When you sell on Amazon, you know it’s not only about the short-term sales. You’re looking at the long game, figuring out how to get and keep customers, compete with other vendors, and get your products seen by more customers. The same applies to Amazon Prime Day, Amazon’s 48-hour event for Prime members only, which takes place July 15-16, 2019. Today, let’s look at how Prime Day 2019 not only sets you up for success this July, but also for the busy holiday season ahead!
Qualify for Lightning Deals
One of the most exciting aspects of Amazon Prime Day that garners most of customers’ attention is Lightning Deals. Not every seller qualifies to feature their products in Lightning Deals, so let’s look at what qualifies you to participate.
What are Amazon Lightning Deals?
A Lightning Deal is a time-bound, promotional offer where an item is featured for a limited number of hours, usually 4 to 12 hours (as determined by Amazon), on the Amazon Deals page. Featuring an item as a Lightning Deal may help increase sales and reduce your inventory. Amazon offers useful tips on how to use Lightning Deals to help improve your brand awareness and sales.
To be eligible for Lightning Deals, you must be a Professional Seller with at least 5 Seller Feedback Ratings per month and an overall rating of at least 3.5-stars. Additionally, products must meet these criteria (full details available here):
- Have a sales history and at least a 3-star rating on Amazon
- Include as many variations as possible
- Not a restricted product or offensive, embarrassing or inappropriate product
- Prime eligible in all states, including Puerto Rico
- New Condition
How does Prime Day help you qualify?
Prime Day gives you the opportunity to get in front of a lot of new customers, so brand awareness is huge. The sales history you build up with Prime Day 2019 can help set you up to offer Lightning Deals during the holiday season—on Cyber Monday or Small Business Saturday, for example.
When you give all these new customers a great experience, it can help spread word-of-mouth about your company and products. The best kind of word-of-mouth you can get is positive reviews, which brings us to our next topic.
Increase your Amazon Seller reputation
As mentioned above, you must have a seller rating of at least 3 stars and have a sales history to qualify for Lightning Deals. If your reputation leaves a bit to be desired, or your sales history on Amazon just isn’t that deep, the buzz around Prime Day can help you overcome those hurdles.
Using a tool like ShippingEasy’s Amazon Feedback Management tool, you can quickly, easily, and automatically follow up with customers after Prime Day to get their verified feedback, in a timeframe that makes sense for your specific products. As long as you’re providing a positive experience, meeting your shipping deadlines, and selling a quality product (which of course you are!), this will only help to build your business throughout the year and into the holidays.
Once you start getting those reviews, you now have the unique opportunity to further develop your relationship with customers by responding to reviews. This customer service opportunity not only lets current customers know they’re being heard, it shows potential customers that you listen and care—and that matters because 44.6% of people give a brand more consideration if they respond to reviews.
We wrote an entire article on the most effective ways you can solicit more customer reviews on Amazon.
Set up for shipping and inventory success
If Amazon Prime Day 2019 is your first experience with the sales holiday, make sure you’re tallying up some lessons learned. Prime members will be expecting free shipping, within the two-day window, and easy returns if they’re not completely satisfied. Making sure you nail all three of these will help you get those aforementioned great reviews, but it can be a challenge.
If your shipping software isn’t helping you manage all of the above, it’s time to assess what you’re using. You should be able to streamline some of your Prime Day 2019 processes. Use automation rules to prioritize these Prime orders or mark them as important so you don’t miss getting them out.
If you’re using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to have Amazon process your orders for Prime Day, you need to be able to manage that inventory quickly and accurately. In that case, a spreadsheet just likely isn’t going to cut it. You need a robust inventory management platform that can help you juggle inventory in multiple places so you don’t end up selling orders you can’t fulfill.
Ideally, all the systems in place should work seamlessly with each other to ensure success in all of the above. If not, take our Amazon Seller Suite for a spin, which includes shipping, inventory management, and Amazon Feedback Requests, all in one place. We’ll even give you 30 days to test it all out, which gets you through Prime Day 2019 and into your back to school planning. Hit the button below to give it a go and streamline all your processes ahead of Prime Day!
Rob Zaleski
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