---
title: "Decoding Yili: From Zero to Tens of Millions in GMV in 84 Days, the 'Fast and Slow' of a Traditional Giant on Douyin E-commerce"
description: "This article analyzes how Yili, a traditional dairy giant, successfully entered Douyin e-commerce, achieving over 10 million GMV in a single livestream within 84 days. It explores Yili's motivations, its phased strategies balancing 'fast' and 'slow' approaches, and the importance of long-term brand building over short-term traffic harvesting."
author: "西兰卡普"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2021-09-20"
language: "en"
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---

# Decoding Yili: From Zero to Tens of Millions in GMV in 84 Days, the 'Fast and Slow' of a Traditional Giant on Douyin E-commerce

> This article analyzes how Yili, a traditional dairy giant, successfully entered Douyin e-commerce, achieving over 10 million GMV in a single livestream within 84 days. It explores Yili's motivations, its phased strategies balancing 'fast' and 'slow' approaches, and the importance of long-term brand building over short-term traffic harvesting.

Source: GrowthBox (ID: growthbox2)
Recently, we came across a set of data: in 2020, more than 50% of internet users made at least one purchase through livestream e-commerce each month. **Even more surprisingly, 43% of people prefer livestream e-commerce, while 35% prefer traditional e-commerce.** Livestream e-commerce has become an unstoppable trend, making it imperative to study.
Just as we were debating whether to study new consumer brands or traditional brands, a 33-second Douyin short video ad tipped the scales.
During this summer's Tokyo Olympics, Yili released a Douyin short video that, despite being an advertisement, garnered 2.561 million likes, 91,000 shares, and 46,000 comments. This level of premium traffic engagement piqued our curiosity.
Following the trail of the short video, we discovered that Yili's approach to Douyin e-commerce is also commendable.
So, this time we focus on **Yili, the traditional dairy giant**. Setting aside the natural goodwill from its Olympic marketing, we chose it as our research subject for three reasons:
**1. With brand self-broadcasting becoming an obvious trend, Yili's hands-on entry into Douyin e-commerce as a traditional giant offers practical reference and inspiration for brands with similar traditional DNA.**
**2. Yili has genuinely found incremental growth on Douyin e-commerce. The Yili Official Flagship Store alone achieved a single-session GMV of over 10 million within 84 days of entry—a remarkable feat for a brand with typically low average order value.**
**3. Yili's approach on Douyin e-commerce is intriguing. They resemble masters of classical Chinese yin-yang philosophy, capable of both flexible accumulation like water and explosive tension like fire. The interplay of 'fast' and 'slow' seeks long-term brand health.**
This article will center on Yili's 'fast' and 'slow' strategies on Douyin e-commerce, exploring three dimensions: the motivations for entering Douyin, specific tactics for success, and future potential. We will focus on four questions:
* **How should brands objectively and rationally assess the value of Douyin e-commerce platforms?**
* **What breakthrough strategies should brands adopt at different development stages?**
* **How can brands avoid being a flash in the pan on Douyin e-commerce and achieve long-term healthy operations?**
* **How should brands calmly address local challenges and bottlenecks?**
**Even in a super traffic arena, adhere to long-termism**
First, Douyin e-commerce, as one of the e-commerce platforms, has successfully boarded the train of incremental growth in the e-commerce track, securing an ecological niche.
From the trend of e-commerce channels, the pie is only getting bigger. According to KPMG Consulting data, the transaction scale of livestream e-commerce in 2020 was 1.05 trillion yuan (+142%), with a market penetration rate of 8.6%, indicating significant room for growth.
It is estimated that in 2021, livestream e-commerce will continue to grow at a relatively high rate, with GMV reaching 2 trillion yuan and penetration reaching 14.3%.
Second, **compared to the bidding ranking logic of traditional e-commerce, Douyin's interest e-commerce advantage lies in the compounding effect of traffic.** After securing a position, the core value of Douyin's interest e-commerce is that its traffic can be repeatedly utilized and reached, inherently possessing the gene of 'traffic compounding.'
In the era of stagnant internet traffic, with 600 million daily active users, Douyin can be called a super traffic arena. The business logic of interest e-commerce is to use recommendation technology to connect personalized product content with potential massive interested users, activating consumer demand through content.
