For the overall management of e-commerce promotions, how to plan activities throughout the year? In other words, how do you organize a calendar of events throughout the year? How long should each activity last? How to arrange the rhythm? How are activities graded? How to configure activity resources for different levels of activities? For companies with multiple business lines, such as comprehensive e-commerce companies, how to balance activity resources among business lines? In this article, the author will explain it to you in detail.

China's e-commerce market is strongly driven by promotions.

According to industry statistics: about 90% of e-commerce transactions are completed through various forms of promotion. In addition to daily promotions, large and small promotional "festivals", also known as "big sales" in e-commerce terms, run throughout the year.

Top promotion in the e-commerce field

Double 11

This is a shopping festival created by Alibaba in 2009. The original intention of creating the Double 11 festival is not really to help single men shop and relieve their loneliness.

November was chosen because it is traditionally a low season for retail, sandwiched between the two prime shopping periods of National Day and the end of the year. It is also an important time for businesses to boost performance and clear out inventory at the end of the year.

Alibaba deliberately created Double 11 to help merchants alleviate the problem of off-season sales through big promotions. Unexpectedly, the business became so popular that it even changed the seasonal pattern of retail, turning November into a peak sales season.

618

This is JD’s birthday. On June 18, 1998, Liu Qiangdong founded JD.com in Zhongguancun.

In the early days of 618, JD.com would hold some small promotional activities in the form of store celebrations. After Alibaba’s Double 11 promotion kicked off in 2009, JD.com quickly followed up in 2010, creating a corresponding festival on June 18 and launching the 618 promotion.

June is also a traditional off-season for sales. Compared with November, it lacks the significance of year-end sales rush and inventory clearance. Therefore, the overall scale of 618 is slightly smaller than Double 11, but it is still the second largest shopping festival in e-commerce, and has alleviated the retail downturn in June to a certain extent.

Black Friday

The full name is Black Friday, which is the largest shopping festival in Europe and the United States.

The most popular shopping season in Europe and the United States is Christmas shopping, which usually starts on the second day of Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday in November), which is the fourth Friday in November. Amazon, the global e-commerce leader, has launched the Black Friday promotion to create an online shopping carnival around the world.

In China, the disadvantage is that Black Friday is slightly later than Double 11, and many consumers are still in the post-promotion fatigue period, and their chopped hands have not fully healed, which is not conducive to the Black Friday shopping. I wonder if Jack Ma chose Double 11 as a deliberate plan to get ahead of Amazon's Black Friday.

In China today, Black Friday has become a standard cross-border shopping carnival.

In addition to Double 11, 618, and Black Friday, many Chinese e-commerce platforms also have many large and small promotional festivals, such as Double 12, Double Holidays (Christmas and New Year's Day), New Year's Goods Festival, Valentine's Day (multiple Chinese and Western ones), Goddess Day, Mother's Day, Children's Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, back-to-school season, home decoration season, and so on. It can be said that these shopping festivals, big and small, run throughout the year.

Then, for the overall management of e-commerce promotions, there are several main issues:

1. How to plan activities throughout the year? In other words, how do you organize a calendar of events throughout the year?

2. How long should each activity last? How to arrange the rhythm?

3. How to classify activities? How to configure activity resources for different levels of activities?

4. For companies with multiple business lines, such as comprehensive e-commerce companies, how to balance activity resources between business lines?

This article will provide you with some ideas on these issues based on my practical experience in promotion management.

1. General principles for event scheduling

The event calendar is a preliminary schedule of major promotions for the following year that is arranged at the end of the previous year. The main principles for event scheduling are as follows:

1. Take advantage of the situation

When planning activities throughout the year, the first idea is to get traffic, traffic, and traffic . Important things should be said three times. In fact, this is what is called taking advantage of the situation .

I have a deep understanding of the issue of freeloading traffic. In the early years, I was quite sentimental and hoped that the team would choose dates based on their own characteristics when setting promotional nodes and create their own shopping festivals. Later on, it was increasingly discovered that cold-starting a shopping festival is extremely costly and difficult. It requires large-scale publicity to build consumer awareness, and it also requires special cooperation from merchants to provide promotional items or special discounts. The communication costs and prices are also high.

Gradually, I realized that the best way to do it is to take advantage of the traffic.

