Amazon Turkey 5 (Cyber Week): Last-Minute Recommendations Every Seller Should Consider
Amazon Giveaways: The giveaways were featured prominently on the main page of the app and website. Some Giveaways were real-time, like an Echo Dot, while other giveaways were time-specific, including a Bluetooth speaker, LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon, and Nikon Camera. The giveaway concept is much more interesting when considered from the lens of the product vendor. Amazon’s marketing page dedicated to giveaways lays out several benefits of offering a product through a giveaway including increased product awareness and polling/surveying that might be required by the consumer to enter a giveaway. Enticing the vendor to provide the bait is yet another clever tactic by Amazon to draw in consumers.
Amazon’s New Take on Black Friday: Turkey 5
This year Amazon added to the holiday shopping lexicon with “Turkey 5”, the five-day span between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, and the Turkey 5 did not disappoint. As in years past, Amazon delivered a flurry of deals, giveaways, coupons, and new tech app features that allow shoppers even more innovative ways to find and view products. Here’s a quick recap of what I experienced on Amazon throughout the Turkey 5.
Traditional Deals: We’ve come to expect these from Amazon. There were over 30 Deals of the Day, and hundreds if not thousands of Lightening Deals. The tech deals seemed a bit sweeter this year simply due to the growing catalog of Amazon’s proprietary products. There were $20+ savings on the Echo, Fire, and Kindle product lines in addition to enticing deals on non-proprietary smart home tech, computers, and video/tech. These notable discounts on proprietary Amazon devices are a well-measured move for Amazon since these devices are conduits by which consumers will find themselves purchasing additional Amazon products and media content in the future.
Amazon Giveaways: The giveaways were featured prominently on the main page of the app and website. Some Giveaways were real-time, like an Echo Dot, while other giveaways were time-specific, including a Bluetooth speaker, LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon, and Nikon Camera. The giveaway concept is much more interesting when considered from the lens of the product vendor. Amazon’s marketing page dedicated to giveaways lays out several benefits of offering a product through a giveaway including increased product awareness and polling/surveying that might be required by the consumer to enter a giveaway. Enticing the vendor to provide the bait is yet another clever tactic by Amazon to draw in consumers.
The Treasure Truck: This concept was introduced by Amazon globally in 2016 and is a hard-to-miss smile-inducing combination of a book mobile and a carnival truck. The truck is rolling into 25 U.S. Cities this holiday season, with a Cyber Monday deal on Finglerlings toys. Amazon is using the trucks to provide limited quantity of high quality items and a significantly discounted price through an entertaining and brand-building experience. This tactic demonstrates Amazon’s increasing interest in creating a physical presence in local communities while tapping into an increasing trend of retail scavenger hunting and treasure finding. While the effectiveness remains to be seen, the truck is an interesting one to watch. Amazon describes the truck with the following:
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Step 1: They hand pick one must-have, fresh, unique thing at a time.
Try Out New Features: Amazon’s approach to feature awareness this year was brilliant. How often retailers invest in new features and functionality only to have them go unnoticed. The premise was simple – try out a new app feature and be entered to receive a giveaway. Try all five features and get an automatic $5 credit toward a purchase. This is a win-win for Amazon and its shoppers because a less than 10-minute time investment can provide a guaranteed payoff that will increase the likelihood of a larger purchase and familiarize the shopper with additional ways to make spending even easier.
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Camera search for a chance to win a Nikon Camera. Use your iPhone’s camera to identify products from real-world objects. When recognized, Amazon automatically displays that product in the standard product list view.
Augmented Reality Assistant: This year Amazon released a built-in A/R feature that allows shoppers to navigate hundreds of pre-set products across categories of top picks, home décor, kitchen, electronics, toys and games. The products have been converted to objects that can be viewed and manipulated on surfaces or in rooms by using the iPhone camera. While A/R has been around for several years now, and aside from a few specialty retailers, it has yet to find real stickiness in broad-based consumer shopping at scale. Recent iOS advancements and a widely used app platform has primed Amazon to be the first with true stickiness, and we expect this to motivate other retailers to give A/R a second look.
Overall, Amazon did not disappoint with the Turkey 5. The investment in the mobile app sends a strong and welcoming signal that their shoppers convenience and experience remain paramount investments for the reigning champion of online retail.
