Retail Marketing, Consumer Psychology, Urgency Marketing
Have you heard about the upcoming Amazon Prime Day? Amazon's latest genius marketing move, on Wednesday July 15th, the company will offer all sorts of special deals only to Prime members. It’s being billed as “bigger than black friday” and “one of the biggest deal extravaganzas in the world.” Believe it or not, any retailer can do this kind of promotion.
At Quikly, we've been doing promotions exactly like this for years for retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch, Advance Auto Parts, Ann Taylor, Carhartt, Dunham’s, DSW, Godiva, Henri Bendel, Pet Supplies Plus, Speck, and Zumba. None of them have the kind of megaphone that Amazon has, and yet all experienced significant and meaningful increases to sales, engagement, and customer acquisition.
Prime Day will accomplish these exact same things for the retail/streaming/multimedia giant:
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Customer acquisition: a huge boost to their Prime membership base, already estimated at 40 million people. Aside from the fact that Prime is poised to challenge every retail and streaming player as it gobbles up marketshare, Prime members spend more than double non-Prime members, so it benefits Amazon to increase that base.
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Revenue: There are three ways Prime Day boosts revenue: 1) Prime Membership costs $99 a year, and if millions of new customers sign up for Prime to take advantage of the deal, that’s a decent revenue stream right there. 2) Black Friday and Cyber Monday are Amazon’s heaviest spending days. They’re adding a third heavy spending day in the middle of the summer, traditionally slow for retail 3) Boosting Prime membership will result in long-term revenue increases throughout the year, as Prime members choose Amazon over other retailers in order to take advantage of the fees.
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Engagement: Amazon’s engagement will be through the roof next Wednesday by almost every measure, not to mention all the paid and earned media they’ve had in the week leading up to it. Engagement win across the board
I watched this video on Marketplace and listened to them talk about the psychology of one-day sales, customers’ fear of missing out, their natural response to perceptions of scarcity, and the fact that these kind of promotions are “catnip for the consumer,” and I thought about all the retailers who have been doing this for years with us. This is not new. It's just newly Amazon-ed.
Every retailer can take a page from Amazon’s book and leverage these elements of customer psychology to increase sales, engagement, and customer acquisition. Not every retailer has 40 million Prime subscribers, but every retailer has a customer marketing base of emails, SMS, social followers, and even mailing addresses.
Watch this video on how retailers can leverage “Prime Day” elements for their own smashing success, and tell us what you think: http://pages.movequikly.com/video-detail-genericretail
Not everyone can be Amazon, but everyone can use innovative promotions to boost sales at off-season times or throughout the year.