For those shopping festivals that have already formed a strong perception, such as Double 11, 618, and Black Friday, consumers basically go around with a strong mentality of "buying things must be cheap, and not buying will lose hundreds of millions." They are hungry, excited and impulsive, and they also believe in promotional prices (even if the original prices are false). Traffic and sales at this time are bound to be very strong.

I have a friend who is in charge of a medium-sized platform. According to his observation, on Double 11, his platform basically did no real promotion, but only put up a few promotional signs, and the sales volume was 6 times that of usual!

At the same time, for high-profile shopping festivals, suppliers often prepare promotional items and discounts in advance, making communication relatively easy.

Therefore, for industry-wide promotions such as Double 11 and 618, everyone must make corresponding arrangements to take advantage of the momentum.

2. Plan topics based on seasonality and festivals

In addition to taking advantage of the industry's big promotion traffic, vertical enterprises or category lines should also pay attention to seasonal periods or corresponding festivals that are highly relevant to their own industry characteristics when arranging special activities. For example, the maternal and infant industry must do Children's Day and Mother's Day; the beauty and accessories industry must do Goddess Day and Valentine's Day; the supermarket and fast-moving consumer goods industry must pay attention to the New Year's Goods Festival; the fresh food industry needs to grasp the traditional festivals such as Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and 517; and stationery and clothing must grasp the start of the school season and the spring and autumn dress-up seasons.

In addition, vertical industries also need to benchmark against competitors, focusing on competitors' promotional arrangements and industry-specific shopping festivals, intercepting traffic and getting a piece of the pie. For example, cross-border e-commerce must participate in Black Friday; the home appliance industry can take advantage of 818 (Suning store anniversary), and so on.

3. Grasp the hot spots and make unplanned arrangements

Being sensitive to hot spots and making timely and unplanned rapid responses to emergencies is also an important strategy for arranging special activities. For example, when East China suddenly encounters high temperatures, it is a great opportunity to hold a special event to prevent heatstroke and reduce temperature; when Beijing suddenly encounters severe smog, we can immediately hold a special event to prevent smog; when South China encounters a cold wave, we can hold a special promotion of "stay at home when it's cold"; when Jin Yong passes away, it is time to hold a big book promotion centered on martial arts. The opportunities brought about by the sudden outbreak... everyone has witnessed this.

4. Category line activity planning

The activity planning of the category line mainly considers the following three points:

1) Make arrangements based on the characteristics of your own category, and firmly grasp the category sales peak season or corresponding festivals to arrange category promotion activities. This can be referred to the second point. At the same time, we should also take advantage of the industry peak and make corresponding arrangements when competitors are holding high-level promotions, compete with prices, leverage on the momentum for publicity, and intercept traffic.

2) Make arrangements based on your own market budget. This is relatively easy to understand. Only with a budget can we support better promotion and sales. The most important thing is to concentrate resources, not disperse them, to carry out fewer but better activities, with loudness and to hit the target in one go. One campaign with good results is better than many campaigns with mediocre results. For example, a campaign that covers 1 million people is better than four campaigns that cover 500,000 people, because the coverage of these four campaigns may only be 700,000 people after deduplication, while the campaign of 1 million people brings in 300,000 new customers or activates dormant customers, which is definitely beneficial in the long run. At this time, it is not appropriate to simply look at the sum of sales data.

3) First understand the company’s overall activity schedule, try to take advantage of it, make good arrangements for it, and then decide on the activities that will lead the category. There is no doubt that the best traffic to get is platform traffic, and the best resources to get are platform resources. First, understand the company's activity calendar, and of course, if you can get a ride, you should get it first. On this basis, the category activity calendar is planned according to seasonality and business line resources.

2. Activity classification and rhythm

Site-wide activity management requires defining the activity level and making corresponding rhythm arrangements and resource investments.

For large platforms, activities can be divided into 3~4 levels.

1. S-Class

This is the highest level of activity and is usually a company strategic level activity.

S-level activities require full investment of resources and comprehensive planning at least three months in advance, from preparation, to accumulation of water, to warm-up, to category charge (special event), to outbreak, to return. The entire S-level event preparation and execution process will be very long, and careful preparations will be made in all aspects such as traffic generation, product selection, product cold start, promotion design, venue construction, etc., to strive for the best results and create a record-breaking peak.

