One of the major benefits of using Amazon’s on-platform advertising campaigns, like Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands, is that sellers can see the precise impact of these activities. In addition, they can quickly see how their Amazon PPC investments are affecting sales and conversions. But what about off-Amazon efforts?
How do marketing campaigns across other channels – like Facebook – impact on Amazon conversion rates? And, perhaps more importantly, is there anything sellers could be doing differently to derive more value from their non-Amazon advertising campaigns? That’s what Amazon Attribution is here to find out.
What is Amazon Attribution?
Amazon Attribution is an Amazon tool available to any seller in the Brand Registry programme. It enables sellers to track how customers engage and interact with off-Amazon campaigns for selected products and uncover which campaigns – across which channels – impact Amazon sales and conversions. Ultimately, it’s a way to align off-Amazon marketing with on-Amazon sales.
For sellers, Amazon Attribution is a way to peek into customer behaviours long before these customers visit an Amazon product listing. By gaining this visibility into areas of the customer journey that have previously been more challenging to see and understand, it’s possible to adapt strategies to ensure they always have the desired effect; to ensure they’re helping to improve on-Amazon conversions.
How Does it Work?
Amazon Attribution works through the use of attribution tags. An attribution tag is a trackable URL that Amazon sellers can insert into their off-Amazon campaigns. Then, when shoppers click the link – which takes them to a specific Amazon product – interaction data is fed to Amazon. The data records where that individual shopper has come from and what they did to arrive at that listing.
A 14-day last-touch attribution model is used, which considers behavioural and interaction data within the two weeks before a product purchase. The conversion is assigned to the last touch point to take place before purchase within that 14-day window. Consumer behaviours can be tracked through that customer’s Amazon account (if logged in) or any activity within a single browser session.
Why is External Traffic Important?
Amazon isn’t everything.
Amazon is the world’s biggest online retailer. And that’s exactly what it is: a retailer which attracts those ready to buy. It’s the go-to place when a transaction needs to occur.
But what about *before* a shopper is ready to buy?
Think about it. A friend’s birthday is coming up, and you know they would like a stylish stationery set. You’re already clear on what you want. You just need to buy it. That’s where Amazon comes in.
But what if you aren’t sure what to buy as a gift? In that situation, your journey to arriving at an Amazon product listing would look different.
It may look something like this:
- A Google search for ‘birthday presents’
- Reading a blog post full of recommendations
- A Google search for one or two of the recommended ideas
- A visit to a brand website
- Checking out opinions on a review website
- Finding the best deals using a price comparison tool
- Purchasing from Amazon
Amazon enters the equation right near the end of the journey. To improve conversions, sellers need to get involved earlier in the process and drive that external traffic to their Amazon listings, regardless of where that traffic originated.
However, to extract the most value from any external traffic, sellers must create a connection between the off-Amazon journey and the on-Amazon experience. And that’s precisely the area of sales where the Amazon Attribution tool can help.
What Does Amazon Attribution Track?
Amazon Attribution can track interaction and engagement with a wide range of off-Amazon activities, including campaigns on social media networks like Facebook and search platforms like Google.
It can track everything from emails and display ads to video ads and other forms of interactive media. And it will track and record data for any brand-owned Amazon product you choose.
The precise conversion metrics recorded are impressive and provide sellers with a vast collection of valuable customer interaction data.
Amazon Attribution can track lower-funnel activities, such as page views and basket contents, and upper-funnel activities, such as clicks. It can even track a product’s halo effect, showing any sales of associated products that have come from off-site activities.
Amazon Attribution Features
The tool includes a range of features that can help sellers adapt their off-Amazon campaigns to have the most significant impact on on-Amazon conversions and sales.
Full-Funnel Amazon Analytics
Analytics often focus on conversion data collected from the later stages of the customer journey. But this isn’t always the most helpful information for those looking for ways to increase conversions. What *is* helpful is seeing the whole funnel at once, tracking where you’re connecting with customers and where you’re not.
Amazon Attribution’s full-funnel analytics feature means you’re not just limited to conversion data alone; you can gain access to a more diverse set of data. This includes everything from page views to basket adds, helping you learn more about how your customers interact and engage with your products and brand before purchasing.
On-Demand Amazon Conversion Metrics
Through Amazon Attribution, sellers can access real-time reports showing how their off-Amazon efforts are impacting on-Amazon sales and conversions. This on-demand reporting functionality is one of the most popular features within the tool as it empowers sellers to make rapid changes to their campaigns.
Conversion metrics are tracked across desktop, laptop, and mobile, allowing sellers to access all relevant metrics, from all devices, at any time. Sellers can optimise their campaigns with this insight to drive the best outcomes. In addition, on-demand reports can be accessed easily through Amazon’s downloadable reports section.
