Social Media and Amazon can be a powerful match for ringing up sales and can be the best performing non-Amazon channel for some sellers. The key to conversion, however, is to know how to implement such campaigns with the least amount of friction in the consumer journey.
Marketers and agencies around the world have discovered URLgenius is the app linking secret for ecommerce teams that want to drive non-Amazon traffic to their product listings from paid and organic social media campaigns.
VENDO, the marketplace growth agency, routinely recommends URLgenius to its Amazon sellers and uses the platform as part of their managed services offerings. To inform other Amazon sellers about this incredible sales channel, we asked the team at VENDO to share one of their client success stories. They chose a DTC advertiser and manufacturer that sells toothpaste and other oral care products on the Amazon marketplace.
The marketing team at the brand considers URLgenius a competitive advantage, so we can’t share the name of the product, but the results were so instant and so dramatic, that the advertiser was willing to share their story in the spirit of best practices.
The results were stunning. Social media combined with the URLgenius platform instantly created a powerful new sales funnel for the brand’s product listings on Amazon. The brand’s conversion on Amazon from social media increased by more than 200%.
Any Amazon Seller for any product can learn from this example of how to use URLgenius links to power “off-site” or non-Amazon traffic to their product listings to increase sales, engagement and product rankings.
As for many advertisers today, social media influencers are an important part of a brand’s marketing strategy. This company works with over 300 influencers on various social media platforms. Each influencer receives their own customized Amazon link to promote the brand’s products and promotions on Instagram and other social networks. The influencer uses the link as the call to action in their social media posts about the brand and sales are tracked and attributed back to each influencer.
The brand participates in Amazon Attribution to track conversions and engagement signals from customers that click but don’t purchase in the session. The customized Amazon link for each influencer includes the required attribution tags for Amazon Attribution reporting.
Amazon Attribution bonus: Driving sales through Amazon Attribution is important especially right now because Amazon is offering a 10% discount off their usual fee for any sales driven through the program.
Amazon Attribution offers access to full-funnel analytics for non-Amazon channels including social (mention Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) with metrics that include clicks, detail page views, add to carts, and sales. Any customer that clicks but does not buy in that session is automatically placed into the Amazon DSP for remarketing. The VENDO agency also provides additional value-added services for reporting and remarketing for customers that did not buy in the same session.
Initial performance was disappointing. Conversion was low from Instagram ads, and not in line with the marketing team’s expectations or experience across marketing channels. For the VP of Ecommerce Sales, not only did the conversion rate seem low, but the results pointed to something being overlooked either with the link or the post.
“It just didn’t add up, thought the brand’s VP of eCommerce Sales and Marketing. “There had to be something wrong with the link or an optimization we could do to improve conversion.”
The campaign was running during the Thanksgiving holiday including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the busiest shopping days of the year. This is a time when a lot of people are at home scrolling their social media feeds, so there was no time to lose. After discussing the issue with the brand, Josh Hong, at VENDO, the brand’s agency decided to take another look at a post and the link.
Having found an influencer’s post about the product, he clicked the customized Amazon link provided to the influencer and was surprised at what he discovered.
Although Josh had the Amazon app on his phone, the link did not open the Amazon app but instead sent him to the Amazon web login. As consumers, we have all seen web logins block our shopping and content journeys. When it comes to Amazon, few people login to the app this way which means no product sales and engagement from customers that didn’t plan to buy in that session could not be tracked.
The reason this happens is because social apps like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and many other apps have what’s called an embedded app browser. When the consumer clicks on a link within these social apps, the embedded browser serves the content and the destination app is not opened.
Not only does this hurt conversion, but no buying signals can be captured such as clicks, detail page views, or add to cart, because the consumer cannot easily engage the product page.
Josh started searching for solutions and had some key requirements:
The brand of course, also wanted to get that 10% credit on each sale for driving conversion through Amazon Attribution.
Josh found URLgenius and discovered it met the requirements. URLgenius uses a patented technique to give those web links additional linking capability to leave the embedded browser and open the destination app when installed on the device — in this case Amazon — to the right screen.
Josh created a URLgenius link immediately tested it from social media. All he needed to do was sign up for a free trial URLgenius account and update the Amazon link. When clicked, the Amazon app opened directly to the product page where he could purchase, view product details, or add to cart. All in the Amazon app without having to login to the Amazon website.
The regular Amazon links in the campaign were then replaced with URLgenius links making sure to include the Amazon Attribution tags for tracking purposes. It was that simple.
The web login friction was removed from the customer journey and the Amazon app opened fast and to the right product page in the Amazon app on iOS and Android devices from the same link. The results were immediate and dramatic skyrocketing conversion by more than 200%.
Results far exceeded expectations and easily answered one of the team’s original questions about where to allocate marketing budget. The answer was clear: social media leading to in-app Amazon listings via URLgenius links.
“URLgenius more than doubled our conversion immediately while Amazon showed us the results close to real-time. We also captured same session engagement signals from visitors that clicked but didn’t buy,” said the brand’s VP of Ecommerce Sales and Marketing. “With URLgenius, we created a whole new sales funnel, and the platform is now a key part of our direct-to-consumer strategy.”
In addition, because URLgenius successfully passed the attribution tags to the app, the client received the 10% credit from Amazon on the sale. Sales results were easily viewed hourly in the Amazon Attribution reporting. The URLgenius link also enabled Amazon to capture same session engagement data from those that did not buy which Amazon automatically sends to the Amazon DSP for remarketing.
URLgenius and Amazon Attribution empowers any Amazon Seller to quickly build a new sales and remarketing funnel by driving traffic into the Amazon app from social media or any other non-Amazon channel. This can be a powerful way to double or even triple your sales immediately.
Not only will you see increased sales, but your sales velocity and engagement will improve brand awareness, consideration and your product rankings. Best of all, your agency or your marketing and ecommerce teams can get started immediately.
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