Indonesian is not familiar with coupon on buying stuffs. That’s true. Some online companies try to break the barrier in this mindset, in collaboration with several e-commerce services. Flipit is one of them. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Flipit has expanded in Indonesia since last year. We spoke with Pudji Masniari Siregar, Flipit’s Country Manager for Indonesia, about Flipit’s business growth in this country and what’s their plan for 2015.
According to Siregar, Flipit Indonesia was initially launched in English, but since translated into Indonesian last October it has seen 350% growth. Siregar further said, “We found out that Indonesia has the highest mobile users, more than most countries in Europe or other South East Asian (35% mobile traffic in ID,
in most countries 20% to 25% (from) mobile).”
“Although the order values in Indonesia are still pretty low so far, but the growth of traffic in Indonesia is very remarkable. In this stage, the growth of Flipit Indonesia is the most important factor and Indonesia is definitely showing big growth every week,” she added.
Breaking the barrier
About changing the culture on buying with coupons, Siregar stated they have two way of promoting coupon codes to the Indonesian audiences that we are
doing currently. The first one, she said, is by providing information to e-commerce business and online shop owners of the importance of online coupon for their business.
“We would like to introduce the new tool of promotion to push their sales in a low budget way. Even though several e-commerce websites in Indonesia have utilized coupon codes for their way to push sales, some online shops still need to be encouraged to use coupon codes as their tool to promote their website. We aim to make them aware about the opportunity gained by using coupon codes for their marketing and sales purpose,” she added.
Moreover, Siregar said:
“The more they provide consumers coupon codes, the more the market grows. Not only through us (a publisher) but through their own channels such as newsletters and social media.”
The second approach, according to Siregar, is to educate the Indonesian market what is the benefit of using coupon codes for their online shopping experience. She said, “We would like to introduce them that there is a new way to save their expense on online shopping which is unique and interesting. Therefore, we present them Flipit.com as a platform of online coupon where they can grab coupon codes for free to be use in hundreds of online shops in Indonesia.”
“We would like to inform the Indonesians on how to get the coupon codes, how to use it and how does it affect to their expenses,” she added.
Plan and target in 2015
Siregar answered that their target this year is to obtain more exclusive collaboration with big e-commerce companies and affiliate networks in Indonesia. She said, “Currently, we have collaborate with Pegipegi.com for promoting an exclusive 10% discount on hotel booking that can be obtained on Flipit.com. Moreover, we are now working hand in hand with affiliate networks namely OMG Asia and Smart Driver to push our partners’ sales and thus we are expecting more conversion rates this year.”