Customer Insights
Amazon Attribution acts as a window into the inner workings of a customer. How do they interact with this type of ad? How do they move forward from one stage of the journey to the next? What motivates them to take action? Through the sort of metrics that Amazon Attribution tracks, sellers can gain answers to these questions.
As more and more sellers are beginning to realise, understanding customers on a deeper level is key to building online experiences that drive the best results. As a seller, when you understand more about your customer’s intentions and behaviours, it’s possible to adapt existing strategies to attract and engage more easily.
Tracking Per Channel
Attribution tags can be added to campaigns run across practically any off-Amazon channel. However, reporting is not limited only to the overall, combined metrics tracked across each platform. Sellers can create as many individual attribution tags as they want, providing opportunities to generate reports for each channel used.
This sort of granular, per-channel insight is invaluable. It lets sellers see that shoppers coming from *this* channel tend to show *this* sort of behaviour. And shoppers coming from *that* channel show *that* sort of behaviour. It provides a unique opportunity to adapt on a per-channel basis to attract different customers.
Attribution Reporting
You can create four types of reports through Amazon Attribution:
- Campaign reports: Performance data, broken down by campaign type
- Channel reports: Channel data showing which platforms drive more traffic
- Keyword reports: Creative data available for bulk upload campaigns
- Product reports: Activity & sales data for selecting products and halo products
Benefits of Amazon Attribution
It’s clear that there are many great features of Amazon Attribution. But can they really make a difference to sellers? Ultimately, what could Amazon Attribution do for your business?
Boost Sales
Amazon Attribution is about creating great customer journeys and experiences for everyone, regardless of their preferred channels. With increasing touch points visible in everyday consumer journeys, sellers must ensure they’re supporting customers every step of the way, not just at the conversion point.
McKinsey states that ‘companies try to ensure that customers will be happy with the interaction when they connect with their product, customer service, sales staff, or marketing materials. But this siloed focus on individual touchpoints misses the bigger—and more important—picture: the customer’s end-to-end experience‘.
Increase Best Seller Rank & SERPs Position
The ability of Amazon Attribution to boost sales and conversions can have a knock-on effect on your on-Amazon visibility, especially when it comes to increasing a product’s best seller rank. Every product listed on Amazon will be given a rank, but products with the lowest ranking tend to enjoy greater levels of on-Amazon visibility.
Why? Because Amazon’s A9 algorithm wants to provide the most relevant results to users. And so, it naturally considers a No.1 best seller to be more suitable than a similar product in 1000th position. You can boost visibility by using Amazon Attribution, understanding your customers more, and tailoring the journey to boost sales.
Access Customer Data
In today’s advertising landscape, customer data is everything. And as already discussed, Amazon Attribution provides sellers with valuable insights into how customers interact with a brand off-Amazon, and how this shapes their journey to an on-Amazon conversion. Armed with this data, sellers can adapt their strategies.
Sellers can make real-time changes to their off-Amazon advertising campaigns as needed in response to the customer data and insights they uncover. Such agility can help maximise return on advertising investment and ensure that sellers get the absolute most value from their efforts across every channel they use.
How Much Does It Cost?
Amazon Attribution is an entirely free tool for Brand Registry sellers. Not only that, but sellers can also earn money by using it.
How? Firstly, through improving conversions and selling more units. But it’s also possible to earn money through the Brand Referral Bonus programme on Amazon.
For every product a seller creates an Amazon Attribution tag for, there is an opportunity to earn between 2% – 30% of sales made to buyers who clicked an off-Amazon ad within the past 14 days via the Brand Referral Bonus scheme. The exact percentage will vary depending on the product category, but Amazon estimates that most sellers will see an average bonus rate of 10%.
How to Get Started with Amazon Attribution
Amazon Attribution is part of Amazon’s self-service advertising platform, which means it’s easy for sellers to get started whenever they’re ready to improve their on-Amazon conversions using their off-Amazon advertising efforts.
To get started, log in to Seller Central and visit: sellercentral.amazon.com/attribution
Here, sellers will be able to select which of their brand-owned products they want to create attribution tags for. In addition, there’s an option to add individual tags for each item manually or run a bulk upload to create multiple tags at once automatically.
When you have your tags, you’ll need to insert these into the campaign or ad manager on each channel for which you want to track metrics. However, this is simply a case of copying and pasting the URL into the relevant fields.
Once everything is up and running, the reporting dashboard will act as the home for all the data pulled in from our various off-Amazon channels. Your dashboard is where you can access your attribution reports, download data, and gain insights into activities.
Leverage Data to Optimise Campaigns
While the data that Amazon Attribution can provide is impressive, it’s only as good as what you do with it. If you generate this data and then sit on it, you’re not getting everything you possibly can out of this hugely powerful tool.
At ClearAds, we’re here to help sellers make sense of their data, utilise this insight, and transform it into strategies that enhance advertising campaigns and improve your conversions. Book a call back with one of our friendly Amazon experts to find out more.
