Amazon recently rolled out the ‘Manage Your Customer Engagement’ tool, a marketing strategy designed to help brands better inform existing customers about new products. This feature is exclusively available to brands that have a Brand Store with followers, or customers with opt-in subscriptions to their store. It also only exists currently to inform customers about new launches for products—they should be first-time launches that are no more than 6 months old. Learn more about this tool in our blog, “What is Customer Engagement?”
Topics for today’s blog:
Setting an Email Campaign in Seller Central
To set up a new email campaign, navigate to Customer Engagement in the ‘Brands’ tab of Seller Central, then click ‘Create Campaign.’ Choose the brand you are currently campaigning for and customize it to your liking with a cover image of the product. Search the ASIN you intend to campaign for in ‘Primary ASIN Selection.’
Then, choose the delivery window, or timeframe you’d like the campaign to be sent out. The range covers a period of five days (Monday through Friday). Always select a timeframe in the future, and allot time for the campaign to be reviewed and approved by Amazon—campaigns will ideally be approved or denied within 72 hours. If it is denied, you will simply have to identify and correct the issue, and create a new campaign to be re-submitted for review. Reference the ‘Manage Your Customer Engagement’ tab in Seller Central for more information.
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Guidelines for Creating Campaigns
Lack of adherence to campaign guidelines can result in a rejection of your email campaign. Here’s a list of helpful tips to consider before submitting your campaign for approval:
- Make sure product image formatting is correct:
Your image should include a clear, centered, and horizontal picture of the item with a white background. Make sure the title and image match, and that the product covers at least 85% of the image. The image should be in JPEG or PNG format. Reference ‘Product Image Requirements’ for the complete standard list. - Do not include text in product image:
Do not reference Amazon or its logo in the product image (refer to Amazon’s “Guidelines For Use of the Available Badge by Sellers” tab in Seller Central for more details). Logos and watermarks are also not permitted, and may result in a rejected image.
- Add a detailed campaign title: It is recommended that your campaign title include the ASIN as well as the name of the product to help better categorize your campaigns. Customers will not be able to see the campaign title.
Potential Disadvantages
Consumers are able to follow certain brands by visiting their brand store and clicking the ‘+Follow’ link. Consumers can also subscribe through the Posts that brands create to show up on the customers’ feed (visit the Amazon Advertising site, ‘Posts’ to learn more).
Additionally, consumers can go to the lists within their Amazon account and click ‘Explore’ in order to find more brands to follow. These ‘follow’ options are not immediately noticeable on the listing page, and may not generate very much traffic, which can affect the number of people that follow a brand.
Conclusion
The primary goals of this tool are to encourage loyalty, promote retention, and drive sales for brands by allowing them to personally reach out to recurrent customers when new products are launched. It has great potential for both buyers and sellers because it gives brands the opportunity to market new products and direct them toward recurrent buyers who follow them and have previously expressed interest in their products. In this way, the Customer Engagement feature’s centralized marketing gives customers more access to products they might want. The fact that it is an optional subscription for consumers helps to further customize the individual shopping experience.
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