DTC Briefing: Startups are using Amazon’s fall Prime Day to kick off holiday promotions

Now, startups that sell through Amazon are using the October Prime Deal Days event as a way to tease the rest of the season’s campaigns while rewarding early shoppers. For instance, some companies plan to leverage the influx in traffic to highlight new products. Health and wellness brands, meanwhile, plan to participate in the event to drum up excitement for their products ahead of the first quarter, which is typically their busiest sales period. Overall, DTC brands that also sell through Amazon are trying to be strategic in how they utilize the busy shopping event.

Personal care brand Evolvetogether, which launched on Amazon shortly before the July Prime Day event over the summer, is running a Prime promotion this week.

Evolvetogogether typically waits until the weekend of Black Friday to run its once-a-year site-wide sale to avoid falling into the cycle of ongoing holiday discounts throughout the fall. Founder Cynthia Sakai said this is largely why she was “very hesitant” to participate in Prime Deals Day. However, she settled on making an exception for the event because of how well Amazon customers responded to the brand’s availability on the marketplace and the traffic it drives.

“Amazon has been great for us without taking away from our DTC,” she said. “So this is a way to give the customers something a couple of times a year.” 

During the July Prime Day, Sakai said the company “saw a lot of new customers coming to us,” with 30% of first-time customers purchasing on Amazon as opposed to the DTC site. “We also noticed a lot of paid digital ads traffic going to Amazon during that period,” she said.

This week, Evolvetogether is offering 20% off on select products, with an emphasis on subscribe and save on its popular natural deodorant. Sakai said the company isn’t investing heavily in paid Prime Day ads. Instead, she said, “Our strategy is to email the customers that haven’t purchased our products but have visited our site multiple times, and incentivize them through the Amazon discount.” 

Prenatal wellness brand FullWell launched on Amazon in August of 2023, and is participating in Prime Deals Day for the first time after doing so in July. This week, the company is offering a 25% lightning discount on select products throughout the 48-hour sales window.

Chelsea Mays, vp of e-commerce & operations at FullWell, said that the first quarter is actually the brand’s busiest season, as it taps into renewed New Year’s health goals and “capitalizes on all the new pregnancies that are conceived over the holidays.” 

“So if we can raise awareness during Q4 to convert customers to our brand during our prime time, great,” Mays said. As such, Amazon is a new customer acquisition and awareness channel for the company. 

“We participate in Prime Day promos so that we remain competitive against some top brands that are heavily PE or VC-backed and very loud in our space,” Mays said. She added that participating “feels like a necessary evil” in order not to fall in the bestseller rankings. “[But] sales from this promo don’t feel incremental.” 

But there is at least one benefit of doing Prime Day deals during the holiday season: it increases the likelihood that a brand will be featured in media affiliate coverage. “These ‘best-of’ articles live on forever and bring in ongoing traffic throughout the year,” Mays said.

But brands already familiar with the Prime Day revenue bump use it to position products for the season. Natural remedies brand Hilma launched on Amazon in 2021, and has since leveraged the annual Prime Day to grow the channel.

Hilma co-founder Lily Galef said that, generally, October’s Prime Deal Days is a smaller event compared to the July Prime Day. This year, however, Hilma has been growing so fast on Amazon that Galef said she projects her brand will do a similar dollar amount in sales during the fall event compared to what Hilma brought in during July’s Prime Day event.

Since Hilma’s products are not traditional gifting items, Galef said, “We typically position these promotional moments leading up to and during the holiday season as an opportunity to stock up on everything you need to get through the holidays in good health.” 

These moments cover everything from using Hilma’s natural supplements during holiday meals and the stress that comes with travel and family gatherings. 

As for capitalizing on the influx of eyeballs on the brand’s Amazon storefront, Galef said momentum from Prime Day-type events helps “fuel advertising momentum on Amazon.” 

“For example, in July, we saw our Gas + Bloat Relief product rise to number one ranking in all of Amazon’s abdominal gas relief category,” she said. “It results in an incredible boost in sales for that product with new customers who we can then retarget with advertising spend throughout the rest of the year and beyond.” 

Sakai said that given that many of Evolvetogether’s customers already shop on Amazon, the Prime Day promotion is an opportunity to reward those customers with a modest deal. “We’re offering a lot of newness with new products at this time, so that’s where we’re aiming to get that traffic this holiday,” Sakai said.  

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