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Capitalising on the Amazon Prime Day Halo Effect

The Prime Day “halo effect”

You may have heard Amazon’s Prime Day is upon us on the 21st and 22nd June 2021. Here at Ortus, we’ve been monitoring what happens outside of Amazon over these days. Last year, our team saw retail websites benefit from a natural increase in search volume over the 2 days, because there were more consumers with buying intent for retail products. Publishers online are dubbing this the “Prime Day halo effect”, due to non-Amazon sites seeing a huge boost in trade thanks to the Prime Day event. To put it in perspective, last year, sales on non-Amazon sites grew by 69% globally on the first day of the sale*. 

The team tested this theory out on one of our retail clients, Moda in Pelle, during last year’s event. This pro-reactive strategy generated a 63% boost in conversion rate and a 70% increase in revenue through PPC. We obtained a PPC specific 10% discount code from the client which we used through:

  • Merchant promotions via Google Shopping,
  • Our ad copy on search,
  • A promotion extension on the ads too
  • Combined this with a limited free delivery message.

We then added seasonality adjustments to the account to inform the brand’s campaigns which use automated bidding that we were expecting an increase in conversion rates over these two days  – read the full case study here

Amazon Prime Day 2021: The best early Prime Day deals to shop right now

Our top tips for capitalising on this sales event this year:

  • Ensure you have your promotional products correctly tagged up / your site-wide promotion is prepared across your products.  
  • Add a merchant promotion for your short-term discount code
  • Add in a scheduled promotion extension across your search campaigns
  • Update your ad copy to reflect the offer too, we suggest using countdown ads to create urgency to purchase!
  • Make use of display ads showcasing this short-term offer. Potentially target recent site visitors, your CRM data of past purchasers and those in-market/similar to your audience to capture a new audience over the sales period too. 
  • Remember to let Google know of anticipated uplifts in conversion rates through seasonality adjustments to support the smart bidding algorithm. 
  • Make sure you have enough budget available across the 2 days to support any uplift in demand and sales. 
  • If possible, offer next day delivery / free delivery across these 2 days. This will help you to compete against the delivery offering Amazon has in place as standard. 

Expect to see a flurry of results from us in the next few weeks of our clients capitalising on the Prime Day halo effect!

*https://www.businessleader.co.uk/amazon-prime-day-will-be-a-15bn-48-hour-bonanza-with-uk-shoppers-alone-splashing-1-4bn/121453/