When a customer purchases a product from you on Amazon, it's possible to send an email to the customer. This email/messaging system is controlled by Amazon and called "Buyer-Seller Messaging Service".
As a seller, you never see the real email address of the customer. Instead, you send the email to an encrypted email address, and Amazon will then forward your email to the customer.
These emails can be sent manually via Seller Central, but it's more common to use an email service to send standardized emails based on specific triggers. For example: "Send an email, 8 days after the Product is delivered". You can send unlimited emails to your customers with Seller Metrix.
Amazon sellers have used the Buyer-Seller Messaging service for years to communicate with buyers. This has been the most important way to generate reviews and communicating your brand values with customers after they purchased a product from you. Over time, this Buyer-Seller Messaging system has become much more restricted and Amazon may even suspend sellers for not complying with their latest guidelines.
With this article, we are trying to make sense of the latest Amazon guidelines (as of early 2021) to clarify what you are allowed to write to your customers on Amazon.
We strongly suggest that you build your own opinion of the guidelines as there is room for interpretation. Here is a link to Amazon's own overview of the Buyer-Seller Messaging system. In September 2020, Amazon also released this updated communication guideline.
This guide should not be considered as
Proactive Permitted Messages
This is what Amazon calls an email that you send to a customer before he/she has reached out to you. Below are the allowed reasons to send a Proactive Message:
Resolving an issue with order fulfillment
Requesting additional information required to complete the order
Asking a return-related question
Sending an invoice
Requesting product review and/or seller feedback
Scheduling the delivery of a heavy or bulky item
Scheduling a Home Services appointment
Verifying a custom design, or any other reason where the contact is required for the buyer to receive their purchase
Amazon clearly confirms that it's allowed to send emails requesting a review/feedback, but there are many restrictions that you need to be aware of, and you can read more about that further down. Other than requesting a review/feedback, the only other reasons are for very specific situations and mostly apply to FBM sellers. So if you are selling your products via the FBA program, you cannot reach out to the customer unless it's for the purpose of requesting a review.
Additionally, you are allowed
How to ask for a review from an Amazon customer with an email?
What can you write in the email
You can ask the seller to leave a review via an email
Insert cards have a stylistic benefit where you can add images, logos, emojis, and much more, while the emails you send to the customers must be very simple to comply with Amazon's guidelines. If you want to learn more details about what you can write in the email, see this article.
For both emails and insert cards, you can never encourage buyers to leave a positive review. For example by saying:
"If you are unhappy, do X. If you are happy, leave us a review".
Or if you say something like "Please leave us a 5-star review".
If you do either of the examples above, you will end up with a suspension. Finding examples of sellers breaking this rule online is not a reason to do it as this strategy is certainly short-lived.