From Promotion Wars to Value Wars: The New Value of Customer Relationships in Shopping Festivals

At the end of each year, shopping festivals like Double 11, Black Friday, and Christmas-New Year sales are renowned shopping events globally recognized by consumers and crucial sales periods for retailers. These festivals are characterized by high discounts and low prices, attracting a vast number of consumers eager to purchase desired products at favorable prices. This surge brings astonishing traffic and sales growth to both online and offline channels of retail brands.

We shared the success principles behind these shopping festivals and explored how brands could prepare in advance on a technical level for the arrival of these events. In recent years, with changes in the market environment, the upgrading of consumer demands, and increasing familiarity with shopping festival practices, relying solely on price promotions has become less effective in continually capturing consumer attention and meeting their expectations. Facing the phenomenon of slowed sales growth during shopping festivals, many retail brands are seeking new strategies to stimulate consumer purchasing enthusiasm and embrace new growth opportunities.

Today, customers are more focused on the value and experience that brands can provide them. At the heart of this is the establishment and maintenance of customer relationships. Shopping festivals are not only golden periods for boosting sales but also pivotal opportunities for brands to establish a positive image in consumers’ minds and begin building lasting customer relationships.

[按此閱讀中文版]

The Importance of Customer Relationships

Transformation of Consumer Needs

Modern consumers, especially the younger generations who are gradually becoming the main force in the market, no longer blindly pursue low prices. They place greater emphasis on product quality, shopping experience, and the values conveyed by brands. They hope to establish an emotional connection with brands and resonate with their philosophies and values. For instance, more and more consumers are willing to pay a premium for brands or products that support sustainability principles or prefer brands that offer superior services. This shift means that enterprises need to focus more on cultivating customer relationships to meet consumers’ deeper needs.

Definition of Customer Relationships

A customer relationship refers to the long-term and trusted connection established between an enterprise and its customers. Beyond a mere transactional relationship, it encompasses multiple dimensions such as emotional connections, brand trust, and loyalty, promoting deep engagement between both parties and bringing sustained value to the brand.

Customer Satisfaction: The degree to which customers are satisfied with products and services. Consistently providing high-quality and satisfactory products and services can build consumers’ trust in the brand.
Customer Loyalty: The willingness of customers to repurchase the brand’s products and recommend the brand to others.
Brand Identity: This reflects the customers’ recognition of the brand’s philosophy and values and is their emotional connection with the brand. Generally, customers who identify with a brand’s values are more likely to be satisfied with its products and make continuous purchases. Gaining customers’ emotional recognition can significantly enhance their support and loyalty to the brand.

By establishing strong customer relationships, enterprises can transform consumers into loyal brand advocates, forming a stable customer base.

Why Customer Relationships Are the Foundation of Brand Success

Enhancing Customer Lifetime Value

Strong customer relationships are the cornerstone of brand success, playing an indispensable role in enhancing brand competitiveness and achieving long-term business development. Firstly, solid customer relationships can significantly increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). It’s well-known that long-term customers invest more in a brand’s products or services, with cumulative spending usually far exceeding that of occasional buyers. Satisfied and loyal customers may make multiple repeat purchases during various shopping seasons, such as Black Friday or Double 11, becoming a stable source of income for the brand.

Reducing Marketing Costs

Maintaining existing customers is significantly less costly than acquiring new ones. This not only reduces marketing expenses but also makes resource allocation more efficient. Loyal customers’ trust in the brand makes them more receptive to new product promotions, creating more opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. For example, during shopping festivals, brands can launch member-exclusive offers or gift sets to entice old customers to purchase a variety of products.

Promoting Word-of-Mouth

Strong customer relationships are also key in helping brands foster word-of-mouth promotion. Satisfied customers often proactively recommend the brand to friends and family. This positive word-of-mouth effect is particularly powerful in the age of social media. Genuine customer sharing and reviews are more persuasive than traditional advertising, attracting more potential customers.

Good customer relationships not only enhance a brand’s profitability but also establish a more resilient competitive advantage in the market. This is the core reason why many enterprises invest resources in building customer relationship management systems.

The Opportunity in Shopping Festivals: Turning First-Time Buyers into Loyal Customers

Shopping festivals are golden opportunities for brands to reach a vast number of new consumers. The immense shopping frenzy during these events allows brands to implement well-crafted marketing strategies that not only attract new customers but also gradually convert them into loyal patrons, establishing long-term customer relationships.

