4 Ways Amazon is Helping Sellers This Holiday Season and Beyond From product pages, to email marketing, to converting customers, to fulfillment and more, Amazon has launched new features to simplify the selling process and help small businesses thrive.

As the holidays approach, business owners are preparing for the busy shopping season. Whether online or in physical stores, businesses that sell directly to consumers are making sure their stores are running smoothly, products are in stock, and they have the bandwidth to handle the upcoming surge in customer purchases.

The good news is that Amazon invests billions of dollars every year in innovative tools and products to fuel the growth of sellers, ultimately helping entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed this holiday season and the years to come. Recently, at Amazon Accelerate—the company's annual seller conference—Amazon announced a series of new and improved tools and initiatives that are helping sellers scale and grow their businesses, ship products more efficiently, build their brand, and more.

Here's a look at four ways Amazon is helping sellers succeed.

1. New personalized emails to help businesses reach their most engaged customers.

Email is critical when it comes to online marketing, but crafting an effective marketing email requires one part art, another part science, and a little luck.

Amazon has removed the guesswork thanks to a free email marketing tool announced at Accelerate. Amazon introduced targeted audiences—three new audience types within the Amazon Customer Engagement tool to help sellers reach more of their customers at no cost—an immensely important factor in maximizing sales during the holiday season.

Sellers can now target their marketing emails to customers beyond those who have opted to "follow" their stores. Specifically, sellers can send messages tailored for repeat customers (those who have ordered their products more than once in the last 12 months), high-spend customers (the highest spending 25 percent of the brand's customers in the last year), and recent customers (the most recent 20 percent of customers who have purchased from the brand).

Amazon's tailored audiences also allows sellers access to performance and reporting metrics, such as open rate, click-through rates, emails delivered, opt-out rates, sales, and conversion.

2. More data-driven insights to help brand owners drive sales.

Success as an online seller often comes down to data and analytics. Knowing what works and what doesn't, enables sellers to refine their product offerings, hone their marketing campaigns, and identify effective strategies to acquire new customers and sales.

At Accelerate, Amazon announced improvements to the Search Analytics Dashboards, giving brands greater insights to make business decisions quickly, improve marketing campaigns, and optimize product listings. With the new ASIN-level view, brand owners can now use Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASIN) to better understand their customers' interests and shopping choices. Brand owners will also soon be able to view the actionable search insights dashboard, which uses data to help brand owners identify areas of opportunity to improve their performance. And with Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer, sellers can use customer feedback from product review insights and product star ratings to help determine what product features they should build and prioritize.

3. New lending and investment programs to support a thriving community of sellers and entrepreneurs.

Dedicated to its sellers and building an inclusive community of new business owners, Amazon is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to help small businesses and entrepreneurs accelerate their growth.

Following a successful yearlong pilot program, Amazon rolled out the Amazon Community Lending program, offering long-term assistance to help sellers grow. In partnership with Lendistry, this program supports urban and rural small businesses in socially and economically distressed communities through short-term loans at affordable rates. Since its launch, the program has loaned more than $35 million to over 800 sellers – surpassing the original pilot program goal of $10 million. The program intends to loan more than $150 million in the next three years to small business selling in the Amazon U.S. store.

Amazon is also launching Amazon Catalytic Capital, a new initiative to invest $150 million in venture capital (VC) funds, accelerators, incubators, and venture studios that provide funding to entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds. The company will invest in funds that focus on Black, Latino, Indigenous, women, and LGBTQIA+ founders. Amazon expects to support more than 10 funds and over 200 companies through the next year.

"We're convinced that an inclusive investment strategy leads to better returns and innovation," said Peter Krawiec, Amazon's senior vice president of worldwide corporate development. "We hope that our investment will be catalytic – sparking a force-multiplying effect by inspiring others to invest in these companies, fostering inclusion and innovation, positively impacting communities, and creating generational wealth and financial return."

4. Convert shoppers and relieve some stress with Buy with Prime.

Driving web traffic and converting shoppers are at the top of the to-do lists of online sellers. With the new Buy with Prime marketing solutions, sellers have even more tools to reach Amazon's engaged shoppers and drive sales on their own brand's direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce store. Buy with Prime helps sellers convert shoppers by offering the same shopping benefits Amazon Prime members receive—including fast, free delivery and a seamless checkout experience—on their own ecommerce sites. With Amazon handling all of the logistic complexities of managing payments and processing, product storage, packing, as well as offering their standard one- to two-day shipping, it makes it easier for sellers to attract and convert new shoppers, while having full control over their customer data.

Buy with Prime provides customers with a streamlined experience that's aligned with a trusted brand like Amazon, while enabling sellers to focus on the things that they do best.

Click here to learn more about how Amazon can help your online business thrive—during the holidays and beyond.