#AmazonCart By the Numbers: Growing Pains and Potential

Online retailers are constantly experimenting and iterating on connecting social media campaigns with more sales, and this is certainly true of Amazon.com's efforts with its automated add-to-cart hashtag, #AmazonCart. With the tagline "Add it Now, Buy it Later," Amazon has implemented a process whereby users who link their Twitter ID to their Amazon account can add products to their shopping cart from within Twitter simply by replying to any tweet including an Amazon link with the hashtag #AmazonCart. Amazon touts this as a convenient way for users to capture items seen while browsing Twitter for future reference. Retailers are supporting the effort by tweeting instructions and opportunities to use the hashtag from their own brand accounts.

My company, Iterate Studio, has been closely monitoring Amazon's test-and-learn methodology as it optimizes its support of #AmazonCart. On behalf of our retail clients, and with help from the social media tracking company CoverCake (one of our portfolio companies), we're able to present extensive data on the numbers #AmazonCart has produced thus far, and zero in on which of Amazon's efforts to support the hashtag have seen the most success. With the launch of #AmazonCart a little more than two months old, the following data from a recent 30-day period tells an initial story of the campaign's success.

#AmazonCart Data for 5/15/14-6/15/14:

• Number of #AmazonCart retweets: 87,605. This is a combination of all sources — Amazon, partners and users. This number is large enough to interpret as significant activity and interest.
• Products Twitter users have added to carts via the hashtag: 3,093. For all the activity on the hashtag, this number — the one that matters most to Amazon and its partners — is lower than might be expected (if only for now).
• Users who have added products to carts via the hashtag: 2,464.
• Average products added to cart per shopper: 1.25.
• Gender breakdown of #AmazonCart tweets: 54 percent male, 46 percent female.
• Percentage of English-language #AmazonCart tweets: 95.39 percent.
• Breakdown by platform: Looking at the platforms used for cart adds, the web holds a slight majority of users, but mobile adoption is high.