Insights from Prime Day 2021

Prime Day 2021 was unlike any other in its history. Let's break down the results, insights and wins. 

As the economy opens back up, brands have facing increased cost of goods, inflated shipping rates, and have been dealing with ongoing manufacturing and shipping delays. To top it all off, Amazon changed their FBA storage limit criteria to urge sellers to focus their replenishment efforts on hot-selling items. 

All these unique situations, combined, meant that sellers were discounting slow movers to clear out inventory and were hesitant to do any deep discounts on best sellers. Additionally, Sellers wanted to avoid not being able to replenish inventory on their top movers, whether due to Amazon's new restock limits or supply chain issues, and this resulted in a meager 6%-9% overall increase in sales on Amazon compared to Prime Day last fall. 

Overall, it was reported that this year's two-day event still resulted in $11 billion in sales, and we were happy to see some major wins for our brands. One brand in the medical equipment and supply category saw total Prime Day sales up 110% from last fall’s Prime Day, and another brand in the premium beauty category saw a 57% increase from last year’s results, with a significant increase in ranking.

After rounding up our performance data from Prime Day, we saw the following Prime Day brand strategies win out across our top performing brands.

1. All branded Sponsored Brand video campaigns featured Prime Day products
2. Ran a retargeting campaign on all Prime Day ASINs
3. We doubled our budget, but not our bids
4. Amazon Store pages featured discounted items 

Featuring Prime Day products on Sponsored Brand video

Sponsored Brand Video was one of the stars of Prime Day 2021. According to our partners at Pacvue, “in Sports & Outdoors, CPCs for Sponsored Brand Video were about 10% higher than static Sponsored Brand ads, as advertisers focused on winning video in search”.

With this strategy, our team ensured that all branded sponsored campaigns featured Prime Day products and drove traffic to specific Prime Day markdown pages. With the continued increase in opportunities, it is becoming crucial that brands pay-to-play to get in front of the expanding Amazon audience.

Retargeting Prime Day ASINs

We ramped up our sponsored display retargeting ads during those two days to reach shoppers who had already viewed a detail page from Amazon ad placements and included all Prime Day ASINs in these promotions. This allowed us to re-engage those shoppers and drive them back to our detail pages, and towards a purchase.

Sponsored display has proven to be an optimal advertising tool to speed up product awareness, encourage consideration and ultimately close the sale.

Doubling the budget, but not bids 

Our team increased budgets by at least double in order to capture the influx of traffic. However, despite Prime Day’s typical increase in conversion rates, we chose to not get more aggressive on our bidding; we were not anticipating as strong of a Prime Day as years past.

Additionally, our “Up and Down” bidding strategy set at the campaign level boosted our bids for us with the anticipated increase in buying activity.

Featuring discounted items

Another effective strategy that we saw was creating a special page in our brands’ Amazon Stores that featured our discounted items. We used sponsored brand ads to drive traffic to that page so shoppers would pick up an extra discounted item or two that they wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to. This helped to boost average order size on those items for deal-hungry shoppers.

As we wrap up Prime Day 2021, and we look to the next big sales event, we continue to optimize our Amazon strategies and analyze these takeaways to best serve our clients. If you're looking to expand your marketplace business, schedule a consultation.