Let’s take a look at the schedule of Taobao Double 11 and JD 618 in 2019:

• Taobao Double 11

Note: There is no unified plan for the return period, and merchants arrange it on their own; the price guarantee period is not an event arrangement.

• JD.com 618

It can be seen that Taobao took 2.5 months and JD.com took 3 months to carry out the entire S-level event. There are some differences between the two arrangements:

• JD.com’s self-operated products cover many categories. In order to extend the peak sales period and reduce promotion fatigue, JD.com shortened the warm-up period and set up a category charge phase (sales period). Each category took turns to increase sales, and during the three-day outbreak period, all categories flourished, triggering a climax. Taobao did not arrange a category charge phase, but instead took a longer time to warm up. But when we look at the data, we find that JD.com’s sales volume during the sales period is not that large, and the majority of sales are still concentrated during the explosive period.
• Taobao’s explosive growth period is 1 day, and JD’s is 3 days. In fact, most of the sales during the explosive period of both were completed on the first day. At the same time, the promotional activities of many merchants on Taobao continued for a few days beyond the platform's explosive period. The difference in arrangements did not have much impact on the results.
• JD.com focuses on self-operation, which is similar to a large store with a unified return period arrangement. Although Taobao does not have this unified arrangement, it is a platform and merchants can arrange return activities on their own.

From the perspective of leveraging momentum, for medium-sized platforms, Double 11 must undoubtedly be arranged as S-level. In addition, you can create another strategic-level event based on your own characteristics, and if possible, arrange one in the first and second half of the year. 618 can be considered as another S-level event, or another event supporting strategic business can be created as S-level, and 618 can be arranged as A-level.

S-level activities will undoubtedly require the mobilization of all site resources for support. Not only should the resources from the first screen to the first N screens of the four major platforms (App, PC, Web, and mini-programs) be open to S-level activities, but every corner of the entire site (main and sub-venues, channels, museum areas, shopping processes, personal centers) should be thoroughly explored and carefully scrutinized, and all off-site resources, external promotion channels, purchasing advertising space, marketing resources of partners and suppliers, and even express packaging boxes should all be used to serve S-level activities, and new traffic windows should be creatively developed to achieve pervasiveness.

The requirements for merchants and suppliers to participate in the promotion, such as product thresholds, inventory requirements and discount levels, must be met according to the highest standards in S-level promotions.

It is particularly important to note that giant platforms such as Taobao and JD.com, because of their abundant resources and huge influence, have many activities that are "inflated" to S-level in a year in order to attract more merchants to sign up and customers to participate. However, although both are S-level, there are huge differences between activities in terms of resources and traffic. For example, Taobao’s Double 12 and Double 11 are far from comparable, and JD’s Qixi Festival and 618 are also far from comparable. This situation has caused huge differences in activities at the same level. In essence, there are many "pseudo-S-level" activities. From the perspective of activity classification management, I do not think this is a reasonable strategy.

2. Grade A

If S-level activities are carnivals for all categories, then A-level activities can be designed as cross-category activities with clear priorities (it can also be divided into A+ level, which is an all-category activity slightly weaker than S-level), or core strategic category promotions, such as Taobao Women's Wear Festival, JD New Year Festival, etc. (it can be considered as pseudo S-level and real A-level).

In terms of category configuration and resource allocation, the corresponding key categories should take the lead, and other categories should be auxiliary, with venues and resources clearly prioritized.

For example: During the New Year Goods Festival, consumers have a strong desire to purchase before the Spring Festival, but the categories will be relatively concentrated in food, wine, general merchandise, and gifts, with other categories such as clothing, mother and baby, beauty, home appliances and digital products as supplementary categories. Categories such as office supplies, stationery, home decoration, and medicine are relatively far-fetched and can be excluded, or only given deeper auxiliary or supplementary resource positions.

In terms of resource allocation, the resources allocated to A-level activities will be relatively reduced, but there will still be eye-catching resource exposure and venue entrance on the first screen of the four major platforms. At the same time, a certain degree of company-level resource support can be provided, such as channels, externalization, suppliers and other resources.

The participation standards for merchants' A-level activities can be lowered to a certain extent compared to S-level.