In simple terms, **if users are water, merchants are rivers, and the Douyin e-commerce platform is an ocean, then content and interest are gravity, and the recommendation mechanism is a valve.** It controls the direction and speed of water flow based on gravity, allowing water to flow top-down or upstream, forming an ecological circulation.
**Under ecological circulation, water is naturally living water, and traffic can be reused—this is Douyin's traffic compounding advantage.** This is what Douyin e-commerce officials call the 'snowball' traffic growth logic.
Of course, in our view, this value mostly benefits the platform's competitive advantage. For ordinary players, if we adopt a 'wool-gathering' mentality of traffic harvesting just because we are in a super traffic arena, it will be difficult to sustain long-term success on Douyin e-commerce.
The top-down water flow can be understood as organic traffic, while the upstream flow can be seen as 'south-to-north water diversion' under paid mechanisms. The size of a brand's water flow depends mainly on the attractiveness of its content.
From interviews with multiple industry experts, we learned that from an ROI perspective, compared to traditional public domain traffic platforms, Douyin advertising still has some advantages, but ROI is not significantly higher—just a few percentage points difference.
**Therefore, for merchants, especially those aiming to build brands, the mindset for evaluating Douyin e-commerce should shift from traffic harvesting to brand management, focusing on how to leverage Douyin's value for long-termism.**
In this regard, we believe Yili's approach on Douyin e-commerce is a good model. While not a textbook-perfect case, its motivations and comprehensive playbook are worth examining.
# **The Truth Behind Entering Douyin E-commerce**
Given the slowing growth of the overall market, why did Yili, a traditional giant, choose to enter Douyin e-commerce? What are the motivations behind its layout?
First, Yili's entry into Douyin e-commerce is not opportunistic but a deep consideration of its digital transformation strategy.
In fact, in recent years, Yili has been continuously deepening its omni-channel operations system. Whether from performance composition or key strategic initiatives, **Yili's layout in Douyin's interest e-commerce is a rational strategy after systematic consideration—continuing to capture the e-commerce channel.**
## **1. E-commerce Channel is a Powerful Booster for Yili**
From a performance perspective, under the impact of the pandemic in 2020, the dairy industry collectively suffered. During the pandemic last year, dairy sales in first- and second-tier cities fell by more than 50% year-on-year. However, despite this adversity, Yili achieved counter-trend growth.
According to Yili's financial report data, in 2020, Yili's revenue and non-GAAP net profit both achieved year-on-year growth, far exceeding the industry average. The market share of room-temperature and low-temperature milk increased instead of decreasing, rising by 3.2% and 0.3% respectively.
From Yili's overall performance, in 2020, Yili's e-commerce business revenue grew by 55.0% year-on-year. Meanwhile, according to research data from Xingtu, **Yili's room-temperature liquid milk held a 28.1% retail market share on e-commerce platforms, ranking first in the room-temperature liquid milk segment.**
Notably, **Yili's room-temperature liquid milk accounted for as much as 79.84% of the company's overall business.**
From Yili's e-commerce channel performance, during the 618 promotion, Yili also ranked first in dairy products across all platforms, demonstrating strong e-commerce channel operation capabilities.
According to comprehensive data from major e-commerce platforms, on June 18 and throughout the 618 period (June 1-18), Yili held the top spot in B2C dairy market share across all e-commerce platforms. It not only secured the No.1 market share in B2C dairy on Tmall and JD.com but also ranked first in food and beverage sales on the emerging Douyin e-commerce platform.
## **2. Douyin E-commerce is a Must for Digital Intelligence**
In its 2020 annual report's key strategic initiatives, Yili explicitly proposed 'actively expanding emerging channels and leveraging internet technology to create new business models.'
Under this strategy, in its 2021 seven key tasks, Yili clearly proposed **the fourth task: 'accelerate digital transformation and enhance omni-channel operations capabilities.'**
Of course, talking without action is just a facade. In reality, Yili is investing real money in digital transformation.
According to the announcement of '2021 Non-public Issuance of A-share Stocks Plan' released on June 4 this year, Yili plans to use 1.25 billion yuan of raised funds to build digital transformation and informatization upgrade projects.
From both strategic theory and actual performance, we have ample reason to conclude that entering Douyin is a strategic implementation of Yili's omni-channel operations enhancement and an inevitable choice to find further growth.
