Amazon Prime Day is likely to take place on the 10th or 11th of July 2018 according to our predictions, but what’s more interesting for retailers is how to take part in Prime Day.
You’ll be able to get advance notification of all Amazon events (Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc) in Amazon’s Lightning Deals Dashboard by clicking ‘Upcoming Events’. This is where you can apply to have your products included in Amazon Prime Day.
Amazon Prime Day key planning dates
Third Party Merchants
The 18th of May 2018 is the final day for third party merchants to submit lightning deals for Amazon Prime Day 2018.
Vendors
The 31st of May is the final day for Amazon Vendors to submit lightning deals, Spotlight Deals, or Category Deals for Amazon Prime Day 2018.
The 15th of June is the deadline for Amazon Vendors to submit merchandising and marketing packages for category pages.
What if you’re not submitting Lighting Deals?
Amazon Prime Day has turned into a marketing bonanza for Amazon and it’s very likely that the event will run for more than one day this year. Amazon is already using language such as “deals in the run up to Prime Day” and the likelihood is that they’ll attempt to stretch the sale from the 30 hours of deals they ran in 2017 to several days worth of deals this year.
Stretching Prime Day puts less stress on Amazon’s infrastructure and with the 10s of 1000s of deals they are likely to run will increase overall sell through rates. Look out for a re-run of deals for which inventory is still available which we’ve frequently seen over the Black Friday period.
One way to sail on the wind of Amazon Prime Day without submitting deals is to make sure your products are seen with Amazon Sponsored Products.
Sponsored Products
If you run Sponsored Products on Amazon, you’ll want to trial run your adverts to ensure that they’re accepted and to establish which ads return the best results. Typically on Amazon Prime Day many merchants will increase their ad spend so set your limits for overall campaigns and specific products you want to promote.
