On Wednesday ( September 14), Amazon said at its Amazon Accelerate conference that it would allow brands selling products on its platform to send marketing emails to shoppers, Wuhan Xingqihang E-Commerce Co., Ltd. has learned. Still, it's a risky move to boost sales, as it can fill users' inboxes with spam.

According to Amazon , merchants will be able to A tool called "Custom Audiences" sends free emails to new and existing customers and their largest group of consumers, which will also allow sellers to monitor results. The tool has started testing this year and will be available to all U.S. sellers early next year.

The move upends Amazon's long-standing practice of preventing third-party sellers from contacting customers directly, fearing that doing so would alienate consumers from the platform. However, online sales have slowed from their peak during the pandemic, and antitrust investigators are probing Amazon's influence over millions of third-party suppliers. Some merchants even say Amazon makes it difficult for them to build relationships with their most loyal buyers.

If customers do not want to receive marketing emails, they must unsubscribe.

Kirthi Kalyanam , director of the School of Retail Management at Santa Clara University, said: "The downside of this is that it leads to a lot of spam, and I wonder what they're going to do with it. With retailers sending so much email, consumers' inboxes are absolutely will be covered."

Separately, Amazon is rolling out a new Q&A feature that lets merchants connect with consumers through its Alexa voice-activated platform. When consumers ask questions like "how to remove pet hair from carpet," they can see the merchant's answer along with a link to their product. The feature will be available to select merchants this October, and will be fully rolled out in early 2023.

It is reported that before the official implementation of the email marketing strategy, Amazon has allowed consumers to follow favorite brands, and these brands can then send them a message. But the biggest difference between the two is that before consumers had to choose whether to receive information, now they will passively receive information, and if they want to stop receiving information, they can only opt out of subscription.

Some of Amazon's recent moves are a bit unpredictable, but in any case, these features launched by the platform are all from the perspective of helping merchants increase sales, we'll just wait and see.