Amazon Turkey 5 (Cyber Week): Last-Minute Recommendations Every Seller Should Consider
Amazon calls it Turkey 5. Others know it as Cyber Week. Either way, the days between Thanksgiving and the following Monday represent the most important week of the holiday shopping season. According to eMarketer, consumers spent $10.7 billion on Cyber Monday last year, making it the biggest online shopping day of 2021. This year’s forecast has been soft due to inflation, but eMarketer estimates Turkey 5 2022 will generate $37 billion in online sales.
Although Amazon doesn’t usually report sales figures for shopping events, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are always two of the highest revenue-generating days on Amazon. More than half of these sales come from independent selling partners, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses. With the stakes this high, Channel Key has compiled a few last-minute recommendations to help your brand succeed during Turkey 5.
Audit Your Product Listings
One of the most important things you can do before Turkey 5 is to make sure your customers have everything they need. This means auditing and optimizing your content. While not the most exciting or novel piece of advice, it’s often the most valuable. Customers cannot physically inspect products on Amazon the way they can in brick-and-mortar stores. Instead, they must rely on the content that you provide. There is no sense in running Sponsored Ads to drive traffic to product detail pages that are not optimized to convert. With Turkey 5 right around the corner, now is the time to analyze your product listings carefully. Make sure each component of your Amazon real estate shows your products in the best way possible, including:
- Titles
- Images
- Videos
- Bullet Points
- Descriptions
- A+ Content
Monitor New-to-Brand Customer Data
Sellers that offer discounts during Black Friday/Cyber Monday attract more new-to-brand customers than the average non-Amazon event day. Not only that, but those who also run ads see an even greater increase in total new-to-brand customers. An Amazon study found that sellers who combine a discount with display advertising typically enjoy 13% more new-to-brand customers than brands that offer a discount alone.
One of the most valuable analytics tools that Amazon provides is new-to-brand metrics. These help you understand whether an ad-attributed purchase was made by an existing customer or one buying a brand’s product on Amazon for the first time. With new-to-brand metrics, advertisers receive campaign performance insights such as total new-to-brand purchases and sales, new-to-brand order rate, and cost per new-to-brand customer. This information helps estimate the cost of acquiring new customers on Amazon – especially during Turkey 5. Currently, Amazon offers the following new-to-brand metrics:
- New-to-brand orders: The number of first-time orders for products within the brand over a one-year lookback window
- New-to-brand sales: The total sales of new-to-brand orders
- % of orders new-to-brand: The percentage of total orders that are new-to-brand orders
- % of sales new-to-brand: The total sales of new-to-brand purchases
- New-to-brand units: The number of units from first-time orders for products within the brand over a one-year lookback window
- % of units new-to-brand: The percentage of total units that are units from new-to-brand orders
- New-to-brand order rate: The number of new-to-brand orders relative to the number of clicks
Retarget Shoppers During the Rest of the Season
The shopping journey doesn’t end after Turkey 5. An Amazon Ads/Kantar survey found that 67% of holiday shoppers continue their holiday shopping after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is a great time to retarget customers who have browsed and/or purchased your products during Turkey 5.
Sponsored Display Views Remarketing enables you to reengage audiences who have viewed specific product detail pages but haven’t purchased your product in the past 30 days. According to Amazon, it takes shoppers about a week to make a purchase after their first search on the platform. Views Remarketing can help keep your products top of mind during this critical consideration window through placements both off and on Amazon, including product detail pages, shopping results pages, and the Amazon home page.
Sponsored Display Purchases Remarketing is another powerful retargeting strategy following Turkey 5. Purchases Remarketing helps drive consideration by cross-selling your products to audiences who have recently bought other related/complementary products. For example, a brand that’s focused on selling electronic accessories, such as headsets and webcams, can reach shoppers who have recently purchased a new computer within their preferred lookback window (e.g., in the past 14 days).
Channel Key Takeaway:
Turkey 5 will officially kick off Thursday, November 24, and last through Monday, November 28. Amazon has been busy promoting the big event to build customer interest with advertising, press releases, Black Friday Deal menu tabs, and more. The retail giant has even curated gift guides for virtually every category to make it easier for customers to find what they want, including Electronics, Home, Toys and Games, Fashion, Beauty, Holiday Treats, and Baby Supplies. By all accounts, this year’s event could easily set records for online spending in the U.S. – even with a likely decline in overall sales growth. Optimizing your product listings, targeting new-to-brand customers, and remarketing to those who view and/or purchase your products will position your brand for greater success during Turkey 5 and the rest of the holiday season.
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