albert Chan
Introduction
The 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, known as Singles’ Day, is an annual event that takes place on November 11. This year, promotions on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms were launched from October 21, when the pre-sale period began. Some brands and retailers had even started their promotional campaigns earlier that month to maximize the exposure of their flagship stores and products.
As a general practice each year, as merchants are eager to assure their Singles’ Day sales performance, they encourage customers to pre-order products during the pre-sale period by offering various special offers and discounts. This extends the event and thus increases the potential for retailers to make as many sales as possible.
We analyze the campaigns and promotions that brands and retailers undertook on their Tmall stores in the pre-sale period, and detail their wider strategies for Singles’ Day 2019.
Overview of Promotion Strategies by Brands on Tmall
There are a number of similarities in the promotional strategies used by brands across different categories on Tmall. These span the use of gifts and coupons, product launches, social media networks, gaming and store membership enrolment.
Brands aim to encourage consumers to add products to their shopping carts in advance of Singles’ Day, for which they can then pay later in the pre-sale stage or on November 11. If customers stay active by bookmarking the store or becoming a store member, they may be entitled to more benefits.
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Source: Coresight Research[/caption]
Encouraging Customers To Select Products and Make Down Payments in Advance
To ensure that customers would shop with them in the Singles’ Day promotion period from October 21 to November 11, some aggressive brands were already encouraging customers to add popular products and promotional items to their shopping cart in early October. These brands offered incentives of free gifts and discount coupons for customers who added certain products to their carts and made down payments during the pre-sale period.
In the beauty sector, Shiseido employed this strategy. If customers added two 30ml Power Infusing Concentrate to their shopping cart during October 1–20, paid in the first two hours of October 21 (00:00-2:00) and were among the first 95,000 orders, they earned a free 10ml Power Infusing Concentrate.
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Shiseido’s 30ml Power Infusing ConcentrateSource: Tmall[/caption]
Olay began motivating customers to add items to shopping cart even earlier, on September 15, and provided a number of limited special offers in the lead up to Singles’ Day. For example, customers earned a ¥30 ($4.29) coupon to use on November 11 if they added ProX 30ml Dermatological Intensive to their shopping cart in advance and were among the first 20,000 orders to pay deposits on October 21. For customers who paid the remaining amount on November 11, if they were among the first 20,000 bottles transacted they earned a free 15g ProX eye essence.
[caption id="attachment_99801" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
Olay’s 11.11 Campaign and Olay’s ProX 30ml Dermatological IntensiveSource: Tmall[/caption]
In addition to beauty, other categories used similar tactics prior to 11.11. Nike offered discounts of ¥15-30 ($2.15-4.29) per pair of shoes for shoppers who made a down payment during the pre-sale period. Similarly, Adidas launched a promotion in which the first 4,800 customers to do this for Adidas 4D shoes received a free 200ml waterproof spray.
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Nike’s 11.11 campaignSource: Tmall[/caption] [caption id="attachment_99803" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
Adidas’ 11.11 campaignSource: Tmall[/caption]
Snack brand Three Squirrels offered half-price and “buy one, get one free” discounts on the first 1,000 or 10,000 orders (depending on the promotion of particular products) that made a down payment during the pre-sale period. Other offers included the Double 11 Nuts Package, which offered ¥10 ($1.43) discounts for all shoppers and a “buy one, get one free” promotion for the first 1,000 customers to pay the outstanding amount on November 11. The product had sold 100,254 boxes as of October 24.
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Three Squirrels’ productsSource: Tmall[/caption]
Offering Cash Coupons for Purchases
A number of brands offered cash coupons as rewards for customers that spent certain amounts:
- Grocery brand Kroger offered ¥20 ($2.80) and ¥30 ($4.20) discounts for orders over ¥199 ($28.20) and ¥299 ($42.30), respectively.
- Nutrition and health supplement brand Swisse offered no-restriction coupons worth ¥20 ($2.80) for new members, in addition to ¥50 ($7.10) coupon discounts for orders amounting to more than ¥200 ($28.30) and ¥400 ($56.60).
Cash coupons offered by Kroger, Swisse, Aldi and AdidasSource: Tmall[/caption]
Working with KOLs and Celebrities To Promote Products
Online KOLs typically share their product reviews on major Chinese social media channels such as Weibo and Red (Little Red Book). For 11.11, many brands cooperated with KOLs to promote their products, by reposting positive reviews on their Tmall product pages, for example.
Snack brand Bestore invited popular Chinese celebrity Kris Wu to be their brand representative for Singles’ Day, using his image in product advertisements in addition to including his review on the e-commerce platform.
