Amazon may have single-handedly invented Prime Day, but today rivals and even smaller players online have the tech giant to thank for whipping consumers into a deal-hunting frenzy that’s lining their coffers, too.
Now that Prime Day is something of a national shopping holiday, retailers of all sizes are eager to lure consumers with sales of their own—and shoppers are only happy to oblige.
In fact, Adobe Analytics data analyzing the first 24 hours of the two-day Prime Day extravaganza shows sales at retailers pulling in revenue of $1 billion or greater annually jumped 64 percent on July 15 compared with any ordinary Monday. Last year, that boost was 10 percent lower, signaling Prime Day’s growth and effect on online retail overall.
The data also shows there was something for everyone on the five-year-old shopping holiday. Smaller specialty merchants—those garnering less than $5 million in annual revenue—benefitted as well. These niche retailers experienced a 30 percent increase in revenue on Prime Day, according to Adobe.
Clearly, the Walmarts and Targets of the world have capitalized on consumers’ heightened interest in summertime sales, rolling out competitive offers and leveraging perhaps their best asset and the one Amazon more or less lacks outside of the Whole Foods chain—a substantial physical footprint.
Many people shopping all sales offered on Prime Day wanted their goods quickly and couldn’t be bothered to wait for parcel delivery. Adobe said the average order value for purchases customers made online and picked up at a brick-and-mortar store (BOPIS) rose 12 percent from $115 to $131, adding that typical BOPIS orders are reserved for low-ticket purchases.
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Adobe attributed two-thirds (66 percent) of the lift in total online retail revenue to an influx of traffic, with stronger conversion (27 percent) and larger basket sizes (7 percent) making up the rest.
According to Adobe, email marketing played a considerable role in retailers’ results. Those executing “excellent email experiences”—which Adobe defines as funneling traffic from an email campaign—drove a 50 percent revenue bounce versus just 17 percent for merchants with a poor email strategy.
The data and marketing firm said Prime Day marked just the third non-holiday-season occasion that rang up more than $2 billion in sales, joining Labor Day of 2018 and this year’s Memorial Day. For context, last year’s total Prime Day haul stood at $4.2 billion.
One trillion visits to 4,500 e-commerce sites inform the retail analysis by Adobe, which monitors 80 of the top 100 U.S. e-commerce firms based on Internet Retailer’s rankings.