In terms of activity resources, participation standards, and activity rhythm, the platform can make calculations and plans based on its own characteristics. It is recommended to concentrate resources and strike a good balance based on your actual capabilities, try to find the best turning point and achieve results. For example, if the discount required is too large in terms of submission standards, fewer merchants will participate; if the discount is too small, the marketing effect will be poor. It is necessary to carefully calculate based on historical data for the same period and pre-event sales data to find the best balance.

3. Class B

These are more activities arranged for a certain vertical category or large brand, such as food festival, lighting festival, toy festival, etc. It also has a prominent seasonality and is often paired with Chinese and Western festivals. Suppliers corresponding to the category participate, the registration standards are further lowered, and the categories and consumers are more vertical.

In terms of resources, more activity entrances will be placed in the regular activity resource entrances of the entire site (such as the top focus, big promotion floors) and category resources (such as category channels), without developing and customizing special resource locations. Similarly, channels and outsourcing resources are mainly based on resources that can be coordinated by categories.

Because the resources consumed by Class B activities are relatively conventional, they can be flexibly arranged globally. The platform only needs to provide corresponding resource application rules and make appropriate coordination. Specific activity arrangements can be driven by business lines.

4. Summary of activity classification

To summarize briefly, for medium or large platforms, I think it is appropriate to divide the activities using the main site resources into three levels:

• S level, the highest level of activity in the company, strategic level, all product categories participate, all resources are open and fully supported. The requirements for brands and suppliers to participate in the event are the highest, and resources are also graded and matched. The operator is the company's promotion team and integrated marketing. Overall planning and execution. The preparation period is 2 to 3 months, with a complete rhythm, and the sprint and burst period is preferably 5 days.
• Level A, cross-category activities, strategic categories dominance, other categories auxiliary, core resources open. Brands and supplier categories participate as required. The company's promotion team is responsible for overall planning and coordination at the execution level. The core category team of the event is responsible for specific leadership and execution, and auxiliary categories cooperate. The rhythm only requires warm-up and burst, preferably within 3 days.
• Level B, category-level activities, are arranged according to seasonality and festivals, supported by regular resources, and special resources may be applied for as appropriate. Vertical category brands and suppliers participate according to event standards. The activity is led and executed by the category team, which applies for and uses resources according to the company's promotion rules and submits them for approval. There is no need for overall coordination, and the category lines can make flexible arrangements based on their own resource conditions. Of course, the category lines also need to make their own annual activity plans at the beginning of the year. Use category resources to warm up the rhythm, and the outbreak period is 1 day.

3. Frequency and duration of activities

A key factor in event planning is the total duration of the promotion throughout the year, the frequency of activities at all levels, and how to arrange the duration of a single activity. This section provides some analysis on this issue.

1. Frequency of activity

There must not be too few activities , because activities bring many benefits. They can achieve results in sales, attracting new customers, enhancing platform influence, clearing inventory, increasing consumer activity, supporting brands, competing for merchants, and increasing category penetration and population penetration. How can we miss such a great opportunity?

But there shouldn't be too many activities.

First, most activities have budgetary investment (the wool of promotion and marketing budget is all taken from the pig, not counting), and the investment is too dispersed, which cannot trigger enough social voice and penetrate the target consumer group at one time, and the performance is tepid, which is a bit of a loss;

Second, the team has limited energy. Planning and running a big promotion consumes a lot of time and energy. Too frequent activities will make the team tired, distract their energy, and lack of time will affect the effect of the activity.

Third, consumers will become promotion fatigued, become insensitive to promotions, and even develop a “no purchase without promotion” mentality.

When I first took over Amazon activities, I counted and found that there were more than 200 days of promotions of various sizes in the previous year. After carefully reviewing and counting resources with the CEO, we believe that based on our own capabilities, in order to ensure effectiveness, the total promotion duration scheduled for the whole year should not exceed 150 days (see the summary at the end of the article for the reasoning logic).

At the same time, in order to avoid the problem of messy event arrangements and strong business lines occupying more event resources, the promotion team continues to formulate relevant rules on event frequency, classification and resources, and strictly regulates the promotion process and event submission standards to rationally use resources and improve user experience and event effects.

