How to Deep Link to Alexa Skills

Alex Skills Top 25,000 as Growth Shows No Bounds

Alexa, Amazon's voice recognition platform, is on a path to stunning growth over the next few years. The platform along with competition from Google and Apple, is poised to fundamentally change the way consumers shop and access information.

A clear sign that developers are embracing the platform is the sheer growth in the number of Alexa skills now available to consumers. Alexa skills are the specialized programs available to Alexa enabled devices that create a more personalized experience about particular subjects and interests. Amazon launched the developer kit for Alexa Skills in June 2015. One year later, the company announced there were 1,000 skills available. Today, consumers can choose from over 25,000 skills that cover a wide range of topics.

Alexa Skills Growth: App-Store-Like Growing Pains

When it comes to Alexa skills discovery, Amazon is starting to experience the same challenges that Apple and Google face with their mobile app stores. Consumers are either not finding the skills they need or not trying the skills they would love. The risk is lack of adoption and shifting marketing budgets while the risk for developers is the lack revenue or return on investment. Amazon is taking steps to alleviate these frustrations. For consumers, there is now an Alexa skills store that includes reviews and ratings. For developers, the company introduced direct cash payment incentives to developers of popular skills.

Marketers need to promote intelligent deep links to Alexa skills within multi-channel campaigns that can open the Amazon shopping app vs. website. Email marketing will often be the first marketing channel brands and developers turn to for driving Alexa Skills installation and engagement.

Email Marketing and Deep Linking is Key to Alexa Skills Discovery

Consumers that own Alexa enabled devices are receiving emails from brands and developers about the latest Alexa skills and features. Users of Amazon Echo, for example, Amazon's voice controlled speaker are receiving personalized emails highlighting skills and suggested phrases.

The links to Alexa Skills in these emails, however, cannot detect and open the Amazon shopping app. For example, here is the link from the email to the Alexa Skills page for the Sonos speaker:

Instead of detecting and opening the Amazon shopping app, users are sent to the Amazon mobile website where they need to login to download the Alexa Skills. Most consumers will abandon at this login screen because they prefer the Amazon mobile app for iOS or Android.

Tools like URLgenius let you update the link to your Alexa Skills so it can open the page in the Amazon shopping app where your users can immediately install the skill. This can help you dramatically increase installs of your Alexa Skills and in turn increase engagement with your content.

Step-By-Step: Deep Linking to Amazon Alexa Skills

URLgenius users can follow these steps to update links to Amazon Alexa Skills.

• Navigate to your target page on the Amazon website and copy the skills link from the address bar of your web browser.
• You only need the root product link (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072ML3N6K)
• Don't include all the navigation tags.
  
  
  
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• Staying with our example, the screenshot below shows creating a deep link to the Alexa Skills for the Sonos speaker.
• Paste the link into the URLgenius homepage and notice the Amazon icon is highlighted.
• This tells you that URLgenius understands the link type you pasted.
  
  
  
  
  
• Notice at the bottom of the dialog there is a pre-populated field that contains four random characters.
• You can customize this part of the path for tracking purposes by channel or campaign.
• For example, you could change it to say the name of the skill or 'email-campaign”.
• In this case we will make it 'sonos'
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Click the “Compose URL” button which takes you to the settings page where you can copy the link for use in any marketing channel.
• Tip: Scan the QR code with your mobile device to test the behavior of the link.
• Copy your Alexa Skills deep link and use it in your all your marketing efforts.
  
  
  Try this URLgenius from a mobile device: https://urlgeni.us/amazon/sonos
  
  

Where to place your Deep Links to Amazon Alexa Skills:

• Place your URLgenius links for Amazon Alexa Skills behind graphics in email marketing.
• Promote on your Twitter feed and other social channels
• Place behind banners in display advertising and within paid search campaigns that promote your Alexa Skills.
• Use in Amazon Affiliate Marketing
• Analytics Tip: Append web or channel analytics UTM parameters for tracking (Google Analytics, Omniture, Kenshoo etc.) URLgenius also supports email marketing and other systems that automatically append tracking parameters to links.
  
  

Deep Linking Analytics for Amazon Alexa Skills

You can login to URLgenius anytime to understand how much engagement you are driving to Amazon Alexa Skills.

• This screenshot is an example chart for daily visitors and clicks by date range:
  
  
  
• The next chart below shows Amazon app opens to your Alexa Skills page by platform.
• Using these charts, you can also estimate what percentage audience has already installed the Amazon mobile app for iOS and Android.
• App store opens indicates those showing interest in opening your Alexa Skills in the Amazon Shopping app but have not installed the app yet.
  
  
  
• And here’s a chart example of app opens by device and by state.
  
  
  
  
• Login to view clicks and app opens at any time
• Note there is a one hour delay in reporting
• We will also email you an analytics summary each month

Contact us at info@urlgeni.us for help or questions about deep linking to Amazon Alexa Skills.