CEO Intrepid: Mega sales must go beyond a discount-driven event

Double-digit day sales (like 9/9, 11/11, 12/12) continue to provide opportunities for brands to drive growth, both from a sales perspective and share of voice. 

More and more consumers will indeed continue to turn to online shopping, as they search for best price deals to cope with current inflationary pressures and the rising costs of goods, according to NielsenIQ.

To provide more insights on consumer behaviors and associated campaign strategies, TheLEADER had a talk with Emmanuelle Gounot, CEO of Intrepid Vietnam, a regional innovative ecommerce and digital solutions provider.

Based on Intrepid’s data, have you observed any notable changes in sale/mega sale days after the Covid-19 pandemic?

Emmanuelle Gounot: So far this year, we see that the sales contribution from double-digit sales witnessed a decline compared to previous years.

This can be attributed to various factors, including decreased platform traffic investment, and the abundance of campaigns, which can collectively result in reduced consumer urgency.

Moreover, the mega sales contribution based on our observations has also experienced a decrease in 2022, as compared to the prior year, primarily due to challenges in stimulating demand, particularly in the electronics category.

Interestingly, we have noticed certain categories, especially beauty and fashion performing exceptionally well in thematic campaigns, similar to double digit campaign performance.

Bear in mind, these category trends are in line with offline consumer behaviours. After the lockdown, people spend less time at home, resuming social activities with the need to look and feel good.

More disposable income goes into fashion, health & beauty category products – being faster-moving goods with shorter life cycles. As we launched the mega sale campaign this year with 9.9 , we noticed that our Fashion category partners continued to deliver outstanding results, aligning with the trend of solid performance. Interestingly, our electronics category partners observed great improvements in both traffic and conversion, in line with platform category trends. This is a positive signal on future consumption trends as consumers may start looking at upgrades after the pandemic boom on electronics and home appliance purchases.

In your opinion, are mega sale days merely a discount-driven event, or are there other factors we need to consider?

Emmanuelle Gounot: Discounts undoubtedly play a crucial role in mega sales, acting as a key driver to attract customers. However, the true success and impact of a mega sale extend beyond mere price reductions.

To continue delivering a powerful mega sale, it is essential to provide a unique and differentiated experience. This can be achieved through diverse strategies, such as offering a distinctive product assortment, implementing creative traffic strategies, or even targeting a new audience segment.

We generally recommend a strong narrative hook articulating the brand’s unique selling point for the campaign, with a narrative being refreshed across campaigns.

For instance, we continue to see brands, and especially premium brands focus on product gifts either full-sized stand-alone items, a series of mini-size or even co-branded gifts. This creates the perception of value and exclusivity when offers are limited in time.

We also see that brands are looking for new ways to engage consumers. Organic live streaming for instance, has become an effective tactic to drive add to cart behavior during the teasing period. KOL live stream - even shared across brands - also start to drive high sales volume, especially if combined with attractive promotions.

By diversifying the shopping experience in this manner, brands can enhance the overall appeal and effectiveness of their mega sale initiatives.

It is said that many prominent brands, previously focused on brick-and-mortar stores, have transitioned to e-commerce, and established their online presence, resulting in a larger share of sales on e-commerce platforms. What is your insight about this?

Emmanuelle Gounot: There has been a remarkable surge in ecommerce penetration. This growth can be largely attributed to the high adoption rate extending beyond urban areas.

While most brands recognize the necessity of an online presence, and invest to grow their online channels to generate incremental business, they also continue to push offline sales. That resulted in an unavoidable degree of channel conflict.

This means a well-established channel management strategy becomes crucial in effectively balancing revenue scales, and navigating such conflicts.

Brands may develop differentiated assortment and promotional strategies, thereby building different hero products for different channels. Many brands are also moving toward an omni-channel strategy with an online-to-offline (O2O) approach.

This is something Intrepid and the broader Ascential Digital Commerce Advisory team can consult brands on, to ensure incremental growth rather than cannibalization of existing sales.

Considering these changes, what recommendations would you offer to brands to run effective campaigns during sale seasons, and enhance their brand awareness? How can they maximize their campaign's impact?

Emmanuelle Gounot: It remains crucial to analyze the performance of previous campaigns, and benchmark the most impactful strategies for one’s category against other brands, to understand market expectations.

This is something we help our brands to do, and our Measurement & benchmarking business can provide additional insights on the performance of competitors.

There are a lot of factors at play that contribute to delivering an impactful campaign, from teasing preparation, traffic planning, customer journey optimization, promotional strategy and stock forecasting.

We recommend brands build in ample time to plan all aspects of their mega campaigns. Successful brands also consistently have a robust contingency plan in place to navigate unforeseen challenges in real time, roll out changes quickly and ensure smooth campaign execution.

Thank you!