Tag: E-commerce

Singapore – The change of consumer behavior into tapping into digital purchases has pushed the average growth of in-app purchases across Southeast Asia to 240% this year, with the Philippines tallying the highest growth at 371%, new insights from marketing analytics company AppsFlyer’s report show.

The region has seen a 13% to 35% rise in in-app revenue from March to July 2021, despite global in-app spend falling 2.05%. In order to capture and convert these first-time users, e-commerce marketers have also doubled down on their ad campaigns after March 2020. 

This has resulted in an overall uptick in year-over-year non-organic installs (NOI) in the region, with Philippines (215%), Indonesia (104%), and Malaysia (69%) noting the highest growth. Meanwhile, marketers in Singapore dialed back on marketing campaigns due to user acquisition cost, with NOI increasing just 28%.

“Up until March last year, Southeast Asia was still a significantly offline market – at least when it comes to the mobile app space, and the majority of people did not have online banking or contactless payment options. Now, just 1.5 years later we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift as Southeast Asia is poised to experience a digital shopping wave; what businesses do now can determine their market share over the next few years,” said Sam Chiu, senior director of marketing for APAC at AppsFlyer.

Meanwhile, app remarketing on iOS saw growth in 2021 across all six SEA markets, even after Apple introduced new privacy rules and disabled Identifier For Advertisers (IDFA) in April 2021. In fact, Indonesia – an Android-dominant market – saw the most robust growth, with remarketing conversions on iOS shooting up 98% from April to July 2021, and Android remarketing conversions falling 4.4%. This contrasts with global figures, where iOS remarketing conversions dropped 22.4% and Android observing an 8.2% increase during the same period.

“This is why it is crucial that marketers advocate for higher budgets to invest in ad campaigns to acquire new users and remarket to existing ones. Companies should focus on increasing brand awareness and building customer loyalty now, before they miss the boat,” Chiu added.

Despite all of this growth, brands should be more wary in executing ad campaigns, as the report found that e-commerce apps’ exposure to fraud was US$58m in APAC between Q4 2020 to Q1 2021. Although this number is high, it is improving: Malaysia and Indonesia both saw an almost 80% reduction in year-over-year fraud rates when comparing January 2020 to January 2021 – reiterating the importance of vigilance and anti-fraud solutions.

Manila, Philippines – Fast-leading retail company, Metro Retail Stores Group Inc. (MRSGI) in the Philippines, has unveiled its roster of initiatives to boost its e-commerce presence. 

The company targets to launch its official store in e-commerce apps Lazada and Shopee in the fourth quarter to take advantage of the expected holiday shopping surge.

“All these developments we are doing are in line with our commitment to grow our e-commerce business and ultimately enable us to continue meeting the changing customer demands in today’s digital environment,” said Manuel C. Alberto, president and chief operating officer at MRSGI.

For its supermarket vertical, MRSGI is looking to expand its reach by adding multi-service superapp GrabMart to the list of their on-demand goods delivery service partners. Metro Supermarket customers in select areas of Metro Manila and Cebu can purchase from an assortment of more than 3,500 goods and have these delivered to their homes through the Grab app.

At present, Metro Supermarket in Ayala Center Cebu and Market! Market! in Taguig have this convenient arrangement, and plans are underway to include six more stores to join GrabMart before the year ends.

MRSGI is also working to integrate its Metro Rewards Card with customers’ Metro online accounts, allowing loyalty cardholders to earn points for all purchases made from shop.themetrostores.ph and even use accumulated points to pay for their online purchases.

In addition, the company is on track to introducing a Progressive Web App (PWA), which is considered more efficient and convenient as they have reduced memory requirements and battery usage, and are expected to load faster and provide better navigating experience for users.

“Our customers can look forward to a more exciting and pleasant online shopping experience. We have lined up a number of strategic initiatives that are geared towards making e-commerce an important component of MRSGI’s overall value proposition,” said JJ Moreno, chief strategy officer and head of e-commerce at MRSGI.

