After being delayed various times throughout the year due to COVID, Amazon has finally announced the 2020 dates for Prime Day. Amazon sellers can expect the event to run October 13 and 14. This means they have a little more than a week to prepare for the shopping extravaganza. 

For sellers, this can create a dilemma. Not only do you need to know the ins and outs of this year’s Prime Day and potentially begin marketing, but you also have to find out where it fits in your holiday strategy. Will you be able to juggle Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas? 

And if you do decide to participate in Prime Day, what are some quick steps you can take to make it a success?

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about the upcoming Prime Day. 

What do Sellers need to know for Prime Day 2020?

Aside from the dates, Prime Day will be available for any Prime member during the two day period. Regular Amazon policies apply, although the holiday restrictions for their Toys and Games category will apply to the event. 

If you want to sell in Toys and Games for the rest of the year, you’ll need to pass Amazon’s strict eligibility requirements: 

• Your first general sale on Amazon must be before September 1, 2020.
• You need to have already processed and shipped at least 25 seller-fulfilled orders from August 15, 2020 to October 14, 2020.
• Your pre-fulfillment cancel rate must be under 1.75% from September 15, 2020 to October 14, 2020.
• Your late shipment rate must be below 4% from September 15, 2020 to October 14, 2020.
• Your order defect rate must be less than 1% as of October 14, 2020.

That said, there are no other special restrictions related to Prime Day during the period.

Despite this, you will want to consider Amazon’s earlier holiday announcement related to warehouse storage restrictions. This could be a good time to clear your warehouse of stale products so you can stock up on holiday favorites.

Prime Day Vs Black Friday

The big concern for sellers is how participating (or not participating) may affect their overall holiday season. Prime Day is now only weeks away from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

For sellers, this can mean rapidly deleting inventory, further segmenting their marketing budget, and interrupting their supplier schedule. 

Ultimately, you’ll need to understand if Prime Day makes sense for your business model. Will you be able to restock in time for Black Friday and the Christmas shopping rush in December? One thing to consider is reach. Prime Day is open to its 150 million customer base, plus anyone who signs up for a free trial during that time. The other holidays, meanwhile, are open for everyone. If you haven’t had many orders from prime customers in the past, or if you don’t have access to either FBA or Sell-Fulfilled Prime benefits, it may not be worth the hassle to ramp up your sales on Amazon in October.

That said, if you do decide to participate in Prime Day, or increase your sales on other platforms during the same period, you need to be strategic. Make sure to communicate with your suppliers and ensure that you can quickly restock inventory for November, and look for cost-effective methods of marketing to reduce diluting your marketing budget. 

Quick marketing tips for busy Amazon sellers

When it comes to marketing, Amazon sellers can save time and money through automating as much of the process as possible, while staying compliant with Amazon’s messaging policies. We’ve selected our top 6 tips to help you quickly prep for Prime Day 2020.

1. Automate your emails

Drafting and answering emails can easily eat up your time. Create an automated email flow to engage your email list while you focus on other business tasks. Don’t forget to build off templates instead of creating your emails from scratch each time. 

This approach will not only save you time, but you can increase your feedback responses while you focus on sales and inventory. 

2. Schedule your campaigns

Don’t let your campaigns run wild. Schedule an end date to ensure you don’t over or underspend. Since this process is automated, you don’t even have to look at it unless you want to duplicate and restart the campaign. 

3. Boost sales with scarcity indicators instead of coupons

If you’re worried about running out of stock before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you may want to limit your sales discounts to preserve capital. To do this, you can use scarcity indicators to drive sales instead of coupons. This way you can charge a higher price while attracting buyers.

4. Limit your coupons to optimize sales

If you must use discounts, you can automatically restrict your daily coupons. Not only will this further promote the scarcity factor, but you’ll also be able to optimize sales in relation to your inventory.

5. Create product landing pages in a few clicks

Consider creating custom landing pages that allow you to further highlight your product. While it sounds more labor-intensive, you can use templates and simply plug-in your product information. This is a great method if you have a mailing list ready. And if you plan on selling the same products throughout the holiday season, you can reuse the same templates for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas. 

6. Use chatbot funnels to answer common questions

Facebook chatbots can help you field common questions, leaving you with a few only complex queries. This tactic can help you save time since it’s basically a FAQ automation tool. In addition, you can reuse these chatbots for other holidays by simply replacing the Prime Day specific questions with other holiday information. 

Start the holiday season strong

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with the sudden Prime Day announcement, but it’s possible to turn it into an opportunity for growth. If you have a strong relationship with your suppliers and can quickly restock your inventory, you can use Prime Day to remove unpopular items while getting some initial holiday sales. And with automation, marketing can take up just a few hours of your time instead of days.