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Who else wants a site like Amazon?

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By Jack Ford, Acquisition Marketing Manager

July 15, 2015 | 3 min read

Today, 15th July, is the first ever Amazon Prime Day and the retail giant is going to have even more special offers than Black Friday. Online sales are expected to rocket.

Not every brand’s strategy will include flash sales but practically all will be looking to increase revenue. Here are five tactics brands can ‘borrow’ from Amazon to compete on Prime Day (and beyond):

Offer multiple delivery options

Delivery used to be one of online shopping’s biggest weaknesses with many consumers seeing it as an expensive and inconvenient alternative to the high street.

Fast-forward to the current day and this is still a key component of online shopping with so many customers citing flexible and cheap delivery options as the primary reason they shop with Amazon.

And with one-hour deliveries now available to Prime members in London, Amazon have again torn down a major barrier to online shopping.

Get product reviews

Amazon picked up pretty early on that people trust people, not us marketers… and product reviews has been an integral part of their offering since 2004.

Over 24% of Amazon customers say they will read a review before purchasing a product showing both the trust in Amazon’s method as well as the model as a whole.

Offer recommendations

One of most recognized features of shopping with Amazon is the recommendation engine.

This has evolved over the years from a simple products purchased logic to their current model which has a multitude of layers based on browsing behaviour (both on Amazon and the wider web) and product specific ranges (Kindle for example).

Store customer details

Over 55% of Amazon customers say they keep returning because the site remembers who they are.

Citing the ease of checkout (one-click is patented I’m afraid) and not having to find payment cards etc. each time they buy is a major winner.

Use remarketing

Amazon make it nice and easy to buy but if you’re not sure and leave the item in your shopping cart, they give you every opportunity to come back and buy it. Amazon send emails with the content of customers’ abandoned carts and encourage them to complete the purchase.

The latest stats from SaleCycle research into over 500 global brands shows that over 75% of online shoppers abandon their purchase but then are very receptive to remarketing with the average order values of recovered purchases 14.2% higher than buying direct.

Conclusion

Amazon are going to make a lot of noise (and presumably money) from Prime Day but some of their less trumpeted tactics will help you boost your sales on an on-going basis without a price-cut in sight!

Now, time to checkout Amazon and see what money I can save on things I don’t need…

Jack Ford is EMEA marketing manager with SaleCycle.

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