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Bestore’s 11.11 promotion banner featuring Chinese celebrity Kris WuSource: Tmall[/caption]
Some brands also launched live-streaming campaigns to promote their designated products. Swisse hired KOLs to promote its Calcium + Vitamin D pills, the Liver Detox and other items through live streams in which they discuss the use of the products and the available discounts.
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Swisse used KOLs to promote its productsSource: Tmall[/caption]
On its Tmall store page, beauty brand L'Oréal posted reviews of a face-mask product by a popular beauty KOL named Lisa, who currently has over three million fans on Weibo. SK-II posted reviews of its Youth Essence product by KOLs on Red.
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Beauty KOL Lisa’s product review of L'Oréal’s mask productSource: Tmall[/caption] [caption id="attachment_99810" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
KOLs on Red shared reviews of SK-II’s Youth Essence productSource: Tmall[/caption]
Perfect Diary worked with top beauty KOL Austin Li—who once sold 15,000 lipsticks in 15 minutes during a live-streaming show—to promote a new pink-colored lipstick that was launched specifically for Singles’ Day 2019.
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Austin Li endorsed a Perfect Diary lipstick product.Source: Tmall[/caption]
Introducing Limited-time Games To Promote Consumer-Brand Interaction
This year, brands engaged their customers by launching interactive games, such as lotteries. Beauty brands were the first to offer gaming features, as the category as a whole started its 11.11 promotions the earliest.
Olay ran a lottery from September 15 to October 20 on its Tmall store, through which customers could earn free products or coupons for use on Singles’ Day. By bookmarking Olay’s Tmall store or becoming a member of the store, customers earned the chance to participate in the lotterry. Belif also hosted a lottery during October 1-31 on its Tmall store, offering customers the opportunity to win free products.
[caption id="attachment_99812" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
Left: Rewards for Olay’s lottery; Right: Belif’s lucky draw lotterySource: Tmall[/caption]
L'Oréal ran a gaming activity from September 19 to October 20 with a prize of ¥10,000 ($1,430) in travel funding for a trip to Paris, in partnership with Chinese online travel agency Ctrip.
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L'Oréal’s game offered ¥10,000 in travel funding for a trip to Paris.Source: Tmall[/caption]
Outside beauty, Three Squirrels launched a lottery that offered the chance to win 11 tonnes of snacks as the first prize. It also ran a fishing game through which customers could win snack prizes. Dairy brand Aptamil offered six months’ worth of free milk powder as one lottery prize, along with a Dyson hair dryer, ¥30 ($4.29) coupons and more.
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Left: Three Squirrels’ lottery game; Middle: Three Squirrel’s fishing game; Right: Aptamil’s lottery gameSource: Tmall[/caption]
Encouraging Customers To Become Store Members
Brands are encouraging customers to become their store members so that they could take advantage of more Singles’ Day benefits. Shoppers were able to interact with stores on Tmall by bookmarking and following a store in order to receive updated merchandise information or by enrolling in the store’s membership scheme to enjoy more benefits.
Brands competed more intensely to cultivate a loyal customer base and offer different perks for store members before Singles’ Day.
L'Oréal offered a limited batch of 700,000 coupons to new members, which provided a ¥10 ($1.43) discount on every purchase worth ¥109 ($15.59). Swisse offered ¥20 ($2.86) coupons without restrictions and ¥50 ($7.15) coupons for purchases worth over ¥200 ($28.60) to shoppers that joined the membership program. Sports brand Sketchers provided new store members with ¥20 ($2.86) discount coupons for ¥200 ($28.60) purchases.
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L'Oréal’s (left), Swisse’s (right) and Sketchers’ (bottom) membership promotion bannersSource: Tmall[/caption]
Brands also offered other benefits for joining their membership schemes. Estée Lauder introducted a Singles’ Day promotion to refund payment deposits, guarantee early delivery and provide dedicated customer services to new members. South Korean cosmetics brand Innisfree offered a limited quantity of 250,000 coupons for newly joined members. Furthermore, if existing members invited a friend to enrol in membership, they were both entered into a lottery draw. All members were entitled to receive coupons in limited quantities—ranging from 10,000 to 20,000—to use from October 21 to November 11. Chinese beauty brand Marubi offered ¥50 ($7.15) coupons and limited beauty product sets to new members.
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Membership promotion banners of Estée Lauder (left), Innisfree (right) and Marubi (bottom)Source: Tmall[/caption]
Key Insights
Brands adopted a number of different promotional methods ahead of Singles’ Day this year: offering limited coupons and gifts; launching special edition products; partnering with KOLs; and engaging customers through membership and games. While the promotion methods and combinations of perks varied according to each brand’s campaign, the underlying strategy was that consumers would be more likely to transact with the store if they were offered as many perks as possible.