Amazon announced another Prime Day this year, scheduled for October 10 – 11. This mega-event signals the start of the holiday season, and even if you don’t plan to participate it’s worth paying attention to.
Prime Day is at the beginning of holiday season, which makes it a good litmus test on the broader consumer sentiment. Early holiday shoppers are a sizeable segment, and they’ll be looking for gifts. However these early birds are feeling – flush or frugal – watching what works and doesn’t on Prime Day will give solid insights into the remainder of the holiday season.
How you make the most of the learnings from this event depends on your business strategy: are you staying away, directing traffic to Amazon, or creating your own program? Read on for tips.
We Won’t Compete
If you avoid competing with Amazon internally and plan to stay away from Prime Day in your own messaging, this is still an event to learn from. Keep an eye on how steep the deals are and how much product moves. Comparing to the Prime Day week last year will give you solid insight into what you can expect from this holiday season. It’s not too late to use this information to tweak your segmentation and offer strategy for November and December.
We Push to Amazon
If you plan to embrace Prime Day but send your audience to Amazon for your deals, this is a great opportunity to get that early jump on holiday spending. The Prime Day event is essentially an early Black Friday/Cyber Monday event, just about one day shorter. Capitalize on the press and excitement Amazon is driving around this event by testing the cadence and segmentation you planned to use for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. (See our Holiday Playbook 2023 for a sample calendar). The learnings you get will help you add or nudge things for the November holiday while you reap the revenue from October.
We Match and Compete
If you plan to compete, we’ve certainly seen that “a rising tide lifts all boats” and competing retailers have typically benefited from Amazon’s Prime Day in the past. Even if you can’t use the words “Amazon” or “Prime” or “Prime Day” for legal reasons, you’ll see a bump from the excitement around this event. October Prime Day is timed well to help identify consumer sentiment that will help you forecast the entire holiday season.
As with marketers pushing to Amazon, this is a great opportunity to test the cadence and segmentation you plan for your Black Friday/Cyber Monday week. Ideally, you have competitive sales, loyalty benefits, and some acquisition targeted to take advantage of the buzz. Read our post “How to Make the Most of Prime Day Buzz” from June for even more ideas.
News to Watch
There are two more trends that are worth mentioning:
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) saw a surge last holiday season and continues to gain steam. As consumers continue to look for value, one area where brands can showcase this is through a range of payment solutions. The recent partnership announced by Shopify and Amazon Pay will help brands further amplify these types of incentives. If you haven’t done so yet, look to add these callouts in your campaigns and take advantage of this sales booster.
On the social scene, Tik Tok Shop recently launched, and it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. Even if you don’t have the resources to expand your presence on Tik Tok yet, you can certainly push for a hashtag to highlight content from your ardent supporters and you can glean some knowledge from how the platform performs this holiday season. We’ll definitely be watching to see if it’s going to become a big player.
