With Amazon Prime Day just around the corner, retailers and e-commerce platforms are revving up their martech stacks to support digital marketing campaigns for this year’s 48-hour event. The martech industry is buzzing with data-driven predictions for how consumers will engage with brands, analyzing key strategies that will help retailers outperform their competition in what is expected to be one of the biggest days in online retail history.
Below, we’ve compiled some of the biggest predictions and insights on the ever-evolving role of martech during this year’s Amazon Prime Day.
Mobile is eclipsing desktop conversions
Salesforce is predicting strong conversion rates on mobile, based on research that examined a unique dataset of 500 million shoppers and 1.4 billion site visits. According to its Amazon Prime Day 2019 News and Predictions report, orders from mobile devices are expected to reach 49%, with 66% of visits coming from mobile — an increase of 5% for both metrics. Salesforce also notes that in Q1 of this year, mobile surpassed desktop purchases for the first time among the cohort in the study.
Source: Salesforce’s 2019 Amazon Prime Day News and Predictions: What Retailers Can Expect From the Cyber Week of Summer
Adobe is also forecasting strong performance from mobile, but its mobile data skews significantly lower than Salesforce. Adobe’s research indicates smartphones account for $1 in ever $3 spent online, with the majority of consumers moving to the desktop to complete their transactions. Adobe’s Prime Day predictions, informed by a daily revenue model based on analysis of over 1 trillion U.S. based retail site visits, don’t anticipate that mobile won’t be consumers’ first choice until the end of 2020.
Despite the disparity, both martech providers are telling us that our customers are only going to continue to be increasingly shifting towards mobile-first. Mobile isn’t the future, it’s the reality now. Our digital marketing strategies need to be consistently reflective of this in the experiences we deliver — year-round, not only on Prime Day.
Email personalization delivers performance gains
According to retail marketing company Bluecore’s 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report (registration required), which looked at over 3 billion emails from more than 400 retailers over the past year, implementing different styles and degrees of personalization not only influences customer acquisition, but can also drive retention customer retention.
In analyzing the difference between one-time email sends, which can be either static — the same for all recipients — or dynamic, which shifts content like product recommendations and personalized offers based on available customer data, Bluecore found that personalized emails earned retailers a 57% increase in revenue per email.
Source: Bluecore 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report
Consumers are more likely to engage with email content that is in-line with their interests and preferences — typically self-reported or first-party data — and utilizing personalization features will help your brand stand out in consumers’ busy inboxes during Prime Day.
Adobe agrees that email marketers who prioritize delivering the best email experiences will come out ahead this year; according to their research email campaigns were responsible for an 8.8% increase in order share during 2018’s Prime Day.
Customer acquisition is key, but retention is king
While deals and discounts will be plentiful on Prime Day, so will be the number of consumers who opt-in to receive emails in hopes of scoring big savings. Bluecore’s data indicates that unsubscribe rates from welcome emails and post-purchase emails are disproportionately high.
Source: Bluecore 2019 Retail Email Benchmark Report
“Surges in customer demand during sale periods present massive opportunities, both short-term and long-term. However, the short-term opportunity to drive sales is no longer the best way for brands to ‘win.’ After reaching shoppers during a peak day or season, brands should seek to retain them and drive long-term customer loyalty,” said John Nash, CMO of customer data platform Redpoint Global.
“For example, Amazon may acquire new Prime members due to the hype around Prime Day – focusing on “in-pulse marketing” offering discounted shopping experiences in July – based off of years of analyzing customer data to offer more personalized product suggestions and experiences,” Nash added.
Digital marketers who notice this trend among their subscribers during high-volume periods like Amazon Prime Day and Cyber Week should keep this at the forefront of their email marketing efforts. We know that consumers respond positively to personalization, and incorporating personalized elements in your welcome campaigns and post-purchase emails will keep those subscribers opted-in and engaged — and could lower your unsubscribe rate to help your business retain those new customers.
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