Amazon Brand Referral Bonus

Although the program has been in place for quite some time, not all Amazon sellers are aware that the marketplace makes the Brand Referral Bonus available to them. This bonus is about 10 per cent on the amount of sales facilitated by non-Amazon marketing activities. But how does it work?

What are non-Amazon marketing activities?

To understand how this bonus works, let’s start with the basics. Amazon considers all forms of promotion of your products on channels other than Amazon, such as search ads, e-mail marketing, your own website, Facebook and so on, to be non-Amazon marketing techniques.

Nothing wrong with that, of course (on the contrary!). However, Amazon has been treating this form of marketing with special attention for some time now. It has even dedicated a service (Amazon Attribution) that can help you monitor non-Amazon campaigns. As a result, you can make more informed decisions on reliable statistical data in order to improve performance.

For example, Amazon Attribution allows you to add tags to the ad links of the products on sale. This makes it easier to monitor the performance and efficiency of campaigns, as each sale will be easily linked back to the original marketing channel.

Brand Referral Bonus: what it is and how to obtain it

That being said, the Brand Referral Bonus is a percentage bonus calculated on the amount of sales driven by non-Amazon channels. It is reserved for whoever is registered in the Amazon Brand Registry, has an Amazon Ads account and starts using Amazon Attribution.

Once you have these basic credentials, simply register for the Brand Referral Bonus on Seller Central. Then, use Amazon Attribution to create a campaign adding attribution tags to product ad URLs.

Once this is done, simply incorporate these links into your non-Amazon marketing campaigns. At this point, all the sales that the brand gets through these tagged links will receive a bonus. The bonus includes both the products promoted with the link and any other products that the same customer purchases from your brand in the next 14 days.

The bonus thus obtained will be recognised in the form of a credit. The credit will reduce the total commission cost after a waiting period of two months. This is the time required to take into account any order cancellations or customer returns.

How much is the Brand Referral Bonus?

The Brand Referral Bonus amounts to about 10 per cent of the amount of sales on Amazon. However, each product category has a different bonus rate, varying from 2% to 30%, also depending on the sales volume.

How to Monitor the Brand Referral Bonus

Amazon is very transparent in disbursing the bonus. It updates the data of each subscriber every Friday. It thus summarises the estimated bonus amount earned over the last 90 days, up to the previous Friday.

To check the credits, simply go to the Seller Central payment page and download the reports for the relevant date ranges.