According to GrowthBox research, the broad user base covered by Douyin's 600 million daily active users and 400 million daily searches overlaps highly with Yili's nearly 1.3 billion consumer reach under its 91.6% penetration rate nationwide. The Douyin e-commerce channel is where they can further optimize e-commerce capabilities and find business growth.
But at the same time, **Yili does not blindly pursue high GMV; they need quality GMV,** which aligns with the basic philosophy of Douyin's interest e-commerce.
In addition to seeking growth on Douyin, Yili also assigns two other dimensions of value to the platform:
* **A place for brand asset accumulation and consumer mindshare building**
* **A magnetic field for deepening services and maintaining user relationships**
How Yili leverages these two values in its Douyin e-commerce operations can be seen from its growth path.
**Yili's 'Fast' and 'Slow' Phased Approach**
Brands aiming to rise on Douyin e-commerce cannot rush. Top operators should have a scientific cognitive system, identifying core advantages based on the brand's own DNA, while also adjusting and compensating for weaknesses according to the platform's tone.
A common mistake mature brands make is: after entering, **without adequate preparation, they rely on brand awareness and financial strength to go all out on Douyin.**
Later, they find that while early volume may come quickly, profit returns are very thin, often losing to new consumer brands.
**For Yili, although they have a 'fast' need to break through GMV on Douyin e-commerce, they actively choose to 'slow down' in their operational strategy.**
Besides seeking growth on Douyin, they also use Douyin's short video and livestream attributes as a link for communication and deep interaction with consumers.
At the same time, Yili wants to leverage Douyin's real-time interaction advantages to optimize the shopping experience and provide more detailed and comprehensive services.
Of course, for larger mature enterprises, a frequently mentioned question in our communications is: 'When formulating a Douyin e-commerce battle plan, **should traditional enterprises adopt a single flagship store volume model or a matrix model for self-broadcasting?'**
## **1. Single Store Model vs. Matrix Model**
In fact, many traditional enterprises are accustomed to a single flagship store model, which is a habitual advantage they have developed on traditional e-commerce platforms.
Generally, under traditional e-commerce, enterprises only need three steps to achieve sales:
* **Step 1: Build a flagship store;**
* **Step 2: Cooperate with platform managers for activities, invest in volume;**
* **Step 3: Repeat Step 2.**
In other words, as long as you invest enough funds and cooperate with the platform, sales are not a problem.
But if you extend this logic to Douyin e-commerce, although it is also paid advertising, **under the single flagship store volume model, there will be a dilemma of high opening and low closing in the Douyin ecosystem, because while sales are high, profits are thin.** This is because Douyin's traffic distribution mechanism is not search ranking but technical recommendation.
**In the Douyin ecosystem, relying solely on paid promotion to build a large livestream room is often insufficient. Enterprises should aim to have livestream rooms that can attract free traffic recommendations; a matrix model seems to be a better layout choice.**
Based on our observation of Yili, we found that its account layout on Douyin adopts a matrix model. On the Feigua data backend, we found that under Yili's main brand account, there are actually 5 livestream accounts bound:
* **@Yili Official Flagship Store**
* **@Jinlingguan**
* **@Yili Milk Powder Home**
* **@Yili Milk Flagship Store**
* **@Yili Cheese Store**
After long-term observation of Yili's livestream rooms, we found that the officially certified account matrix has its own deep considerations, with each of the 5 accounts assigned different roles and missions.
The Yili Official Flagship Store is the official boss account; Jinlingguan targets the maternal and infant group; Yili Milk Powder Home focuses on different segments under the milk powder category, including children, students, middle-aged and elderly, and women; Yili Milk Flagship Store acts more like a 'housekeeper'; and Yili Cheese Flagship Store targets the cheese segment.
Additionally, Yili has opened 5 Douyin stores on the platform, bound to different livestream matrix accounts to complete full-chain transactions.
According to Feigua data, due to the price band limitations of dairy products, although Yili is a relatively low average order value brand, through matrix layout it achieved monthly sales of 46.225 million yuan.
Due to space constraints, this article selects Yili's official big account @Yili Official Flagship Store (hereinafter referred to as 'Yili') as the in-depth research specimen. **We will detail its core strategies from the cold start period, growth period, daily sales stabilization period, and holiday promotion period.**
## **2. Cold Start Period: 'Build Reserves, Delay Claiming Kingship'**
**In the Douyin ecosystem, advertising is a must, but operating a store is not solely about brand exposure or commercial resources.** During the cold start period, Yili is cautious with advertising, not launching S-level big projects early on.
