GMV increased by 260% in a single day. Sellers have a "magic formula" to boost sales during the peak season

With the arrival of the second half of the year, a series of consumption-driven festivals have followed one after another, which not only ignited consumers' shopping enthusiasm, but also made September to December the recognized peak sales season in the cross-border e-commerce industry. Taking Saiwei Times, which successfully went public last year, as an example, the company's operating income in the second half of 2023 reached 3.791 billion yuan, an increase of 1.018 billion yuan compared with the first half of the year, with a year-on-year growth rate of 37%, highlighting the huge boost to merchants' performance during this period.

As the leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, Shopee has achieved great results in the first half of this year. In the first quarter, the platform's order volume and gross merchandise volume (GMV) both set new historical records. In addition, Shopee also won the honor of the first place in the total usage time of shopping apps in the world and Southeast Asia in the first half of the year, and ranked first in the monthly active users and total downloads of shopping apps in Southeast Asia, winning many shopping app championship honors.

Recently, Shopee's annual Seller Incentive Conference came to a successful conclusion. At the conference, the 2024 peak season "Million Incentive Plan" was officially announced to accelerate sellers' cross-border peak season orders in the second half of the year. This article will deeply analyze Shopee's peak season incentive plan, and by sharing successful experiences in past promotional activities, provide strategies and methodologies for facing the peak sales period, starting from a practical perspective, to help sellers seize market opportunities and achieve their expected goals.

Millions of incentives aimed at the peak season in 2024

Recently, Li Xingqian, Director of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, said that in the first half of the year, my country's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports continued to maintain a steady growth momentum. From the perspective of corporate expectations, nearly 80% of cross-border e-commerce companies are optimistic about the growth momentum in the second half of the year.

As the overall economic environment gradually improves, many cross-border e-commerce companies are gearing up to seize the opportunities brought by the market recovery. In order to help sellers fully grasp the sales peak during the peak season and increase turnover, cross-border e-commerce platforms have made full preparations in advance. This includes Shopee, which occupies 48% of the Southeast Asian e-commerce market. (Data source: Momentum Works - "2024 Southeast Asian E-commerce")

The "Million Incentive Plan" is a special incentive launched by Shopee for the second half of the year's peak sales season, aiming to provide exclusive support for different types of sellers. As mentioned earlier, the 2024 peak season incentive plan was officially unveiled at the recent Seller Incentive Summit. The plan mainly highlights one feature, which is "diversity".

The "Full Seller Peak Season Incentive Competition" is open to all sellers on the platform. After completing the preset threshold tasks, participating sellers will be eligible to enter the qualifying and target competitions. For sellers with outstanding performance, the platform will provide generous SLS logistics subsidies and cash rewards to encourage them to continuously improve their sales performance.

The "Strategic Seller Exclusive Incentive Program" was launched for the first time this year for the platform's top cross-border sellers. Sellers can enjoy commission rebates after completing monthly sales targets, achieving monthly marketing investment targets or achieving price competitiveness targets.

In addition, Shopee has also created a series of incentive programs for localized fulfillment sellers, high-quality content sellers, high-potential brand sellers, and high-potential factory resource sellers. Sellers can obtain multiple incentives such as commission reductions, subsidized promotions, and advertising cashback by actively participating.

The Southeast Asia E-commerce Report 2024 released by research firm Momentum Works shows that in 2023, the total GMV of the region's eight major e-commerce platforms reached US$114.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 15%. This year, this figure is expected to double that of 2020. Obviously, the peak season in the second half of the year will be an important driving force for this growth.

In Southeast Asia, 11.11 and 12.12 are key promotional opportunities in the second half of the year, and they often have a decisive impact on the seller's annual performance. If Shopee sellers want to seize the traffic dividends during the peak season and accelerate the growth of explosive orders, they must formulate detailed strategies in three aspects: product operation, traffic marketing , and stocking and fulfillment .

There is a "magic formula" for this year's peak season, so don't worry about the explosive growth in orders

The following is a specific strategy for promotional activities that has been proven in practice, covering the three key areas of product operation, traffic marketing, and inventory and stocking fulfillment.

Product operation strategy: optimize price competitiveness + continue to launch new products

The key to product operation is to optimize the price competitiveness of the promotion products in advance during the promotion preparation period, and continue to launch new products during the promotion to obtain additional traffic.

During the preparation period for the big promotion (30-60 days before the big promotion) , the platform will provide heavy traffic and subsidy support for the extremely cost-effective hot products. In addition, it will announce platform activities and big promotion incentive projects in advance, and publish consumption trend guides for each site for sellers' reference.

At this critical moment, sellers need to take the following measures: First, carefully plan 5 to 10 flagship products and potential hit products designed to attract traffic 45 to 60 days in advance. Second, optimize supply chain management and cost structure to enhance the price competitiveness of products. In addition, sellers should seize the opportunity to launch new products in advance to seize the market opportunity. For sellers using SLS Shopee logistics services, it is recommended to update product lines on a weekly basis and complete product listing at least 30 days in advance. Sellers who choose LFF localized fulfillment services can update products on a monthly basis, and the goods should be delivered to the warehouse at least 30 to 45 days in advance to ensure sufficient inventory and timely response to market demand.

