Amazon to allow brands to directly contact repeat customers

In brief

Amazon plans to give brands a series of new marketing tools, including the ability to send direct emails to customers who have made repeat or recent purchases.

Until now, third-party companies have only been able to send marketing emails via Amazon to customers who have chosen to ‘follow; their brands.

The new tool, called Tailored Audiences, responds to sellers’ requests for more ways to market to customers who’ve purchased items from them before, Amazon said in a conference in Seattle on 14 September.

The announcement came on on the same day that the state of California filed an antitrust suit alleging that Amazon forces third-party sellers and suppliers into “anticompetitive agreements on price.”

Amazon also announced it will fund and manage co-branded “Buy with Prime ads’ on Facebook and Instagram to drive customers to advertiser sites involved in the program.