Amazon Prime Day 2021 Performance Insights to Inform Your Holiday Strategy

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Amazon Prime Day is one of the most important selling periods for brands and retailers and this year was another for the books. The two-day event was ahead of schedule falling before the back-to-school and holiday season kick-off. With students just ending their school year and the start of summer, consumers were not precisely expressing purchasing intent for school supplies or holiday gifts quite yet. Regardless, consumers were still ready to take advantage of Prime deals from brands.

In this blog post, we’ll examine what our clients observed, review key performance results and insights from Prime Day 2021, and benchmark what you can expect this holiday season so you can adjust your business’s strategy accordingly.

What Happened During Prime Day?

Ecommerce sales during Prime Day surpassed $11 billion with day one bringing in $5.6 billion. Although there were over 2 million Prime Day deals across every category, shoppers spent a little less on their orders this time around. The average order size fell to $44.75 from $54.64 in 2020. What may have contributed? Although Amazon attracts a large portion of online shoppers, this doesn’t stop the competition from going head to head with the ecommerce giant. A quarter of customers browsed competitive deals that retailers like Walmart, Target, and Best Buy offered in relation to Prime Day. 

This is also a time where Amazon sees an increase in Prime memberships. Total Prime Day members topped over 250 million worldwide. Our Amazon clients observed some significant growth during the two-day event and we’ve compiled seven of the most essential results along with insights that can help inform your marketplace strategy.

5 Amazon Prime Day 2021 Results and Insights

Our marketplace clients did see wins this Prime Day when it came to an increase in traffic, conversions, and through the use of Sponsored Brand Campaigns. We’ve compiled several Amazon Prime Day insights and tips that you can use to inform your strategy during the event next year and even during the upcoming holiday season.

1. Prime Day Traffic on Day One Tops Day Two

Continued YoY trend on Prime Day that most traffic comes through on the first day. Traffic was 27.2% higher on day one of Prime Day than on day two, similar to last year. ROAS, CTR, and CVR were similar DoD, only traffic seemed to dip lower (even while average CPC increased by 5.3%).

Insight: If you’re picking which day to run a deal, focus primarily on the first day. Lightning deals on the day of are good, but coupons can work if your brand was not offered any Prime Day discounting.

2. Sponsored Brand Campaigns Are Performance Drivers

Diversify your campaign type and utilize Sponsored Brand (SB), Sponsored Brand Video (SBV), and Sponsored Display leading up to Prime Day and during the holiday. Sponsored Brand deals during the holiday are a great way to increase customer growth, as we saw 66% of sponsored brand ads were New-to-Brand customers/orders. This shows Prime Day will lead to shoppers who haven’t bought from you in the past year.

Insight: Amazon had new Prime deal callouts on Sponsored Brand campaigns. These clear callouts led SB ads to have a higher CVR than all other campaign types, where over 20% of people who clicked on the ad converted on a sale. Overall, Sponsored Display and SBV all saw outstanding performance during Prime.

3. High Funnel Strategies Reach a Larger Audience on Prime Day

Utilizing high funnel strategies on Prime Day allowed us to reach more people at a lower CPM leading up to the event. Although CPM was much higher on Prime Day, Amazon Posts offered a unique way to reach people for free and hint at the upcoming holiday deals since the term “Prime Day” cannot be used in ads.

Insight: Despite Sponsored Display CPMs increasing on the actual holiday, these campaigns are still useful to continue running as Amazon has new audiences that will help audience targeting going forward (30-day product views). 

Amazon Posts generated thousands of free impressions where you can educate customers and get them ready for deals. A new Amazon Posts feature will be coming out that allows you to collect brand follower’s emails and create an email message letting them know of upcoming deals and product launches, which will be beneficial for future holidays.

4. Overall Prime Day Revenue & Traffic Increased YoY

YoY, we saw traffic increase by 10.07% and revenue increase by 35.09%. We saw a rise in CPMs of 19.75% YoY, and overall efficiency numbers were in line YoY.

5. Stay on Top of Budgets

Amazon will give warnings throughout the day if a campaign reaches the current budget cap and gives a recommended budget based on pacing. Continually check these notifications and adjust accordingly to keep your campaigns live during the entire holiday.

How Prime Day Can Inform Your Holiday Marketing Strategy

With Prime Day being one of the major ecommerce events to take place in our post-pandemic world, advertisers can use it as a pulse check to gain insight into how to reach shoppers during the holiday season.

On Amazon specifically, brands and retailers should shift their focus more on early promotions at least one to two weeks out. Using Sponsored Display and Sponsored Brand Ads for higher funnel marketing during that leadup, and making sure SKUs with a discount are built out in Sponsored Brands Ads on holiday. This is where Adlucent observed a significant increase in CVR when the deal messaging appeared.

Take advantage of a multi-channel approach, influence your customers on multiple parts of the funnel with a cross-channel strategy. Drive more traffic to your products through the use of paid search and social media advertising. Move customers down the funnel by driving awareness, converting them for an initial purchase, cross-selling to retarget them, and driving loyalty.

Although Prime Day has been a little different the past two years, it still helps with brand discovery, gives insights into what customers are purchasing, and results in impressive ecommerce performance. With more shoppers feeling comfortable shopping in-store compared to last year, buyer behavior will have a shift going into the holiday season compared to 2020. To ensure you are reaching your customers, begin looking at ways you can drive brand awareness, retarget customers, and bring attention to deals you’ll have this upcoming holiday season and during Cyber 5. If you are looking for ways to prep your Amazon marketplace strategy to outperform for the holidays, do not hesitate to contact our team today!

Marshal Tinnel