Imagine if you could update your Amazon customers every time you launched a new product. Think of how beneficial it would be for your brand!
Well, it’s not just a thought anymore but reality!
Amazon has recently introduced the new free of cost Manage Your Customer Engagement Tool, allowing brands to market to Amazon’s customers via email directly.
The E-Commerce giant has always been a customer centric brand, and it’s no wonder they decided to take it a step further to make buying and selling easier for both sellers and consumers.
But what does it mean for you as a brand? And how can you leverage it?
Don’t fret; we’re here to help. In this guide, you’ll learn about all things MYCE – What it is, what it does, how it works, and more…
So without ado, let’s get started.
What Does The MYCE Tool Do?
Previously Amazon had very restrictive guidelines for sellers having direct communication with their customers – you could not send them any promotional or marketing messages.
If any seller were caught doing so, they would face severe consequences such as listing removal or even blocking of the account.
There was the option of storefront and Amazon posts; however, that too had its limitations. Many concerns and complaints of sellers arose due to the lack of personalization provided, so MYCE came about.
‘Manage Your Customer Engagement’ tool is a marketing tool introduced by Amazon. It allows you to send promotional emails regarding products and directly market to its customers (only those that follow your brand).
As a direct gateway to please customers, it will help brands like yours get exponential growth, build a strong reputation, increase visibility, establish meaningful interactions with your most loyal customers, and eventually gain brand authority.
You can now share your brand’s touch, logo, and product imagery (along with Amazon’s touch) with consumers, which will help gain trust, familiarity, and a connection.
This tool is going to be the breakthrough for brand advertisement on Amazon. Anyone who works in sales and marketing knows the importance of direct engagement with the customer and the amount of investment that goes into it. And if Amazon is helping you get it for free, then this is one thing you have to check out.
Note: Currently, MYCE is only available for sellers in the US. Since it is in beta version, many sellers may not have access to this tool too.
Am I Eligible For The Manage Your Customer Engagement Tool?
The customer engagement tool is only available for brands, or in other words, sellers that have Brand Registry and have formed an Amazon store can avail this opportunity.
If you are a brand registered seller but don’t have a storefront, then what are you waiting for? Make one now!
What If I’m Not Eligible
My first suggestion for you is to get a brand registry. But, if for any reason you don’t have a brand registry or this update is not available for you, then don’t feel left out just yet. Amazon has many other marketing venues that can improve your customer’s journey get you established, such as:
- Listing Content – A basic but extremely powerful necessity.
- Product Review – Maintain the quality of your products and get back to back positive reviews.
- Sponsored Ads – Paid advertising is always the way to go
- Amazon Seller Feedback – Slightly differentiating for product feedback, this is feedback for you as a seller. Keep your customer service strong and responsive and level up your ratings
How does the Manage Your Customer Engagement tool work?
Amazon laid the foundation of this update by bringing about Amazon Storefronts which allowed brands to showcase all their products in one spot – then it started Amazon posts that let sellers share their brand stories to relevant shoppers.
By doing so, sellers built up a follower base which now helps them leverage MYCE the right way.
But how does it work?
Manage Your Customer Engagement focuses on creating email campaigns for your Brand followers on Amazon. You will be able to contact customers using supported email templates only for new product launches at the moment.
Amazon has announced plans to release more templates, campaign performance metrics, and new features in the future. Moreover, they are also building a targeted list of people interested in hearing from a particular brand.
These email campaigns are designed to showcase your product with customized branding, increase customer engagement, promote loyalty, and launch new products to an impressionable audience.
This will ultimately help you increase awareness of your entire product range.
How do I gain followers?
Now that you’ve confirmed that you are brand registered and have a running storefront on Amazon, your next question probably is something like this.
How do I gain followers on Amazon so I have an audience for my campaigns?
Ready? Let’s find out!
Firstly, ensure that you have a consumer-friendly and well-optimized Brand Storefront with multiple pages to drive traffic. The store should be appealing enough to make the consumer slip through the funnel.
The smiling A recommends that you use another tool called Amazon Posts to ramp up engagement.
With a similar structure to Facebook or Instagram, Amazon Posts allow you to share images and other product-related content through a “feed” to help customers purchase or find new products.
This feed appears on your product detail pages and store. It is free, and if utilized with tact, can quickly get you multitudes of impressions per week.
Another alternative you might want to undertake is to direct customers to follow your Amazon Storefront in your follow-up email or on an insert that you provided in your packaging.
Try experimenting with lives. You don’t need to be a vlogger or a video expert to go live on Amazon! Amazon Live gives you the convenience of interacting with your customers in real-time. You can set up a camera in your warehouse demonstrating how items are assembled, host an interview with a happy customer, talk about the product’s utility, or offer live customer service.
Once you think you’ve got sufficient followers, you can start creating email marketing campaigns to promote your items.
How to set up an email campaign?
The method is relatively straightforward. You can choose the ASINs to target, select a campaign start and end date, and the e-commerce giant will send email alerts to all the customers who follow your brand.
You can set up an email campaign with the Manage Your Customer Engagement tool using the self-service prompts. You’ll go through five simple steps:
1: Use your Brand logo:
Upload your high-res brand logo with a JPG black-or-white background or a PNG transparent background in a 3:1 horizontal layout to add a personal touch to the email campaign and familiarize customers with your brand.
2: Select your product:
Amazon designed this tool to help launch and promote new products, so it is best to use your new ASINs.
Note: Your selected product must’ve been made available for purchase on Amazon for the first time in the previous six months.
3: Choose your Supporting image:
Consider using a high-quality lifestyle image to explain the customers’ benefits, illustrate functions and feel, or a picture to provide context rather than a plain Amazon product listing image.
4: Schedule a time:
Determine when you want the send out the emails. You have a five-day time frame, from Monday to Friday, to run your campaigns.
5: Campaign Approval:
Once scheduled, Amazon’s team will review if your campaign and content meet the policies and approve it within 72 hours or 3 days.
After approval, Amazon will automatically send the email campaign to your brand’s followers.
How to access the tool?
In your Seller Central account, under the “Brand” tab, select “Customer Engagement” near the Brand Dashboard. If you have access to the tool, you can start creating your email campaigns, or you might see the “Something cool is on the way” page if not.
Even if you are fully qualified and registered with a full-fledged brand store and followers, the tool may still not be available to you as Amazon is slowly making it available to all sellers.
Just wait and monitor periodically to see if you have access for a few more months; until then, explore options to increase followers.
It Doesn’t End Here
To wrap it up, we discussed what MYCE is for, who is eligible, how to use it and use it the right way. The blog may have finished, but your hustle shouldn’t.
Now that you’ve got a complete breakdown of the ‘Manage Your Customer Engagement Tool, it’s time you go out, implement what you learned, and conquer!
Take Advantage of MYCE Today!
