How to Sell Products on Twitter Using #AmazonCart and the Drawbacks

 

Amazon has a new way to buy products while browsing Twitter. Once you have connected your Twitter account to the Amazon Cart service, you can reply to a tweet with the #AmazonCart hashtag, and whatever product was linked in the original tweet will show up in your shopping cart on Amazon. It requires no set up for the merchant, brand or even the average person. I ran a test today and it was fairly easy.

3 Steps to Run #AmazonCart + Twitter promotion

Step One

Tweet Amazon link with #AmazonCart hastag.

Construct a tweet with a link to a product on Amazon and add the link #AmazonCart with a call to action telling people to reply with the hashtag. Here is one that I put together as a test while I was attending a webinar today about the book The Confidence Code by Katy Kay (@KattyKayBBC) and Claire Shimpman.

Thanks @KattyKayBBC @ClaireShipman. The #ConfidenceCode: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance http://t.co/ZZzlDfK9rJ #AmazonCart

— Kami Huyse (@kamichat) May 6, 2014

Step Two

Followers reply to the tweet and add the #AmazonCart hashtag.

The second step is up to your followers since they have to initiate. The system will either tell them that the item has been added to their cart, or that they need to enable their account. It also sends an email. See below:

@kamichat Great! We added this item to your Amazon Cart. When ready, review your Cart http://t.co/dFGxq0faFX and check out

— MyAmazon (@MyAmazon) May 6, 2014

@franniel333 Thanks for trying #AmazonCart. To start, enable your account: http://t.co/vW2EjaPNmL

— MyAmazon (@MyAmazon) May 6, 2014

Step Three

Follow up with people who replied.

Thank them for buying your product and perhaps ask if they have any questions. This could be a great way to have more engagement in your stream.

 

The Drawbacks of #AmazonCart

I am fairly optimistic about this new feature, but I also see the dark side. Here are just a few I thought of, what are your concerns?

• Noise. It will add a lot of “buy me” noise to the Twitter stream.
• Fraud. There is room for it to be misused by a hacker. If they are able to get into both your Amazon and Twitter account (are you using the same password?) they could buy something from your cart. However, Amazon will most likely make them reenter the credit card info if they log in from an unusual location.
• Bad Marketing. This is a frictionless invite to conduct spammy and uninteresting marketing.
• Follower Fatigue. If you do too many of these, it might mean you will lose followers over it.

I am starting to collect some ideas for how to do effective and interesting marketing with Amazon Cart. I have started by pulling together a few of them in this Pinterest board. If you have great examples of brands or individuals using this new tool, please add a link to the tweet in the comments. I will pin the most interesting ones in my Pinterest board.

What do you think? Will you be using #AmazonCart in your marketing toolkit?