Economies of … Sale?
Compelled isolation, travel limitations and restrictions on leisure activities can lead to a common deficit of joy, another aftereffect of the pandemic. Call it a sublimation, but people are still deprived of so many pleasures that online shopping often becomes the best remedy for unhappiness under the current circumstances. Thus, the Golden Quarter of 2020 has never been this promising. While customers can use a well deserved opportunity to splash out a little, advertisers and publishers get a chance to improve their performance.
Obviously, the vendors understand the potential gains of the holiday season. This quarter has an impressive number of special promotions in store. Starting with traditional festive propositions for Halloween and Christmas and continuing with the newly emerged Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we can also see how retail giants introduce more sales occasions.
This year Amazon Prime Day fell on the 4th quarter and set off the succession of highly promoted sales. The next stop along the best bargains’ route is the Singles’ Day. A so-called Bachelors holiday in China turned into a huge shopping event, not the least because of Alibaba Group sales efforts. Although many shops provide solid discounts on this day, AliExpress leads in this race. Admitad believes that publishers can join the ride to success with the eponymous affiliate programme.
November begins with Aliexpress
Actually, the presale goes off on October, 28. That’s when the decreased prices will be revealed and users will be able to add the items to the cart to be purchased on the sale’s day itself, that starts on November 11. Customers can also collect and win coupons during the presale stage, there will be 3 types of them: seller, special and AliExpress coupons. The best deals are promised to be discounted at up to 70%, and the total range includes millions of items.
AliExpress is one of the largest marketplaces in the world. According to Admitad, their affiliate programme with more than 98% average approval rate (the ratio of confirmed target actions to the total number of actions) makes quite a lucrative option for publishers. In plus, Singles’ Day is a good reason to give the programme a try for the following considerations:
New customers: those who didn’t buy anything from AliExpress before can be more propense to go with something cheap as a trial purchase.
Broad assortment: it is easy to select items to integrate with virtually any business model, be it a content project or a cashback service. The categories vary from mobile phones, consumer electronics and electric transport to clothes, footwear, personal care and make-up. Still, not all traffic sources are allowed, and the availability of commission rates should be checked for non-affiliate products.
Wide coverage in media: Singles’ Day is already well-known across the globe; and every new publisher’s initiative to promote an offer can thus capitalise on a common marketing synergy.
Overall, Singles’ Day Sale has developed into a real Global Shopping Festival. And publishers should start developing money-making strategies even before the presale commences.
What helped publishers earn on 11.11 a year ago?
Admitad Academy compared their data before and after the sale’s period in 2019 and shared some findings in the webinar: the number of clicks and orders increased 4.5 and 8 times respectively, and publisher commission amount grew 7.6 times. The average conversion rate was at 27.2%. The first hour of sale, 17.00-18.00 pm. and 20.00-21.00 pm time spans were identified as the peak hours for purchases, regardless of the country. It might be of interest that the traffic types demonstrating the biggest growth were blogs and forums, price comparison websites, YouTube channels, social media groups and coupons. The top product categories were mobile phones and accessories, computer peripherals, interior accessories, clothing, beauty and health goods.
The results of 2019 suggest that even the pickiest buyers would chase alluring promos from time to time. Perhaps, it is no longer the time for sentiments. When it comes to Singles’ Day, neither your marital status counts, nor the liability of origin affects the perception of goods sold that much; it is the value for money that matters most for shoppers.
In addition, most advertisers understand that now it is the perfect time to regain the losses imposed on many businesses by COVID-19. This means that neither Chinese, nor European brands will neglect the potential of Singles’ Day, so it makes sense to search for gainful affiliate offers.
Tips to get ready for Singles’ Day
- Become a publisher: if you have experience with buying at Aliexpress and there is a touchpoint you can use to interact with a potential audience, why not to take advantage of the affiliate programme then?
- Remember that Singles’ Day can help acquire new clients, first-buyers who can later become regular visitors.
- Don’t miss the warm-up stage: start attracting users, tell them how to get the coupons and encourage them to add products to the cart on presale as soon as the special prices are displayed.
- Don’t forget that during this sale the first-click attribution is applied. If a user clicks affiliate links of a certain publisher within the warm-up period, goes to AliExpress, gets a coupon or/and adds products to the basket and later-on comes back to place an order during the sale days, the user’s actions will still be attributed to this first publisher. To avoid order abandonment, remind customers to check out when the sale sets off.
- Go beyond traditional traffic sources – use additional ad spaces, collaborate with other influencers, create landing pages, etc. Based on Admitad expertise, previously the best performed business models included product selections in social media, product reviews, deals websites and blog posts with sale details, but you can find your own successful ways to engage with the audience.
