Amazon’s “New Customer” Acquisition Metrics

Amazon’s new-to-brand customer acquisition metrics are essential KPIs for helping marketers identify new strategies and goals for their Amazon marketing initiatives. Currently, these customer acquisition metrics are only available for Sponsored Brands, Video, and DSP ad types.

What Are Amazon’s New-to-Brand Customer Acquisition Metrics?

• New-to-brand orders: a user’s first-time order of your brand
• % of orders new-to-brand: the percentage of orders that came from new customers
• New-to-brand sales: the ad sales associated with first-time customers
• % of sales new-to-brand: the percentage of ad sales associated with first-time customers

It is important to note that these metrics were originally supposed to have a 1-year lookback window, however, it looks like they’re still valid going back to November 2018 (when this feature launched).

What Does This Mean for Marketers?

Whether running Sponsored Ads or DSP, marketers can use this data to glean insights from how they’re acquiring net new customers. Then, based on internal goals, they can reallocate spend and invent new strategies. In the following examples, we will focus on Sponsored Brands and strategies to leverage these brand metrics.

Note: For the examples below, I am using a date range of 11/1/2018-5/19/2020.

Demonstrate The Value of “Protecting Your Own Back Yard”

It can be hard to demonstrate to stakeholders the importance of Branded spend. However, with customer acquisition metrics, there’s a compelling argument to maintain your Branded spend—especially if you have a competitor buying your space. In the client example below, you will see that new customer purchases generated 77% of total Branded sales.

By defending your back yard, you’re not only acquiring new customers and sales but ensuring that your competitors aren’t stealing your new customers for their own market share gains.

Showcase Areas For Improved Market Share Growth and Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

We’re going to do a similar exercise as above and take a look at our Non-Brand/Category campaigns. Oftentimes, we are held to a strict ROAS goal that is focused on profitability without taking into account the true value of acquiring a new customer and what their lifetime value could be as they move through a brand’s product maturity curve (not just a one-time purchase). By using these metrics, we are able to identify the percentage of sales coming from net new customers. We can then measure our new customers against CLTV to determine if we should pull back on our hard KPI goals and shift focus on driving net new customers instead, allowing us to improve market share. In the example below, you can see from the same client that 87% of all Non-Brand sales are coming from net new customers. This makes the Non-Brand campaigns an excellent opportunity to grow new customer acquisition and further increase market share.

This data paired with the right strategy can enable marketers to have better insights into what’s driving their business and allow new, data-driven strategies and tactics to deploy as a result. While there are other forms of analysis that can be completed, these few examples should give marketers ideas on what they can do to take their Amazon business to the next level.

Rise will continue to provide updates on Amazon’s ad enhancements and best practices for driving results. If you’d like to learn more about how Rise can grow your Amazon advertising sales faster, contact us today.

UPDATED: MAY 21, 2020
This feature was released in January 2019. Read on for strategies to leverage Amazon’s New Customer Acquisition Metrics.