How Amazon Sellers Can Use Affiliate Marketing to Promote Their Products and Store

Tracking the performance of your marketing campaigns is crucial for optimizing your efforts and Amazon Attribution provides a robust solution to measure the impact of external traffic on your product pages and storefront. This post delves into the step-by-step process of creating effective attribution links, guidelines for choosing the right URL formats, and strategies to ensure accurate tracking. Whether promoting through affiliate partners, email campaigns, or review sites, this guide offers actionable insights to streamline your attribution setup and enhance your reporting accuracy.

Affiliate marketing is a powerful way for Amazon sellers to drive traffic and boost sales by partnering with affiliates such as influencers, bloggers, or websites. These partners promote products using unique tracking links and earn compensation based on clicks, views, or sales generated.

To track affiliate performance effectively, Amazon sellers can leverage Amazon Attribution, a free tool that provides insights into clicks, conversions, and ROI.

Tracking Affiliate Performance

1. Manual Approach: Create individual attribution links for each affiliate or campaign through Amazon Attribution. Affiliates use these links in their promotions, and sellers can monitor performance on the Amazon Attribution dashboard. However, maintaining multiple links for various channels can be time-consuming.
2. Automated Approach: Use Amazon Attribution API to generate generic tracking tags that affiliates can customize for different campaigns. This scalable method allows sellers to track performance across multiple affiliates and channels efficiently.

Manual Tracking Approach

1. Create Attribution Links:
   • Log in to Amazon Seller/Vendor Central and navigate to the Amazon Attribution Dashboard under the “Advertising” section.
   • Click Create Campaign and name it (e.g., “Affiliate – Tech Blog”).
   • Select the product(s) to promote and generate unique attribution links for each affiliate partner.
2. Share Links with Affiliates:
   • Distribute the generated link to each affiliate for use in their promotions (e.g., blog posts, social media, email campaigns).
   • Ensure affiliates use their specific links exclusively to enable accurate tracking.
3. Monitor Performance:
   • Use the Amazon Attribution dashboard to track clicks, conversions, and ROI for each link.
4. Limitations:
   • If affiliates promote across multiple channels, the same link won’t provide channel-specific data.
   • Sellers must manually create and manage multiple links for each affiliate and channel, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors.

Automated Tracking Approach

1. Set Up API Access:
   • Register for the Amazon Attribution API through Amazon’s Advertising API documentation.
2. Generate Generic Attribution Tags:
   • Use the API to create a generic tracking link for your store or products.
   • The tag structure looks like this:
     {lpurl}?maas=maas_adg_api_12xxxx_static_11_61&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas&aa_campaignid={campaignid}&aa_adgroupid={insertAdGroupId}&aa_creativeid={insertCreativeId}
3. Customize and Share Links:
   • Customize the tag for affiliates by replacing placeholders:
     • Replace {campaignid} with the affiliate name.
     • Suggest affiliates personalize {insertAdGroupId} and {insertCreativeId} to track specific campaigns or channels.
     • Replace {lpurl} with the product or store URL.
4. Monitor Performance via API:
   • Fetch attribution data using the API to analyze performance at multiple levels:
     • Affiliate summary.
     • Specific promotion channels (e.g., blog vs. social media).
     • Individual articles or creatives.
5. Benefits:
   • Scalability: Automates tracking for multiple affiliates and campaigns.
   • Granular Insights: Provides detailed data for every level of performance.
   • Efficiency: Eliminates the need for manual link creation and reduces errors.

Why Amazon Sellers Should Use Affiliate Marketing to Promote Their Store

1. Expand Audience Reach: Affiliates help sellers connect with new customers who may not discover their products organically on Amazon.
2. Drive Targeted Traffic: Affiliates often cater to niche audiences, ensuring your store receives highly relevant traffic.
3. Boost Credibility: Recommendations from trusted influencers or bloggers enhance your brand’s reputation and encourage purchases.
4. Increase Sales: By driving more traffic to your store, affiliate marketing can lead to higher conversions and sales.
5. Performance-Based Model: Affiliates earn commissions only when sales are generated, making it a cost-effective marketing strategy.
6. Measure Impact with Amazon Attribution: Track clicks, conversions, and sales through attribution links, enabling data-driven decisions to refine campaigns.

Why Amazon Attribution Matters for Affiliate Marketing

Amazon Attribution is a free tool for sellers and vendors that provides detailed insights into how external marketing efforts impact Amazon sales. It allows you to track:

• Clicks: Number of times your affiliate links are clicked.
• Conversions: Sales generated from affiliate traffic.
• Return on Investment (ROI): The effectiveness of your campaigns.

By using Amazon Attribution, you can track the performance of each affiliate partner and optimize your promotional strategies for maximum impact.

In the next section, we will explore how Amazon Attribution links can be effectively built and tracked to maximize the impact of your affiliate marketing campaigns. Read on for detailed FAQs and actionable tips!

Amazon Attribution FAQ: Easy Guide to Building and Tracking

Note: The FAQs section assumes that the seller is using the tracking template generated using the Amazon Ads APIs.

Q1. How do I promote a product page effectively using Amazon Attribution links?

For product pages, use URLs in the following format:
https://www.amazon.com/{Insert-a-Descriptive-String-Here}/dp/{ASIN}/

For example:
https://www.amazon.com/Product-Name/dp/EXAMPLE12345/

Please avoid using links that point to Amazon search results pages with hardcoded keywords. For instance, do not use links like:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Example+Product+Name+Placeholder

Attribution tracking does not function correctly for links directing traffic to search results pages. Instead, ensure that your links point to specific product or store pages for accurate tracking.

