Rain Down the Packages
An inside scoop on Amazon Prime Day
Amazon Prime Day. The unofficial firesale of the summer. What started yesterday and ends today represents the self-proclaimed holiday for the e-commerce behemoth, and by Friday you should expect to see a couple of these at your front door 👇
Prime Day
Since 2015, Amazon has dominated a normally dormant time for shopping sales. Aside from July 4th sales, the summer is known for being a slow period for retailers. Amazon’s introduction of Prime Day has significantly changed that and has even led to fellow retailers creating their own shopping sales during the summer.
Prime Day is more than just a way for Amazon to provide incredible deals for items you may never use again (hint: you’re never going to use that 50% off Kindle you just bought), Prime Day is a way to capitalize on the FOMO that non-subscribers may feel from all the fun that friends and family have while snagging incredible deals (or so they think).
Prime day is made for people who aren’t Prime subscribers yet. It’s a way to entice them to join the ever-growing community of Amazon Prime by putting so much attention on a subscription they don’t have. Viral Prime Day hauls amass millions of views on social media highlighting how e-commerce businesses have found ways to promote shopping to consumers in unique ways.
Amazon has brilliantly locked Prime Day behind a subscription wall known as Amazon Prime which costs $14.99 / month or $139 / year. Once people subscribe, they never leave. Prime members in the US have a 93% retention rate after the first year and a 98% retention rate after the second year. To give you a little perspective, anything over 35% retention for a SaaS business is considered elite. Amazon Prime crushes this benchmark in every way.
Prime Day is so successful that several retailers have responded with their own summer sales during the same time. Macy’s Black Friday in July, Saks Fifth Avenue’s Designer Sale, and Target Deal Days are just a few examples.
How Amazon Wins
Shipping — Amazon has pushed the industry standard for delivery from 5-7 business days to 2-days or less. The last thing anyone wants to do is wait for their packages to arrive, and Amazon has gone as far as same-day deliveries for many items. Most retailers still take at least 3-5 business days to deliver, leading to many consistently choosing Amazon instead due to delivery speed.
Product Selection — Amazon sells more than 12 million unique products on its website and is constantly adding more. Clothing, jewelry, electronics, sports equipment, toiletries, groceries, home improvement, and pet supplies, are just a few categories that fall under Amazon’s reach. Amazon is the go-to place for almost anything you want. These products range from dirt-cheap to incredibly expensive, catering to both budget and high-end shoppers. If a new brand starts to gain traction, Amazon will copy it and make it cheaper.
Media Benefits — Prime Video, Gaming, Music, and Reading are additional benefits that act as the icing on the already delicious cake. Prime Video offers unlimited streaming of an extensive catalog of movies and shows and Prime Music provides unlimited ad-free streaming for over 2 million songs. Amazon Gaming and Reading only add to this already robust collection.
Customer Support — Most items on Amazon are eligible for free returns within 30 days of purchase. These returns are hassle-free and most products even have the option to be picked up and returned directly from your home. In 2019, Forbes wrote that “The need for customer service is so rare because the experience is consistently so good.”
The Landscape
The holiday season (November & December in the US) is known for being a time of high consumer spending. Black Friday is the unofficial start to the holiday shopping spree and is followed by Cyber Monday two days later.
In 2021, Black Friday led to $8.9bn in sales for companies across the US, while Cyber Monday sales amounted to $10.7bn. In the same year, Prime Day led to $11.2bn in sales, surpassing both shopping holidays.
While Prime Day is impressive, you can hardly compare it to China’s Singles Day, a counter to Valentine’s Day that celebrates being alone rather than being hitched. In 2021, Singles Day amounted to $139bn in sales, showing that Prime Day still has a long way to go to compete with the likes of Alibaba and JD.
The increasing amount of time spent on social media apps like TikTok and Instagram offers more and more opportunities for brands to persuade consumers to learn about products they never would have purchased. Short-form video content allows people to experience products far more than static images would, and the best part for brands is that people are happily producing videos themselves of the products they love. Digital media will continue to have a stronger influence on our lives, and it’s important for businesses to recognize the best ways to use it.
🚨 Hiring Zone
Over the past few months, hundreds of thousands of people have been laid off. In an effort to help support people during this turbulent period, I’ve decided to curate a list of companies that are actively hiring.
MongoDB | Associate Product Marketing Manager | NY
Yelp | Analyst, Corporate Strategy | Remote
Twill Health | Product Manager | NY, Remote
Disney | Product Marketing Associate - ESPN+ | NY
Bank of America | Investment Analyst | NY
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NBC | Associate Product Manager, Peacock | NY