Hanoi, Vietnam – The data-driven loyalty platform in Vietnam, Society Pass (SoPa), has announced that it has closed a Series C funding round, which will help in accelerating its growth and acquisition strategy in the SEA and SA region.

Society Pass is a loyalty and data marketing ecosystem that operates multiple e-commerce and lifestyle platforms across its key markets. Its business model focuses on collecting user data through the expected circulation of its universal loyalty points.

Society Pass plans to expand its market presence by harnessing the untapped potential of SEA and SA, regions which according to the Digital 2021 Global Overview Report by HootSuite and We Are Social stand to see tremendous growth. SoPa believes that developing countries are only now experiencing a surge in digital adoption, with large potentials for future growth.

Moreover, the said funding aims to acquire companies with existing user and merchant bases that can be quickly plugged into the Society Pass ecosystem.

Dennis Nguyen, the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer at Society Pass, shared that the platform’s success up to this point has been built through offering unique value for both consumers and merchants, along with the infrastructure supporting that exchange.

“This new funding will allow us to replicate our success in our target markets and our ongoing aggressive M&A initiatives in the pipeline. We are very grateful to have found strong demand from quality investors that share our vision,” said Nguyen.

Manila, Philippines – Growsari, a first-of-its-kind e-commerce enabler for the Filipino ‘sari-sari store’ or the mom-and-pop neighborhood stores spread all over the region, has just announced its expanded presence across the Luzon region, aimed at serving 100,000 sari-sari store owners to maximize earnings and get access to best prices. 

‘Sari-sari stores’, which are hyper-proximal stores of sundries situated in the country’s neighborhoods, have been an economical staple in the Philippines. As such, they are considered the backbone of the country’s retail. 

The expansion follows Growsari’s concluded Series B funding in June this year, where it has secured more than US$30m in funding. 

The Growsari app enables sari-sari store owners to quickly order goods, while also providing essential services such as microfinancing support and assistance, and other e-services including telco, bills payment, and remittances.

With the expansion widening its presence to 100 municipalities across Luzon, Growsari aims to add more in the months to come. Among the new provinces where Growsari will now be available are Batangas, Bulacan, La Union and Camarines Norte and Sur in the Bicol region. Growsari expects to cater to almost 220 municipalities across Luzon by the end of the year.

ER Rollan, Growsari’s CEO and co-founder, shared that with their fresh funds, they aim to more than double GrowSari’s existing coverage and service more than 100,000 mom-and-pop-up stores by the end of 2021.

“This will also help us broaden our supplier marketplace with new third-party partners and scale our financial service pilots,” said Rollan.

Manila, Philippines – As the platform continues to grow its presence in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, the local arm of e-commerce platform Lazada has launched a new process called ‘Start It Up, Laz It Up’ which encourages new sellers to register via a simplified three-step sign-up process. To add up to the encouragement, the platform has also placed a raffle for the new registrants, amounting to US$10k worth of prizes.

Said raffle will be awarded to one lucky recipient and is composed of cash and advertising credits to kickstart the recipient’s online business on the platform. Interested new sellers must sign up and launch their Lazada marketplace stores in active selling mode during the period of 27 September to 30 October.

The ‘Start It Up, Laz It Up’ process is as follows: submit and enter a registered local mobile number, then enter a one-time six-digit code to verify the mobile number, and finally setting a strong and unique password.

Once finished setting up the account, online sellers can start selling on the platform by adding the address of the location where the seller will ship their products from; then adding a valid government-approved identification so that payments can be processed, and adding a valid bank account information for ease of withdrawing earnings from the platform.

For Carlos Barrera, chief operating officer at Lazada Philippines, the first six months of 2021 saw the number of Filipino sellers joining the platform tripled, which is a striking testament to how e-commerce is a must-have for many local businesses in today’s digital era, adding that the company remains committed to empowering Filipino SMEs with the tools and services that are key for their online growth ambitions.

