Like Black Friday sales on Amazon, Singles’ Day or Double 11 on the 11th of November every year has been a big day for all the Chinese for 9 years. Until the midnight of 29th October, Singles’ Day 2017 top 5 ranks of the beauty brand pre-sale result are Lancome, Estee Lauder, SK-II, Olay and L’Oreal respectively.
Top 5 Beauty Brand of Singles’ Day 2017 at Tmall
Lancome invited Jessie Li (春夏), Yolanda Yuan (袁泉), Chun Wu (吴尊)， Tamia Liu (刘涛), Zhou Dongyu (周冬雨) and Vin Zhang (张彬彬) to represent and recommend the signature products. Lancome tries to use celebrities to bring conversion.
Estee Lauder was represented by Mini Yang (杨幂) and pre-sold some of the product packages. There is nothing special in terms of eCommerce marketing.
SK-II appointed Leah Dou (窦靖童), a young singer to be the brand ambassador and this also drove a lot of discussions. SK-II seems to swift the target audience now to the younger generations. At the same time, their new flagship product, limited edition of Pitera will make its world debut on the 11.11.
Among this 5 cosmetic brands, L’Oreal is making a step forward to eCommerce marketing. Every activity is fitting the China eCommerce ecosystem and consumer behavior and step by step, to enhance the conversion and retain the digital consumers. There are 3 stages in the Singles’ Day 2017 11.11 campaign: Pre-heat (20/10 – 31/10)， Pre-climax (1/11 – 10/11) and the Official Singles’ Day 2017 11.11 Celebration. Let’s check what the L’Oreal can inspire us about the eCommerce strategies:
How L’Oreal play with the Singles’ Day 2017
1. Discount coupons
‘Order exceeding XXX can enjoy XX discount’ is not a new thing. However, it is an old-fashioned but effective way to attract customers. After all, when you buy RMB800 and you can enjoy a 12% off (i.e. RMB100). A lot of people care about this, right?
2. Deposit Inflation and Lucky Draw
Deposit means the consumer can pay in advance a certain amount to lock the discount product. A new feature of this year: the deposit will be inflated, says when you have paid RMB30, it will be honored finally as RMB45 when you complete the transaction. It can enhance the conversion to complete the purchase and also let the brand know a rough estimation of GMV in advance.
To encourage the deposit and customer engagement, L’Oreal offers the lucky draw opportunity to customers who have made deposits, followed the page, favorited the page and shared the products to the social media. Prizes like Sony camera, facial cleanser, and cosmetics are given.
3. Pay deposit and enjoy free gift
From the midnight of Singles’ Day 2017 11.11 onwards, customers can start to clear their shopping cart. In L’Oreal, consumers complete payment to goods with deposits on or before 01:59, may have the chance to win a lipstick.
4. Free Gift
Similar to discount, consumers can get a certain amount of extra gift and cosmetic samples when the bill exceeded a certain amount. It will give implication to consumers to try their best to achieve the certain budget in order to get the free gift.
5. New Member Marketing
L’Oreal does not forget the importance of loyalty marketing. New members can enjoy a 5 dollar coupon and 11X member point rewards.
6. Hotcakes
L’Oreal has set up a price strategy for certain products and limited the number of stock to catch consumers’ attention. They also classify the product into several categories including hotcakes, facial, men’s, make-up, etc. to diverse consumers into certain targeting section.
Interactive Singles’ Day 2017 Campaign – Botanical Wisdom
Overall speaking, there is not much surprise about the Singles’ Day 2017 campaign from these brands. It demonstrates the normal strategies for most of the brands in Taobao and Tmall. Luckily, I capture another interesting brand campaign that is worth sharing with you. Obviously, through the creativity, the brand would like to engage younger generations who are the major forces of online consumption.
Facial treatment product brand, Aglaia (Botanical Wisdom 植物智慧) shows their creativity and users engagement in the campaign. It is not necessary to be price focusing; an engaging and creative promotion can also catch the public attention.
Aglaia launched a campaign called ‘The Plant Museum – 11.11 Fantastic Night’. The consumer becomes a ‘Botanical Expert’ to explore the museum and engage with the brand and products. On the store page, the brand also demonstrates their product and ingredient component with a ‘game’ feature like configuration, skill and condition. The brand would like to communicate with the teenagers with a tone of gaming and enhance their desire for participation. The 95’s or even 00’s are too familiar with a slogan like ‘Spend RMB 5 to Summon’ which they always encounter inside the game.
