According to Amazon, July’s Prime Day was their biggest ever, with 300 million items purchased globally during the two-day event. Now, with just a few months until the holiday shopping season, Amazon is hoping to make lightning strike twice with their Prime Early Access Sale. Taking place on October 11 and 12, this sale will be similar to Prime Day held earlier this year, with deals for Prime members across top categories. For shoppers, especially those who plan ahead, it’s a chance to capitalize on sales for fall items and holiday gift giving, but for brands, it can cause trepidation on how much to lean in.
Code3 Commerce Strategists recommend brands put some serious thought into their plan and set aside incremental budget, if available, as experts are predicting the Prime Day Early Access Sale will be just as big, if not bigger than July’s event. Noting it could be an unofficial kickoff to the holiday shopping season, brands should be prepared for additional traffic, glance views, and the always important, halo effect. According to eMarketer, in July, nearly a third of consumers browsed Walmart and 24% browsed on Target for competing sales.
With analysts predicting a significant event, and the timing aligning to serve as a kickoff to the holiday season, brands should be taking note. If your brand hasn’t planned on participating, it’s not too late to switch courses and develop a strategy. At the very least, brands should be planning for an increase in advertising spend during this timeframe in order to remain competitive and not lose market share.
With the heightened anticipation around this event, it may be worth taking extra budget from the traditional holiday shopping season of November and December and applying it to the Prime Early Access sale. Our Strategists recommend looking at historical Q4 sales and understanding when the typical peaks are, in order to appropriately allocate your spend between the three holiday shopping months. If your brand will be increasing budget for the two-day event, now is the time to begin planning so you’re prepared to push media spend in the lead-in time period. A week to ten days lead in time tends to give enough opportunity to ramp up for tentpole events.
Code3 clients found July’s Prime Day successful in reaching new customers and introducing them to their brand.* The % of new-to-brand sales from Sponsored Brand campaigns during Prime Day were 72% compared to 53% before the event (during the lead up time frame).
Our Strategists recommend a proven strategy of leveraging DSP and other mid-to-higher funnel media tactics like Sponsored Brand campaigns to introduce new customers to your brand in October; overall, driving more consumers awareness of the brand ahead of the critical holiday season.
The beauty of having multiple Prime Day events in the same year is the ability for brands to lean on their wins from the summer, and learn from the losses, to approach strategy differently for the second go-around. As mentioned, analyzing the wins and losses from July by digging into analytics and sales, is vital for brands to effectively prepare. Pay special attention to inventory, as this is a task that should not only influence Prime Early Access Sale, but November and December as well. If items went out of stock during Prime Day, or on the flip side, there was too much inventory on hand, make necessary adjustments ASAP.
Additionally, use learnings from July’s Prime Day to plan day-of strategy. Code3 Strategists saw large spikes in traffic early, and then again when the workday concluded, around 6pm EST. While the second day of tentpole events typically has lower traffic and sales, in July, there was an additional large spike towards the latter part of the second day.
While a second Prime Day may have come as a surprise, having a significant shopping event just ahead of the holidays can have many advantages for brands. It can pay to lean in - adjust strategy and budgets to come out of the two days on top.
If you could use an Amazon expert to help you plan for the Prime Early Access Sale, contact us today.
*All data points are reflective of all Amazon paid search/sponsored ad campaigns under Code3 management at the time of Prime Day and 2) data is only accounted for 1 day of sales attribution.