Flipkart to treat its loyal customers royally; lines up mega offers for them

Flipkart is going to lure its loyal customers with a preview of offers that will be up during its mega shopping sale. Flipkart has taken this move to grow its user base and stay ahead of its rival Amazon India.

The e-commerce giant is planning on reaching out to lakhs of frequent buyers with special offers. The company will send the customers a postcard inviting them to an exclusive preview of its Big Billion Days on September 30.

"We have been trying to do this (focus on loyal customers) for the last six months, there is a clear effort to win (them) back,” Samardeep Subandh, chief marketing officer at Flipkart told ET.

Flipkart plans on increasing its user base by 30% as it launches its largest marketing campaign in the past seven years. The company recently announced that it crossed the mark of 100-million registered users.

"We will be using close to 50 marketing channels and spend about 20% of our budgets on digital marketing,” said Subandh, declining to comment on the specifics of other media spending.

An amount of about Rs 30 crore is expected to be spent by Flipkart excluding Digital Marketing, so as to make it Big Billion Days successful. Amazon however, is going to outspend its rival by spending around Rs 130 crore on its five-day sale including Digital Marketing. Snapdeal which trying to resurface in the business will spend an amount of Rs 200 crore on marketing for two months starting in September.

Flipkart is also planning on creating a wish list and using social media platform to spread the buzz. The company has a positive edge as it has exclusive multinational brands and easy loans which make those unaffordable brands affordable.

The company announced that it will open sales on the dedicated days for each category. This includes fashion and large appliances, followed by mobile phones and then electronics.

The e-commerce companies are looking forward to gaining a large portion of their annual sales value during this festive season.

Red-Seer however, has estimated that the overall value of the goods sold across all online marketplaces may not exceed Rs 10,000 crore in October this year, as compared to goods worth about Rs 9,000 crore sold last year.
(image: Indiatimes)