During the big sale period (5-7 days) , the platform will improve the preheating promotion and the day's promotion mechanism inside and outside the site to guide consumers to make additional purchases 3-7 days in advance. In addition, it will increase investment in traffic and subsidies to accelerate the conversion of top hot products.

At this time, sellers can create a big promotion atmosphere 3-5 days in advance, preheat the big promotion by getting coupons in advance, and guide additional purchases. On the day of the big promotion, they can adjust marketing tools in time at relatively low traffic points such as 9:00, 15:00, and 19:00 based on trends and inventory, so as to obtain higher conversions at high traffic points.

During this year's Shopee 6.6 promotion, BEIGUO, a seller specializing in baby travel and safety products, achieved a 260% increase in GMV on the promotion day (compared to normal days) by relying on this strategy. How did he do it?

It is reported that BEIGUO started preparations six months before the big promotion, and continuously optimized the product development process by paying close attention to the hot-selling new products in the market. The company worked closely with the production factory, and on the basis of consolidating the supply chain, successfully developed and produced products that meet the consumption level of the Southeast Asian market, while effectively reducing production costs.

Before the big sale, BEIGUO began to continuously launch new products, putting them on the shelves in overseas warehouses in a "multiple models and small quantities" approach to test product performance. For products with skyrocketing sales, it directly stocked up large inventories, that is, starting from June, it launched 2-3 products every week to stock overseas warehouses. In addition, it also used extreme price promotion activities and flash sales.

Having made sufficient preparations in the early stages, BEIGUO guided customers to add items to its shopping cart by preheating prices five days in advance during the big sale, and continuously monitored the data on item additions to dynamically optimize inventory and prices. On the day of the big sale, it maintained low prices for 24 hours, using extreme prices to impact conversions of the store's best-selling products and leverage the platform's free traffic subsidy support.

Traffic marketing strategy: live broadcast, AMS, advertising, and short videos

In terms of traffic marketing strategy, a four-pronged approach can be adopted, including live streaming, AMS, advertising, and short videos. In particular, Shopee short videos must be focused on, which will be of great benefit in obtaining incremental sales from big promotions.

Generally speaking, for big promotions, the platform will increase incentives for content, including AMS×short video influencers’ incentives, big promotion ranking competitions, influencer resource packages, etc. In terms of AMS, new features including promoter platform, free samples, open commissions, and paid posts are also available. In terms of Shopee short videos, cold start traffic weighting will be provided to sellers who publish daily. In addition, the platform will increase the exposure entrances for live broadcasts, short videos, and advertising traffic to prepare for traffic reserves.

In this case, it is recommended that sellers actively deploy AMS×live broadcast×short video×advertising linkage during the preparation period of the big promotion , and combine it with the big promotion goal to obtain high traffic conversion. In addition, during the preparation period, you can actively try out new platform features such as live broadcast advertising and free samples and deploy them to the big promotion. As for the commission issue that sellers are more concerned about, you can try to increase it by more than 15% compared to usual days, and invite target influencers 20-50 days in advance.

During the big promotion period , the advertising budget increase in the warm-up period can be controlled at around 1.2 times that of normal days, and on the day of the big promotion it can be boosted to 3-5 times that of normal days.

During this process, there are two points worthy of sellers' attention. First, the live broadcast time should be selected at 0:00, 10:00, and 20:00 as much as possible, because these three are the high points of live broadcast traffic, which can achieve twice the result with half the effort. Second, the commission of the target influencer can also be increased appropriately to fully mobilize the influencer's enthusiasm.

In addition, during the period of the big promotion, the advertising budget investment can be maintained at 1.2 times, and the sales can be continued through live broadcast x short video, using "clearance" as an excuse to seize the long-tail effect of the big promotion.

With the above marketing strategy, O.TWO.O, a beauty brand specializing in cosmetics and skin care , achieved a three-fold increase in the number of orders from the AMS Marketing Alliance during the 6.6 promotion compared to normal days. The following is the specific operation method of the brand:

First, during the preparation period for the promotion, the brand began to try out live advertising and free sample strategies. After receiving positive feedback, the brand invited high-quality influencers through AMS and set promotion commissions to lock in influencer schedules in advance. During this period, the brand operation team invited more than a thousand beauty influencers to try out the products and publish unboxing videos through the AMS open platform, leading the market trend and accumulating sales.

Secondly, O.TWO.O set 2-5 times the AMS and CPAS budget during the promotion period, locked in the target influencers and continued to give promotion commissions, achieving a considerable conversion rate. Not only that, on the day of the promotion, three groups of store live broadcast rooms were set up to achieve 18 hours of uninterrupted live broadcast.

