The deal that even god of death Yama can’t resist, from Snapdeal

Snapdeal, the burgeoning daily deal e-commerce site in India, which has attracted considerable interest among the tech community and the media, launched an interesting campaign to further its reach. Called Yam-Dude (meaning if Yama visited earth, how would he have enjoyed Snapdeal vouchers and deals; to put it mildly, even people from heaven can’t resist such deals), this campaign was yet another innovative thinking to entice customers. Sandeep Komaravelly, Head – Marketing & Alliances at Snapdeal.com, talks to YourStory.in on Snapdeal’s latest marketing campaigns. Sandeep graduated in engineering from BITS Pilani followed by MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur. He co-founded a company Grabbon in Bangalore with a couple of friends before joining Snapdeal. In this conversation, he elaborates on the thought behind Snapdeal’s marketing campaign and its expected reach. He also points out that new audience is being sought for its new products deals that is being rolled out everyday apart from daily deals.YourStory: Why did Snapdeal go TV?

Sandeep: Actually, Snapdeal was one of the first e-commerce sites in India to do TV advertisements. In fact, we started our TV campaigns in December last year. The reason why we chose TV is because of its unparalleled access and reach to a large number of people in a very short duration. Our intention was to reach out to younger audience via TV as medium, as our services are generally very attractive for youngsters.

What products sell well on Snapdeal? Which daily deal is more sought after?

Within local merchant services, restaurants and health & beauty are the biggest categories, and in products, we are the the largest e-retailer of watches, sunglasses, jewellery and one of the biggest is mobiles.

What was the concept or thought process behind the Yam Dude campaign? We believe it’s a campaign that even Yama, god of death, can’t resist...

So the thought process was very simple. We wanted to communicate a few things via our campaign. Snapdeal is a very interesting platform with a mix of both services and products deals. The whole idea of the campaign is to talk about the whole range of products and services we offer, and with it also to showcase the experience a customer has on using our deals. We want anyone who has not yet transacted with us to try us.

What is the expected outcome of Yam Dude campaign?

There are a couple of objectives out of the campaign :

1.      Communicate the broad variety of services & products that Snapdeal.com has to offer to its consumers. Along with the offers on all of these, there are functional benefits like Cash on Delivery and Deals within nearby locations which are also promoted through the campaign

2.     The campaign also aims at ensuring that users who have not purchased before on Snapdeal.com, try out the services.

Is TV better as a medium or Internet, in your view?

Both the mediums are different and do have very different outcomes. While TV ensures wide reach within a short span of time, and is very good, at brand building, internet is purely performance driven medium which is useful to drive transactions.

How do you measure ROI on any of these campaigns?

Unlike in online media, we don’t have exact metrics to measure ROI of offline campaigns. But there are some agencies that help you track the ROI of the offline campaigns using some rough parameters.

Can you tell us about your target demographic via the offline TV campaign?

So, through this campaign we plan to reach out to a wider audience. In fact the first campaign we did with MTV and V was targeted towards college-going students, typically early twenties group, but through this campaign we plan to target a larger audience. As a platform we diversified to product deals as well. So now, anyone who is buying anything online is our target audience.

Can you give us a breakup of the audience that visits Snapdeal?

35% of transactions happen from Tier 2 cities, we see traction from places like Nagpur, Vijayawada, and Vizag.

Tips marketing tips for sellers online?

Social Media is obviously the most economical way to reach out to a large audience. But, the usage of social media should be in such a way to get maximum traction out of it. But, other than that, having a great product/service helps. Because, word of mouth now is becoming a very powerful means to acquire customers. The probability that a new customer has heard about you from an existing customer is very high.

How do your day-to-day operations look like at the helm of Snapdeal?

There are new deals that go live across cities everyday and there are new product deals that are added across cities everyday. So a typical day would like reviewing some of the campaigns that we are doing in the online and offline space in the last 48 hours and figuring out how to sustain or increase the ROI of the campaigns. We do a lot of analysis on the investment that we are doing both online and offline on a daily basis, also brainstorming on how we can do this better.

How is the marketing spend breakup like?

35% of our marketing spends will go into TV. The rest of the budget is split into online, outdoor and radio.

What do you like the best about your job?

The best thing about this job is that I don’t hate Mondays any more. Also, the best part about small companies is that they are very entrepreneurial in nature. Snapdeal is a mix of smart and young bunch of people. The average age of employees in our company is around 25. We are very young and dynamic team that wants to do a lot of innovative stuff, and that is the part of Snapdeal that I like the best.

Your view on the e-commerce industry in India . . .

What is striking about e-commerce industry is that it is at an inflection point in India now. What happened to mobile penetration 7 years back is now going to happen to internet and online penetration and e-commerce. It is an industry waiting to explode and for all those interested in e-commerce, this industry is certainly on a unprecedented growth path.