Amazon recently announced that it will again offer a second Prime member-exclusive sale this year. Get ready for the Prime Big Deal Days event!
The sale will take place in October 2023. Deals will be available to Amazon Prime members across 19 countries — including the US, UK, Brazil, China, and Australia.
If you’re an Amazon seller planning to participate, here’s what you need to prepare for the biggest possible sales boost.
If you’re on the fence, read on to learn more about how this Prime member-exclusive sale could benefit your business.
Inside This Year’s Amazon Second Prime Day
- Why Is There a Second Prime Day?
- What Did We Learn From July’s Prime Day?
- How Can Sellers Prepare For a Second Prime Day?
Prime Big Deals Day: Why Is There a Second Prime Day?
Despite some skepticism and negative press, Amazon believes last October’s Prime Early Access sale was a hit. The mega marketplace is now looking to recreate that success with another fall sale event exclusive to Amazon Prime members.
In 2015, Amazon began offering Amazon Prime Day, an exclusive annual sale available only to Amazon Prime Members. The sale was typically held annually in July.
Over time, the sale expanded from a single-day Prime Day event to a 36-hour event, then finally to a two-day event in 2019. In 2020, Prime Day shifted from July to October to adapt to pandemic-related disruptions.
After supply chain hold-ups bungled shoppers’ gift-giving efforts in 2021, consumers and retailers sought to bump up the holiday shopping season in 2022. That year, Amazon offered its usual two-day event in July, but it also introduced a new two-day Prime member-exclusive event in October called the Prime Early Access Sale.
Some media reports criticized this second Prime event for not drawing as much traffic as the July event, but by many accounts (including Amazon’s) the event was a success.
The e-commerce giant hasn’t shared much about Prime Big Deals Day, which is being offered for the first time this year, but many experts see it as the latest evolution of the October Prime events.
What we do know is that Prime Big Deals Day will be offered in October 2023, and open to sellers and Amazon Prime members in the following countries:
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Canada
- China
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Japan
- Luxembourg
- Netherlands
- Poland
- Portugal
- Singapore
- Spain
- Sweden
- US
- UK
What Did We Learn From July’s Prime Day?
Amazon called the first Prime Day of 2023, which took place on July 11, “the single largest sales day in company history” and “the largest ever for independent sellers in Amazon’s store.”
Prime shoppers purchased over 375 million items globally, and some small businesses — like Caraway, True Classic, and TUSHY — increased their average daily Amazon sales by over eighteen times during the first day of Prime Day.
As in years past, the best-selling products overall were in categories like home, fashion, and beauty. The top five items purchased, by number of units, were Temptations Cat Treats, Amazon Fire TV Sticks, Liquid I.V. Packets, Echo Dot 5, and Blink Outdoor Cameras.
Earlier this year, we made some predictions about July Prime Day:
- Tech products would take the spotlight again. And we were right. Some of the most popular items sold were Amazon devices, Blink cameras, as well as Apple AirPods and Apple Watches, Anker batteries, Sony Bluetooth travel speakers, and Beats headphones.
- The halo effect would continue, meaning traffic to other retailers and marketplaces like Walmart and eBay would increase on and around Prime Day. We were right about this one too. According to Adjust’s analysis, global e-commerce app downloads increased by 60% year-over-year during Prime Day, and shopping app use surged by 30%.
- Low-cost and impulse “essential” items would win big. Called it. Numerator’s research shows that the average Prime Day order size was $54.05, with the majority (57%) of individual items selling for under $20. LANEIGE Lip Glowy Balm and Lip Sleeping Mask sold big, for around $13 and 17, respectively. Only 5% of Prime Day items sold cost over $100.
- Another Prime Early Access sale would be planned for October. Well, here it is.
We also learned a few notable numbers about retail tech trends:
- Amazon Live streaming videos had more than 100 million Prime Day views in the US and India. For context, TikTok has around 150 million monthly active users in the US. While livestream shopping has been slower to catch on in the US than in countries like China, this could be a signal that it’s worth making some investments in your Amazon Live strategy.
