If you’ve ever tried driving traffic from external sources to your Amazon listings to increase sales, you’ll know how frustrating it can be.

Like a digital Bermuda Triangle, once your potential customers click the link in your ad, blog post or landing page, and crossed into the Amazon ecosystem, you were pretty much left to guess whether they actually followed through and purchased.

That is, until earlier this year, when Amazon rolled out the beta version of its Amazon Attribution program.

In this article, I’ll talk through what Amazon Attribution is, why you need it, and how it works.
A Quick Primer Of Off-Amazon-To-Amazon Marketing Before Amazon Attribution
The biggest problem with tracking your Off-Amazon-To-Amazon marketing campaigns (before the Amazon Attribution program was around) is that buyers that didn’t arrive at your listing from Amazon PPC were lumped into the same pot.

So if you made 200 sales, and you knew 75 were from Amazon PPC, you were left with 125 buyers who could have come from paid ads, organic, or could have found their way to your listing from, well, anyway, there was no way you could tell.

And if you couldn’t attribute a sale to a specific piece of off-Amazon marketing there was no way to tell if it was working, or which part of your sales funnel needs to be optimized.

Why You Need Amazon Attribution
The clue’s in the name: Amazon Attribution allows you to finally attribute sales to your off-Amazon marketing.

So now, when someone buys, you know exactly what path they took to get to your listing.

This is huge because this data allows you to track Amazon customers throughout your entire sales funnel, kill ads that aren’t working, optimize the ones that are, and increase your overall ROI on ad spend.
The big advantage this technique is that you will receive affiliate revenue, typically of around 2%. This adds up quickly. The downside is that the tracking of sales is not nearly as granular as Amazon Attribution.

Pixelfy.me Links
Pixelfy.me is a service that provides external tracking for Amazon links. It can track clicks and pixel your customers BUT it cannot track sales, except through the use of an Amazon Associates affiliate code (which you can use).

Pixelfy.me allows the use of Super URLs and other Amazon algorithm manipulating URLs which can be helpful for SEO which is the big benefit of it. As mentioned, it can also pixel traffic with Facebook tracking code, but this isn’t necessarily that useful unless you’re putting links on a website that you don’t control.

Who Can Use Amazon Attribution and How Much Is It?
Right now, Amazon Attribution is open to any third party or first party seller on Amazon that is brand registered.

To sign up, simply go here and signin with your Seller Central login information (to sign in go here).

How Amazon Attribution Works
Paid platforms like Facebook and Google Shopping allow you to track potential customers by using a pixel.

Dropping this code on your website means they can follow them from your ad to your website and report back to you every action they take.

But that only works if you own the website. And Amazon owns Amazon, and they ain’t letting you anywhere near their website with your dirty spying pixel.

Amazon Attribution works slightly differently.

Rather than giving you a pixel they give you what Amazon call an “Attribution Tag.”

What’s an Attribution Tag?
In the words of Amazon, “Attribution tags are parameterized URLs that measure click-throughs and attribute conversions and sales of their products on Amazon.”

What that means is, an Attribution Tag is essentially a link to your product listing that Amazon can track.

You can generate that tag (or URL) in your Amazon Attribution account.

Then you simply place that link in your ad, blog post, email, or whatever, just like you would a regular link to get people to your listing.

Except now, when anyone clicks on it, Amazon can track them and let you know a number of actions that they take.

How to Create an Amazon Attribution Tag
Once you’ve set up your Amazon Attribution account it’s pretty simple to generate your first Attribution Tag and start tracking your off-Amazon marketing efforts.

Click on the advertiser name you want to create the tag for.