1. Attracting First-Time Buyers

The promotional intensity of shopping festivals effectively draws in new customers. Through time-limited discounts, gift-with-purchase promotions, and exclusive offers, brands can significantly increase their visibility and entice first-time buyers to give their products or services a try. For example, during the Double 11 festival, YOHO launched large-scale promotional activities that attracted numerous first-time shoppers to the platform. Each year, YOHO successfully captures market attention and engagement during Double 11, transforming the festival buzz into a significant increase in new user numbers.

2. Establishing an Initial Relationship

After attracting first-time buyers, brands can leverage shopping festivals as critical moments to establish initial customer relationships. Providing an excellent shopping experience to first-time buyers is crucial, including a clear and straightforward transaction process, fast logistics services, and high-quality after-sales support. For new customers, these details often determine their initial impressions of the brand.

For instance, during Black Friday promotions, brands can attract new customers to become members by offering member-exclusive discounts. This approach allows customers to feel valued by the brand. Through automated, personalized recommendation features within the membership program, brands can provide new members with a superior shopping experience, leaving a deep initial impression. Making consumers feel that every interaction is tailored specifically for them further enhances satisfaction with the shopping experience.

3. Promoting Long-Term Engagement

After the shopping festival ends, brands can convert the short-term hype into long-term customer relationships by continuously interacting with members and providing quality services. Through follow-up engagement and interaction, new customers can be transformed into loyal customers. This includes subsequent email marketing, personalized remarketing pushes, and special offers designed based on new members’ browsing behaviors.

By analyzing membership data, brands can recommend relevant products according to customers’ purchasing preferences and encourage repeat purchases by offering exclusive deals on related items. For example, within seven days after a user’s first purchase, the platform can send a thank-you email and an exclusive discount on recommended products, further strengthening the shopping engagement of new customers.

Practical Strategies for Building Customer Relationships—From Shopping Festivals to Daily Purchases

The value of shopping festivals extends beyond peak sales periods; they offer brands a rare opportunity to attract new customers and strengthen their existing base. However, transforming short-term traffic boosts into stable, ongoing revenue and deepening customer relationships is crucial for long-term brand success. Below are several effective strategies to help brands continue engaging with customers even after the shopping festival has ended.

Data-Driven Approach: Crafting Precise Marketing

Brands should fully leverage the potential of data analytics by integrating multi-channel data from both online and offline sources to build comprehensive customer profiles. This approach not only provides deep insights into customer behavior but also helps businesses create more targeted marketing plans. For example, sales data and consumer behavior records from shopping festivals can be used to analyze which products are most popular, which promotional models best attract customers, and which customer segments have high repurchase potential.

Customer segmentation is a core aspect of data application. By analyzing different customers’ shopping frequency, preferences, and purchasing power, brands can design precise marketing content and exclusive offers tailored to each group, thereby increasing customer engagement and purchase intent. For instance, a beauty brand can use member data to make accurate recommendations, offer exclusive discounts to high-frequency shoppers, and launch new product trials for potential customers, significantly enhancing customer satisfaction and repurchase rates.

Additionally, in the high-pressure environment of shopping festivals, real-time data analysis is particularly important. Brands can quickly adjust their marketing strategies by monitoring sales data and customer behavior in real time. For example, if a popular product is about to sell out, brands can promptly replenish stock and boost its promotion; for slow-moving products, they can swiftly adjust prices or offer additional discounts to avoid wasting resources.

Personalized Experience: The Key to Earning Customer Trust

Modern consumers increasingly value personalized shopping experiences. Brands that tailor their services based on customer preferences and needs can not only enhance consumer satisfaction but also effectively strengthen the emotional connection between the brand and the customer, further deepening customer relationships.

Brands can utilize technologies such as marketing automation and artificial intelligence to analyze customers’ browsing and purchasing history, recommending products they might be interested in. Personalized services significantly increase product visibility and shopping conversion rates. By proactively catering to customer needs and dynamically adjusting the customer journey map, every step of the shopping experience can address the customer’s immediate needs. Thoughtful services make customers feel valued by the brand.

Equally important is the way brands communicate with their customers. Content delivered through emails, SMS, and app push notifications should convey a sense of exclusivity tailored to each member. For example, using personalized salutations based on membership preferences and designing customized offers based on their activity records. These small details allow consumers to feel valued by the brand, thereby enhancing the brand’s credibility and loyalty.

