How to set up Prime Exclusive Discounts for Black Friday & Cyber Monday on Amazon

Prime Exclusive Discounts on Amazon are special discounts offered uniquely to Prime (FBA and SFP) and non-Prime (seller fulfilled) offers during seasonal promotional events such as Prime Day, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday.

Below, we’ll show you how to quickly create your own discounts with this program.

Amazon’s Prime Exclusive Discount Guidelines

Besides all regular eligibility criteria, Amazon has a list of other eligibility requirements you’ll be able to read through in the first step of creating a discount.

The most important of these are:

• Product must have at least 1 reviews with an average rating of at least 4 stars.
• The discount must be at least 20% off the non-prime member non-promotional price.
• The discount must be at most 80% off the non-prime member non-promotional price.
• The Prime Exclusive Discount price must be 15.00% lower than reference price (that is, List Price or Was Price).
  • For more information, go to Reference Prices and how to Show a reference price to your products.
• The Prime Exclusive Discount price must be 5.00% lower than Was Price. Learn more about Was price here
• The Prime Exclusive Discounted price must be lower than the lowest price for the ASIN in past 30 days. The lowest price in the last 30 days is the lowest order price for the ASIN in that period including all deal, promotional, and sale prices across all merchants.

It’s the pricing that trips most people up as it is hard to calculate if you haven’t been running promotions or do not have control of your supply chain (there are other sellers on your listing). In general, it needs to be 20% off your normal price (the minimum discount). If you have been running promotions or sales then it will need to be 15% off of that price, depending on the date.

It’s also mandatory to have at least a rating of 4 for your Seller Feedback.

What is the cost of creating a Prime Exclusive Discount?

Previously, setting up Prime discounts was free, but at the time of this writing and while creating Black Friday/Cyber Monday discounts, we noticed a $50 fee.

How to set up a Prime Exclusive Discount

1. From the hamburger menu in the top left corner, select Advertising and then Prime Exclusive Discounts

2. Select the Create Discount button.

3. Name your discount and choose the type of discount you want to run. You can choose to create discount just for Black Friday, just for Cyber Monday, or for both. When you select both, the discount will be available from the beginning of Black Friday to the end of Cyber Monday.

⚠️ Note that Amazon now charges an Event Fee of $50.

4. Add your product details. You can enter them manually with up to 30 SKUs, or use the spreadsheet Amazon provides if you have more than 30.

Enter the product SKU, discount type (amount off, percentage off, or fixed price), Prime discount, Minimum Price, and operation (add, edit, delete).

5. Hit the submit button.

6. After submission you’ll want to set a reminder to check back and see which discounts (if any) have issues. If you do, it’ll say “Needs Attention” on the status.

How to Troubleshoot Prime Exclusive Discount Errors

If your submission comes back with errors, then you will need to figure out what the issue is and whether or not you can actually resolve it. Here are some of the common issues.

No reference price

This is one of the more obscure errors but usually it means that you’ve put something on sale that either does not have a sales history or the “list price” filled out in the backend. In the case below, this product was a new launch and did not have any sales history yet.

Lower than ASIN reference price by 15%

This is one is a lot clearer and just involves some simple math. The only thing to keep in mind is that while the list price is in your backend, the “was price” will be based on any discounts or sales you’ve run. If you can’t figure it out then you will need to play around with increasing the discount on your BFCM deal until it’s approved.

As of this writing Amazon defines a “was price” like this:

“A Was Price is automatically computed and changes over time. The Was Price is determined using the 90-day median price paid by customers for the product on Amazon. We exclude prices paid by customers for the product during a limited time deal.”

Lower than minimum price

Very simple error here. Just a mistake with the minimum price. If you’re doing discounts in bulk then this will happen a lot. Just change your minimum price to fit with this products price point. Check back to make sure other errors have not triggered.

And that’s it! After you’ve troubleshooted any errors you should be good to go for Black Friday Cyber Monday. Good luck!