Growth remains a centerpiece of every discussion we’re having with brands in the ecommerce space today. Especially for direct-to-consumer (DTC) channels, where businesses are feeling the squeeze from both consumers’ rising expectations and the need to drive higher returns on marketing and operational investments to meet their business goals. To meet their growth goals, businesses are placing their bets in four areas: 1) putting more focus on improving their DTC shopping experiences, 2) reaching new audiences to optimize acquisition costs, 3) strengthening customer relationships to improve lifetime value (LTV), and 4) streamlining critical operations.
An opportunity to drive topline growth
Reaching new audiences and simplifying logistics is not easy, so a growing number of leading brands are turning to Buy with Prime for a suite of ecommerce solutions. It takes the best of what we’ve built on Amazon.com and externalizes those ecommerce and fulfillment solutions for businesses’ channels off of Amazon. We’re seeing more brands starting to offer Prime shopping benefits—that millions of Prime members trust on Amazon.com—on their own websites.
But it’s more than fast, free delivery—we’re helping businesses transform their shopping journey. From those early moments of shopper search and discovery, we’re helping businesses drive qualified traffic and convert customers at a higher rate. We’re also helping businesses offer shoppers the experience that they expect: fast, reliable delivery, easy returns, and great customer service to keep them coming back.
There are numerous reasons why leading enterprise brands are embracing Buy with Prime, but at the core, the following are five ways Buy with Prime is helping businesses transform their shopping journey to meet critical growth goals.
1. Acquire new DTC shoppers by reaching Prime members
We’ve witnessed the rising challenges of acquiring new-to-brand customers, with more channels and higher costs to acquire. It starts with difficulty getting shoppers’ attention and getting shoppers to an ecommerce site. We’re helping brands acquire new shoppers by driving qualified traffic to their site to improve return on ad spend (ROAS), using the Amazon demand-side platform (DSP) and exclusive shopping signals. When brands use Buy with Prime, they can take advantage of a new way to reduce customer acquisition costs by reaching relevant Amazon audiences with ads on sites across the web. Brands tell us that they love the exclusive insights to help them reach potential customers based on interest in their products or similar products and categories. Over 80% of brands reported meeting or exceeding their ROAS goals with Amazon DSP for Buy with Prime.1
Wyze improves ROAS on and off Amazon: Smart home device retailer, Wyze saw >20x ROAS across its website and Amazon product listings using the Amazon DSP solution for Buy with Prime. “For site sales alone, these display ads drove results that met or exceeded the results we get through other ad channels. The added bonus was that we also saw and were able to track a marked increase in our product sales on Amazon.com, giving us a more comprehensive view of our overall return on ad spend.” – Logan Dunn, Head of Ecommerce, Wyze
HEYDUDE sees strong ROAS: “Within two weeks of using Amazon DSP for Buy with Prime to remarket to engaged shoppers across the web, it’s already our second-highest performing ad channel giving us an incredibly strong return on advertising spend.” –Tommy Kowalski, VP Regional Digital Commerce, HEYDUDE
Another way merchants are engaging Prime members is by participating in high-velocity events like Prime Day, featuring their brand on Amazon-owned and -operated channels, and in joint promotions to help improve traffic. Participating merchants, in the aggregate, saw a 3.9x increase in average daily Buy with Prime orders and a 4.3x increase in average daily Buy with Prime sales during the Prime Day 2024 event period (as compared to June 2024). Getting shoppers to an ecommerce site is one challenge, but converting those new-to-brand shoppers is another challenge. Buy with Prime can help brands acquire new DTC shoppers by engaging the best ecommerce shoppers on the planet—an audience of 200 million Prime members who spend often on DTC sites and prefer the Prime experience.2 In fact, according to an April 2024 survey, 40% of Prime members indicated that they’re more likely to place a first-time purchase with a DTC store that features the Amazon Prime logo. Brands can provide a shopping experience that millions prefer, displaying the Prime logo and offering Prime shopping benefits directly on their DTC sales channels.
bareMinerals boosts new shoppers: For bareMinerals, 40% of its Buy with Prime orders were new-to-brand shoppers. It used Buy with Prime as a tool to meet consumer expectations for fast delivery and extend its holiday selling period by 5-7 days, allowing more time for tens of thousands of shoppers to purchase and receive their gifts in time. “For shoppers who are new to the brand, Buy with Prime helps establish trust early and allows the shopper to try a product without having to meet a minimum order threshold or worry about a complicated returns process. This helps remove any hesitation they might have about the order.” Carney Nir, VP of Commerce and Digital Experience, bareMinerals
2. Drive topline growth by converting more shoppers with fast delivery and reviews
There are a host of reasons shoppers don’t start or finish making a purchase on a brand’s ecommerce channels, from the site experience or product reviews to the shipping costs or return policies. We’ve found two ways to convert customers at a higher rate to help drive topline growth on an ecommerce site: 1) offering fast, free delivery from Prime and 2) displaying Reviews from Amazon directly on a product pages.