Brands also need to focus on optimizing the overall user experience. Whether on the brand’s online store or mobile app, a consistent experience is essential. Emphasis should be placed on the smoothness and convenience of online channels, ensuring that search functions and checkout processes are simple, intuitive, and efficient. Reducing shopping friction allows customers to enjoy a pleasant shopping experience.

Post-Festival Follow-Up: Extending Brand Influence

After a shopping festival concludes, following up with customers is crucial. This not only presents an opportunity to deepen customer relationships but also serves as a key step in converting one-time shoppers into loyal customers. For example, brands can send thank-you messages to customers who participated in the shopping festival or invite customers to provide feedback on their festival experience and suggestions. On one hand, this makes customers feel that the brand values their opinions; on the other hand, the collected feedback can be used to optimize future services and products.

Furthermore, post-festival promotional activities should not be overlooked. Brands can offer exclusive discount coupons to customers who were active during the shopping festival or invite them to participate in member events, encouraging repeat purchases. This approach not only sustains the momentum of the shopping festival but also provides customers with additional value.

Additionally, brands need to maintain long-term interactions with customers through continuous content marketing. Zalora, a beauty brand, is a successful example. After the shopping festival, Zalora enhanced its repurchase rate and strengthened brand exposure and customer engagement by sending the latest product information and exclusive discounts via email and app push notifications, and by inviting consumers to participate in online fashion events.

Case Study: Suning’s Customer Relationship-Centric Shopping Festival Strategy

Suning is a well-known consumer electronics retailers that frequently organizes activities to attract new members. Through data-driven precise marketing, membership loyalty programs, and omni-channel services, Suning achieves dual growth in sales and customer retention through these events.

Suning excels at utilizing big data technology to analyze customer behaviors, pushing tailored promotional information based on different customer needs. For example, for customers who prefer home appliances, Suning recommends the latest products and related discount information, ensuring consumers can find the products they need when they need them, thereby enhancing shopping satisfaction.

Suning’s membership app, Hong Kong Suning APP, is a crucial tool for building customer relationships. After joining as a Suning member, members can instantly receive welcome rewards of up to HKD 800-1,000 through the app, access exclusive discounts, and earn points. This exclusive service for members not only increases consumer engagement but also further enhances brand loyalty.

Image source: https://www.hksuning.com/cuxiao/quickstartguide.html

Suning also places special emphasis on delivering an omni-channel shopping experience. By offering services such as online ordering, in-store pickup, and home delivery, Suning effectively meets the diverse needs of consumers. Additionally, whether through the website, app, or physical stores, Suning ensures consistent service levels, allowing consumers to experience the brand’s professionalism and dedication across all channels.

By combining data analysis, personalized marketing, and omni-channel services, brands can not only achieve impressive sales figures during promotional activities and shopping festivals but also lay a solid foundation for long-term customer management.

How Shopping Festivals Become Opportunities to Cultivate Customer Relationships

Shopping festivals are not only golden periods for boosting sales but also crucial opportunities for businesses to establish and deepen customer relationships. Through meticulously planned marketing strategies, brands can transform one-time purchases into long-term customer loyalty, laying the foundation for ongoing interactions in the future. Below are several actionable recommendations to help businesses effectively strengthen their connections with customers during shopping festivals.

Cultivating Anticipation in Advance

The success of a shopping festival often begins with building customer anticipation. Brands need to fully utilize the time before the festival to attract customer attention through various creative methods and enhance their excitement for the event.

Image Source: https://www.yohohongkong.com/en-us/post/568-YOHO11

Firstly, countdown calendars and previews are classic strategies for creating anticipation. For example, YOHO launched its Double 11 Shopping Festival flash sales countdown calendar before the Double Eleven shopping festival, revealing different discounted products each day. This successfully built significant user anticipation and encouraged consumers to act swiftly once the event commenced.

Leveraging Shopping Festivals to Drive Membership Conversion

During shopping festivals, offering exclusive member benefits is a key strategy to convert temporary shoppers into loyal customers. Brands can attract consumers to join membership programs, extending the short-term traffic benefits of the shopping festival into everyday operations, thereby strengthening long-term connections between the brand and its customers.

Member-exclusive benefits are essential for attracting consumers. For instance, Amazon’s Prime Day offers exclusive shopping benefits to Prime members, including larger discounts, free and faster shipping, and special promotional offers. This strategy not only increases member loyalty but also deepens the customer relationship between the brand and its members.

