How Businesses Plan to Drive Serious Sales This Prime Day

By Mattea Vecera, Editorial intern

Amazon Prime Day -- the retail giant's two-day sale event -- is coming up next week, on July 16 and 17, and businesses are prepared.

Expectations are high following 2023's Prime Day success. According to Statista, sales reached an all-time high of $12.7 billion in the U.S. last year, an increase of $800 million from the previous year. Per Amazon, the first day of last year's event was the largest sales day in the retailer's history.

This year, businesses are gearing up with new strategies to tap into the shopping frenzy and engage with more consumers. Here's how these companies are approaching the event:

Driving traffic to Amazon

Rather than promoting sales on its own website during Prime Day, ceramic cookware brand Caraway is encouraging customers to shop via its Amazon storefront, says Jordan Nathan, the company's founder and CEO.

Prime Day, dubbed by Nathan as Caraway's "mid-year holiday," has proven successful for the brand. The New York City-based company reported a 300 percent sales growth between Prime Day 2022 and 2023, and its average daily sales surged more than 18 times on the first day of Prime Day 2023 compared to the period leading up to it.

This Prime Day, Caraway is extending a 20 percent markdown on all products, mirroring last year's promotion. Additionally, it's introducing Prime Day-specific bundles and featuring flash deals during the event for consumers to get additional savings on select products. 

"If you're signed up to our SMS list, there's going to be like five to 10 flash deals that happen that have 'X' amount of inventory at a certain price," Nathan says. "We'll have 10 to 20 new bundles on Amazon that will be evergreen but launching just in time for Prime Day."

Nathan says this aligns with Caraway's goal to drive traffic to Amazon during the event through email, SMS, and paid advertisements. Unlike last year, when Caraway offered a 10 percent discount on its website from late June into Prime Day, this year the brand is not running any pre-Prime Day sales. 

"We felt like the 10-percent-off pulled demand forward, and Prime Day was still super successful, but we want the sale focused in that two-day period versus Caraway being on sale for two-plus weeks," Nathan says.

Leaning into AI 

Since Prime Day 2023, Logan England, head of e-commerce at Provo, Utah-based accessories brand Thread, says the company has leaned into the power of AI for marketing. 

Thread uses the marketing platform Attentive to optimize and personalize its SMS and email campaigns with AI tools. England notes that this data-driven approach helps mitigate human error: "One of my biggest struggles with the email and SMS program was I always felt like we were testing and guessing, and that is so hard to get right," England says. "I can't pick the right send time, I can't pick the right audience all the time, but data can." 

Instead of offering a fixed discount rate this Prime Day, Thread products on Amazon will start at 20 percent off, with some discounts increasing to 50 percent off. England says the company frequently uses this sales strategy because it creates a competitive offer and enables better inventory control by facilitating the liquidation of slower-moving items.

"It gives us a lot of flexibility," England says. "It's nice because you don't have to have a discount code, you don't have any of that friction. Brands love it, consumers love it, so until it stops working, I think we're going to stick with it."

Leverage traffic with inclusive discounts 

Cleanlogic, a bath and skin care company dedicated to advancing the lives of individuals with disabilities, is maintaining its value of inclusivity when it comes to its Prime Day strategy. Rather than offering member-exclusive deals, Nelson says the company is using Amazon's "click to save" coupon option, providing discounts between $1 to $5 on its products that will be eligible to all consumers shopping on the site. 

"We use those click-to-save coupons to really increase our conversion rate, to get more eyeballs on our founding story, on the mission of the brand," says Brenna Nelson, Cleanlogic's senior manager of e-commerce. 

According to Nelson, Cleanlogic saw a 162 percent increase in average daily sales during the Prime Day 2023 window, and its products see a three to six times increase in traffic on and leading into Prime Day. 

Cleanlogic is planning to run a brand-tailored promotion after Prime Day targeting cart abandoners and page visitors who didn't purchase during the Amazon event. Nelson says the company hopes that consumers who missed the main Prime Day deal will return to their purchase if incentivized with a partial discount.

Photo Credit: Getty Images.