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All online sellers know this—the higher the traffic, the higher the sales. With a huge chunk of the 150-million strong Amazon Prime members shopping during Prime-exclusive events, sellers would be missing out on lucrative opportunities if they don’t prepare well for these sale events.
If you have been an Amazon seller for years now, you’re probably getting all set for Prime Day in July. If you’ve kept up to date with the trends on the platform, you should also be gearing up soon for the Amazon Prime Fall Deal event.
Still unsure about what to expect and how to prepare for the big sale event this fall? You’re in the right place. We’re here to give you a rundown of what Amazon Prime fall deals are and how best to prepare for them.
For almost a decade now, Amazon has been treating Prime members to amazing deals on Prime Day. What started out as a one-day event in 2015 has become an annual two-day sale extravaganza since 2019.
Prime Day is a big sale event exclusive to Prime members held by Amazon. It was initially held in July. However, due to the pandemic, the dates shifted a few times, beginning in October 2020 until Amazon returned Prime Day to its old July date in 2022. In that same year, however, Amazon surprised members with a second big sale event in October called the Prime Early Access Sale. Finally, in October 2023, Amazon held a 48-hour sale called Prime Big Deal Days.
Like Prime Early Access, Prime Big Deal Days was also a success. On the first day of the sale, over 25 million items were sold in the US alone. Worldwide, more than 150 million items were sold by independent sellers during the entire two-day sale.
With the previous Prime-exclusive events held in fall achieving great success, we expect fall deals to be part of Amazon’s annual lineup of sale events. Held just before the holiday season, these events are definitely a big deal for sellers looking to maximize their profits.
Amazon does not usually announce sale dates until a month or two before the sale starts. With both Prime Fall deals being held in October for the past two years, however, it is highly likely that this year’s big fall sale will happen in the same month, too.
Watch out for announcements around August and keep track of the deadlines for submitting deals. For the Prime Big Deal Days in 2023, the last day for submission was on August 11. It’s bound to be around the same date this year and just a few days after the event is announced.
With such a short time to prepare for deals after the announcement, it’s best to start planning your deals months ahead. Once Amazon gives a go signal for submission, all you’d have to do is review your list and tweak your strategy to adapt to how the market looks by then.
We’re still a long way from October, but you wouldn’t want to miss such a profitable opportunity by being unprepared. As early as now, plan your offerings and marketing strategy to maximize profits during the fall sale.
Here are some steps you can take to get ready for the Amazon Prime Fall Deal and make the most of this major sales event:
Get started by adding products to your catalog. Look at historical data and check out the latest trends to determine which items would be most popular this year.
Home goods and household essentials may be the leading categories during Prime Day, but that might not be the case in fall. Since Amazon Prime Fall Deal events are close to the holidays, many shoppers take advantage of the huge discounts to save on holiday gifts and apparel. Many also reward themselves by purchasing big-ticket items such as gadgets or appliances that they have been saving up for since the start of the year.
Here’s a list of the best-selling items during the Prime Big Deal Days in 2023 that gives us a hint of what shoppers splurge on.
In general, the list shows a mix of consumer electronics, toys, and personal care products. You may want to boost your catalog with items under these categories. To source profitable products at the lowest prices, use tools like Tactical Arbitrage. This allows you to scan thousands of websites, compare prices, and find the best wholesale prices within minutes.
Avoid last-minute supply chain bottlenecks by ordering inventory well in advance. This gives you ample time for shipping and handling your stocks and ensures you’re able to fulfill all orders during the sale.
With Amazon’s new capacity limits, you can now forecast your inventory needs up to three months ahead. But as early as now, you should calculate expected demand and set a budget for new inventory. If your Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) capacity is low, strive to increase your sell-through rate to get a higher limit. Right after Prime Day in July, audit your stocks and reduce excess inventory to make space for Prime Fall Deal stocks.
If you forecast customer demand to be much higher than your FBA capacity, add both FBA and Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) options under each Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN). That way, shoppers can still purchase items through FBM in case your FBA inventory runs out.
It may sound complicated, but you can simplify your inventory management with InventoryLab. This management platform brings together all the tools you need to source your products, manage your stocks, and generate your accounting reports. It can track your Amazon inventory and help you make sense of all the fees and overheads that impact the cost of goods sold. This helps make budget allocation and selling price determination more efficient.