“This journey starts from something as simple as making the first step and registering as an online seller. With the simple and seamless seller registration process, we hope more aspiring entrepreneurs from all walks of life will dream big and explore e-commerce with zero barriers. Lazada is here with you to build resilience and preparedness in order to tap onto the massive online opportunity,” Barrera stated.

The rise of sellers has been noted in their first-ever ‘Digital Commerce Confidence Index’, where 70% of Southeast Asia’s online sellers are optimistic and confident about their future growth and prospects for the third quarter of 2021.

To further help new sellers in setting up a successful online shop in the platform, Lazada University has an introductory step-by-step guide to welcome new users with a manageable Learning Management System (LMS) with a suite of diverse training materials for easy understanding especially by first-time sellers. Topics available range from advertising to budget management, as well as offline and live-streamed training sessions conducted by Lazada staff and peers from the seller community.

Sydney, Australia – iStock, the e-commerce platform that provides premium visual content to SMBs, SMEs, creatives, and students, has just announced the launch of its two new products that aim to make professional-quality video creation more simple and affordable for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The first product, iStock Video Editor, is a video maker that does not require any previous design or editing experience, helping customers quickly go from start to finish of the video-creation process. Combined with the depth and breadth of iStock’s videos, photographs, and illustrations, the tool allows businesses to use customizable templates, music, colors, fonts, and layouts to produce high-impact videos. To use the Video Editor, users simply need to click ‘Create’ at the top of the iStock homepage.

Meanwhile, the iStock’s new subscription plan, Premium Plus Video, seeks to give subscribers on-demand access to millions of video clips, images, and illustrations all in a single easy and affordable subscription. 

Moreover, it is available in monthly or annual plans in which image and video downloads count the same, allowing customers to license video for as low as a few dollars per asset. Subscribers will also be able to roll over unused downloads and enjoy the same rich royalty-free rights included with all iStock content. 

Grant Farhall, iStock’s chief product officer, shared that video has become the preferred way for companies to reach and communicate with their audiences in compelling ways, however, their customers have told them that while they want to create more video it is a difficult and time-consuming task that requires complicated tools and large budgets.

“We listened to our customers and the launch of Premium Plus Video subscription and the iStock Video Editor will make professional video creation fast and easy for small businesses and entrepreneurs, no previous experience needed,” said Farhall.

The new iStock Video Editor and Premium Plus Video aims to remove the barriers to video creation and give businesses, both large and small, the opportunity to optimize their visual strategy to create higher engagement and improve ROI’s. 

Singapore – Customer experience platform Emplifi has announced the launch of their latest platform Emplifi Social Commerce Cloud, which offers a multitude of marketers social commerce capabilities who are often charged with driving high conversion rates and increased revenue across social platforms.

The platform delivers a full suite of solutions to enable the social shopping experience by synchronizing social commerce activities across platforms, providing automated and live assistance during the shopping experience, and giving brands a single, holistic view of their social commerce efforts, along with advanced analytics.

One of those tools is Shop Sync™, which enables e-commerce teams to provide an omni-shop synchronization across social platforms without relying on heavy IT involvement. The API integration with Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops eliminates any long and laborious tech efforts, helping brands rapidly scale online shopping experiences. The tool also tracks inventory across all social shops so that e-commerce and product managers gain a full view of product availability and performance across all platforms. 

In addition, Emplifi’s AI-powered Shop Clerk™ bot tool delivers a personalized shopping experience through sophisticated conversational commerce capabilities, guiding shoppers from discovery to purchase. The bot can answer product questions, complete transactions, offer in-store pick-up information, recommend additional product add-ons, seamlessly hand over to care agents and deliver quick surveys via Emplifi’s Natural Language Processing and proprietary Intent Engine abilities that go far beyond the standard, limited Bot FAQ offerings.