It’s best to use /dp/ASIN links because they are straightforward and work seamlessly with attribution tracking. Canonical URLs may also work but can sometimes include unnecessary parameters that complicate tracking.

Q2. How can I promote my Amazon store page with accurate tracking?

Yes, you can use Amazon Attribution links to track sales on your storefront pages. Simply create links that direct traffic to your Amazon Store pages.

The format of a store page URL is:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/{Insert-a-Descriptive-String-Here}/page/{store-page-id-here}

For example:

• Link to your storefront home page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/ExampleStore/page/DUMMY12345PAGEID

• Link to a specific store section: https://www.amazon.com/stores/ExampleSection/page/DUMMYSECTIONID12345

You can insert any arbitrary string in the place of  {Insert-a-Descriptive-String-Here}. Please avoid whitespace characters to build cleaner URLs.  Ensure you copy the correct store-page-id from the URL in your browser to build accurate links.

To find the correct URL for a storefront page:

1. Open the desired store page in a web browser.
2. Copy the store-page-id from the URL in the address bar.
3. Use the format provided above to create the link.
4. Insert tracking parameters to make it an attribution link (e.g., ?maas=...&tag=...).

Q3. Can I use Amazon Attribution to promote Amazon search result pages?

No, you cannot use Amazon Attribution to promote Amazon search result pages. Amazon Attribution only supports tracking for specific product detail pages or branded storefronts.

Do not use links like https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Example+Product+Name+Placeholder .

For accurate tracking and reporting, ensure your campaigns link directly to individual product pages or your Amazon Store.

Q4. How do I get the URL template for generating attribution tracking links? Is the URL template the same for all sellers, or is it specific to each seller?

The tracking template is specific to each Amazon seller and marketplace. Sellers need to use the Amazon Ads APIs to generate the template. Alternatively, tools like Karooya can help generate the correct template.

Use the following link template to create trackable links:

{lpurl}?maas=maas_adg_api_12xxxxxxx_static_11_61&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas&aa_campaignid={campaignid}&aa_adgroupid={insertAdGroupId}&aa_creativeid={insertCreativeId}

Replace placeholders with the following:

• {lpurl}: The product or store page URL.
• {insertCampaign}: Unique identifier for the affiliate (e.g., partner name).
• {insertAdGroupId} and {insertCreativeId}: Optional identifiers for channel or content.

For example, if Karooya Technologies is one of your affiliate partner, you can share the following customized template with Karooya : 

{lpurl}?maas=maas_adg_api_12xxxxxxx_static_11_61&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas&aa_campaignid=karooya-tech&aa_adgroupid={insertAdGroupId}&aa_creativeid={insertCreativeId}

Note: This tracking template is provided as an example only. Please do not use it directly. Sellers must obtain the unique tracking template specific to their Amazon account.

Q5. How do I generate attribution tracking template for multiple affiliate partners?

• Assign a unique campaign ID to each affiliate (e.g., partner1, partner2).
• Use additional parameters to distinguish between affiliate channels (e.g., website, email).
• Regularly audit links to ensure proper formatting and accurate tracking.

Q6. How should affiliates utilise the template shared with them? How can they customize links to track traffic from different affiliate channels or campaigns?

Finer tracking can be achieved by appending unique identifiers for each channel or content type (e.g., articles, email campaigns) to the attribution links. For example:

• Article Link: For example, here is how Karooya Tech will create a link to publish on review site
  • {lpurl}?maas=maas_adg_api_ 12xxxx_static_11_61&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas&aa_campaignid=karooya-tech&aa_adgroupid=review-site&aa_creativeid=article-1
• Email Link:
  {lpurl}?maas=maas_adg_api_ 12xxxx_static_11_61&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas&aa_campaignid=karooya-tech&aa_adgroupid=email&aa_creativeid=promo-2024

Q7. What are the limitations of finer tracking with Amazon Attribution? How do I ensure accurate tracking of affiliate sales?

Amazon requires a minimum of 10 clicks per tracking parameter to display data at that granularity level.

Q8: What steps can be taken to ensure sales tracking is accurate?

Share tracking links in the proper format with partners. Use descriptive, clean URLs and verify that each partner’s links are functional. Monitor data accuracy over a trial period before expanding to other partners

Q9: Can I track affiliate performance in Amazon Ads Console UI?

You can see the summary statistics at the affiliate level (for the value you replaced for {creativeid}) in the Attribution reporting section of Amazon Ads Console. For more granular reports, you must fetch data using Amazon Ads APIs.

Q10. Can I track affiliate performance at a granular level in Karooya dashboard?

Yes.

Q11. How do I share performance data with affiliates?

In the Karooya dashboard, you will be able to query all the important metrics such as clicks, purchases, and sale value for the affiliates. You can also get the stats at the finer level based on how they built the final links. You can export this data in spreadsheets and share it with them.

Q12. How does the tracking template benefit both affiliates and sellers?

The affiliate can use the tracking template to promote multiple of your products through their promotional channels. 

You on the other hand  will be able to track sales generated by your affiliate at the following level:

1. Total sale generated by the affiliate
2. Breakup of sales generated by affiliate by channel types they used
3. And you will also be able to track sales generated by individual products

Related Links:

• Introducing the Google Ad Preview Tool for Amazon Products
• Evaluate and Improve: Your Guide to Amazon’s Post-Campaign Checklist
• Start Here: Key Metrics to Track on Amazon Attribution