Prime Day content drives email engagement for Amazon’s competition

Amazon’s annual Prime Day is almost upon us, and last year’s event generated more than $4 billion in sales, according to Internet Retailer. How can your brand capitalize on the hype and excitement of one of the year’s biggest shopping days and compete with the retail giant? Your email marketing — right down to your subject lines — could play a key role in generating revenue this month.

Prime Day subject lines prompt higher open rates

According to research from Yes Marketing, e-commerce brands who sent emails to their subscribers during last year’s Amazon Prime Day saw an enormous lift in their open rates — especially those who used the words “Prime Day” in their email subject lines. Open rates soared up to 47% higher than the average of other top-performing holiday-themed email campaigns sent the previous quarter. Across all e-commerce emails (regardless of subject line or theme), open rates were 43% higher than all emails sent in Q3 2018.

But it wasn’t only e-commerce marketers who saw an increase in opens during Prime Day; apparel brands reported seeing open rates of 15.6%, while consumer electronics brands reached 15.5%. 

How to stand out in the crowded managed inbox

Amazon’s Prime Day has only been an event since 2015, yet the retailer has managed to shift consumer expectations to anticipate promotions and sales in July — far earlier than previous years, when Black Friday and Cyber Monday dominated digital revenue generation. 

This year, marketers can expect that subscribers’ inboxes will be full of offers from Amazon, among other retailers, and standing out in subscribers’ managed inboxes will be key to driving revenue. Amazon’s Prime Day emails can be expected to be clever, dynamic and drive urgency with their time-sensitive calls-to-action.

Tease your audience, but focus on email quality — not quantity

Prepare your subscribers, customers and prospects for your brand’s Prime Day promotions by teasing your own event and targeting the most engaged users. Smart segmentation strategies should also come into play for specific products and services, and marketers should stay hyper-focused on the quality of our emails and subject lines, rather than focusing on the volume of emails hitting inboxes on one of the busiest days of the year to drive value from your email marketing. 

About The Author

Jennifer Cannon

Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media's Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.