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Amazon End of Year and Christmas Promotions – Should You Take Part?

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

The holiday time is something everyone gets excited about, and so should sellers. Amazon has massive sales potential with 52% of consumers opting to search for products first on Amazon vs Google, so it should be a major focus of your e-commerce efforts.

Every year, Amazon offers opportunities for sellers to offer additional promotions and deals for customers in the holiday season. These offers range from: Black Friday Week to Boxing Day Deals. Taking advantage of this time of year allows for sellers to make more sales with the help of Amazon. The deal opportunities that are offered during this time period are: Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals, Best Deals, Vouchers and Price Discounts.  So read on to find out just why you need to take part!

What are these opportunities?

The opportunities that are offered by Amazon at the end of the year are numerous. Black Friday Week, Cyber Monday Week, Last Minute Christmas Deals and Boxing Day Deals are the largest at this time of the year and make the biggest difference for sellers and consumers. These allow for more marketing and deal opportunities to be expanded. As these events are close in time to each other, consumers will be more willing to make a purchase during this time for those last minute Christmas presents. This time period provided a large impact in 2017 as there were thousands of deals running everyday on Amazon.co.uk. During this time over one billion items were ordered from small businesses and entrepreneurs worldwide. Electronics benefit massively from this season, in 2017, more than 1,400 electronic products were ordered every second on mobile devices. 2018 should be expected to perform just as well, if not better than last year.

So what are the key dates you need to be aware of? This year, Black Friday Week runs from 16th November to 23rd November; Cyber Monday Week runs from 24th November to 28th November; Last Minute Christmas Deals, 6th December to 21st December; Boxing Day Deals run on 26th December (should be expected!).

Deal of the Day

Deal of the Day is a deal that is offered by Amazon that runs for 24 hours on the “Today’s Deals” page. These deals receive one of the top spots on the page which will guarantee plenty of views of the deal. The product(s) that are taking part in this deal, are seen as Amazon’s hero deal at the highest quality. Not just anyone can take part in the Deal of the Day however, as the criteria for these deals may restrict a few sellers.

To be eligible for the Deal of the Day, the best brands with a proven track record of selling well is one of the criteria. Further criteria include having a minimum discount of 25% off the current site price of the product, along with having/being the cheapest of the year for the product. In order to take part after meeting the criteria, the sellers must nominate their bestselling products and funding to their Amazon contact by a set date, this year being Tuesday 4th September. The sellers also need to ensure 100% availability of stock throughout the whole Q4 period, so the stock has to be planned for peak sales.

Lightning Deals

Lightning Deals can be set up and run all throughout the year just not to the extent as Q4 Lightning  Deals in terms of performance. Lightning Deals are offers that run for six hours on the Event page making them sought after by customers as they will not be available for long.

These deals are also limited quantity deals which, once again, is an incentive for customers as they will only have limited time for the deal running to purchase the product  – so they need to act fast if they want to buy the product because they could be sold out before the deal expires!  The criteria to meet for Lightning Deals aren’t bad but may restrict some brands which may have poor selling performance. The requirements for this are having a brand with a proven track record of selling well, same as the Deal of the Day, and having a minimum discount of 20% off the current site price. In order to have a Black Friday/Cyber Monday Lightning Deal, sellers have from the 27th August to enrol. Enrolling into these deals are simple as you just need to create a Lightning Deal as normal and check the box which says ‘I want Amazon to consider my deal for Black Friday/Cyber Monday Week’.

Best Deal

Best Deals are offers that feature on the Event page which can run for up to two weeks. These promotions are can have multiple products set up for them allowing for sellers to add discounts to just a few of their products or their whole catalogue if they wish.

When customers see the deal, they will only see one product but once clicked, they will be redirected to a page which showcases all of the products that have been set up for that deal, by the seller. Once again, one of the criteria to meet for this is the best brands with a proven track record of selling well (noticing a trend?). The other criteria for this type of promotion is that a minimum discount of 15% off the current site price must be applied to the products that are set up for the deal.

Setting up these deals are simple as you just create a promotion as you normally would, selecting ‘Best Deal’. For these to be run during Black Friday/Cyber Monday Week(s), the same check box as with Lightning Deals should be ticked for the deal to be considered for that event period. After that, dates are selected with an event in the event calendar with the start date needing to be at least four weeks in advance.

Vouchers

Vouchers can be applied to products so that shoppers can redeem them when they are applied to the product to receive a discount. These have no minimum or maximum duration requirements and they are also budget constrained. Being budget constrained can make them an effective tool for managing a budget however. Keeping the trend going, the first criteria to meet for this promotion is ‘best brands with a proven track record of selling well’. The other criteria to be met for this promotion is that the value of the voucher must be a minimum of a 10% discount of the current site price. Setting up vouchers for the holiday season is the same as setting up vouchers normally but with selecting dates aligned with an event in the event calendar with the start date being at least three weeks in advance.

Price Discounts

Price Discounts are discount offers that can be run for up to 52 weeks as discounts on the products applied. These aren’t shown on the Event page as they are just discounts to products to make them seem more attractive to shoppers. Unlike the other promotions mentioned, this deal has very light criteria to meet as all products are eligible. There is also no minimum discount that needs to be applied for this promotion. There is nothing special that needs to be done in order to set up these discounts for the holiday period. You just need to set up the discount(s) as you normally would.

What products should you use for deals?

There are quite a few different products that could be used for deals/promotions in terms of what would sell well. Any product could be set up for deals really, but they might not perform that well. So, the best types / most appealing products to use for deals would be as follows:

  • Already attractive products – bestselling or Amazon’s Choice products would be examples that are already attractive to shoppers
  • Products/Deals exclusive to Amazon
  • Products or similar products that are proven to sell well when on deals
  • Seasonal products for the appropriate season and relevant to customers
  • Highly rated products (4 stars or higher) with A+ content
  • Products with larger discounts – people prefer to purchase products when they can save more even though it may still be more expensive

All of these deals and promotions that are available make the end of the year so great for consumers and seller alike. By taking advantage of Amazon allowing for all of these promotions and showcasing them to customers, everyone can be happy. These promotions should be used by most sellers during this time to as customers want to benefit from discounts and there are always people buying last minute presents!

If you’re selling on Amazon, being found easily is essential. Brands are fighting for maximum visibility, so a high ranking product can make all the difference between securing a sale or missing out to your competitors (and we don’t want that!). So do get in touch to find out how we can increase your Amazon sales.

If you require help with advertising on Amazon then please get in touch with us today to see how we can help!

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