Other tools included are the ‘360 Shop Dashboard™’ which was designed to offer the industry’s most comprehensive view of product performance and inventory status across all social media shops, and Emplfi’s Social Care, the consumer engagement tool that brings together marketing and operations to help service customers, while measuring the success of their entire customer journey.

“Social commerce is the next frontier for cutting-edge B2C brands that wish to connect, convert and monetize today’s shoppers. Social media shops are rapidly becoming the new shopping malls. We’re excited to release Emplifi Social Commerce to the market to enable our customers to revolutionize the shopping experience, win unprecedented conversion rates and drive revenue gains,” said Mark Zablan, CEO at Emplifi.

Emplifi Social Commerce Cloud is the first major platform announcement from Emplifi since the company’s rebranding earlier this year. With the goal of unifying marketing, commerce, and customer care through AI-powered CX solutions, Emplifi was born from the combined technology of the customer experience platform Astute Inc. and the social media marketing platform Socialbakers.

Hong Kong – TBWA\Hong Kong has launched its commerce offering TBWA\Commerce, in partnership with sister agency The Integer Group, the commerce agency headquartered in the U.S. and a key member of Omnicom Commerce Group.

Integer is a leading commerce agency focused on driving business growth results and opportunities through retail marketing, e-commerce & social commerce, connected commerce media, and brand communications & activation, as well as retail experience design, and technology & innovation. The agency’s clients include world-leading brands like AT&T, FedEx, Frito-Lay, Michelin, Nestlé, P&G, PepsiCo, and Starbucks.

TBWA\Commerce will leverage Integer’s e-commerce expertise to center its offering around e-retail, specifically on HKTVMall, Hong Kong’s online shopping platform. 

Jan Cho, TBWA\Hong Kong’s managing director, commented that surprisingly, the e-commerce landscape in Hong Kong is less advanced than most developed countries because of its prolific and highly concentrated retail presence, which previously provided the unchallenged shopping convenience.

“But Covid upended the landscape and gave rise to a late, yet rapid e-comm boom from direct to consumer (DTC), social commerce to marketplace,” Cho said.

According to the agency, HKTVMall is one platform that has benefited significantly with the marketplace’s Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) more than doubling to HK$5.95b or almost US$800m in just a year and which is still climbing.

The agency said that despite the speed in development, marketplace commerce remains an unfamiliar territory for many Hong Kong brands, and like most e-commerce platforms, HKTVMall has its own layers and set of rules that feel foreign to most marketers, which can initially be intimidating.

Anne Chan, the agency’s head of digital and commerce, said, “HKTVMall is a fantastic platform for brands. Its volume of traffic, diversity of customers, promotion support, and online-to-offline (O2O) presence are second to none in the region.”

Chan shares that they’ve spent a great deal of R&D time to understand the inner workings, hidden codes, and rules of the platform. Chan said they believed they’ve cracked the ‘codes’ with the help of Integer’s expertise and the suite of tools from HKTVMall.

Cho added, “We’ve tried and tested [the] methodologies we’ve developed with actual businesses on HKTVMall, which have proven to be very effective. We’re confident we can advise any marketers to boost conversion, and the impact would usually be seen in a matter of months.”

TBWA\Commerce sits alongside other specialized offerings to provide full-funnel support to brands, namely, Disruption\Consulting which is catered to data-led business planning, DxD or which stands for design & experience planning, and BOLT, the agency’s in-house film production. 

The commerce offering will pioneer in Hong Kong but planning for expansion across other APAC markets is already underway.

Terence Ling, head of strategy at TBWA\Hong Kong, commented, “We have made heavy investment of resources to develop this proprietary capability. Brands can take advantage of our unique experience and know-how leapfrogging the competition.”

Ling said that while the immediate focus is on HKTVMall, brands can access the agency’s ‘ePlaces’ offering to map their growth strategy across the digital ecosystem.