In the following year, although various resource conditions and rapid changes in the company's business had a significant impact on the operation of the event, I could still clearly see that the event's gameplay and routines gradually became clearer, and the results became more predictable.

Here are the activity frequencies for large and medium-sized platforms that I think are reasonable:

1. 2~3 S-level promotions every year. A true S-level promotion requires careful planning, water accumulation (focusing on off-site placement and planting grass) and preheating (focusing on creating an atmosphere within the site and issuing coupons for pre-sales). It takes a long time and it is unrealistic to do too much, which will only affect the effect. If it is 2 times, then once in each of the first and second half of the year. If it is 3 times, then consider adding one more time in the second half of the year. Because in the second half of the year, both consumers' desire to buy and merchants' enthusiasm for promotions will be stronger, and activities will be more likely to achieve results. Double 11 is undoubtedly the best choice for an S-level event.

2. Except for the S-level promotion period and the Spring Festival (the month with the lowest traffic and the team is on vacation), one A-level promotion can be arranged in each other month, and no more than two times in special circumstances.

3. Class B activities can be arranged flexibly, 2 to 3 events per month is appropriate.

4. Try to stagger the promotion categories within each month and between months, and rotate them according to seasonality to reduce promotion fatigue.

Of course, the above ideas are just for reference, and each platform can increase or decrease them based on its own resources and team capabilities.

2. Activity duration

This is directly related to the activity level. We have seen that for S-level events in the industry, such as Double 11 or Black Friday, it is common for the event to take three weeks to a month from warm-up to climax to return, excluding the preparation period. But what is the effect of an activity that lasts for such a long time? Let’s take a look at the traffic trends.

The figure below shows the traffic trend of Amazon’s Black Friday promotion. The event lasted for nearly five weeks, with Double 11 as the warm-up and Black Friday as the climax. There was a return event for a few days after Black Friday.

During the event, heavily discounted hot products from all over the world continued to lead the trend. However, as we can see from the figure below, the traffic only rose for about 8 days during the climax stage. Except for a small bump during the Double 11 preheating period due to the industry promotion, the situation before and after was relatively close to normal.

Amazon Black Friday promotion traffic trends

For comparison, I pulled the traffic data of Taobao Double 11 and JD 618 in 2019 (this year, due to the epidemic, the data may be special), as follows:

Taobao Double 11 traffic (10.23~11.22)

JD.com 618 traffic (June 1st to June 30th)

Data source: Analysys Qianfan

From the above chart we can see that for Taobao and JD’s top promotions, traffic increased and then declined within 6 to 7 days. At the same time, JD.com also showed obvious post-promotion fatigue.

Although S-level activities have a long preparation and promotion process, the traffic and sales peak only lasts for no more than a week . To put it bluntly, there is no point in running an activity for too long. At this point we can conclude that S-level activities can be preheated for 2 to 3 weeks, and the subsequent explosive period should be about 3 to 5 days. However, self-operated platforms can arrange categories to take turns to increase sales volume during the warm-up period and extend the sales peak.

Now let’s take a look at the A-level activities. A-level activities can use category resources for dissemination and preheating, and apply for main site resources for the preheating and climax stages. The preheating period is preferably 3 to 5 days, and the outbreak period is 2 to 3 days.

When the activity lasts longer than 3 days, we see a significant post-activity fatigue in most cases (see the figure below). As a non-S-level activity, the outburst is relatively short and the peak is low. Such a fatigue period offsets the effect of the activity, which is not worth the loss.

Big sale sales comparison

Finally, the B-level activity uses category resources for appropriate warm-up, and the main site applies for resources for a 1-day burst period to complete the harvest.

3. Date Selection

In terms of date selection, the natural traffic volume on holidays and weekends is lower, especially the Spring Festival and long holidays, so they should be avoided as much as possible when arranging activities.

The figure below shows the average weekly traffic for the whole year (excluding November) calculated by the promotion team. The yellow value is the average value for the time periods with promotions, and the red value is the average value for the time periods without promotions.

One week traffic observation

We can see that the traffic situation is: Tuesday > Wednesday ≈ Monday > Thursday > Friday > Sunday > Saturday

Therefore, without the influence of holidays and other traffic-generating projects, Tuesday is the best natural traffic day of the week, and the first half of the week is better than the second half. Therefore, the promotion period can be arranged from Monday to Wednesday, and some content projects can be released on Saturdays and Sundays to plant grass and warm up.