Simplifying the membership registration process is also an effective way to boost conversion rates. During shopping festivals, businesses can lower the barriers to joining by offering quick registration options (such as signing up with a Google account or social media login), helping customers complete membership registration swiftly and avoiding potential member loss due to complicated procedures.

Image Source: YOHO Hong Kong

Post-Festival Follow-Up and Interaction

After the shopping festival concludes, a brand’s continued follow-up directly impacts the maintenance and deepening of customer relationships. This is a crucial step in consolidating customer loyalty and encouraging repeat purchases.

For example, brands can send thank-you emails to customers, enhancing emotional connections by including purchase details, after-sales service information, and even thoughtful suggestions, making customers feel the brand’s sincerity and care.

Secondly, offering exclusive post-festival discounts is an effective way to encourage repeat purchases. For instance, within two weeks after the festival, brands can provide additional discounts or exclusive event invitations to customers who were active during the festival. This not only extends the event’s influence but also further strengthens the connection between the brand and its customers.

Finally, inviting customers to participate in feedback surveys helps brands understand customer needs and expectations, providing valuable insights for optimizing future events. Additionally, this makes customers feel like they are a part of the brand’s operations, further deepening the customer relationship.

By implementing these strategies—building anticipation beforehand, leveraging the festival to convert memberships, and maintaining post-festival follow-up—brands can effectively use shopping festivals as pivotal moments to cultivate and enhance customer relationships, ensuring long-term success and loyalty.

Future Trends: The Integration of the Experience Economy and Membership Applications

The Rise of the Experience Economy

Consumers are increasingly valuing the emotional interactions they have with brands, which lies at the heart of strong customer relationships. For instance, by creating immersive shopping environments or designing exclusive events, brands can make customers feel valued, thereby enhancing brand loyalty and fostering long-term interactions. In the era of the experience economy, consumers’ needs have shifted from merely acquiring products to seeking memorable experiences during the shopping process. To stand out in a highly competitive market and further strengthen connections with customers, brands must offer emotional satisfaction and unique experiences that go beyond the intrinsic value of their products.

Membership Applications as a Solution

Membership applications are becoming essential tools in the experience economy, helping businesses build closer customer relationships amidst the digital wave by shifting focus from mere sales to value creation centered around customer experiences. Through these applications, companies can achieve more efficient data management and personalized marketing while increasing the frequency of interactions with customers. This not only deepens customer relationships but also enhances the brand’s competitive advantage.

Membership applications can provide personalized experiences for customers. For example, based on a customer’s purchase history and preferences, the application can automatically push exclusive content and discount suggestions, making customers feel the brand’s thoughtful service. Additionally, this data-driven precise recommendation not only heightens customer engagement but also promotes two-way interactions between the brand and its customers. Incorporating gamification features into the application can further enhance customer interaction. Brands can set up daily tasks, point systems, or lottery events within the app to motivate customer participation, thereby increasing usage frequency and deepening emotional connections. Moreover, the application can serve as an effective channel for collecting customer feedback. By implementing simple surveys, businesses can promptly understand customer needs and continuously optimize their products and services based on the feedback, further strengthening the foundation of customer relationships.

Conclusion

In today’s fiercely competitive market environment, relying solely on price wars is insufficient for sustainable business growth. Building strong customer relationships, providing high-quality products and services, and meeting consumers’ deep-seated needs are the keys to a company’s success in intense competition. Shopping festivals should serve as opportunities for brands to establish a positive image in customers’ minds and to begin building customer relationships, rather than merely pursuing short-term sales figures.

Investing in customer relationships yields returns that far exceed short-term sales. Shopping festivals should be viewed as starting points for cultivating customer relationships, not as endpoints. Through data-driven precise marketing, personalized experiences, membership applications, and continuous customer interactions, brands can transform consumers’ purchasing enthusiasm into long-term loyalty. Solutions like the Motherapp Loyalty Platform can help businesses develop customized membership applications, gain deeper insights into customer needs, enhance customer experiences, and strengthen brand loyalty. By being customer-centric and leveraging digital tools such as membership applications, we can create unique value and collaboratively forge a brighter future. By continuously optimizing the customer experience, we can not only ignite consumers’ purchasing passions but also build a long-term, stable customer base, achieving sustainable business development.