How is your private domain sales during the 2023 Spring Festival?

Data released by major platforms and official media in recent days show that popular industries such as catering, tourism, and supermarkets have all "increased" to varying degrees, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is "retaliatory" consumption. In addition, this year is the first Spring Festival after the epidemic has been reopened for three consecutive years, and many data and new user behavior habits have attracted everyone's attention.

On the first day of work in the Year of the Rabbit, Jianshi launched a questionnaire survey to the private domain teams of major brands. Among the brands that responded, 10% said that their private domain performance soared during the 2023 Spring Festival, 55% of revenue remained flat, and 35% of brands said that their private domain performance was not as expected.

This survey echoes the current market trend. Data released by major platforms and official media in the past few days show that popular industries such as catering, tourism, and supermarkets have "increased" to varying degrees, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is "retaliatory" consumption. In addition, this year is the first Spring Festival after the epidemic has been lifted for three consecutive years, and many data and new user behavior habits have attracted everyone's attention.

Taking advantage of the start of work, Jianshi had detailed discussions with many brands’ private domain teams. In addition to understanding the data, we also saw many new trends worth mentioning.

1. 10% of brands’ private domain performance increased significantly

In the brand private domain questionnaire survey conducted by Jianshi on the first day of work, 10% of the brands said that their private domain performance increased significantly during the 2023 Spring Festival. For example, Xibei said that its private domain performance doubled compared with the same period last year. Lecoo Technology, which focuses on 3C sales, also told Jianshi that they moved sales forward, and their private domain sales performance at the end of the year increased by nearly 200% compared with the same period last year.

55% of brands said that their performance during the Spring Festival was at a normal level, not much different from previous years. In addition, 35% of brands said that their private domain performance was not as good as expected.

Interestingly, around the Spring Festival, Jianshi has been communicating with private domain operators of many brands in the group, and many people jokingly said that "private domain operators have no holidays." The overall data reflects the growth brought about by this hard work.

Of all the voices, the voice of "increase" is of course the most pleasing and the most concerned. For example, Nayuki's Tea released its Spring Festival sales data, showing that during the Spring Festival, the sales volume of stores nationwide increased by 120% compared with the same period last year, and some stores increased by 600%. The number of orders from stores nationwide increased both month-on-month and year-on-year, increasing by 82% month-on-month compared with the week before the festival and 120% year-on-year compared with last Spring Festival.

When Jianshi had an in-depth discussion with Nayuki, an insider mentioned that its private domain strategy centered on membership operations has contributed a lot to its overall sales.

The same is true for platform data. For example, WeChat mini-program data shows that during the Spring Festival, the number of hotel and travel orders increased by 76%, the number of catering orders increased by 40%, the number of retail channel orders (shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores, etc.) increased by 32%, and the number of movie and performance orders increased by 27%. Some retail and service industry companies also used WeChat for business to stay open during the Spring Festival, and the number of inquiries received by companies through "WeChat Customer Service" increased by 9 times.

During the Spring Festival, the volume of offline payment transactions using WeChat Pay increased by 23%, with supermarket and convenience store transactions at the top, and offline payment transaction volume reached its peak on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year.

These data are consistent with the information released by major local platforms and official agencies.

According to the latest VAT invoice data from the State Administration of Taxation, during this year's Spring Festival holiday, the sales revenue of consumption-related industries nationwide increased by 12.2% compared with the Spring Festival holiday last year. Among them, commodity consumption and service consumption increased by 10% and 13.5% year-on-year respectively, with consumption of daily necessities, home upgrades, and tourism services growing rapidly.

On January 28, the Zhejiang Department of Commerce released an analysis of the operation of the consumer market during the 2023 Spring Festival Golden Week. During the Spring Festival, the total transaction volume of Alibaba Taobao platforms in Zhejiang was about 20 billion yuan, and the number of orders was about 250 million times. The 10 e-commerce platforms monitored achieved a transaction volume of 63.846 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.3%; the number of orders was 628,000, a year-on-year increase of 5.5%.