4. Activity threshold and business line balance

In the management of big promotions, I always encounter business lines applying for the company's big promotion resources one after another. The competition is fierce and coordination is very difficult. At the same time, it is difficult to control the total duration of the promotion throughout the year, as it will be significantly extended due to the strong demand for activities in the business line if you are not careful.

During the category activities, we observed the traffic and sales, and we can see that because the event resources have a strong ability to bring traffic, the sales of the categories participating in the activities undoubtedly increased significantly. But in reality, this also draws away traffic from the entire site and waters the categories where activities are being held, which is often not optimal from a global perspective.

Therefore, when planning the annual event calendar, the promotion team should make clear requirements on revenue and traffic expectations for Class A and Class B activities, set clear activity level thresholds accordingly, determine whether the activities applied for by the business line should be positioned as Class A or Class B, and allocate corresponding activity resources.

The total duration of the year-round promotion can be controlled by adjusting the entry threshold of the event to achieve the goal of overall control.

The following factors are also the reference factors I often use to review and approve business line activity applications, for your reference:

• Strategic Weighting of Business Lines
• The full-year performance of the business line
• Business line revenue performance for the month
• Revenue target of the activity
• Gross profit of activities
• Seasonality of business lines

These factors should be relatively easy to understand. After all, the goal of the big sale is to boost sales and customer numbers of strategic categories, help each business line achieve its revenue targets, help the platform make a profit, and appropriately match customer needs from the perspective of goods and venue.

Finally, based on the above discussion, we can determine the initial version of the event calendar as follows:

Step 1: Communicate with leadership to determine S-level activities throughout the year.

Step 2: Determine the capacity and monthly distribution of level A and B activities.

Step 3: Each business line submits a list of annual intended activities and key target data such as revenue targets (the submitted targets themselves will also be affected by the activity classification).

Step 4: Check monthly, change the time period or cancel activities that do not match seasonality, and merge activities that can be merged. Note: It is usually not recommended to arrange other activities during the month of S-level promotion.

Step 5: Prioritize monthly activities based on the activity review elements above. Focus on strategic businesses and businesses that face greater challenges in achieving revenue targets.

Step 6: Based on priority, coordinate with the business lines to move some activities from months with too many activities reported to months with relatively fewer activities, or cut off the activities at the end.

Step 7: Given an initial activity threshold standard, based on this standard, determine how many activities throughout the year are Class A and how many are Class B. If you find that there are too many Class A activities, you can adjust the standard up, otherwise adjust it down. Until finally, according to the standards, the total amount and distribution of A and B level activities reach the optimal quantity. You will often see that there are many candidate activities in some months, while everyone wants to avoid some months. At this time, you can also consider setting different standards for each month and raising the standards for the peak season of activities.

Step 8: At this point, the activity calendar for the whole year can be basically determined, and then the resource allocation calculations can be made based on this to give a preliminary activity resource plan. At this point, the time and resources for each activity can be determined.

Of course, the above steps are all for activities that apply for the company's promotional resources. If it is an activity planned internally by the business and does not occupy company resources (it may be called Class C), the business line can arrange it according to its own budget and resources, and the promotion team will not intervene.

Finally, the resulting activity calendar is as follows (the content is only a simplified example):

Full year calendar

Monthly promotion calendar

Activities List

Finally, let’s talk about the calculation logic for the 150 days in a year mentioned earlier:

• 3 S-level games, warm-up + burst, a total of 3 weeks/game;
• A-level: 9 games, warm-up + burst, totaling 1 week/game;
• 27 B-level games, with a total of 1 day/game during the outbreak period;

3*21+9*7+27*1=153 days.

Of course, this only sets the baseline for activities. In actual operations, there will be many sudden hot spots that require unplanned arrangements. Activities will also change a lot due to company needs and resource constraints. It is important not to fill up all the activities at the beginning and to be able to make arrangements flexibly and flexibly based on clear overall principles.

Coming soon : The next article will move into the event planning phase, discussing event goal management for big promotions, including event goal setting and selection, and the impact of event goals on core gameplay and resource allocation.

Author: Xu Xiaopeng

Source: Product Meets Operation (ID: alden_xu)