By Natalie Pantaleo
Marketing-Communications Consultant
LifeBrands D2C
Let’s call Amazon what it is– a beguiling behemoth always on the forefront of change.
The search engine, eCommerce platform, digital marketing mecca and CRM is now equipped with eMarketing capabilities for building seller-customer relationships (and, on the horizon, social-media-like posting capabilities in testing phase).
Many people including marketers themselves are unaware of the completely nuanced and success-critical data points behind selling on Amazon, all of which impact search position, visibility, traffic, and ultimately, sales. When we’re shopping, it looks so simple and straightforward. Not.
Revmo, Inc. President and Amazon Marketplace expert, Jacob Cooley, says that in addition to Amazon being the world’s largest e-commerce platform, it ultimately functions as a highly curated product search engine. As such, the internal algorithms responsible for a company’s position in search have increasingly become a consortium of interconnected inputs for which optimizing takes decades of acquired skill.
So, I asked Cooley what his thoughts are on Amazon’s latest rollout: an eMarketing tool allowing advertisers to send customers targeted messages for the first time.
“The Manage Your Customer Engagement tool offers sellers something they have long-craved from Amazon— the ability to connect with customers on more than just a transactional level,” Cooley says. “It addresses a critical gap that had existed for Amazon advertisers and should allow for brands to cultivate and grow the relationship they have with customers who prefer to shop on Amazon.”
CNBC reported the tool is “designed to drive repeat purchases for vendors and sellers and help them build a more robust following.” Customers have the option to follow a seller via a button featured on the Brand Store page to receive marketing information about new or existing products.
Marketingdive.com reports that “Amazon will give companies aggregate data when they use the tool that shows them how many emails will go out when they decide to share marketing campaigns with their followers. Companies can also view metrics to see how their campaigns were received.”
”Amazon is constantly innovating and changing the game on sellers. Just a few short years ago, sellers couldn’t create Brand Stores. They couldn’t create A+ Content. They couldn’t create Lightning Deals,” Cooley added. “Today, you would be hard-pressed to find success without utilizing these and other on-platform tools. In a few short years, there is a good chance we will be saying the same about the Manage Your Customer Engagement tool.”