The "2023 Spring Festival Holiday Consumption Trends" released by JD.com shows that the transaction volume share of mobile communications, household appliances and medical care has increased significantly; the upgrade of service consumption is even more obvious, with the transaction volume of life services during the Spring Festival increasing by 302% compared with the same period of the lunar calendar last year; the sales of "Rabbit" year themed jewelry increased by more than 10 times year-on-year, the overall sales volume of gift boxes increased by more than 50% year-on-year, and the transaction volume of pre-prepared meals increased by more than 6 times year-on-year.

Meituan's "2023 Spring Festival Consumption Data Report" shows that in the six days before the holiday, out-of-town consumption in the life service industry increased by 76% compared with the same period last year. The number of orders for multi-person dine-in packages nationwide increased by 53% year-on-year. Among them, Shanghai's dine-in consumption was the most prosperous, with orders increasing by 240% year-on-year.

From these data, we can see that consumer power began to "recover" in 2023.

2. Behind the rise and fall of private domain performance

One of the main reasons for the increase in performance is the influence of product categories, such as the liquor category is a hot product during the Spring Festival.

According to insiders of Jiaogepengyou and Jianshi, liquor sales were good during the Spring Festival, with many single products exceeding one million in sales. During the Spring Festival, the total liquor sales in Jiaogepengyou's live broadcast room exceeded 300 million, a year-on-year increase of 30%. The sales of all live broadcast rooms exceeded 1.5 billion, the highest figure in the past year.

The popularity of the liquor category can even be seen if we look back at the advertisements placed during the Spring Festival Gala.

In addition to the impact of categories, another reason for the increase is the insight into user needs and the innovation of interactive gameplay and content.

For example, during the Spring Festival, Wumart Group's private WeChat account had a cumulative sales of nearly RMB 100 million, a year-on-year increase of more than 20%. Chen Junzheng, general manager of Wumart Group's home delivery business unit, told Jianshi that they upgraded the column content in the new year to help with sales opportunities, and worked with stores to achieve sales conversion improvements.

Of course, there were not only increases during the Spring Festival, but also many "decreases", which were also affected by product categories, express delivery, earlier sales times, holidays, etc.

As Wang Xichen, head of Zhuoer Digital's private domain team, told Jianshi, they observed that some brands' private domain teams had lower sales during the Spring Festival, which were lower than during weekdays.

The first reason is that the category is not very relevant to the Spring Festival and is not suitable for sales during the festival; the second reason is that the execution team is on vacation during the Spring Festival and there is relatively little maintenance. When observing the performance of private domains during the Spring Festival, the Quanliang team also mentioned similar views to Jianshi.

In addition, the popularity of offline stores will also bring fluctuations in private domain sales. For example, the head of a well-known fast-moving consumer goods chain brand told Jianshi that they tend to focus on offline stores during the Spring Festival and do not have much time to carry out online operations during the Spring Festival. This is reflected in the data, that is, the data of the entire offline stores has increased significantly, but the changes in online private domain data are not obvious.

3. Five ways to increase private domain performance

The survey around the Spring Festival still shows that many new ways of playing have been determined, or they will be continuously operated and strengthened throughout 2023. Among them, at least five of them were mentioned by different brand teams around traffic delivery, link combination, interactive content and activity innovation:

1. Douyin live broadcast + WeChat private domain closed loop

Huang Sheng, Private Domain Partner of Li Guoqing & CEO of Social New Retail Innovation Center, told Jianshi that they will let users place their first order in Douyin live broadcast room, and then guide them to join the private domain (success rate of 70%+), and continue to make repeat purchases and fission. This combination will at least increase the annualized income of the private domain by 2-6 times (that is, the public domain performance of wine: private domain performance = 1:2-6).

2. Choose Douyin and Xiaohongshu as your advertising channels

When observing the data of social media placement during the 2023 Spring Festival, Weibo found that brands prefer Douyin and Xiaohongshu among social media accounts. In terms of the amount, it is at least 7 to 10 times that of its direct competitors. In terms of the number of placements, it is at least 8 to 9 times that of its competitors.

Moreover, the release schedule of these large-scale ads was locked in a month in advance. Most of the released content pursues the integration of brand and effect, that is, it is related to bringing goods.

