In the past, Amazon has set rigid guidelines and offered only limited avenues for sellers to interact with their customers. That has now changed with the introduction of Amazon’s Manage Your Customer Engagement tool (MYCE).
In beta, the free MYCE tool allows brands that have an Amazon Store page with followers to directly connect with and engage their followers through email marketing campaigns.
These email campaigns are designed to highlight a seller’s products in tandem with their unique branding. Sellers can customize their emails with a logo and product images. These emails are an ideal way for increasing the visibility of new products, building brand loyalty and customer retention.
Sellers can create email campaigns using several themed templates from the "select event type" dropdown menu. Currently, the tool only supports new product announcements.
Shoppers must choose to follow a brand before they can be emailed. Sellers don’t have access to any identifying shopper data. Only the number of shoppers that will receive a scheduled email is revealed.
The MYCE tool does provide useful metrics to measure the performance of the email campaigns. Once an email has been sent, sellers can review the following performance metrics: total reach, open rate, click through rate, and opt-outs.
However, the tool doesn’t currently provide metrics on which shoppers took which actions or whether the featured product was purchased by anyone.
Eligibility Requirements For Amazon’s MYCE Tool
Brands wishing to participate must be enrolled in Brand Registry and have an Amazon Brand Store. The store must have 1,000 followers or more, and product launch announcements must be regarding a product that has been on Amazon for less than six months.
How to Increase Amazon Brand Store Followers
For brands under the 1,000 followers threshold, Amazon recommends that sellers:
- Use Amazon Posts to build their brand’s following.
Amazon Posts permit brand-registered sellers to share product-related content through a ‘feed’ that is similar to other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Posts help to drive discoverability and encourage shoppers to ‘follow’ a seller’s store on Amazon to automatically receive notifications about product updates and brand content. Shoppers can access a seller’s ‘feed’ through a designated tab on their Storefront.
- Sellers should post frequently (3 to 5 times per week), using lifestyle imagery to drive product clicks and followers.
- Sellers should regularly update their Stores page with engaging content that includes rich imagery and video.
- Sellers should leverage other non-Amazon social channels to encourage shoppers to follow their brand by driving them to their Amazon Store account.
How to Set Up an Email Campaign in Amazon’s MYCE Tool
Once sellers have a sufficient number of followers, they can begin to create email campaigns to showcase their products.
Upload a high-resolution brand logo – logos must be in a horizontal layout on black, white, or transparent background / logos must have a 3:1 aspect ratio / logos must be JPG (.jpg), or PNG (.png)
Add a recently-launched product – (product available to purchase for the first time on Amazon within the last six months)
Upload an image – select a lifestyle image or an image that explains the benefits of the product. Image must adhere to Amazon’s product image requirements.*
Schedule a delivery window – select a five day range from Monday to Friday to send the campaign.
Sellers can review their email campaigns before submitting them by clicking on the Preview option next to Start Campaign.
Emails should be scheduled for several days in advance because Amazon can take up to 72 hours to determine if the content meets their requirements. Upon approval, the emails will be sent to followers during the 5-day delivery window through Amazon Messaging.
* The products and images that a seller uses in the Manage Your Customer Engagement campaigns must comply with the following standards and guidelines...
- Product acceptability – campaigns should only include child ASINs.
- ASINs must be in stock while the campaign is running.
- The ASIN image featured in the MYCE email campaign is the main default image on the product detail page.
- Images should be clear, easy to understand, informative, and attractively presented.
The Manage Your Customer Engagement tool adds another way for brands to engage their customers and followers, while providing a powerful means for increasing the visibility of new products, with direct messages through Amazon’s messaging platform.
The requirements to use the MYCE tool are to be brand-registered, have a Storefront, and have store followers. If you haven't registered your brand, do so as soon as possible.
Once you’re brand-registered, Entourage Storefront Service can help you to set up a new Store and introduce your brand’s story to a wider audience, while giving your customers an immersive, user-friendly shopping experience that increases sales, repeat buyers, and builds loyalty.
Entourage: Software to Scale Amazon Ads and Results Driven Management.