• by Ray Schultz , April 26, 2021

One famous walled garden is about to have at least a slight crack breached in it.

Amazon is allowing merchants to send emails directly to customers, in a reversal of its historic posture -- but not all merchants, and not all customers.

Only firms that are part of Amazon’s Brand Registry can avail themselves of this opportunity. And only customers who are following those brands can be contacted. 

Still, it’s a change. In a video, Amazon states that its new Manage Your Customer Engagement tool “lets you manage your content and send email campaigns to customers who have purchased products from you in Amazon stores.” 

Experienced email marketers might quibble with this claim: “For the first time ever, take advantage of email marketing to help strengthen the customer-brand relationship and drive inspiration driven shopping experiences.” That’s true on Amazon, however.

And the video continues that brands can  “send new product launch announcements, offer promotions, inspire repeat purchases and more to help drive brand loyalty in Amazon stores.”

The video adds, “The best part? Monitoring the impact of your campaigns and customer engagement with key performance metrics.”  

CNBC, which broke the story, notes that Shoppers’ contact information will continue to remain private. 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.”