Over 75% of US Prime members indicated that fast and free shipping are very or extremely important when shopping on a brand’s website.3 Based on 167 A/B tests with merchants, merchants have seen strong increases in shopper conversion when they offer Buy with Prime, translating to a 16% average increase in revenue per shopper.4
Gabb sees strong returns: Kids’ smart device brand Gabb saw a substantial increase in shopper conversion and a 25% increase in revenue. “I’m enthusiastic about Buy with Prime because it has delivered substantial results for our business. We’ve seen a significant revenue increase, reduced customer service costs, and a positive impact from social ads. The overall return on investment has been exceptional.” – Dani Strong, Director of Marketplace, Gabb
As we look more closely at their shopping behavior, almost 50% of US Prime members read reviews (most of the time) on Amazon.com before buying something off of Amazon.com.5 For businesses that are already selling on Amazon, they can boost shopper confidence and help drive conversions on their DTC sites by displaying ratings and customer reviews from Amazon.com directly on product pages.
Premo Guard improves revenue with delivery and reviews: Pest-control product company, Premo Guard, has a strong Amazon presence so it added Reviews from Amazon to its ecommerce site to give shoppers easy access to the company’s thousands of reviews and help them make informed purchase decisions. Since adding its Amazon reviews to PremoGuard.com, the company has seen a 45.4% increase in revenue per visitor.
3. Grow LTV by keeping Buy with Prime customers coming back
Creating digital experiences that keep shoppers coming back is as challenging as acquiring them in the first place. But there are clear signs of what’s important to shoppers in their digital shopping journey. According to Forrester research, nearly 80% of ecommerce leaders state that order fulfillment and return experiences significantly affect whether a customer purchases from a retailer again.6
Our research shows that Prime is a key reason why shoppers buy again. Over 50% of US Prime members indicated that they are more likely to buy again from DTC sites that offer Prime shopping benefits.7
One way Buy with Prime helps brands build lasting relationships with Prime members is by providing a first-class online shopping experience beyond checkout—with benefits like 24/7 customer support and free returns on eligible items. Similar to the returns experience that shoppers love on Amazon.com, Prime members now get easy order tracking and label-free, box-free returns on their Buy with Prime orders when they shop on participating DTC sites.
The proof is in Buy with Prime shopper’s feedback, with an average satisfaction rating of 4.7 out of 5 and 95% of shoppers indicating they are very likely to use Buy with Prime again, based on an August 2024 Buy with Prime Post-Purchase Customer Survey.
Offering Prime shopping benefits can help brands make Prime members their customers to meet LTV goals and improve customer retention by providing their preferred and personalized experience. Merchants keep the customer data to help build those long-term relationships, using customer and order information (like email addresses) to reengage shoppers who abandoned their checkout, or reengage first-time customers.
Sherpani wins back customers: Sherpani, a brand that offers work and travel bags for women, used email marketing to win back Buy with Prime customers who had abandoned their checkout. Specifically, it used the integration with Klaviyo to create an automated abandoned checkout email flow. “Placed orders were 30.7% higher through our abandoned checkout flow using the Klaviyo for Buy with Prime app compared to the abandoned checkout flow not using the app.” – Alexis Beuning, Sales and Brand Manager for DTC Sales, Sherpani
4. Offer a predictable fulfillment experience to drive revenue
Faster delivery that shoppers can count on can be the deciding factor on whether a shopper chooses you over a competitor.8 Over 70% of US Prime members indicate that they are more likely to purchase from a DTC site when it offers 1-2 day shipping, and online consumers are only willing to wait an average of 2.5 days for their online orders to arrive.9 That translates for enterprise businesses, 60% of which report an increase in revenue when they started offering 1-2 day delivery.10
Faster delivery matters, but delivering orders fast, and on-time, every time, is what drives sustainable revenue. This is where brands fall short, because they only meet their published click-to-delivery times 66% of the time, and that drops 10% during peak shopping seasons.
Offering that speed and predictably requires an enterprise third-party logistics (3PL) fulfillment service, but building that part of the supply chain is costly. We’ve invested the capital up front, so you can take full advantage of Amazon’s unparalleled size and infrastructure to deliver fast, free delivery and easy returns at scale and on time.
