Amazon have finally announced the date for Prime Day – the 11th of July and are promising hundreds of thousands of deals exclusively for Prime members.
As is Amazon’s wont, they’re extending the sale to last even longer in the same way that Black Friday started as a day of sales but then spread to a weekend including Cyber Monday and finally last year we saw ‘Black Friday Week’ deals as retailers spread the strain on their logistic operations and realised that punters would spend spend spend for as long as the were fed the deals.
This year Amazon are also extending Prime Day to China, India and Mexico, so expect to see the final tally of sales bigger than ever as that includes two of the most populous countries in the world. Frankly, Prime Day could be a massive failure in China and sales could still far exceed those in the West if only a fraction of Chinese consumers are engaged.
2017 Prime Day Highlights to look out for
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30 Hours to Shop
24 hours just isn’t enough time to shop all of the great deals according to Amazon, so Prime Day will start at 6pm on Monday, 10th July giving Prime members 30 hours to shop.
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Explore Deals You’re Into
Find deals organised by the most shopped for themes. From pet lovers to gardeners and techies to artists – find your deals even faster.
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Watch-a-Deal
Deal watching on the Amazon App expands globally. Track and shop deals while at home or on-the-go with deal alerts on the Amazon App. Learn more at www.amazon.co.uk/watched
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Amazon Global Store
Prime members in China and Mexico will be able to shop both local deals as well as select deals from other countries from the Amazon Global Store.
Amazon Prime Day Deals starting today
Every day leading up to Prime Day on 11th July members will find all kinds of exclusive promotions and deals:
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Amazon Music Unlimited
Prime members who haven’t yet tried Amazon Music Unlimited can get the best deal in Amazon Music history, four months of the full catalogue on-demand service with access to 40 million songs, for just £0.99.
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Amazon Video
From 7th to 11th July, Prime members will have the chance to win £100,000 in cash just by streaming Amazon Video on their TV via Fire TV, Fire TV Stick or the App on one of the many supported Smart TVs and game consoles.
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Kindle Unlimited
Prime members can save up to 40% on a Kindle Unlimited membership. Enjoy unlimited reading from over one million titles on any device.
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Everyday Essentials
Prime members can save up to 25% off with onsite vouchers on select food and household items in Prime Pantry from 3rd July until 6th August.
The Grand Tour Season 2 Prime Day Sneak Peek
As a Prime Day exclusive, Amazon will reveal a brand new teaser of The Grand Tour for Prime members. The new footage, which is the first look at any filming from the hugely anticipated second season, sees Jeremy, Richard and James in Mozambique, Switzerland and the UK. Prime members will get this exclusive Prime Day sneak preview ahead of the full The Grand Tour season 2 launch later this year.
3rd Party Merchants
40 percent of all Lightning Deals for Prime Day 2017 will be from third party merchants – if you’re involved you undoubtedly already know and it’s going to be a massive sales day today so hopefully you’re already preparing and preboxing deals ready to have shipping labels slapped on and despatched. Prime Day in 2016 saw orders nearly triple year-over-year for third party merchants offering deals so be prepared, notify your couriers, get your staff prepared for evening or night shifts and speak to agencies if you’re planning extra help. Alternatively of course, simply ship your stock to FBA and let Amazon have the headache.
If you’re not offering Prime Day Deals, get ready to blast out email marketing to your base. The only decision you have to make is do you promote your products on Amazon (likely the best for sales) or promote deals on your own website (likely to be the highest overall margin once fees are taken into account).
It’s also worth considering your pricing strategy for the day, so long as you get the volumes it’s worth considering dropping your prices for 24 hours and adjusting your repricing rules. Say you have a product costing £10 which your normally sell for £20 – would you rather get 10 sales at £20 (£200 margin) or win the buy box and get a 100 sales at £18? (£800 margin). Of course the margin isn’t everything, you still have fixed costs and pick/pack/ship charges to pay, but Prime Day is an opportunity to shift vast volumes of stock.
Consider using Prime Day as Liquidation Day
Finally, if you’ve got lines sat in your warehouse which are simply not selling, seriously consider liquidating the stock by slashing the price on Prime Day. Reinvest whatever you recoup (even if you sell at a loss) and get fresh stock ordered in to arrive before Black Friday. If you’ve got stock that’s not selling, perhaps because you’re being undercut on price to the point where you’d make a loss, it’s tempting to hold out in the hope that others will run out of stock and prices will rise again. The reality is however that it’s tying up your capital and in the months you’re sitting on the stock your money could be churned over multiple times making many times more profit than what you may hope to get by holding out and sitting on your stock.
