As we’re well into Q1, many brands are beginning to plan and finalize their promotions for the rest of the calendar year. Especially after the busy holiday season during Q4, you’re likely looking back on your promo periods and trying to analyze and improve on your past performance.
We’ve compiled a breakdown of all the different promotion types on Amazon, as well as how you can easily analyze your promotions to set yourself up for future success!
What Promotion Types Amazon Offers
No one type of promotion is better than another; it’s all about choosing the deal that’s right for your specific promotion strategy and industry. You might even use a combination of promotional times in the same event!
Coupons
Coupons are special promotions that give your customers a percentage off (e.g., 5% off) or money off (e.g., $5 off). Customers must clip the coupon by checking a box on the Product Detail Page in order to receive the discount.
As the seller, you’ll pay an upfront fee of $5 for each coupon you create. You’ll also be charged a variable fee of 2.5% of all sales on coupons that are redeemed (capped at $2,000).
Coupons can be run concurrently with Lightning Deals, and the discounts will be combined.
There are three types of coupons on Amazon, and they each have a different recommended duration:
- Standard coupons (for any customer shopping your product on Amazon): 30 days
- Reorder coupons (for past purchasers who have not repurchased within a specified time frame): 180 days
- Subscribe & Save coupons (discount for first-time subscribers): 365 days
Lightning Deals
Lightning Deals are exactly as they sound—they’re limited-time discounts that are offered a certain number of times (or until the specified time period ends). Lightning Deals typically run for less than 1 day; Amazon determines the length of the promotion, but it’s usually between 4 and 12 hours.
These deals are limited to one per customer. Lightning Deals that are run during Prime Day automatically only apply to Prime Members.
The cost for Lightning Deals consists of two parts: there’s an up-front fee of $70 per day, and a variable fee of 1.0% of sales (capped at $2,000). If you run a Lightning Deal on Prime Day, Prime Big Deal Days, or Cyber Weekend, you’ll be charged a flat fee of $500.
Best Deals
Best Deals are similar to Lightning Deals in that they are limited-time offers that run for a specified amount of time. Best Deals typically run for a select number of days, and often have a Deals Badge to help push the promotion. Usually, Best Deals run for the full length of an event (like Prime Day) or for seven days.
For Best Deals that are run on non-peak days, there’s an up-front fee of $70 per day, and a variable fee of 1.0% of sales (capped at $2,000). Best Deals that are run on peak events are subject to a flat fee of $1,000.
Price Discounts
Price Discounts allow you to offer a discount on a product for a specified amount of time and on a specific number of units. Price Discounts can run between 1 and 30 days. You can also create Price Discounts that are specific to Prime Members or for all Amazon customers. This promotion crosses out the original price on both the search results and Product Detail Page and displays the discounted price.
There are no fees to run Price Discounts during non-peak event days! However, if you run a Price Discount during a peak event, you will be subject to these fees that you’ll pay whether or not you sell any units:
- Big Spring Sale: $50
- Prime Day: $100
- Prime Big Deal Days: $100
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday: $245
Where Performance Data Lives
You can only get aggregated performance data on promotions in Seller Central and through Amazon’s APIs. If you use a third-party software like Kapoq, you’ll be limited to what they can pull through the APIs.
For example, if you run a Best Deal with 5 ASINs, you’ll be able to see how many sales the deal has done overall, but you won’t be able to see the share of sales by day or across ASINs.
How to Structure Promotional Tests
In order to determine whether a promotion is effective for long-term growth or not, you need to set up structures to determine your profitability during the promo. Here are some of our basic recommendations to get the best data.
Set the Goal for the Promotion
The first but perhaps most overlooked step in analyzing your promotions on Amazon is to set a goal for the promotion—whether you want to liquidate inventory, rapidly acquire new products, improve your conversion rate, or improve your organic ranking.
Ideally, you should set a quantifiable way to track this goal to ensure you reach it. Maybe you want to see a 25% improvement in your conversion rate, or take over the number-one rank for a specific keyword.
Establish a Pre-Promo Baseline
Next, you need to establish a pre-promotional baseline of whatever metric you want to reach as your goal. You’ll need to have a deep understanding of your data across the specific SKUs you’re promoting or your catalog as a whole, which can be easily found in a software like Kapoq.
Track the Promo Period
You’ll obviously want to track your success during the actual promotional period—whether that’s a few hours or 30 days. But, depending on your goal for the promotion, you’ll also need to track your success in the weeks following the promo period, specifically if your goal was to improve your organic rank or conversion rate.
These sorts of halo effects take time to see results, so you can’t judge the full success of a campaign over the course of a few days or a week. Continue to monitor your analytics to see your success grow over time!
Evaluate Profitability
Lastly, you’ll need to evaluate the profitability of your promotion on Amazon. Discounts can quickly erase your margins on Amazon, so it’s important to determine what your comfort level is for the discount. Kapoq makes it easy for you to determine and evaluate your profitability.
For some promotions, you’ll want to maintain a certain margin on your products to avoid losing money. But if your goal is to liquidate inventory, maybe you don’t care about margins anymore and can offer a deep discount.
To evaluate the profitability and effectiveness of your promotions, you’ll need to look at a few metrics. We’ve recently released some enhancements to Kapoq that allow you to view and analyze promotion performance in-app for the first time!
- Aggregated at promotion level
- View portion of sales (e.g., filter by Lightning Deal only)
- Promotion comparisons
Book your free demo of Kapoq today to set yourself up for success in 2026.