Instead, they focus on solidifying basic infrastructure, concentrating on building the livestream team and innovating livestream strategies based on precise audience insights.
After the livestream process is streamlined, they use small-scale traffic investment to continuously build vertical label systems, testing and accumulating precise traffic models.
**A. Conduct User Group 'Background Check' Before Entry**
Before truly entering Douyin, Yili assesses the overlap between its omni-channel user assets, especially accumulated crowd package data, and Douyin platform users. They evaluate and weigh the 'fit' between brand users and Douyin users from three dimensions:
**a. Yili's omni-channel reach > Douyin's broad user base**
Douyin's ecosystem is dominated by broad users, while Yili's penetration in China is nearly 92%, reaching nearly 1.3 billion people. To some extent, Douyin's broad users can be roughly equated to Yili's potential users—this is the natural advantage of a traditional giant.
**b. Yili's category advantage: products are almost all 'family series'**
Since Chinese consumers' milk-drinking habits are universal, Yili, as a dairy brand, has a significant category advantage. Its products cover children, women, and the elderly, almost consumable by the whole family.
**c. In terms of targeted demographics, both are primarily female users**
The gender, age, and city distribution of Yili flagship store users highly overlap with Douyin's overall user profile. Douyin's broad users and Yili's omni-channel users maintain consistency across multiple dimensions.
For Yili, the most important thing when entering Douyin e-commerce is precise crowd marketing, because most of Douyin's broad users are potential Yili customers.
**Thus, the overlap between Yili's accumulated users and Douyin e-commerce channel users itself presents a significant opportunity window.**
**B. 'People-Oriented': Personalized Configuration of Host Teams**
According to GrowthBox's research, we summarized the basic staffing of dairy industry livestream teams. The standard team is about 5-6 people, including one management role; other positions can be roughly divided as follows:
* **Platform operations: 2 people**
* **Host operations: 1 person**
* **Content operations: 1 person**
* **Data operations: 1 person**
From our internal research, whether traditional or new consumer brands, **livestream team sizes are relatively standard; what matters more is how to stimulate the team, especially the hosts' potential.** Hosts' performance in livestreams directly affects product sales and brand reputation.
Therefore, in team management, Yili places great emphasis on tapping the potential of the host team. In host selection and management, Yili does not solely focus on sales. Interestingly, **Yili's hosts do not need to create personas; they just need to be themselves.** Yili encourages them to maximize their personal strengths in the livestream room.
Although the entire livestream industry currently evaluates hosts mainly on sales performance, for Yili, **host sales performance is just one dimension of KPI assessment. They advocate a people-oriented approach, fully stimulating the maximum potential of different hosts—this is also a manifestation of Yili's 'slow' approach.**
Therefore, during Yili Official Flagship Store livestreams, you will find lively and cute female hosts, professional and knowledgeable female hosts, young mother hosts, and even chubby but approachable male hosts... Almost every host has their own personality, but none are forced personas.
**However, Yili has one unshakable hard requirement for hosts: professionalism.** No matter how distinct or varied the style, hosts must possess professional dairy knowledge. Every Yili host is familiar with milk nutritional components and content, able to recite them effortlessly during livestreams.
### **C. Livestream Strategy Innovation: 'Adapt to Local Conditions' + 'Adapt to Time Conditions'**
**a. 'Adapt to Local Conditions'**
Yili Official Flagship Store's innovation in livestream scenes is mainly reflected in the background and format. They set up different types of livestream rooms based on different activity time nodes, focusing more on the audience's visual experience, conveying key benefits to users in the shortest time to improve livestream efficiency.
**Yili treats different livestream scenes as 'fine decoration' of the online store,** integrating brand elements from products, promotional stickers, table settings, props, and host scripts throughout the livestream room, allowing users to immerse in the consumption scene and even enjoy immersive shopping.
Based on our tracking of its livestream rooms, we found four types of Yili livestream rooms:
* **Real scene**
* **Backdrop scene**
* **LED background scene**
* **Milk supermarket scene**
Real scenes and milk supermarket scenes are used during major promotions; backdrop and LED scenes are mostly used for regular daily broadcasts.