- 6.4% of orders were made using Buy Now, Pay Later, which drove $461 million — up 20% over last year’s first July Prime Day. This percentage doesn’t say great things about the economy or inflation, but it could make adopting Buy Now, Pay Later a smart customer conversion strategy.
- 43.7% of Amazon Prime Day purchases were made on smartphones, up 1% from last year. This figure may be growing slowly, but it’s definitely growing steadily, especially for sellers who optimize their websites and design high-quality Amazon mobile storefronts.
There are still some risks to selling on July’s Prime Day event:
- Advertising was more expensive, and increased competition made it less effective. Cost per click increased on Prime Day by 90% from the previous month’s average, while click-through rates decreased by 23%. In other words, merchants had to pay more and work harder to stand out from the extra competition.
- Inventory and planning continued to be a challenge. Sellers had to get their Prime Day deals submitted by April 28, and FBA inventory had to get to Amazon’s warehouses by June 15 to be included in Prime Day sales. Meanwhile, the exact dates for July Prime Day weren’t even officially confirmed until June 21, meaning sellers had to plan for a multitude of unknowns while preparing for the event.
- Customers may be losing faith in Prime Days. Only 29% of customers surveyed by Digital Commerce 360 said Amazon Prime Day 2023 lived up to their expectations, and 19% said they were disappointed. The main reasons are that prices were higher, discounts were lower, and users reported not being able to get the deals they wanted, due to apparent stockouts.
How Can Sellers Prepare For an Amazon Second Prime Day?
The time to start preparing for a successful Prime Big Deals Day event is now.
Here are some ways you can take advantage of the October sale:
- Get your deals in early. You’re probably already too late to snag Lightning Deals and Prime Exclusive Discounts ahead of October’s shopping event — Amazon told sellers to submit their deals by August 11, 2023. But you can still create other promotions, like BOGO, Social Media Promo Code, or Percentage Off offers.
- Plan for a small passive sales lift. Remember, doing nothing when it comes to deals is still an option for Amazon’s Fall event. In 2022, Amazon sellers who didn’t run any deals still saw a sales lift on July Prime Day. Based on past October shopping events, it’s unlikely the lift for Prime Big Deals Day will be as high.
- Leverage your best-selling Prime Days categories. Promote your top performers and focus on the categories that do best during Prime-exclusive sales. If you’ve had success with product bundles in the past, run tailored promos to increase your Average Order Value (AOV).
- Order inventory. Make sure you have enough inventory on hand to avoid stockouts, without exceeding your FBA capacity limits. Keep working on your sell-through rate now to qualify for higher limits later. Check back regularly to see when Amazon will stop accepting inventory for this event.
- Create a fulfillment backup plan. If you’re too late to get inventory to FBA or your inventory capacity limits are too low, you can create FBM offers. You can decide whether to fill these orders yourself or contract with a third-party fulfillment provider.
- Optimize your listings. Audit your listings and take advantage of Amazon’s A+ content and split-testing features. Tweak your listings to be as Google-friendly as possible and reach out to loyal customers to get more product reviews up on your pages.
- Plan your ad strategy. Consider more aggressive PPC campaigns, and using Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Display ads. Decide how you’ll use email, affiliate marketing, social media — especially TikTok — and other off-site tools to drive more traffic to your pages.
- Analyze your performance. Look at your past Prime Day metrics and make a plan for gleaning deeper data insights into Prime Big Deals Day. These insights could be useful when making Black Friday and Cyber Monday plans for 2023.
Even if you can’t do all of these, a smart strategy combined with a healthy head start can help you make the most of this event and tee you up for even more wins in Q4.
Make the Most of the Amazon Second Prime Day Sale
Amazon Prime-member exclusive sales can be key to increased sales and customer acquisition. But the more sales Amazon holds — and the higher its fees increase — the more you wind up spending on ads, inventory, and more.
To maximize your effectiveness on Amazon’s Prime Big Deals Day, and all its other unmissable sales events, you need two things: the right strategy of attack, and the capital to execute it.
Check out the SellersFi Amazon resources hub to start planning for your next Amazon sales event. Then, register for a free SellersFi account to get the funds you need to make it happen.