3. Insight into needs + interactive innovation + publicity resonance

During the Spring Festival, Wumart Group's private WeChat account had a cumulative sales of nearly 100 million yuan, an increase of more than 20% year-on-year. Chen Junzheng, general manager of Wumart Group's home delivery business unit, and Jianshi said that they did three things right:

1. In terms of insight into user needs, Wumart grasped the needs of users who return home for the Spring Festival to give gifts, paid attention to this year's popular gifts, and through selling point packaging and scene marketing, repeatedly promoted in-depth operations, achieving year-on-year sales growth of many star products such as cherries and Chu oranges, and social network-related sales exceeded 3 million in a single day;
2. In terms of column content upgrades and interactive innovation, we mainly created hot spot activities, such as "Tell me your New Year's wishes" and "My New Year's goodies", and used content seeding activities to bring users closer. During the Spring Festival, the number of visitors to the relevant interactive columns exceeded 200,000, an increase of more than 20% month-on-month.
3. During the Spring Festival, we worked closely with stores and regarded the community as the second front for store sales. Stores independently filmed and published store sales scenes with a sense of life, answered customer inquiries in real time, and did a good job in promoting fresh food recommendations, event announcements, and product promotions, achieving publicity resonance.

Chen Junzheng mentioned that Wumart's subsequent event planning will closely follow the festivals and solar terms, and will plan events for festivals such as the Lantern Festival, Valentine's Day, and Dragon Head-raising Festival, such as the popular Beijing-style Jinfang Lantern Festival and the Valentine's Day limited-time sale of luxury brands. He believes that the future value point of the private domain will be to increase exposure and attract traffic to the store through omni-channel promotion and promotion such as social networks, Moments, subscription messages, and 1V1, and to increase sales of differentiated categories on the main site APP based on the attributes of the community.

4. Accurate operation and maintenance to cultivate user life journey + improve single product penetration

233 Brand Private Domain also mentioned that a community supermarket brand client it serves has seen rapid growth in terms of popular New Year gift boxes (cherry gift boxes & self-branded New Year dishes such as Golden Soup Buddha Jumps Over the Wall) and self-branded New Year dishes. Its specific approach is:

During the New Year Goods Festival, private domain communities will promote products through ① preheating period water storage + New Year goods combination, focusing on good products at low prices, and recommending New Year goods scene combination matching ② outbreak period - New Year gift matching product promotion, and New Year greetings and gift scene recommendations. The community will be reached daily, and at the same time, the community will have exclusive reservations for hot New Year dishes in all stores, and you can get the brand’s own beer when you check out at the store.

Finally, a private community campaign was launched to share orders and give away gifts for New Year gift boxes. Thousands of places for the giveaway were responded to by users in the group, and the expectations were met in just two days, so the giveaway campaign ended ahead of schedule.

Another membership-based supermarket brand of 233 Brand Private Domain Services achieved growth during the Spring Festival by using the following private domain gameplay:

The content of the private domain community revolves around product promotion and promotional activities, including: 100% lucky draw for orders; gifts for orders over a certain amount; 98% off on fresh food on the New Year's table. On New Year's Eve, the community also held a table sharing event around the festival, and a "New Year's Seven Days of Joy" daily interactive check-in Q&A event for the seven days of the New Year. Cherries are also a hot-selling product. The brand's private domain community sales method is to provide pre-sale welfare coupons.

The success of these two supermarket clients' private domain marketing during the Spring Festival is based on precise operation and maintenance to cultivate the user life journey and continuously improve the penetration performance of single products.

In the future, as the market size expands, the scale of private domains will also continue to grow. Member communities can be managed, interacted, and activated in an organized and systematic manner, connecting products and users, with a focus on improving member activity and member penetration.

5. Automated operations are always available

According to public data from WeChat, during the Spring Festival, the number of inquiries received by companies through "WeChat Customer Service" increased by 9 times. Some companies in the retail and service industries achieved "staying open during the Spring Festival" with the help of WeChat for Business.

Wang Xichen, head of the private domain team at Zhuoer Digital Technology, found that the "unmanned sales" volume of the brand customers they serve has doubled during the Spring Festival. That is, through the pre-set operation SOP for automated operation, it can run well during the Spring Festival, and the final conversion can be completed without the need for EBA online maintenance. The conversion rate has also doubled compared to normal days.

Author: Chen Shan, A Shuang

Source: Jianshishijie (ID: jianshishijie)