Even without deals, you’ll likely see sales higher than usual because of the sheer number of shoppers during the two-day event. But you can attract even more shoppers by offering them multiple ways to save. Here are some of the promotions you can run for Amazon Prime Fall Deals.
In 2023, 25% of Prime Big Deal Days shoppers purchased items included in Lightning Deals, which are time-bound offers featured on the Amazon Deals page. With the deals available only for a few hours, it compels shoppers to complete their purchases immediately before they miss out on huge discounts.
To run deals within the Prime Fall Deal window, go to the Deals Dashboard and follow the steps below:
Do note that Lightning Deals are only available to Professional sellers and some ASINs may not eligible for this promotion. If you don’t see the Lightning Deals option or your products in the Deals dashboard, you are currently not eligible for the deal. Amazon refreshes the list of eligible ASINs weekly, so regularly check your Deals dashboard.
Here’s another exclusive deal you can offer Prime members. Setting this up can attract more shoppers as the discounts and savings they can get are prominently displayed on the detail page of featured offers. Set this up on the week of the sale by following these steps:
Even after submission, some SKUs may be flagged as invalid if they don’t meet the criteria for the discount. When this happens, go back to the Review page, where you can delete the invalid product or edit the discount information, then republish the deal.
Get bright green tags to signal shoppers to buy your products. These coupon tags make it easy for shoppers to spot products offered at discounted prices. You can create these coupons ahead of time and schedule up to 1,000 of them to run on the same day. One coupon could hold a maximum of 200 parent ASINs, but you can only create one coupon type for each ASIN. The system can detect coupons that overlap and will suppress the newest one.
Follow these steps to create a coupon:
You can schedule your coupons up to six months in advance. You can start planning your coupon strategy now and set coupons up in April. This would give you time to edit your coupons before stocks come in and take much of your time.
You can also boost Amazon Fall Deal Event sales using promotions available year-round, including Percentage Off and Buy One Get One. Set a tiered discount structure where shoppers can save more as they buy more. Alternatively, you can create promo bundles that encourage shoppers to buy in bulk. Once your promos are set, create custom promo codes that you can share on your social media channels.
If you can’t find this feature on your Seller Central dashboard, it is probably because you are not eligible for it. Social media promo codes are only available for U.S. brand registry and professional sellers with more than 80% positive feedback.
Competition becomes even fiercer during big sale seasons. To get your share of the market, optimization becomes all the more important. If you offer the same products year-round, audit your listings and update product descriptions to boost their visibility on search. Make your listings stand out by using high-quality images and descriptive titles.
Although not directly, pricing also impacts ranking on search results. Use SmartRepricer to automatically adjust product prices on Amazon and improve your listings. Product reviews also help boost discoverability and ranking. Leave the tedious work of requesting reviews and managing feedback to FeedbackWhiz so you can focus on other optimization strategies.
Build a full-funnel approach to gain the most out of this high-traffic event. Review the performance in previous Prime Day and Prime Fall events to identify campaign tactics that perform well.
You’d want to increase your visibility and boost your reputation way before the fall event starts. Aside from using FeedbackWhiz to automate review requests and increase positivity ratings, you can amplify your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns with automation tools. If you’re under the Brand Registry, use native advertising solutions such as Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display ads, and Sponsored Brand videos.
A few weeks before the sale, start sparking interest in your products through your social media channels. Share engaging posts that let shoppers know what you’ll be offering for Prime Fall Deal. Give them something to look forward to, then increase brand engagement a few days before the sale starts.
The track record of previous Prime events makes it clear that this sales event is something you wouldn’t want to miss. Last year, the majority of households spent more than $100 on their Prime Big Deal Days purchases. With tens of thousands of active buyers, the potential sales during the Amazon Prime Fall Deal Event are just too big to ignore.
We know that the first quarter of the year is barely done, but it’s never too early to start your preparations for the big sale in fall. Aside from following our tips above, get your tech stack ready with tools from Threecolts. The platform has practically everything you need to fortify your arsenal of digital solutions that streamline product sourcing, inventory management, review generation, and other operations. By using these tools to automate tedious tasks, you can focus on your core business operations. So gear up and get ready to rake in the profits during the Amazon Fall Deal event.
