My Mall is said to be the biggest contributor to sales, can I grow my shopping mall well?

Although there are many External Channels such as Coupang, Naver, Brandy, and ZigZag, operating our own mall is now essential for long-term survival and continuous growth. In particular, many own malls have been created in recent years. After Nike exited Amazon, an external channel, and successfully raised sales in its own mall, the D2C, or own mall, the craze was also blown in Korea.

If so, what is the difference between the company's mall and how should it be managed? Let's find out together.

🤔What's different about our mall?

Brand image engraving, acquisition of customer information, and reduction of commissions and distribution margins by operating our own mall!

Our mall is a space for the brand and the customer alone. It is difficult to clearly convey the brand image because many different products are exposed on external channels, but the company's mall can show its own brand identity. Customers who like the image displayed by the brand become loyal customers and are more likely to purchase again.

In addition, customer information can be obtained more easily in our mall. You can find out what types of customers buy which products, find out their product preferences, and analyze customer reviews. With the customer data obtained in this way, you can quickly find ways to increase purchase conversion rates, and incorporate the data into new product launches, thereby increasing business efficiency. 

Moreover, since external channels are intermediate distribution processes, payment fees and distribution margins are inevitable. Also, the more channels you have, the more difficult it is to manage and the lower your profitability. However, since our mall deals directly with customers, payment fees and distribution margins can be reduced, right?

😰Disadvantages of our mall?

Difficult customer influx, higher operating costs!

Although it is their own mall that only looks like this, many brands say that they have difficulties in operating their own mall. The biggest disadvantage of running an in-house mall is that it is difficult to get into your own mall, whereas external channels can inform more people about your products and your brand. However, as more stores enter external channels, the inflow of the company's mall decreases, and as the company grows its own mall, it is difficult to see the efficiency in external channels. It can't be a problem.

In addition, the larger the company's mall, the more management personnel and costs are involved. Marketing, banner, and product detailed design for the influx of our own mall, as well as promotion and operation including order delivery. Whether the site is large or small, it is unavoidable that it takes a lot of work.

🧐 What to do?

However, if you have already taken the steps to build your own mall, you can think of a way to choose a store that fits your brand well and provide differentiated merits to customers of your own mall, even if it is a little bit of an external channel.

1. This method is effective for new inflows into the company mall!

Promotions that support coupons and points when new members sign up for their own mall are the method most brands use to attract new customers. It goes without saying that the higher the discount rate, the higher the probability of attracting new customers. However, if a high discount rate is burdensome, it may be a good idea to set it so that it can be used only on certain products that have a certain margin even after applying a discount.

Also, a method that has been used a lot recently is a specially designed product for new customers. The most representative example is Market Kurly's 100 won deal. Market Kurly has been running a promotion that allows only new customers to purchase certain products at 100 won since 2015 when the business started. This was enough to win word of mouth, and it was an opportunity for a lot of customers to come in. 

With the successful start of Market Kurly, Baedal Minjok and Musinsa are also conducting similar first purchase events. In addition to this, promotions, such as experience packs, where you can receive samples from your own mall by paying only the shipping cost, are also helpful in attracting new customers.

2. How to differentiate between external channels and own malls!

In order to activate our own mall, we need to differentiate ourselves from external channels. To this end, plan a promotion that is only held in your own mall. If you provide a gift product that only goes out to customers in your own mall, or if you provide a product composition that is not available in other external channels, your customers are more likely to purchase from your mall.

Benefits such as membership and points are also very helpful. Simple purchase points are helpful, but try using point policies that drive customer action. For example, try to induce reviews and pay points to customers who made a purchase in your own mall. The customer remembers the brand once more while writing a review and visits the company's mall again to use the accumulated points. By using these points, you can get reviews as well as repurchase.

3. Utilize various solutions, now essential!

One of the biggest reasons for experiencing difficulties in operating our own mall is time. Therefore, many brands are actively using various solutions to make their mall operations more efficient. In fact, as a result of a survey of domestic brands, 93% of the respondents said that they use a SaaS tool (Service as a Software). One way to do this is to use various solutions that help in operating your own malls, such as customer management, marketing, and design.

Of course, there are many solutions, but the one I want to introduce today is the review solution. Alpha Review is a review solution that helps you solve everything related to the review of your own mall.

Why are there so few reviews only in the company's mall? Other external channels send their own app pushes or notifications to induce reviews, but in most cases, our mall does not provide such a function. In addition, the process of going to the company's website, logging in, and entering the purchase history is very cumbersome for buyers.

So, Alpha Review sends a notification to customers through KakaoTalk so that they can touch their satisfaction within the KakaoTalk message window and leave a review right away.

And the fact that a review is written even if the customer just clicks the AlimTalk satisfaction button and leaves the page! It is automatically saved as a phrase set in advance for “star rating”, not just “star rating”. A special feature of Alpha Review that increases the review writing rate by reducing customer annoyance is the quick review function.

In addition, Alpha Review significantly reduces the time required for review management. We made it possible to automatically do everything from review posting, inspection, payment of points, and review comments.

Of course, you can get a lot of high-quality reviews because you can automatically pay different points for each number of letters, photos, and videos by subdividing the payment of points.

The reviews obtained in this way can be effectively published using the trendy design widgets of AlphaReview. Make your mall richer by applying neat designs that you have only seen on external channels, such as banners and detail pages.

The alpha review goes with the review writing rate, which increases 11 times from 2% to 22%.