Walmart Deal Days: Five Final Marketer Tips for the Big Event

Next week is the much-awaited Deal Days, a Walmart shopping event that promises to transform the landscape of retail summer sales. It represents a pivotal moment for retail advertisers and brands to showcase their products to a massive audience. Sales are generally an opportune time for brands to reach net-new consumers, as 80% admit they’d try a new brand if it offered them a discount.

With high interest and traffic from Deal Days, CPG marketers nationwide are gearing up for the event. In today’s post, we will explore how brands can effectively use Walmart’s retail media advertising network, Walmart Connect, to participate and thrive during these high-stakes sales days.

About the event: Walmart’s largest savings event ever

Scheduled from July 8 at 5 p.m. ET to July 11 at 11:59 p.m. ET, Walmart’s Deal Days are adding to what is becoming an increasingly important summer shopping period. With Walmart+ members enjoying a five-hour lead, the event is strategically designed to boost membership sign-ups, offering a tangible incentive that enhances customer loyalty and engagement.

This year’s array of deals is vast and varied, with substantial discounts expected across multiple categories — check out some of the announced sales. From cutting-edge electronics that appeal to the tech-savvy shopper to essential home goods that cater to everyday needs, Walmart is set to cater to a diverse consumer base. Deal Days timing aligns with the back-to-school rush with bargains on school supplies, apparel, and tech gadgets. This strategic alignment with consumer needs underscores Walmart’s commitment to providing value and convenience at a critical time.

The event is not just a sales opportunity; it’s a part of Walmart’s broader strategy to enhance its market share and reinforce its position as a leader in the retail sector.

Five steps to be ready for Deal Days

The following are five strategic steps to ensure your products not only capture but also hold the attention of the vast influx of customers anticipated during next week’s event. These strategies leverage Walmart Connect’s powerful tools and data insights, allowing you to maximize your impact and achieve better outcomes during Deal Days.

Optimize visibility

It is crucial to ensure your products are prominently displayed during this event. If you have time this week, double-check Walmart Connect’s analytics tools to gain insights into customer behaviors and trends. Adjust your ad placements based on these insights to maximize visibility at times when consumer interest peaks. This involves not just reactive adjustments but proactive planning based on predictive analytics that forecast when and where your ads should be displayed to capture maximum attention.

• Pro Tip: Use Walmart Connect’s dayparting features to schedule your ads during peak traffic times identified through analytics. This allows you to focus your ad spend more effectively, maximizing visibility when potential customers are most active on the platform.

Leverage Walmart’s scale

Walmart.com’s vast traffic offers a unique opportunity to reach millions of potential customers. Craft your marketing messages to resonate with the diverse Walmart audience by emphasizing the value and relevance of your products. Highlight special deals and promotions that align with the event’s theme, such as back-to-school savings, to engage specific shopper segments more effectively.

• Pro Tip: Utilize Walmart Connect’s segmentation tools to target specific demographic groups based on past purchase behavior, geographical data, and browsing history. Tailoring your messages to different segments can significantly increase the relevance and effectiveness of your ads.

Drive impulse purchases

The dynamic environment of Deal Days is ideal for encouraging impulse buys. Strategically place enticing offers and recommended products in key areas of the Walmart site to increase visibility and appeal. Utilize dynamic advertising features such as countdown timers, limited-offer badges, and exclusive deals to create a sense of urgency that prompts spontaneous purchases.

• Pro Tip: Employ Walmart Connect’s retargeting strategies to recapture the attention of users who have visited your product pages but did not make a purchase. Showing them targeted ads as they continue to browse increases the likelihood of converting initial interest into sales.

Prepare your campaigns

Double-check the quality of your product page. Invest time in creating engaging, informative product descriptions and high-quality images that reflect the excellence of your products. Combine this with a robust bidding strategy and keyword optimization that targets your ideal demographic. It’s essential to keep a close eye on campaign metrics and make ongoing adjustments based on performance data to ensure your ads remain competitive throughout the event.

• Pro Tip: Leverage Walmart Connect’s A/B testing capabilities to test different elements of your product pages and ads. This can help you determine the most effective images, descriptions, and call-to-action phrases that drive higher conversion rates during the event.

