Alibaba, China’s largest retail marketplace, has surprised the Digital Market with its revenue results in Q3 2017: active consumers grew to 488M and Alibaba gained a revenue growth of 61%. They also produced $3.4 billion dollars in free cash flow (non-GAAP).
This year, after September 2017, Alibaba earned an “outstanding quarter” and became, once again, the Chinese eCommerce with the best growth. Furthermore, considering last Saturday’s Double 11, it’s clear that the next quarter results will show stellar numbers again: they just declared over 25 billion dollars in sales during the 24 hours shopping festival, 40% more than the previous year.
In order to reach the 488M active users, Alibaba had to invest in sharp digital marketing strategies, they ran an excellent campaign aimed to drive new customers to the website and also implemented a new loyalty system to encourage active users to buy smarter and use their platform.
Among these impressive results, Alibaba’s numbers highlight its faster growing service turned: Cloud Computing. It got special attention and opened new discussions: the Cloud Computing service increased 99% and made the huge Chinese eCommerce earn 2,975 million RMB, around 447 million dollars.
Digital Marketing in China keeps getting strong and worldwide experts have particularly enjoyed analyzing this year’s quarters.
Alibaba overseas
And sales haven’t stayed exclusively in China, Alibaba’s international commerce revenue reached 2,878 million RMB, over 433 million dollars. The retail business managed to remain appealing to users in countries far away from China and hit a record of 115% year-on-year growth. The outstanding platforms were Lazada, Alibaba’s Southeast Asian site, and Aliexpress, their international service.
Digital Marketing in China is starting to expand and more Chinese eCommerce have eyes on Alibaba’s movements to satisfy international clients. The delivery service is one of the main limitations but this huge Chinese eCommerce has been optimizing their service and developing new strategies to conquer the international market.
88 Loyalty Membership
One of Alibaba’s innovation, the 88 Loyalty Membership, was a successful program that engaged customer’s loyalty and engagement across Tmall and Taobao. The membership is free, and members get scored according to their frequency and quality of purchase. The result is that users with better ratings can get access to loyalty benefits like exclusive products and better discounts.
This new membership system started in August and more than 29 million users applied. The 88 loyalty membership club encourages users to spend more on quality purchases on Alibaba’s marketplaces in order to gain better scores. According to Jiang Fan, head leader of this initiative, their main concern is how users feel on the platform, and they want to bring a better system and quality to their customers.
The goal is to offer a better experience to those users engaged and to develop a community with the perfect environment for their favorite customers.
Digital Marketing in China is changing, and Alibaba is leading these initiatives that are already having an impact all around the globe.
