A Look Into Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale 2022

[Updated 9/26/2022 to include official dates]

Despite the 40-year high inflation rate, shoppers around the globe took part in this year’s Prime Day event and saved over $1.7 billion on more than 300 million items. At an estimated total of $11.9 billion in sales, Prime Day proved once again that shoppers are willing to spend if the deals and discounts are too good to pass up.

While this year has not been easy on any retailer, Prime Day did provide some relief as shoppers were purchasing at a rate of 100,000 items per minute. The top-selling categories were:

Household Essentials
Consumer Electronics
Health & Beauty
Home Products
Amazon Devices

Prime Early Access Sale –

In June, Amazon notified a selected group of third-party merchants in Seller Central that a second Prime Day event is happening later this year as a way to revive sales and increase Prime subscribers. Confirmed in September, the 48-hour shopping event will begin on October 11th; just in time for shoppers to begin their holiday shopping.

2 potential reasons for this Fall event:

To generate additional revenue for Amazon after announcing its slowest quarterly revenue growth since 2001 back in April 2022.
To assist sellers with overstock inventory accumulated due to inflation’s impact on

If your brand is looking to kickstart your holiday season, get rid of some inventory, or revive declining sales, this second Prime Day might be an excellent opportunity to do so. Keep in mind that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are right around the corner and could benefit exponentially from the momentum built from this Fall Prime Deal Event.

Q4 looks different this year as shoppers search for deep discounts after experiencing inflationary pressures, and brands should cater to this when possible.

Given the time of the year, these seasonal items have the potential to be a top-seller:

Halloween-themed: decorations, costumes, party accessories, candy buckets, and more.
NFL-themed: coolers, barbecue grills, footballs, party decorations, and more.
Larger ticket items: TVs, laptops, and more.
Holiday gifts: kid’s toys, apparel, sneakers, and more.

Is Prime Day suitable for your brand in Fall 2022? –

With Amazon’s growing shopper base, sellers can expect Prime Day to continue being a key component in driving eCommerce sales; however, not every brand should participate.

To ensure proactive thinking, ask yourself the following questions when deciding if participating in this two-day shopping event is right for your brand:

What is the nature of my product(s)?
How and why do people buy my product(s)?
Will the sale still happen without Prime Day?

Do you have the inventory to support the influx of traffic? –

To prepare for Prime Day, review your inventory levels and historical performance to ensure that your brand will be the best player in the category. Inventory should cover the few weeks before and after Prime Day because the momentum continues (and so should your strategic planning).

When a product is marked as unavailable due to inventory limitations, the product’s search ranking will drop and your Seller’s ranking will be negatively impacted. It takes time to rebuild that search ranking once again despite restocking the product. With this in mind, you should also accurately forecast inventory demand to avoid overstocking issues.

For example, household essentials are purchases that shoppers will make whether there is a sale or not, so brands could capitalize on this by running a discount to entice the shopper further.

If your brand cannot participate in Prime Day without being at risk of running out of stock, it would not be beneficial to participate. However, you can still take advantage of the traffic increase simply by having a presence on the Amazon platform.

Learn more –

Are you ready to kickstart the holiday season and end the year on a good note? Our Amazon experts dive into this year’s winning strategy in the 2022 Seller’s Guide to Amazon Prime Early Access Sale – get instant access here.

If you want to get straight to the point, we compiled checklist for you to ease the planning process for this year’s second Prime-like event. Get it here!

Curious about how to better prepare for Prime Day? If you missed our 2022 live webinar, you can view it on-demand here. Get tips on ensuring retail readiness, what products to promote, how to approach discounting, and how to plan for inventory demand for a successful campaign.

To wrap it up, here are 8 steps to Prime Day success:

Analyze performance and trends from past Prime Day events to better understand what drove engagement and conversion rates in the past
Identify seasonal trends and what shoppers are interested in at that particular point in time
Bonus: Increase brand awareness by offering multiple types of products to provide shoppers with a broader selection, further taking them away from your competitors
Provide a discount on your related products to incentivize shoppers
Launch targeted ad campaigns to stand out from the competitors
Dial in on the top-performing products and increase the daily ad budget to avoid running out of funds
Optimize ad campaigns by running A/B Test Experiments to identify the best performing version of the product listing
Track campaign performance and strategize for future events
Extend your efforts two weeks after Prime Day to maintain the relevancy, momentum, and growth built leading up to the event (note: traffic will still be higher than average as shoppers continue searching for trickling discounts).