Monitor and adapt

Agility is key in a high-stakes event like Deal Days. Continuously monitor the performance of your campaigns and gather customer feedback in real time. This will allow you to respond swiftly to any new trends or changes in consumer behavior. Be prepared to adjust your strategies, whether shifting ad spend, tweaking campaign messages, or even pivoting your promotional tactics to better align with emerging shopper interests or to counteract competitors’ actions.

• Pro Tip: Set up real-time alerts in Walmart Connect for significant changes in campaign performance metrics such as click-through rates, impressions, and conversion rates. This enables you to react quickly to positive and negative trends, optimizing your campaigns dynamically to maintain peak performance throughout the event.

By integrating these pro tips with the outlined steps, Walmart Connect advertisers can enhance their readiness and effectiveness for Walmart’s Deal Days, maximizing both reach and return on investment.

10 Skai retail media capabilities

The following Skai capabilities will help you make the most out of the remaining time before Walmart Deal Days, ensuring that your marketing efforts are as effective and efficient as possible.

1. Automate actions. Create some automated actions to adjust your campaigns dynamically as Walmart Deal Days begin, ensuring maximum responsiveness to real-time data.
2. Monitor budgets closely. Set up budget monitoring with Skai’s tools to manage spending efficiently as traffic spikes during Deal Days.
3. Create clarity with dimensions & categories. Tag your various campaigns with Skai dimensions so you can easily search, find, and take action on them during the chaotic days of the event.
4. Bulk actions. UseSkai’s ability to perform bulk actions to scale campaigns, adjust bids, or pause underperforming ads across multiple products or categories.
5. Implement ad scheduling & dayparting. Configure your ad scheduling now to capitalize on peak Deal Days shopping hours, ensuring your ads appear when shopper engagement is highest.
6. Conduct a search term analysis. Perform last-minute search term analysis to fine-tune your keywords for the Deal Days, targeting the terms shoppers are most likely to use.
7. Set automated alerts. Set up automated alerts immediately to stay informed of any critical changes in ad performance throughout the Deal Days event.
8. Use the high peak time to gather insights with experiments. If possible, launch some experiments during Deal Days to gather insights that can be quickly applied to optimize ongoing campaigns.
9. Utilize custom metrics & reporting. Configure custom metrics and reporting tools now to get real-time insights into your campaign performance during the event.
10. Track Walmart in-store metrics. Start tracking Walmart in-store metrics if your campaigns link online efforts to physical store results, to fully understand the omnichannel impact as Deal Days begin.

Post-Event Tip: Leverage the insights from Walmart Deal Days for future success

With indications that Walmart may host another Deal Days later in the year, closer to the holiday shopping season, this July event serves as an excellent rehearsal for marketers. The insights gained during these summer Deal Days can be invaluable as you refine your strategies for the more competitive holiday period.

Marketers can use this event as a test bed for different promotional tactics, messaging, and customer engagement strategies. Analyzing which approaches yield the best results in July can provide a blueprint for optimizing campaigns later in the year. For instance, if certain deals or product categories outperform others, this could influence inventory decisions and marketing emphasis for the Q4 holiday season.

Additionally, this event offers a unique opportunity to gather data on customer preferences and behavior patterns that are only visible during major sales events. By applying these learnings, marketers can adjust their strategies to better align with consumer expectations, potentially leading to higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction during the critical holiday shopping period. Remember, each Deal Days event is not just an opportunity to boost sales but a chance to build deeper relationships with consumers, enhance brand loyalty, and pave the way for future engagement.

Use Skai for next week’s Deal Days and beyond

Skai’s Retail Media solution empowers marketers to plan, execute, and measure digital campaigns that meet consumers when and where they shop. As part of our omnichannel platform, we connect the walled gardens and manage campaigns on Walmart and 100+ retailers, including Amazon, Target, and Instacart, alongside major publishers across paid search, paid social, and apps.

For more information, schedule a brief demo to see how our Walmart Connect support can help boost retail media performance.