Amazon began piloting a tool last week that lets brands in its Brand Registry program in the US email marketing materials to customers who “follow” the brand
- Amazon recently began piloting a tool for some brands to communicate with customers who opt to follow them.
Context & Ripple Effects
Brand Registry began as an IP-protection gate — Amazon expanded it in 2017 so brands could register logos and trademarks to keep counterfeits out of listings (brand IP registration program). This pilot repurposes that same registry as a marketing asset: brands can now email shoppers who opt to follow them, a direct line to customers Amazon has historically kept for itself.
It is also one step in a longer sequence of Amazon loosening — and controlling — access to its shopper base, from the paid free-samples program pitched to brands like Folgers in 2019 to the Tailored Audiences tool that brought seller marketing emails to all US sellers a year and a half later.
First-order effects
- Participating US Brand Registry brands gain their first native channel to message opted-in Amazon customers directly, instead of reaching them only through on-site ads and packaging inserts.
- Customers who follow a brand start receiving marketing email from inside Amazon's platform, putting Amazon's sender reputation and inbox deliverability behind third-party promotions.
Second-order effects
- Brands weighing off-platform ad spend on search and social now have an Amazon-native alternative tied to purchase intent, shifting budget toward whoever controls the follower list.
- If Amazon charges for reach at scale — as the later Tailored Audiences rollout suggests — follower marketing becomes a new auction-style revenue line layered on top of retail media.
Third-order effects
- Amazon's moat recomposition continues: the marketplace evolves from neutral shelf into a CRM platform where the customer relationship is rented back to brands on Amazon's terms, weakening the case for brands to build standalone direct-to-consumer funnels.
- As Amazon both hosts rival brands' marketing and pitches its own private-label products in shoppers' baskets — per the 2019 basket-analysis reporting — brands face a structural tension: the channel that reaches their customers also competes with them.
The trend: Amazon is converting shopper relationships from a closely held asset into a metered marketing layer for brands, one controlled pilot at a time.