Prime Day 2023: How To Prepare, Part 1 With Logan Nielsen - Episode 290
INTERVIEW WITH LOGAN NIELSEN
DESCRIPTION
In today’s podcast, Kiri talks with Logan, Sr. Retail Marketplaces Sales Development Manager at Acadia.
Logan and Kiri discuss the upcoming Prime Day event and share some useful information for brands looking to maximize their success in this year’s event. They share insights on trends and results from last year, as well as differences in tools, trends, and Walmart's expected competitiveness this year.
Logan also provides a countdown of things that brands should be doing leading up to the event, including paying close attention to capacity monitors, preparing for system issues with Seller and Vendor Central, sharing deals with external traffic, and having a backup FBM capability.
Make sure you tune in to find out more!
Logan has been in the ecommerce space for 12 years including on the brand side and agency side, working with Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Wayfair, and other marketplaces. As an Arkansas native, he is a huge WM fan and advocates for brands expanding to Walmart.com.
Logan was previously a retail account manager at Acadia and has recently joined the biz dev team as a senior manager.
“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In today’s episode, Kiri and Logan discuss:
Recap trends and results from last year:
Last year’s results from Numerator:
Spend for 2022 Prime Day was $200 - up from $150 in 2021
Source: Numerator
95% of shoppers knew it was Prime Day
From the Acadia side, Logan drove most of his client’s deals with coupons and Prime Exclusive discounts.
There were big issues with some promotions that were scheduled.
For one brand, Prime Exclusive Deals had been set up and were working at the start of the day. But then the deal just disappeared from the PDP. In haste, we set up coupons instead as there was no time to troubleshoot with Amazon support.
But coupons themselves were not immune. We experienced coupon glitches where everything was looking good in Seller Central, but were not showing on PDPs - We pivoted and created Price Reduction and got the discount notification to show on the PDP.
In our experience 25-30% of brands don’t participate in the event because of margin, or inventory issues.
Early expectations this year are different. A lot of Logan’s clients want NTB customers.
What’s different this year (tools, trends, etc):
Logan to talk about his call with BP with Inventory Specialist - talk about sell-through.
From the Seller's end - the capacity monitor is more important this year.
From the consumer's end - people are anxious for a deal and I predict will have less disposable income to spend compared to other years (with the economy)
Walmart will be more competitive this year - than in other years.
This is a seller's chance to MOVE inventory as Amazon is hyper-fixated on inventory turn.
Countdown of things brands should be doing: 2 months out, 1 month out, 2 weeks out (or whatever timeline):
2 months out:
June 15: FBA inventory cut-off date for sellers in Canada and the United States
June 27: FBA inventory cut-off date for sellers in other markets
Paying close attention to our capacity monitors - they are changing frequently. This will update on Mondays - 1-2 times per month.
Working with your production facility/manufacturing
Getting optimizations squared away (Brand Story, A+, etc)
Shoppers will start looking at what they plan to buy and saving discretionary purchases
Having FBM capability in place as a back-up
1 Month:
Getting optimizations squared away
PED vs Coupon: Preparing for the worst (system issues)
Sharing deals to the audience - external traffic. BRB links (brand referral bonus) - since this will allow you to track performance AND get rewarded for this traffic.
Landing page on the storefront
2 weeks through to day of:
Having all your promos documented so that you can pivot to creating coupons if there are issues - feed files ready
Auditing efforts from the 1-2 months (optimizations, scheduling etc)
Nightmares on day-of
