Amazon gives Digital Brands a Valentine’s Day Gift
In general, I am very impressed how Amazon is able to leverage its “fulfillment platform” and release new shiny products on top of it which helps Amazon bring “digital products & services” (i.e. the subscription based economy) on its platform AND create an opportunity to extend its ecommerce marketplace to digital brands. Such a smart move!!
“Rewarding Moments” — Not a new concept.
Large CPG Brands are already rewarding their customers
Large brands generally have an established distribution — online & offline retailer portfolio — with long lasting trade & promotions marketing. Large brands never had D2C strategy to start with, but then came internet era and every brand started building website. For many of these brands, loyalty is the one of the main reasons why consumer shows up on the website. Some of these brands have specifically built mobile apps for “Rewarding Moments” such as Huggies, Pampers, Kotex, Carter’s. etc.
Brands has love and hate relationship with Amazon. Since the inception of Kvantum (over 6 yrs now), we have been helping established as well as emerging brands to manage their strategy on Amazon. In past 6–7 years Amazon has emerged as a powerful ecommerce platform for brands with its features like subscription & save, Amazon Dash, etc. And after the introduction of Amazon Ad Platform (AAP, also known as Amazon Media Group), brands had to determine how a brand or category portfolio should be built on Amazon when it comes to merchandising & media.
Amazon “Moments” — Is it just a Loyalty Program or something bigger?
On the surface, “Moments” is a self-serve loyalty offering, which administers both physical and digital rewards for marketers that are fulfilled, shipped and delivered by the online retailing giant.
Few Industry that Amazon will be able to tap into:
Fitness has become a staple of today’s wellness economy, and consumers increasingly expect fitness to be available on-demand. Startups are increasing their at-home fitness offerings with a focus on making workouts increasingly efficient, exciting, and — of course — tech-enabled.
Mental Wellness: Thanks to decreasing stigmas around mental health disorders, more startups are cropping up to manage depression, anxiety, and overall well-being.
Sleep Tech: Lack of sleep is increasingly seen as a public health epidemic in the United States, with over one-third of American adults not getting enough of it. To solve this, a variety of sleep tech brands are cropping up promising products or services that will promote deeper rest.
(Source: CBInsights)
Amazon is targeting a whopping $3.7T Global Wellness economy* which mostly runs on mobile and web apps (subscription based). Majority of the companies in this landscape are VC funded. These companies need to show exponentially growing acquisition numbers to their investors to continuously get funded.
*Note: I did not include obvious mobile apps industries in Gaming & Publishers industry who would love to integrate “Moments” into their mobile apps to improve engagement & subscriptions. That is GIVEN!
And Amazon is promising to help these companies retain the customers and make the metrics look good.
Food for thought
So far Amazon knew about consumer’s searching (Amazon SEO), shopping, buying behavior & Consumer’s address. Basically everything within Amazon Universe.
Now with “Moments” amazon would know consumer’s non-Amazon behavior from digital & mobile world.
Combining Amazon Universe & non-Amazon Universe would give Amazon a great deal of understanding of a consumer lifecycle needs & wants (in addition to Amazon Reviews). This would help boost Amazon’s Marketing & Advertising services (AAP, AMG, AMS) and certainly help the brands merchandising & advertising on Amazon marketplace.
What all it means to Google & Facebook? I will leave open. A topic for next time :)
Overall a great product, we will soon learn how it will pan out for brands — jury is still out. If successful, I am sure next year, digital brands must be sending Valentine’s Day gifts to their loyal customers via “Moments”.
