Now well-entrenched and highly anticipated, this year’s Prime Day event was Amazon’s seventh. Amazon’s more than 120 million Prime members guarantee the event’s high visibility and reach. Prime Day was a mid-July event for its first five years, but in 2020 the pandemic pushed it back to October. This year’s event resurfaced on June 21-22. Because Amazon doesn’t announce actual event dates until a few weeks prior to kickoff, competitors always struggle to mount responses that have comparable impact. 

As in past years, we’ve taken a look at how Amazon deployed email to support Prime Day. The data reported below reflects Prime Day-themed emails for the Prime Day run-up, and then data during the two-day event itself.

Amazon’s initial Prime Day emails – those including actual event dates – deployed on June 3, almost three weeks ahead of the event’s official start-date. The number of campaigns deployed per day ranged from two (on June 4-5), to 82 (on June 21).

Amazon deployed relatively small total email volumes for the first two days of the run-up, saving its first big sends (>37 million total) for the third day. Smaller send days followed, interspersed with significant spikes on June 9, 14, and 17. The Prime Day period itself saw the largest volumes: 130 million and 137 million, respectively, on June 21-22.

Amazon’s emails typically produce industry-leading read rates. This year’s Prime Day emails maintained that standard, averaging about 28%, within a range of 17% (June 9) and 38% (June 13). Even on the last two days – with the largest sends – read rates averaged 25%.

## **Prime Day emails in relation to other Amazon activity** 

Despite its visibility, Prime Day email reflected only 10% of Amazon’s total email campaign flow during the analyzed period, and 30% of its total deployed emails. This was considerably larger than last year’s Prime Day email share, when the comparable ratios were 4% and 16%. Amazon’s average read rates for the non-Prime Day activity were 32%, versus the 28% we report for Prime Day emails.

## **Inbox performance**

Amazon’s overall sophistication in email best practice, and consequent high email subscriber engagement, drove very strong deliverability. Their Prime Day emails show an inbox rate of 97%, even with their total inbox rate for the comparable period.

## **And what of the competition?**

Prime Day creates an almost insurmountable challenge for even Amazon’s largest competitors, because Amazon has all the leverage with control of timing, audience, and messaging. 

- Major retail promotional event planning requires far more lead time than Amazon provides when they hold off announcing the event’s dates until less than a month before the event. Nevertheless, key competitors manage to mount a variety of opposing events, especially just before and during the Prime Day event itself.
- Still, as seen in the table below, Amazon’s overall email audience footprint – and even just its U.S. Prime membership – far exceeds the overall email footprints of their largest retail competitors, and their communication investment is far less.- This reflects the competitive response to Prime Day: Amazon controls the market with a vastly larger audience, event recognition, value perception, many more mailings, and higher overall circulation. The results speak for themselves: Amazon’s read rates outperform its next strongest competitor’s by eight percentage points.

  ## **Notable email examples**

  The table below shows six of either Amazon’s best period performers or its largest event sends. Four of the six examples reference “deals.” Four deployed before the event itself; one of those more than two weeks before. Two reference “sneak peek” or “early.” Only one has a product category focus.

  This next table shows examples of campaigns supporting key competitors’ countervailing events. All deployed during the late Prime Day run-up or event period. All are promotional, three contain product specificity, and four carry urgency. 

  So, all in all, I think it’s safe to say that Prime Day 2021 was a success – at least from an email standpoint. 

  All data is courtesy of [Competitor Tracker](https://www.sparkpost.com/competitive-tracker/). 

  ~John Landsman

  Manager, Research Analytics

  SparkPost