Singapore – Digital advertising solutions company Innity has made its latest feature, Shoppable QuickBuy, available on their enhanced Innity Shoppable Solutions service, allowing online shoppers to now add items directly to their online cart from the ads they see online.

With Innity’s Shoppable QuickBuy tech, users are able to browse and add products to the retailers’ cart all from within the ad format, retailers’ landing pages, blog posts, or apps. Once shoppers click on the ‘Buy Now’ button, they will be led straight to the ‘Add to Cart’ page or checkout page on the retailers’ site. 

Innity’s in-house creative team custom designs each creative experience so that it is unique to each brand.

“Innity Shoppable Ads solution was designed to effectively shorten and streamline the traditional consumer purchase journey, allowing users to go from discovery to purchase in an instantaneous and engaging experience, leading to greater profits for brands,” the company said in a press statement.

The shoppable platform is also equipped with advanced data feed management to allow retailers to synchronize product feed across multiple sales and marketing channels to monitor, enrich and update product info or pricing simultaneously.

In addition, retailers can also create custom segments from their product catalogs to run dynamic ads that can highlight personalized products to shoppers who have already shown interest in the brand.

Speaking about the feature launch, Phang Chee Leong, co-founder and CEO at Innity, said, “We’re thrilled to be rolling out Shoppable QuickBuy to help more brands adopt and maximize the power of discovery commerce; to turn interests into purchases, and content into conversions more seamlessly. As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, consumer behavior towards online shopping has shifted for good, and we believe this change will continue beyond the pandemic.”

He added, “We’re constantly on the lookout for new ways to improve and expand our Innity Shoppable Media platform, with the goal to make the online shopping experience more interactive, personalized, and instantaneous for everyone.”

Sydney, Australia – Global commerce company Shopify in Australia aims to encourage businesses and consumers to view the brands that have reimagined retail in their own business operations through Shopify’s latest out-of-home (OOH) advertising, made in partnership with creative content agency Chello and media agency iPROSPECT.

Titled ‘Reimagine Retail’, the OOH campaign is best considered as a celebration of Australian brands that have disrupted retail with innovative products and cutting-edge e-commerce strategies – while doing it all on Shopify.

The campaign comes to life when users scan an inbuilt QR code functionality on all assets, giving users an opportunity to ‘meet’ Australian brands who have reimagined retail, and then shop their stores — from anywhere on any device.

“We wanted a campaign which celebrates and showcases local, independent businesses, who are the backbone of Australia’s entrepreneurial economy,” says Robin Marchant, head of marketing for APAC at Shopify.

Initially intended for a pre-lockdowned Australia, Shopify was keen to proceed as a show of support for its more than 100,000 merchants in Australia. Some of Shopify’s customers featured in the visual assets of the campaign include Go-To Skin Care, frank green, MAAP, and Who Gives a Crap.

“At Shopify, we power more than 100,000 Australian retail businesses to launch, run and grow by making it possible to sell to anyone, anywhere. Every day, we’re inspired by our merchants as they reimagine the possibilities of retail, and we can’t wait to see what the next generation of budding entrepreneurs will do with the exciting, evolving retail space,” Marchant added.

Speaking about the campaign, Tristan Velasco, creative director and co-founder at brand and content agency Chello, shared, “Working with Shopify made two things clear to us. One, that they’re merchant obsessed, and two, they help a long list of innovative, Australian brands redefine retail. It was a no-brainer that these brands would be the heart of our campaign.”

He added, “With so many businesses being hit hard by these latest lockdowns, it’s an exciting time to demonstrate the resilience and willpower of Australian brands on Shopify that have truly reimagined retail.”

Meanwhile, Sam Cousins, chief strategy officer at iPROSPECT, commented, “We recognize more and more in our business that every media touchpoint is a commerce opportunity. It’s great to have Shopify on board with us to help drive this forward through our partnership with Chello.”

Said campaign will run out of home, digital out of home, programmatic and digital as well.