How to setup Amazon Brand Referral Bonus to increase your profits by 10%

In July 2021, Amazon announced the launch of a new Brand Referral Bonus Program. Available exclusively to brand owners enrolled in Brand Registry, the program further incentivizes sellers to accelerate growth from referral traffic. In short, Amazon is giving you even more reason to level up your external traffic. Not only will registered sellers be able to profit by driving promotions from outside of Amazon, they’ll effectively be able to earn even more money from these sales.

In this article we will explain the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus Program, its pros and cons, process to setup attribution, bonus reporting along with video walkthrough.

What is the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus Program?

The Brand Referral Bonus program gives brands an opportunity to earn a bonus from non-Amazon marketing efforts and improve their advertising efficiency.

Why should I participate?

The Amazon Brand Referral Bonus program credits Brands an average of 10% of sales from traffic you have driven to Amazon. The program helps you advertise efficiently by receiving the same bonus for customer purchases of additional products from the Brand up to 14 days after clicking on the ad. The program also helps you accelerate growth by improving the efficiency of your non-Amazon marketing efforts that drive referral traffic to Amazon.

How is my bonus calculated?

On average, Brands can earn a 10% bonus from their qualifying sales. To estimate your bonus, multiply your qualifying sales by the minimum bonus rate in the corresponding product category. Your actual bonus rate may vary based on inputs such as additional shipping and gift wrapping charges, which may vary between selling partners. The actual bonus applied to your sales can be viewed in your weekly bonus report. See estimated category bonus rate below.

When and how do I receive the bonus?

There is a wait time (2 months) before the bonus is credited to your account to accommodate order cancellation and customer returns. For example, if a qualified sale occurred in July, the bonus will be credited to your account in September. The bonus will be used to deduct the referral fees in September and going forward, until the bonus gets exhausted.

What purchases qualify for the Brand Referral Bonus program?

The bonus applies to brand-owned products with an Amazon Attribution tag that originates from a non-Amazon marketing effort. This includes promoted products and additional products purchased from the same brand up to 14 days after clicking on the ad.

Who is eligible to join the Brand Referral Bonus program?

All brand owners selling in Amazon’s US store are eligible to enroll. If you sell on Amazon but have not registered your brand yet, click here to enroll your brand in Amazon Brand Registry.

How do I get started?

1. Register for the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus program.
2. Enroll in Amazon Attribution if you are not already.
3. Create tags for your promoted products using Amazon Attribution. All traffic must have an Amazon Attribution tag in order to qualify for the bonus.
4. Launch your advertising effort.

How do I learn more about adding tags to my advertising efforts on different channels?

To generate an attribution tag, you will start by creating an order. Orders allow you to group together the ASIN’s you want to measure. You will then create line items within your order(s) that correspond to your various non-Amazon media strategies.

Process to generates tags for Social, Display, Video, Email

Provides information on how to generate and implement attribution tags.

1. Click on New order.
2. Choose Manually create order and tags for manual line item creation. Note: This process described here is for creating tags one at a time. For Google Ads or Facebook bulk operations steps, follow the instructions in the Bulk Upload Campaign Data help article.
3. Enter the new order name.
4. Select the products (ASINs) you want to measure. Note: We recommend segmenting orders based on your brands product groupings, another idea is to select all the ASIN’s you are featuring in your creative, plus any immediate variations (size, colors, etc.) You will be able to review performance of all products under the same brand under “Total” metrics in reporting.
5. Click Continue to line items.
6. Name your line item. Note: Each line item will create a unique attribution tag. You can create as few, or as many line items as you need, depending on what insights you want to see in your reporting. An example can include only one line item per publisher, or multiple line items to measure various placement, creative, or audience strategies.
7. Select a publisher and a corresponding channel. Note: If a publisher doesn’t appear in the existing publishers drop-down, you can create a new publisher by selecting the new publisher option. The name and channel you enter here will appear in your downloadable reports. Any publishers you create will only be visible to users within your entity.
8. Enter your Amazon destination URL in the Click-through URL field. Note: The destination URL you input is the page where customers will be driven to after clicking on your Ad. If you require the use of other third party ref-markers or UTM parameters, they should be entered in with the click-through URL. If they are applied to your attribution tag, the tag will not work.
9. Click Create. You will see an attribution tag generated. For Amazon Attribution tag implementation steps, read the Display, Video & Email Advertising – Implementation below.

Display, Video & Email Advertising – Tag Generation

1. After your attribution tag has been generated (see previous sections for the steps), click Copy to copy the tag.
2. Paste the copied tag into your self-service ad manager, or provide the tag directly to your publisher. Note: Amazon Attribution tags should be specifically created for each individual ad unit, link or button within your non-Amazon media. When implementing, apply the specific Amazon Attribution tag as the click-through URL for each individual tactic.

Social Media – Tag Generation

1. Once your attribution tag has been generated, click Copy to copy the tag.
2. Paste the copied tag as your ‘click-through URL’ (website URL field within certain social publishers). Note: Each generated Amazon Attribution tag should be applied in one individual ad unit within the social publisher Ad manager.

How do I find my Brand Referral Bonus balance?

There are two ways to see the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus. First, you will see your earned bonus in Seller account’s Transaction Details. Second, you can download the bonus report to see a 90-day performance summary (see next question).

Where do I find the Brand Referral Bonus report?

The system generates a report every Friday to summarize the last 90 days of the estimated bonus amount earned up to the previous Friday. For example, if you download the report on July 23, 2021, you would see the estimated bonus amount earned up to July 16, 2021. If you do not have qualified sales in the past 90 days, a report will not be available. For those with qualified sales, you can download the report from your Brand Referral Bonus page within Seller Central.

Final Thoughts

This Amazon Brand Referral Bonus Program presents a tremendous opportunity to scale your business. Amazon Sellers will be able to accelerate growth while increasing profits and improving the efficiency of their marketing campaigns outside of Amazon.

Driving external traffic should always be a priority of Amazon sellers, especially with the steep rise in the cost of advertising on Amazon. With an opportunity to earn money by executing strategies that were already beneficial by driving sales and boosting rank, it makes emphasizing traffic a no-brainer.

For sellers who have been executing strategies centering around external traffic, this bonus is free money. Amazon business owners unfamiliar with advertising outside of the confines of Amazon may find this to be the perfect opportunity to expand their reach. There may never be a greater time to experiment with ads on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

If you’ve been on the fence about ramping up your external traffic efforts, now is the time to unleash your inner influencer and make some extra dough!

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