After last year’s pandemic-related challenges, which saw Amazon postpone Prime Day to mid-October, Amazon’s annual Prime Day event returned to its traditional summer scheduling slot. Prime Day, however, was held earlier than usual (June 21-22), less than a year after the 2020 sales event.
This change was in part influenced by the fact that July is typically a busy month for vacations and, this year, will also feature the start of the Olympics. Amazon also likely moved up the dates out of anticipation for continued supply-chain and inventory issues related to the pandemic.
Prime Day 2021
Prime Day 2021 marked yet another record-breaking two-day event for the retail giant.
Estimated sales over the two-day period spanning June 21 and June 22, were $11.19 billion globally. This figure represents an increase of 7.6% over the 48 hour event held in October of 2020 when sales reached $10.39 billion.
Prime members purchased more than 250 million items worldwide during the 2021 event, according to Amazon. Amazon collected data on all these shoppers based on their shopping behaviors.
Strategies for Retargeting Prime Day Shoppers
Sellers can take advantage of the data Amazon has collected from Prime Day, by using some of the features from Sponsored Display Ads. Sponsored Display Ads allow sellers to retarget potential buyers both on and off Amazon.
These features include Audiences, Views Remarketing and Amazon Audiences.
With these features, sellers can retarget and re-engage shoppers who have viewed/shown interest in their listings or similar products in their category in the last 30 days.
- When retargeting with Sponsored Display Ads, bids are 'per-click' both on and off Amazon.
- Sellers also can create customized ads by adding their logo, or by crafting unique headlines for specific types of audiences.
Depending on the amount a seller decides to bid, Amazon will either spend more or less depending on how likely they consider that a shopper viewing the ad will make a purchase. Amazon will never go over the daily budget assigned to the campaign when the seller created it.
- Because sellers are remarketing to secure the sale from prospective shoppers, they would utilize the "Optimize for Conversions" feature.
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Types of Remarketing Campaigns Post Prime Day
1. Category or Interests/ Lifestyle
Post Prime Day campaign goal: drive awareness for new product and brand launches. Reach audiences who have recently visited other similar categories and brands.
For example, if the product is a cat litter mat, the seller would set up post Prime Day ad campaigns that would target new pet owners and closely related cat categories such as cat litter box enclosures.
Bonus Tip: Example Headlines...
An example of a customized ad headline that could be used in this instance, would be one that piques the curiosity of shoppers… ‘Find out how to eliminate litter scatter’.
An alternate headline strategy might be to tap into the self-interest - "How does this benefit me?" of the shopper… ‘Never worry about litter scatter again’.
Sellers that may need help with creating compelling product ad headlines can use the free resource, Entourage Spotlight Headline Creator.
Sellers can also use Amazon Audiences to remarket to Post Prime Day shoppers. Amazon audiences gives sellers access to several audience segments in order to engage new customers or retarget potential customers.
Amazon audiences includes:
In-market: In-market audiences allows sellers to reach audiences in the same category as their advertised products to drive consideration and gives them the ability to try out entirely new segments to help drive awareness for their products.
Lifestyle: Used for awareness campaigns, these audiences reflect a variety of aggregated shopping and viewing behaviors. These behaviors reflect shared preferences and reveal lifestyle segments such as ‘sports enthusiasts’, ‘new pet owners’, and more.
Interests: Interest-based audiences allow sellers to raise awareness for their products with prospective customers based on what they frequently browse and buy.
Life events: Life events audiences give sellers the opportunity to drive awareness and consideration for relevant products based around life moments like ‘new baby’, ‘going on vacation’, and more.
2. Acquire New Customers
Post Prime Day campaign goal: advertise your best selling products to audiences who have recently viewed similar product or specific category detail pages.
Remarketing to competitor listings or specific categories (CPM + on/off amazon)
For example, sellers would remarket over the previous 30 days to all audiences that have viewed products similar to theirs or choose a highly specific category.
The custom creative might be "Ours is Better." Sellers could use headlines like ‘Our new and improved cat litter mat’, or ‘The cat litter mat that actually works’.
3. Drive Additional Sales
Post Prime Day campaign goal: advertise to shoppers who have been to your listing in the last 30 days but have not purchased yet. Sellers would use Views Remarketing to help re-engage those audiences.
Bonus Tip: More Headline Ideas...
Sellers might try to re-engage shoppers who visited their pages but did not purchase with Call-to-Action headlines like: ‘Grab your cat litter mat today!’ or ‘Don’t accept cat litter between your toes. Buy now!’
4. Get "Out-of-Aisle"
Post Prime Day campaign goal: select adjacent or substitute categories to reach new audiences. Sellers can also choose In Market. Sellers are seeking to go after wider audiences (for example, audiences in the dog toys category).
Sellers should...
- think outside of the box (where is your audience potentially hanging out?)
- test using low bids,
- use specific headlines.
Sellers might re-engage shoppers with a customized headline that drives curiosity (example: ‘Did you know litter scatter is avoidable?).
While the official sale has wrapped up for this year, shoppers are still hunting for after Prime Day deals, looking for savings before prices go back up. This is a prime opportunity for sellers to take advantage of post Prime Day traffic to grow their businesses and engage shoppers during the different stages of their customer buying journeys, both on and off Amazon.
Entourage: Software to Scale Amazon Ads and Results Driven Management.
