Ecommerce in Thailand has evolved and grown over the years, accelerating even more following the impact of the pandemic. Every year in Thailand we are observing substantial growth more so during the key Mega Sale Days. A study by Facebook and Bain & Company even confirmed the massive interest for Thai consumers in these critical sales dates, having found that Thailand recorded the highest number of first-time online shoppers during the Mega Sale at 64%.
With such intense appetite from consumers surrounding the Mega Sale period, how can brands successfully stand out and capture consumer interest and sales during this essential time frame? The key lies in refining your Mega Sale strategy and ensuring all the necessary preparations are made from the very start.
1. Leverage data and insights for an added advantage to Teasing & D-Day Strategy
Brands must start their preparations and strategic planning well ahead of the Mega Sale period. According to the same study, almost three quarters of consumers had aligned their purchases with the Mega Sales, especially in categories like smartphones, home living and electronics. All the more reasons for brands to capitalize on this early stage interest through advance preparation months ahead.
Prior to building your pre Mega Sale hype, you must first identify where your key consumers’ priorities lie, how they research and shop during the Mega Sale as well as in-depth insights into your brand’s current standing against competitors. At Intrepid, we optimize our inhouse insights and analytics solution to provide our brand partners valuable and actionable insights into their market share, pricing & discount, share of search on high volume keywords and more.
2. Deliver an innovative customer journey
In the increasingly competitive and saturated Mega Sale climate with brands vying to offer the best deals, the struggle to stand out becomes more challenging. Brands must be more innovative and creative in exploring and optimizing engagement assets, from loyalty programs, livestreaming to gamification.
An iDac survey identified that a growing 53% of Thais spent more time engaging with social influencers calling more attention to the importance of livestreaming in your Mega Sale strategy. A growingly popular option to drive awareness and engage target consumers, live streaming is far more complex to execute successfully – involving a number of detailed steps including identifying the best platform, influencers, storyboard and script creation to engagement moderation.
If a livestream is not planned and executed well during the Mega Sale period , this can result in a disconnected brand story and worse, plenty of missed conversion opportunities. Engaging a team of Livestream experts equipped with an in-house studio will help manage your brand’s end to end livestream process; minimizing potential issues and delivering impactful shopping experiences.
3. Automation should be your ally
Do you have sufficient SKUs stocked up to meet the unpredictably huge demand? Are your customer service representatives ready to help your consumers at every step of their journey throughout the sale period? These are just a couple of the list of key questions to cross off before the start of your Mega Sale campaign.
To avoid a potential crisis from manual dependency in managing stores across multiple platforms and meeting the high demand of the Mega Sale period, brands should invest in technology and automated solutions, especially a well integrated order management system that can ensure unified inventory stock syncing as well as streamline store operations for more consistent and efficient outcomes. Not forgetting advanced customer experience solutions that can help escalate customer enquiries and ensure that your brand takes advantage of the 48% of consumers who are more likely to make a purchase when the business is efficiently responsive.
Don’t wait till it’s too late to reap the full benefits of the highly attractive and rewarding Mega Sale campaign. As we have observed, a solid combination of ecommerce expertise supported by advanced technology and comprehensive, timely preparation has the power to help your brand thrive during one of the most critical sales campaigns of the year.
Writer: Orapa Tachochavalit, CEO Intrepid Thailand