Buy with Prime orders are stored, picked, packed, and shipped by Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF), a 3PL fulfillment service with a greater than 97% on-time delivery rate, with deliveries 7 days a week. 9 MCF uses Amazon’s fulfillment network, which has an average “click-to-door speed” over 50% faster than other retailers.11
Wyze reduces click-to-delivery and improves efficiency: Amazon helped Wyze scale while reducing its click-to-delivery time by 50%. The company consolidated its inventory into fewer locations, which means fewer split shipments and, thus, lower shipment costs. Today, MCF fulfills 75% of Wyze’s site orders. “We were able to not only cut the time between order completion and delivery by half, but also use less resources to manage the fulfillment of our orders. So we got the benefits of both speed and reduction in costs.” – Rob Johnson, Principal Ecommerce Leader, Wyze
Businesses that sell on Amazon can improve operational efficiency by using one pool of inventory to fulfill Amazon.com and DTC orders, including those from a merchant’s site, social channels, and other marketplaces. When merchants use MCF and Fulfillment by Amazon (for Amazon.com orders), they have reduced out-of-stock rates by an average of 13% and improved inventory turnover by an average of 24%.12 How? Because we’re experts at strategically distributing inventory across the globe. So fewer missed sales—and a lot fewer headaches.
Poppi reduces fulfillment costs: Beverage retailer Poppi used MCF to streamline operations across its sales channels—both on and off of Amazon. MCF powers its order fulfillment across Amazon.com, its wholesalers, and its influencer samples. Using has helped the brand reduce fulfillment costs by 30%.
5. Provide a consistent delivery experience across more channels and regions
Offering fast, predictable fulfillment on a DTC can be a game changer, but selling across so many channels is increasingly complex. Today the average channel retailer is selling on 5.4 channels, and that number is projected to grow to 6.5 in the next 4-5 years.13
Shoppers expect fast and on-time shipping on every brand’s channel. Brands share the challenges of having the right products, in the right locations, at the right time.
Adriana Bourgoin, Chief Customer Officer at Salesforce Commerce Cloud, shared a similar perspective on the opportunity to outsource to meet shoppers omnichannel expectations in a conversation with Peter Larsen, VP of Buy with Prime and MCF:
“The more I learned about Buy with Prime, and particularly inventory allocation and some of these other pieces, the more intrigued I was that these best-in-class services and products were suddenly going to be available outside of Amazon. Consumer expectations are just continuing to get higher and higher. You have this disconnect between what I, as a consumer, want in terms of shipping, delivery, [and] returns. And a widening chasm of ability to execute to meet those expectations. When companies heavily invest in their own stack they’re really not able to keep pace or innovate in any way because they’re so focused on maintaining what very quickly becomes table stakes. They lose the ability to respond as the market evolves. So they can’t, for example, execute on ‘buy online pick up in store’ or an integration with Instagram or whatever the new thing is. So, I really like this idea of letting the experts do their thing [so you can] focus your resources on the things that are actually going to move the needle for your business.”
Amazon has been innovating and solving for customers’ expectations for 20+ years, investing billions of dollars in creating a supply chain infrastructure that ensures that businesses can meet customers fast and on time across any channels, but also more regions. With more than 200+ fulfillment centers globally, MCF offers a way to scale operations and expand a business’s footprint to more regions across North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
With MCF, businesses can use that same pool of existing inventory for DTC orders to manage inventory planning and fulfill any sales channels beyond Amazon. This includes meeting those viral moments on social channels like TikTok and Facebook, as well as providing the same experience on ecommerce marketplaces, like Etsy and eBay.
WhyNotNatural stands out on TikTok: “Speed is critical to shoppers across all channels. When our brand took off on TikTok Shop, we struggled to keep up and get orders out on time. We used WebBee’s TikTok Shop integration for Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment, which offered us great scalability, speed, and reliability. This gave us an edge on the competition, earned us thousands of happy customers and good reviews, and took a weight off our shoulders so we could focus on growth.” – Kelin Marquet, Marketing Director, WhyNotNatural
To meet the businesses ongoing growth goals and shoppers growing expectations, Buy with Prime is empowering brands to deliver the seamless experiences shoppers crave, while also driving meaningful business results. It’s a powerful solution for brands looking to strengthen their DTC offerings, expand their reach, build lasting customer relationships, and streamline critical operations.
Discover how to drive revenue growth with Buy with Prime.
1 Based on results compiled from 28 merchants who initiated advertising campaigns with Amazon DSP for Buy with Prime between March 2024 and June 2024
2 April 2024 survey
3 April 2024 survey
4 This data point is based on A/B testing results collected between July 2023 and June 2024 from 167 merchants, and measures the average increase in revenue generated when Buy with Prime was a purchase option versus when it was not, during the same time period.
5 April 2024 survey
6 Forrester, Click to Delivery: Unleashing the Power of Ecommerce Fulfillment, April 2024
7 April 2024 survey
8 Forrester, Click To Delivery: Unleashing The Power OF Ecommerce Fulfillment, April 2024
9 Forrester, Click To Delivery: Unleashing The Power OF Ecommerce Fulfillment, April 2024
10 Incisiv – Amazon, Ecommerce study, July 2024
11 NielsenIQ, Delivery speed data from Insider Intelligence comparing US purchases made on Amazon.com to other US retailers, September 2023
12 Based on data from 505k US sellers who shipped more than 100 units with FBA during CY 2021
13 Forrester, Click To Delivery: Unleashing The Power OF Ecommerce Fulfillment, 2024.