Amazon now offers the ability to market directly to customers through email to alert customers of new product launch announcements and promotions. The new feature is called Manage Your Customer Engagement (MYCE).
Anyone who knows how tightly online marketplaces control the communications between buyer and seller may be asking, what’s the catch? Simple: It’s available only to brands that have an Amazon Stores page with followers, and Amazon won’t be sharing customer contact information with brands.
CNBC wrote about the new tool today, and it’s something performance-marketing agency Tinuiti had written about last month in a blog post on its website, where it wrote: According to Amazon, Manage Your Customer Engagement allows sellers to:
- Market directly to Amazon customers who follow your brand;
- Helps build loyal relationships with Amazon customers;
- Increase the visibility of new products.
Merchants must be registered with Amazon Brand Registry and must have a Stores page before they can use MYCE to market to Amazon customers.
“Manage Your Customer Engagement (MYCE) lets you market directly to Amazon customers, who follow your brand. MYCE helps your brand build loyal relationships with Amazon customers and helps increase visibility of your new products,” according to Amazon’s help page.
But Amazon isn’t giving carte blanche to brands – “Campaigns are reviewed by our moderation team, who will determine if your content meets our requirements,” Amazon explained. “It takes a minimum of 72 hours for your image assets to be reviewed.”
CNBC said the tool was a departure from its “tight control” over customers. It quoted Fahim Naim, a former Amazon employee who now runs e-commerce consultancy eShopportunity, who told the news outlet that brands have been requesting that Amazon launch more services to help them build more durable relationships with shoppers on the site.
“On Amazon, which hosts millions of products, it’s crucial for brands to be able to stand out among a sea of competitors,” CNBC wrote. “To that end, the company has increasingly launched new tools or improved existing ones.”
Not sure what Brand Registry is? Check out the landing page on Amazon.com.
