Lack of analytics has long been an issue for brands driving traffic from outside Amazon.
Amazon being a self-contained platform means you can’t track customers through your funnel from start to finish. Thus, optimizing your external marketing campaigns is difficult.
Now, for brand registered sellers, the Amazon Attribution feature is being rolled out, which will finally allow sellers to correctly measure the impact of media channels outside Amazon.
Read on to learn more about Attribution, how it works, and who can use it.
What is Amazon Attribution?
Amazon attribution is a feature that allows you to track conversion metrics for products on Amazon, originating from sources outside of Amazon.
This means you can see the actual return on investment from external traffic campaigns. For example, let’s say you’re running a product launch with Facebook Ads. Amazon Attribution will allow you to see how many detail page views, add to carts and sales you received from this launch.
As per Amazon, this feature is designed to help you:
- Measure – the effectiveness of different publishers or channels.
- Optimize – your campaigns for maximum results.
- Plan – your future marketing strategies and business goals based on data.
Amazon Attribution is the first officially sanctioned attribution tool for Amazon sellers. The idea is for sellers to have the same level of insight and data available from internal traffic like PPC.
Select qualified sellers and vendors can use this tool to perform an accurate sales impact analysis and assess ROI from ad spend on social media, display ads, search ads, and other off-Amazon media.
Metrics Tracked
Currently, you can track the following metrics with Amazon Attribution:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Detail page views
- Add to carts
- Purchase rate
- Sales
All these are viewable from within the Attribution dashboard, as well as via downloadable reports.
All metrics work off a 14-day last touch attribution window, meaning you will be able to attribute actions to a tracking tag as long as the action takes place within 14 days.
How it Works
Attribution works by adding a tag to the end of the URL you use to drive customers to Amazon. In this sense, it’s very much like Facebook conversion tracking, Amazon Associates tracking, or just about any other kind of affiliate tracking.
Once you have an account activated for Amazon Attribution, log in and add any products you want to track on your dashboard.
Next, generate a tag for each channel or campaign you want to track for that product.
For example, you’re selling Product A.
You’ll add Product A in Amazon Attribution. Then you generate a tag to track your Facebook Ads for Product A.
Add that tag to the link you use to drive traffic in Facebook Ads, and you’ll get conversion data for this specific tag.
Repeat with a new tag for Google search ads, email, or any other media channels you want to track.
Then repeat the same thing for additional products.
You could also create a tag for certain situations. Let’s say you’re trying out a Facebook video ad (usually you run regular text/image ads). You can create a different tag and apply this only to the link in your video ad.
Then you’ll compare the conversion metrics and sales impact from the video ad against your other Facebook Ads to see whether the video ads provide more end conversions (by way of a more qualified audience) than regular image ads.
Who Can Use Amazon Attribution?
Amazon Attribution is currently available for Vendor Central users in the US and UK, and US Sellers who have Brand Registry.
The program is currently in Beta, and is likely to open up to more marketplaces in the future.
How to Start Using Amazon Attribution
Vendors can sign up with this form, while brand registered Seller Central users can register from within Seller Central.
Once approved, you can start creating tags for your various traffic sources. As soon as traffic starts coming through your tagged links, you will be able to see insights and Amazon sales activity of people coming from these links.
You can create each tag individually, or you can use Amazon Attribution’s bulk upload feature to create tracking links at scale.
Why is Amazon Attribution So Valuable?
Without Amazon Attribution, there are few ways you can measure the impact of your external traffic campaigns.
If you’re giving out promo codes, you can match the number of people who clicked on your ad against the number of coupon redemptions.
If you use a landing page tool (like ours ;)) you can also get analytics data like page views, coupon claims and clicks through to Amazon.
These are decent metrics, but they don’t give the full picture of how your traffic is performing.
Data is crucial for crafting an effective digital marketing strategy. Without data, a certain amount is left up to guesswork, and you’re never going to be able to get true insights on whether your strategy is the right one or not.
This is especially important for media such as Facebook Ads, and Google search and display ads. You need to be consistently testing and optimizing your campaigns to achieve more goal completions for less ad spend.
If your goal is to drive more sales on Amazon, you’re never going to be able to optimize your ads completely without knowing how many sales result directly from these ads.
Additionally, being able to access analytics on each step of your customer’s journey lets you understand exactly which part of your funnel needs optimization.
Example: you’re getting a really good CPC on your Facebook Ads, but very few sales on Amazon.
With Amazon Attribution, you’ll be able to see the number of detail page views on your Amazon listing, the number of add to carts, and the number of purchases (as well as the clicks on your Facebook Ad, of course). This lets you see where the biggest dropoff in your funnel is.
A lot of clicks, a lot of page views, but few add to carts? It’s likely something on your listing that needs to be optimized.
Limitations of Amazon Attribution
Amazon Attribution is still in Beta, so there may be some growing pains to be noticed here and there. It’s a good idea to keep a close eye on metrics right now, to notice if something seems off.
Attribution tags work only as long as the link that takes someone directly to Amazon has the tag. So you’ll have to make sure that the final link in your pre-Amazon funnel is the one with the attribution tag.
As an example, if you have a funnel that goes from Facebook Ads to a landing page and then to Amazon, your Attribution tag should be included in the link from the landing page to Amazon, as this is the link that will be picked up as the referrer URL by Amazon.
Also, while you can track conversions and other key metrics from external traffic using Amazon Attribution, you unfortunately can’t retarget people the way you can with the Facebook Pixel (such as retargeting people who added an item to their cart but didn’t purchase). It’s unlikely Amazon will ever allow this too, as it would provide a way for sellers to divert customers to their own site.
That means retargeting, which is a powerful targeting method for paid ads, is only possible if you have an in-between step such as a landing page in your funnel.
Amazon Attribution Case Studies
An official case study from Amazon claims nutrition company Premier Nutrition saw Amazon sales growth of 96% quarter-over-quarter and 322% year-over-year for their Premier Protein lines after implementing Amazon Attribution in combination with their marketing initiatives.
In another case study, cookware manufacturers and suppliers Meyer Group Ltd made a revenue increase of 54% and decreased CPA by 48% on traffic driven from Facebook and Google.
Pet food brand “I and love and you” also implemented Amazon Attribution in their business, and discuss the improvements it has made to their advertising measurement in the video below.
Amazon Attribution – In Summary
Analytics is vital for marketers to assess and optimize the performance of their campaigns. Unfortunately, with Amazon being a black hole for reporting, that puts businesses whose sales funnels end on Amazon and begin somewhere else at a disadvantage – until now.
While it’s still limited beta, Amazon Attribution is an exciting solution for sellers and vendors running marketing campaigns across different media channels. The brand attribution and product attribution features provided by Amazon can only be beneficial when driving traffic to products on Amazon.
Stay tuned for more info, and an eventual rollout to additional marketplaces.
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