With the combination of AMS+advertising+live broadcast+CPAS, the number of orders for the O.TWO.O promotion has skyrocketed.

Stocking and fulfillment: making goods "run" faster

In the evaluation systems of many e-commerce platforms, fast logistics fulfillment capabilities are often regarded as a significant advantage for sellers. Especially during e-commerce promotion seasons, consumers often compare products offered by multiple sellers. Sellers with fast logistics response capabilities can get ahead of the competition and deliver products to consumers in a timely manner, thereby effectively improving purchase conversion rates and attracting more orders.

To this end, Shopee gave two suggestions:

First, we will focus on expanding Shopee’s official warehouses, which will not only provide 60 days of free warehouse rent, but also provide exclusive traffic support for the “Fulfilled by Shopee” label. In addition, Shopee also provides exclusive manager services, which aim to help partners optimize inventory management and improve logistics efficiency through professional one-on-one support.

The second is to upgrade the “one store, multiple shipments” model, which will make it compatible with cross-border logistics and localized fulfillment, and help sellers quickly increase their sales through low trial and error costs.

With these two suggestions, during the preparation period for the big promotion, sellers can prepare inventory for the next 60-90 days based on the hot-selling product list . It is worth mentioning that since the markets are prone to "port congestion" in the second half of the year, combined with the customs clearance and warehousing cycle, the goods in overseas warehouses can be shipped 45-60 days in advance, especially Malaysia and the Philippines need special attention.

After everything is ready, sellers who use SLS Shopee logistics services during the promotion period need to urge the warehouse to complete delivery and scanning within 2 delivery days. For sellers who use LFF localized fulfillment services, they need to urge orders to be shipped from the local warehouse as soon as possible.

Also in this year's 6.6 promotion, HOOWO, a seller specializing in home appliances, received five times more orders than usual with the above strategy, and achieved a breakthrough of over 1,000 orders at its Philippines site.

It is reported that Jumenghong first entered the official warehouse of Shopee in the Philippines in May, and during the preparation of the promotion, it strategically selected items with extremely competitive prices and actively participated in various promotions organized by the platform, which enabled it to enjoy an additional 30%+ traffic subsidy support compared to other sellers. At the same time, during the promotion, Jumenghong will conduct a detailed inventory of inventory status and monitor the order processing progress of the warehouse before 12:00 am every day; for products with slower circulation, the company also adopted a price reduction strategy to promote rapid inventory turnover and clearance.

In the upcoming sales peak, Shopee has launched a new logistics value-added service in the Philippines and Malaysia, "Logistics+: Overseas Free Return Service", to address the logistics challenges that sellers may encounter during the surge in order volume. This service is tailored for sellers using Shopee Logistics Service (SLS) and mainly solves the problem of delivery failure caused by buyers. According to the terms of service, sellers can obtain service grants provided by the platform for eligible orders that meet certain conditions, which helps to reduce the pressure on sellers due to reverse logistics returns and reduce the losses incurred by sellers during operations.

In addition, in order to provide sellers with more flexible cash flow solutions during the big promotion, Shopee official wallet's early payment service has been newly launched in Singapore. The service currently supports 7 major sites. All supported sites have added an automatic payment function. After the seller simply turns on this function in the background, their daily shipped orders can automatically apply for early payment, which effectively reduces manual operation costs. Invited sellers can also enjoy a limited-time better interest rate for the big promotion, which can be reduced by up to 4% on the existing basis.

In order to further improve the efficiency of sellers' fund management, Shopee's official wallet has also added a personalized note service for bank account payees, allowing sellers to manage multiple supplier accounts more efficiently. Sellers can customize transaction notes when withdrawing or paying, and can download transaction vouchers independently, which greatly simplifies the complex operations in the payment verification process, thereby reducing the seller's time cost when checking payments and managing payees. On this basis, Shopee's official wallet free withdrawal rights card also launched a daily free order event during the 9.9 promotion. New sellers can enjoy 0 withdrawal fees upon registration, as well as advertising incentives of up to $1,120 per month, and other activities continue to give back to new and old users, helping sellers to go global with peace of mind during the promotion.

The launch of the above services marks that Shopee is providing full-scale and multi-angle support to sellers, especially providing more solid logistical support during large-scale promotional events.

In conclusion: Now is the critical stage for sellers to prepare for the peak season. In this stage full of opportunities and challenges, it is crucial to develop an effective strategy for explosive sales. And Shopee's approach has obviously made further upgrades in cross-border strategy, attacking in three directions: depth (diversified overseas routes), speed (full-chain upgrade of logistics fulfillment services), and breadth (strengthening the content ecology of live broadcasts, short videos, etc.), helping more sellers to seize the traffic dividends during the peak season and accelerate the growth of explosive sales. Moreover, this methodology has been proven to be successful and effective. In this peak season, sellers only need to learn from this strategy to achieve a leap in performance.

In addition, there are many things to do during a big sale. Sellers can prepare according to the following checklist:

Peak season sales boom

Shopee