Amazon.com Inc. bought Zappos in 2009 for $1.20 billion. And since then, the retail giant has kept the Zappos brand distinct from Amazon.
But that recently changed when Zappos overhauled its loyalty program and added a benefit to shoppers who link their Amazon Prime membership to their Zappos loyalty program account. Those Prime members receive two times more rewards points for each Zappos purchase than other shoppers.
Other changes to the loyalty program include a name change (from Zappos Rewards Program to Zappos VIP) and the elimination of silver, gold and platinum tiers that awarded different benefits to different shoppers. New benefits for consumers include five points per day for logging into the site and 10 points for reviewing items they’ve already purchased.
Zappos seeks to boost engagement with these changes, says Michael Rock, senior manager loyalty marketing at Zappos. “While we had very engaged rewards members who had been with us for a long time, we wanted to make the program simpler, more engaging and more rewarding for new customers and our more casual customers.”
Finding ways to drive more consumers to shop on Zappos is important given that the site’s traffic in November was down 10.8% compared to the previous year and October traffic was down 5.9%, according to data collected by digital measurement firm SimilarWeb Ltd.
[infogram id=”ac1968d0-86c9-4fd9-abbe-27fdc22745e6″ prefix=”1LX” format=”interactive” title=”Zappos traffic June-Nov 2019″]
The move to integrate the program with Amazon came roughly a year-and-a-half after Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market rolled out benefits to Prime members, including exclusive sales and an extra 10% discount on select sale items. Rock says Zappos’ decision to follow a similar path was a “completely independent decision,” but notes that doing so offers a “win-win-win benefit” for Zappos, Amazon and shoppers.
Amazon is No. 1 in the 2019 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000.