Amazon Prime Day 2019 – everything you need know

The biggest day of the eCommerce year is nearly upon us, with phenomenal sales, celebrity endorsements and even a concert by Taylor Swift taking place. But if you’re not up-to-speed with Amazon Prime Day and how it can transform your business, don’t worry –  we’ve gathered together everything you need to know about Amazon Prime Day 2019. 

When is Amazon Prime Day 2019

Amazon Prime Day 2019 starts at midnight on Monday 15th July and ends at midnight Tuesday 16 July 2018. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that Amazon Prime Day is actually two days…and the even eagler-eyed among you will notice that it’s actually taking place already, but we’ll get onto that.

What is Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day is a two-day long sale held to celebrate Amazon’s birthday. Full of exclusive and extensive deals for Amazon Prime members, it’s also one of Amazon biggest sales days of the year – last year generating more than 100 million product sales, worth in excess of $1 billion. In short, it’s a sales event that you want to be a part of.

Amazon Prime Deals

This year there will be more deals than ever before across Amazon – enticing existing and wannabe Prime members to the online marketplace in their droves. Highlights include:

⮞ Prime Day Deals – 48-hours of major deals across the platform. 

⮞ Lightning Deals – limited quantity, jaw-dropping deals. 

⮞ Early deals – offers available in the lead-up to Prime Day. 

⮞ Product launches – across all of Amazon’s categories. 

⮞ A Prime Day Concert – featuring Taylor Swift and streamed live on Prime Video. 

How to Make the Most of Amazon Prime Day – Sellers

So how do you take part in the biggest eCommerce party of the year?

1. Get on Amazon

If you’re not already selling on Amazon, you need to be. Not only will Amazon be hugely popular this month with online shoppers, but it remains tremendously popular throughout the year. Sign up, set up and use Expandly to duplicate your existing listings on Amazon quickly.

2. Sign up to Amazon Prime

Being on Amazon during next week’s mayhem is excellent, but to really benefit, you need to become an Amazon Prime seller. This can be achieved yourself by completing a Seller Fulfilled Prime trial, or through Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). You can also take advantage of Amazon FBA multi-channel fulfilment, using Expandly to send your multi-channel sales orders.

3. Get on eBay, Wish.com and Etsy

Amazon Prime Day generates a halo effect – increasing sales on other marketplaces including eBay, Wish and Etsy. Buyers are out to buy, and if you’re not out to sell, you might miss out. Increase your exposure and expand your reach by selling on multiple sales channel(s) using multi-channel management eCommerce software to handle it all.

4. Create lightning Deals

Lightning Deals are what make Amazon Prime Day so exciting – time and quantity-limited sales that use the psychological triggers of scarcity and  fear of missing out to encourage sales. They are heavily advertised by Amazon and are almost guaranteed to increase sales.

For your products to be eligible for Lightning Deals you must be a Professional Seller with more than five Seller Feedback Ratings per month, at an average of 3.5 stars, and your products must:

⮞ Have a 3+ star rating and be compliant with the customer product reviews policy;

⮞ Include as many variations as possible;

⮞ Be new condition and not restricted, offensive, embarrassing or inappropriate;

⮞ Be Prime eligible in all regions;

⮞ Be compliant with Amazon’s pricing policies; and

⮞ Be compliant with Amazon’s deal frequency policies; and

If you meet the criteria, go to the Lightning Deals Dashboard in Seller Central > click on the Create tab > choose your item > click edit > enter the schedule, maximum deal price and minimum deal quantity > click submit.

5. Offer discounts

You can also use Amazon Prime Day as an opportunity to create your own offers, discounts and bundles.

Pro tip: manage your bundled item inventory automatically with Expandly’s inventory management tool.

6. Shout about it

Amazon may have its own global marketing campaign, but that doesn’t stop you from launching your own. There will be a lot of excitement, hype and traffic around Amazon Prime Day – join in by advertising your participation on social media, through email campaigns and on your website.

7. Consider Amazon advertising

Amazon’s PPC advertising solution is another way to increase visibility, clicks and sales. Sponsored Product listings, in particular, will see a lot of traffic this week and can be a valuable investment. Optimise your keywords, increase your budget and monitor closely.

8. Optimise your Amazon keywords

Amazon keyword optimisation is a must any day of the year. Revisit and perfect yours using this Amazon keyword optimisation guide.

9. Use multi-channel management software

And finally, make the whole ordeal one heck of a lot easier by using multi-channel management software to:

Control your stock

Prime day is a prime day for selling out or, even worse, overselling. Re-run last year’s reports to help you plan your stock levels and use the inventory management feature to sync your multi-channel stock levels in real-time automatically.

Process orders quickly

View and progress all of your sales orders from a central screen, saving you time and keeping your warehouse staff fully up-to-date.

Ship orders quickly

Get any orders out of the door quickly by bulk printing pick lists, pack lists and shipping labels. You can also use Expandly to send orders to multi-channel FBA.

Report

When it’s all over, you’ll want to know which products performed well and which product didn’t. Run standard and customised reports to gather and analyse this data – allowing you to plan for next year properly.

Reconcile your invoices

And finally, you’ll want to see how well you did by automatically sending Amazon orders to Xero. Using Expandly, you can also configure your Amazon orders to go into separate bank accounts in Xero, depending on the payment method used.

Prime Day – final thoughts

Amazon Prime Day is a great way to:

⮞ Clear stock (just in time for the holidays);

⮞ Increase sales and brand awareness;

⮞ Grow your customer reviews;

⮞ Increase your search ranking; and

⮞ Launch new products. 

We hope that Prime Day 2019 if your best yet – don’t forget to share your success with us on Twitter and Facebook.

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About Expandly

Expandly is multichannel management software that allows you to manage your eBay, Amazon, Wish and Etsy accounts alongside your shopping cart, shipping carrier and accountancy software – all from one central location.

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