Alibaba Group Holding Limited recently officially kicked off the 14thedition of its 11.11 Global Shopping Festival (“11.11” or “Festival”), featuring more than 290,000 brands. This year, Alibaba will equip merchants with tools and solutions to grow their brand loyalty membership programs and unveil new products, among other initiatives, to help them succeed during and beyond 11.11. To date, more than 40 brands on Tmall have loyalty membership programs that surpassed ten million members and 600 brands have loyalty membership programs with over one million members.
“11.11 this year will have the most diverse range of products in the event’s history, with 17 million products available to more than one billion annual active consumers on our platforms in China, thanks to the support of our brands and merchants from around the world,” said Chui Xue, President of Industry Development and Operation Center of Taobao and Tmall, Alibaba Group.
“11.11 is the most powerful engine for our merchants’ customer growth every year. Transforming consumer awareness into customer loyalty is key to generating the best return on investment. We will introduce technology and business innovations while enhancing supply-demand matching and loyalty membership management, to support our brand and merchant partners. Ultimately, we aim to turn customer assets into the most important driving force for merchants’ long-term business growth.”
11.11 presale on Tmall will kick offat 8 pm Beijing time on October 24. Two check-out windows will follow – the first window will begin at 8pm on October 31 and end on November 3, while the second window will last from 8pm November 10 to November 11.
Helping brands cultivate high-value customers
Alibaba will support merchants on loyalty member recruitment, along with other initiatives, to promote the broader use of membership systems as a tool to attract, engage and retain consumers by merchants on its platforms.
Alibaba’s ecosystem-wide premium loyalty membership program 88VIP has over 25 million members with annual average spending of more than RMB57,000[1], which reflects the high-quality consumer base with strong purchasing intent on its platforms. Alibaba is well-positioned and committed to helping merchants build up their own membership operation capabilities to better target and serve customers during the customer lifecycle. Many top brands, including Nike and Unilever, are already running brand loyalty membership programs through their Tmall stores to engage with existing customers more effectively and capture new customers, especially from the base of over 123 million annual active consumers who spend more than RMB10,000 annually[2] on Taobao and Tmall.
Livestreaming continues to be an effective channel for consumer engagement, and Alibaba will support merchants with the capability to host self-run livestreaming sessions during 11.11 through Taobao Live.
New products will be introduced this 11.11, including fashion and accessories from top luxury brands Moncler and Ferrari that opened Tmall flagship stores in the past month. Many brands will also showcase the fruits of their product innovation incubated based on insights from the Tmall Innovation Center (TMIC).
Supporting merchants at home and abroad
Incentives for merchant and influencer-hosted livestreaming sessions will be one of many ways Alibaba will provide support to small and medium-sized businesses on its platforms this 11.11. In particular, Alibaba will offer marketing exposure and customer targeting assistance to newly-launched livestreaming channels.
Alibaba will also provide merchants with access to business intelligence tools and financial support. For example, a marketing analysis tool will be made available to all merchants on Taobao and Tmall for the first time during this 11.11 to guide merchants’ real-time business decision-making. Tmall and Taobao will also provide faster payment transfers for merchants to ease their liquidity during 11.11, halving the account receivable cycle to seven days on average for certain products.
To support the growing demand for logistics support from cross-border merchants, Cainiao has further streamlined warehousing, customs clearance, line haul and distribution for 11.11. It has increased the number of its import line haul routes by 20% and doubled the capacity of its self-operated bonded warehouses. Cainiao launched 400 line haul services spanning air, sea, road and rail to cover key import markets. For export from China, Cainiao is collaborating closely with AliExpress to offer delivery services within a committed timeframe and late-delivery compensation in various markets, ensuring a smoother experience for merchants and consumers.
For less-developed markets, Taobao Deals is working with more than 1,800 industrial clusters in China during 11.11 to offer value-for-money products, including groceries from over 10,000 factories.
A glimpse into a greener consumer experience
This year will see more initiatives aimed at building a greener 11.11 community. In accordance with the newly released standard guideline for low-carbon products by Alibaba Group, at this year’s 11.11, Tmall has ramped up efforts to label low-carbon products covering extended shopping categories such as apparel, food and cosmetics apart from energy-efficient electronic goods to drive sustainable consumptions. The new product label aims to help consumers better identify low-carbon products on the platform, check their impact of purchases on the environment and encourage more sustainable choices.
Tmall has also collaborated with 40 plus brands to initiate a green campaign to promote low-carbon products through various initiatives. For instance, 10 brands out of the 40 plus such as Procter & Gamble, Haier, ThinkPad and Yili have co-branded with Tmall to make innovative and sustainable shopping bags as free gifts for consumers with an aim to encourage consumption on sustainable products. According to Tmall, one crossover bag is made from 6 recycled PET plastic bottles that can be sourceable. In addition, Tmall together with Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, have leveraged the cloud unit’s carbon management platform Energy Expert to provide online carbon footprint modeling, calculating and certification for the abovementioned 40 plus brands for them to identify low-carbon products and conduct informed sustainability practices.
Joining with thousands of merchants, Cainiao will help reduce carbon emissions from delivery and packaging, in addition to stepping up its parcel box recycling efforts across nearly 100,000 Cainiao Post stations offline.
