Amazon is loosening its grip on customers

Amazon is testing a new feature for sellers that will let them contact customers directly by email to notify them of things like new product announcements or sales.

It’s a major change from Amazon’s current policy, which is to limit the amount of interaction between customers and companies that sell on Amazon, outside of resolving things like returns or order issues.

The new “Manage Your Customer Engagement” tool won’t let companies just spam previous customers with promotional emails. They’ll only be able to contact Amazon users who have specifically chosen to follow a particular company, and Amazon (not the sellers) will be the one to actually send out the emails, writes TheVerge.

Crucially, Amazon isn’t giving sellers blank-check access to customers’ personal contact information. Rather, Amazon will tell brands how many customers have opted to receive the emails, along with performance metrics for the campaign (the specifics of which haven’t been disclosed at this time) but not the names, information, or email addresses of individual customers.

The new email campaign option is a free service for sellers, but it’s only available to brands registered through Amazon’s Brand Registry program.

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