Online marketplace ShopClues.com is currently riding high on the popularity of its latest television campaign 'O Bhaisaab', that promotes its 'Sunday Flea Market'. This was the brand's third attempt at trying to get e-shoppers to log onto the site at a specifically demarcated time/day. Recall the 'Wednesday Super Saver Bazaar' and the '6 to 9 Gharwapsi Sale'?
We bring you a quick chat with Nitin Agarwal, associate vice president, marketing, ShopClues.com, who is glad people are beginning to find his brand "relevant."
"It's as though ShopClues was just waiting to be discovered," he tells us. Lots more where that came from.
Edited Excerpts.
Edited Excerpts
On the need for a 'curated sale' property like the 'Sunday Flea Market':
These are basically utilitarian products like hangers, agarbatti stands... stuff we always need at home but hat, somehow, never makes to the shopping list. For the deals, we reach out to merchants from our seller base... merchants who either have remnant inventories or an odd number of pieces that they want to liquidate. That's how they're willing to offer attractive discounts.
Sunday Flea Market (SFM) took off well. As against the industry conversion rate of three per cent, we saw a conversion rate of around 20 per cent on the property. It also worked very well in acquisition as well as retention (85 per cent) of customers.
SFM was launched to overcome the challenge that all e-commerce ventures face - that of low weekend traffic. On weekdays, people log on during work hours, but this is reversed on holidays. We researched the urban work force, college goers and young families in tier II and III cities. Many of these cities have something called the 'Shani Bazaar' (Saturday market) or the 'Mangal Bazaar' (Tuesday market). People do their 'utilitarian shopping' at these weekly neighbourhood 'haats'... that's where the idea for SFM came from.
On the perils of discount-driven models/properties:
It is true that customers these days are fickle and used to discounts, to the extent that they might not shop with you tomorrow if you are not offering one. That is why we have built these properties. They are based on specific insights into customers' buying behaviour and convenience, not on discounts.
On the 'Generalist Versus Specialist' proposition:
I have always maintained that the only true value that e-tailing sites like ours add to the business/ecosystem is the merchandising and buying experience.
We have understood the value-mindset of Indian customers in tier II and III cities very well. So, while we specialise in merchandising, there is equal focus on generalising horizontally across all categories. You can call us specialists in generalisation!
On the year gone by and goals for 2016:
2015 has been a good year for us. We increased our advertising spend. While this gave us more audience and visibility, the proof lies in the feedback. We grew around 4X to 5X in terms of traffic. The repeat ratio is healthy as well.
ShopClues' major goal for 2016 is to establish itself as the leader in the home and kitchen category, which constitutes 35 per cent of all our orders. We are already among the top three players in this vertical.
On the challenges he foresees:
I think there will be three major challenges. From app to the m-site, there is a lot of insanity prevailing. The first challenge will be to ascertain the customers' platform of choice... where are they shopping? The second challenge is to manage the noise that is being created by our competitors' ads... because our budgets are not as high as those of our peers, we will have to work harder to make sure our communication is more differentiated. Thirdly, we will ensure more effective distribution of content.
On his media mix/media plan:
The emphasis will be on television. It is our preferred medium for storytelling, and our customers in smaller cities love to hear stories. While we do not have any ground-burning media spends, they are healthy.
Digital is our bread and butter. Mobile traffic to our site has grown and today we receive nearly 65 per cent of our traffic from this medium (app plus mobile site). On digital, we spend a lot on performance marketing.
E-mail marketing is still a powerful tool for customer retention. While the growth has not been huge, it is a highly efficient medium. The cost per order through e-mail marketing is one-third that of any other medium. Around 50-60 per cent of our total 'retained audience' comes from here.
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