Three Common Mistakes to Avoid for Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day is reportedly going to take place on July 16-17, 2018.

READ MORE: Amazon Prime Day 2018 Details Leaked!

If you’re not familiar with Amazon Prime Day, it’s an approximately 30-hour summer (possibly longer this year) sales event exclusively for Amazon Prime members.

During this time period, Amazon (and Amazon sellers) offers deep discounts and specials to the over 100 million Prime Members.

Last year, it was Amazon’s biggest sales days outside of the fall holidays, with a 60% increase in sales over 2016. Amazon sellers saw a 58% increase in profits and a 92% increase in sales.

Analysts are already projecting another record-setting year. Whether you’re an Amazon seller or not, you’d be wise to find a way to participate in the event. Even Best Buy used the sales holiday to advertise deals.

This marks the third year of the event, which provides us with some learnings and mistakes from the previous years to make sure your participation this year is a successful venture.

Let’s look at some mistakes to avoid.

Not Participating in The Conversation

As soon as Amazon announces the official date for Prime Day, the internet will be abuzz with chatter (there are details of a “leaked” date, and buzz is already building around that).

You need to be part of that conversation. There are a few ways you can do this.

Educate your customers. Do a little research on what Amazon Prime Day is and how your customers can benefit from it.

Your customers may not be aware of it, especially if they’re not currently Prime members (Amazon saw a huge uptick in new members during the event last year).

Use this educational moment as a way to also let your customers know what deals you’ll be running.

Providing educational value and access to your deals doubles the value of your communication!

There will be plenty of conversation online. If you have a Twitter or Instagram account for your business, follow and participate in the conversations using #PrimeDay, #PrimeDay18, and #PrimeDay2018 (people will likely be using these three variations).

Chat with potential customers, share insider information on what deals you’ll be offering, and help get your brand name in front of more customers to make a splash on Prime Day.

Not Having Streamlined Shipping Processes

One of the easiest ways to get completely overwhelmed during a surging sales day is not having your shipping processes streamlined and optimized. A few processes to have in place prior to Prime Day are:

Automatic Order Downloads

The margin of error during a hectic sales period is simply too high to rely on the antiquated process of copying and pasting order and tracking numbers.

Software that pulls in order information and sends tracking and confirmation emails will not only reduce this margin of error, it will cut literally hours of work from your week.

You could be bringing on plenty of new customers during Prime Day, and you don’t want to start them off with a poor experience with their order.

Rate Comparisons and Saved Selections

Every shipping software worth using will allow you to compare rates by carrier and delivery window so you can quickly make the right decisions for your business and customers.

Particularly with Amazon Prime Day, Prime members will be expecting 2-day shipping for free. Keeping up with that demand while not losing money on shipping is imperative.

Saved selections can be your best friend. With Prime Day, you’ll likely have repeat sales on the items you’re featuring.

Saved selections lets you save the optimal settings for shipping a package so that you don’t have to waste the time going through and manually selecting it.

This also reduces the error of potentially clicking the wrong selection as you’re rushing through a surge of orders.

Shipping Rules

One of the best ways to streamline your shipping processes is to use shipping rules. These are If/Then statements in shipping software that help automate processes in the background.

An example you’d set up for Prime Day is to automatically set Prime orders with a priority tag or color so you can process them first and get them out the door.

Any lag in processing your Prime orders could put you in a bind.

Also, Amazon requires a packing slip be included for your shipments. They also have strict guidelines on return policies that you will likely want to include on your packing slip which may not be applicable to other store platforms.

Luckily, you can use shipping rules to create a customized packing slip template for all your Amazon orders. Not having to do this one-by-one will save you quite a bit of time during the hectic Amazon Prime Day holiday and ensure the accuracy and consistency Amazon requires. More information on this here.

Not Having a Communication Plan

Amazon sellers know that Amazon has strict rules about communicating with customers, but that doesn’t mean a communication plan isn’t crucial to your success.

Though you can’t directly email a list of previous customers on Amazon, you should be sure to promote your Prime Day specials to the rest of your subscriber list.

You may also consider running social ads leading up to Prime Day promoting some of your specials, sending people to your online store.

A vastly important, yet often forgotten strategy is the follow-up. Online sellers in general, and Amazon sellers in particular, thrive on reviews.

You absolutely must have a plan in place to capitalize on the surge in sales traffic, turning that traffic into reviews.

Amazon is more than just a sales channel, it’s a search engine, and reviews can make or break your results in searches for your products.

Reviews

Reviews are highly regarded by consumers, with 85% trusting reviews as much as personal recommendations. Getting reviews isn’t the end of the process, however.

According to ReviewsTrackers, 44.6% of people give a brand more consideration if they respond to reviews, many expecting a response within a week of posting.

You’ll need to have a way to monitor your incoming reviews, particularly the neutral to negative ones, as customers are increasingly looking for 4-4.5 star ratings as their minimum.

ShippingEasy offers this kind of review soliciting and monitoring via the Amazon Seller Suite platform, as do other review soliciting software.

Avoiding these mistakes and taking the time to prepare for Amazon Prime day NOW can help you turn this summer sales event into a huge win for your business during a typically slow season in e-commerce.

READ MORE: Amazon Prime Day 2018 – Are You Ready?

Will you be getting involved in Prime Day 2018? Let us know in the comments section down below or over on our Facebook Group.

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