Advertisment

SnapDeal.com: 3,50000 Followers and Counting

author-image
PCQ Bureau
New Update

Voted as the number one e-commerce site in India by Dataquest (Feb 2011 issue), SnapDeal.com emerged as the top e-commerce retailer in terms of actual traction. It was also ranked second for its business model. Started in Feburary, 2010, the innovative e-commerce portal has already garnered more than a million subscribers, and is amongst the top 35 websites in India, in terms of traffic.

Advertisment

Within a year of going online, SnapDeal has been able to maintain and grow its huge fan and follower base. Most of these people have turned out to be customers for the e-commerce portal which serves as a one stop shop for discount deals across the country. Various verticals like food and beverage, travel, lifestyle, etc are covered by SnapDeal in terms of providing good discount deals to its prospective customers.

SnapDeal has also been aggressively pushing the marketing strategy along. Advertisements in print and TV space have started to frequent the viewers timeline. But the major marketing and connect has been achieved from the online activities that SnapDeal.com has taken up. Presence on Facebook, Twitter and Blog has been important contributors towards binding customers to the portal.Apart from marketing of the deals provided by SnapDeal, online presence is also utilized in brand management by the company. A brief tete-e-tete with Kunal Bahl, CEO and Founder, SnapDeal.com helps understand the company's success story.

Advertisment

Social media for brand

management

'SnapDeal actively manages its brand through Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and through blog. Through these platforms, the portal engages with its customers through discussions, contests, activities, etc. SnapDeal also promotes their deals and merchants through these channels. It also uses some of these channels for customer support. SnapDeal has also been exploring YouTube and LinkedIn to connect to audiences and we should see some presence and benefits from those channels too.

Advertisment

How social media helped

SnapDeal.com

Advertisment

SnapDeal has been able to reach out to a larger mass and give out information regarding deals on a timely basis. Social media tools account to 350000+ followers for SnapDeal who receive updates on deals. This also acts as a second arm to the support/customer care team, with respect to helping out on resolving queries asked by the customers. It has also helped in connecting and getting a better understanding of the levels of expectations on them by the huge following mass.

Advertisment

To sum it up, the benefits are as follows:

a) It acts as a platform to take the essence of the brand to existing/potential customers

b) It helps to get the feel of the market in terms of suggestions and feedbacks

c) It's been an alternative channel for customer support ( the amount of support request coming through social media has been significantly rising)

d) SnapDeal has been able to drive revenues through deal posts on the social platforms

Challenges faced, resolutions

Advertisment

The biggest challenge is to keep audience hooked to the site. This is done by uploading engagement posts, keeping the conversation alive and catering to the issues faced by customers at the outlet and resolving their queries. It's an accepted fact that more and more purchase decisions are made and ratified on social platforms so there is a need to keep striving to have as many customer touch points on the platforms.

Advice

'I think the key is to have a unified branding and customer approach strategy across social media channels and the traditional offline and online channels. Social media should be seen as a logical extension to the branding and customer support strategies and should work in sync with the rest,' Kunal emphasizes. 'Having a focused and metric driven approach helps you get your priorities right on these platforms.'

Advertisment