, you can set it up with four simple assets.
- Brand Logo
- Product – Since this feature is currently designed to promote new products, a selected product for the campaign must have been made available for purchase for the first time in the last 6 months.
- Supporting Image – This is a great opportunity to include a lifestyle image! You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, so feel free to use an image already on your Amazon listing.
- Scheduled Time
Like most things, Amazon will have to approve the campaign. It’s estimated that it can take up to 72 hours to approve the send, so plan accordingly.
What can I do if I don’t yet have the Customer Engagement feature?
There are still so many ways you can improve the customer’s journey with your brand without the customer engagement feature in Amazon. The main goal will be to grow customer retention with Amazon brand followers.
Amazon Posts
Amazon Posts is like Instagram for Amazon. It gives brands the opportunity to upload images outside of the standard approval guidelines, and brand followers can interact with these images! Posts are currently optimized and focused on the mobile experience, but you can access an example feed here.
To find out if Amazon Posts are right for you, check out this post!
Are Amazon Posts right for you? Here are 3 reasons to use this visual tool as part of your brand-building and social media efforts.
Maria NavolykinaAmazon Live
You don’t have to be a video expert to go live on Amazon! Around the holidays, a prominent toy company had a Live set up, watching some people put together some block kits. We have also worked with companies who had set up a camera in their production warehouse to show how items are made. You could even just sit down in front of the camera and host an interview or offer live customer service.
Amazon Live gives you the ability to interact with shoppers live on Amazon. You can include specific product offers or discounts only for the duration of the live broadcast. Think of it as the Home Shopping Network, but online.
Email Lists & Social Media
We imagine Amazon will roll out this feature to brands with the highest number of followers next. Increase your brand followers on Amazon now by tapping into your existing email lists or social media followers. If a customer feels a strong connection to your brand, encourage them to follow your brand on Amazon.
Does that mean you won’t use these groups as part of your broader marketing strategy? Absolutely not! It will just help you become a contender for the new customer engagement feature, and allow you to tap into buyers who may not be following you on social media yet.
Manage Your Customer Engagement is a great tool to improve the customer experience, but only if you qualify. There are still great ways to improve customer satisfaction and build brand followers even without this feature. Try to also use email marketing, social media, and more.
Caroline is an Event Manager, Partner Specialist,and Marketing Expert at DISQO. When she's not offering excellent customer support she's doing pirouettes and cheering on the UGA Bulldogs.
