Inspired by the success of Cyber Monday, the post-Thanksgiving online sale in the USA, an Australian online retailer group have decided to create an Australian version – Click Frenzy. The online sale, which the promoters say will stop a nation, runs on the 20 November.
With participants like Myer, Target, Just Jeans, Portmans, Dotti, Dick Smith, Bing Lee, Ted’s Cameras, SurfStitch, StyleTread, The Iconic, DealsDirect, and Booktopia, Click Frenzy has created a pretty big buzz in the past week with reports in the print and tabloid media. Power Retail, the promoters of Click Frenzy reported that after a profile on A Current Affair, traffic to the Click Frenzy website spiked massively.
Click Frenzy is an exciting development in Australian online retail. The level of interest proves that Australian’s have an appetite for buying cheaply from local businesses and may even convince Australian’s that physical retailers like Myer can be as relevant online as Amazon.
The term Cyber Monday was officially introduced in 2006, by Shop.org, after they noticed online sales spiked after Americans returned to work after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The important thing to note here is that Cyber Monday evolved organically after some canny marketers noticed customers behaving in a certain way.
In Australia, online shopping has traditionally peaked in the lead-up to Christmas, so it makes sense for retailers to choose mid-November as a date to launch a new campaign to promote online shopping. I haven’t seen any information to suggest that there was anything more behind the choice of date and think that it would have been good to see the reasoning behind the choice of date.
To put it in perspective, Cyber Monday generated $1,251m in sales in 2011, which was a growth of 22% from 2010. With online sales topping $200b in the same period, Cyber Monday seems to be more marketing buzz than statistical reality. For Click Frenzy to generate the same results for Australian retailers, it would need to generate over $65m in sales (based on $11b in sales for 2011/2012)
Given the buzz that has been created in the traditional news media, I’m positive that Click Frenzy will be a profile raiser for a lot of Australian online retailers and generate some solid increases in sales.
The thing to remember for Australian SMB’s is that you don’t need to sign up to Click Frenzy to accelerate your own online sales. You can build your own community, advertise online, and have a great website. Click Frenzy is an advertising opportunity and should be seen in that context only. Innovation in digital and delivering a true omni-channel experience could deliver a far bigger sales increase for Australian retailers.