**b. 'Adapt to Time Conditions'**
From interviews with industry experts, we learned that hosts must ensure real-time broadcasting, and generally, store broadcasts should not be less than 12 hours. While ensuring broadcast duration, Yili also coordinates with short videos and activity nodes, moderately investing in Qianchuan advertising for account base building.
In fact, sensitive insight into broadcast time slots is also an important factor in improving livestream efficiency. In this regard, we summarize Yili's full utilization of time slots as follows:
* **Morning slot**
The morning slot is particularly important, as it determines the starting point of the day's maximum traffic. At this time, hosts who can drive the atmosphere and have distinct personalities are needed.
* **Noon slot**
Noon traffic gradually stabilizes, requiring good handover from the morning traffic. At this time, the host's style should not create a disconnect from the morning host.
* **Afternoon slot**
The afternoon is when traffic is weakest. At this time, hosts can focus on information and knowledge sharing, emphasizing content interactivity.
* **Evening slot**
The 7-9 PM and 9-10 PM slots have traffic intensity similar to the morning, marking the peak traffic period of the day with high fan activity. At this time, hosts with clear affinity and strong sales rhythm should be scheduled.
**D. Accumulating Precise Traffic Models**
Yili has always placed great emphasis on the quality and value of user traffic. When advertising, they have very high requirements for precise traffic.
**For Yili, the dairy industry must first establish vertical crowd label attributes, which is one strategy to improve ROI. Then, attract user retention and interaction through quality content. Finally, use Douyin's intelligent distribution logic to label user groups and accumulate a precise traffic operation model.**
To understand Yili's advertising strategy, we must first understand Douyin's push method.
On the Douyin platform, **a user can be tagged with approximately 250 labels, which can be divided into interest labels and user labels.**
User labels are more based on basic user profiles; interest labels are preference tags generated after users use the Douyin app, such as 'sports enthusiast,' 'tech geek,' 'mom,' etc.
**Additionally, Douyin's content push rules can be divided into default targeted push and interest content push.**
* **Default push mode**
In default push mode, Douyin pushes products with the highest match to user labels, e.g., providing 'good products at fair prices' to consumers who value cost-effectiveness.
* **Interest push mode**
In interest push mode, Douyin recommends products whose video content matches users' 'interest labels.' Therefore, based on targeted and interest label push rules, Douyin e-commerce portrays consumer profiles more precisely than traditional e-commerce, enabling precise product delivery to tagged users.
So, how can brands achieve precise delivery, and what methods can they use to improve volume and efficiency? Here we share how skincare brand Erno Laszlo does it.
**Step 1: Screen Benchmark Accounts**
Erno Laszlo is a high-end beauty and skincare brand. Before selling, they established labels by screening benchmark accounts, targeting women aged 25-40 in the affluent group.
Interestingly, they did not benchmark against similar vertical beauty accounts but instead shifted to target women who had ordered cashmere and fur in Douyin livestream rooms, also focusing on second-hand luxury, luxury watches, and high-end women's clothing livestreams.
Following this clue, they screened livestream accounts with 100,000 to 2 million followers. **Note: these are livestream accounts, not short video accounts,** because livestream account traffic is more precise, while short video accounts mostly have broad traffic.
**Step 2: Small Amount, High Frequency Investment**
On the day Erno Laszlo's account started broadcasting, they invested over 12,000 yuan in small store 'follow push,' but not in one lump sum; instead, they divided it into 50 orders of about 300 yuan each.
**Step 3: Data Monitoring and Optimization**
Erno Laszlo monitored and analyzed the effectiveness of each 300-yuan order in real-time, recording which user group each order went to and its conversion rate. If performance was good, they increased investment; if not, they abandoned it later.
Under this combined strategy, Erno Laszlo achieved an advertising ROI of 1:8, investing 12,000 and selling 92,000, with very optimistic returns.
**Yili's Precise Traffic Accumulation Model**
For Yili, **they do not lack broad traffic; they lack precise traffic.** Therefore, they also pay special attention to using label systems for advertising on Douyin.
The figure below shows Yili's traffic investment model. By comparison, we found their approach is similar to Erno Laszlo's. After continuously optimizing precise traffic investment strategies, their growth multiple stabilized at around 5, which is considered upper-level for low average order value categories.
**In summary, Yili's cold start livestream strategy includes the following points:**
* **Before entry, seriously evaluate the match between brand users and Douyin e-commerce platform users, conducting a 'background check' of the audience;**
* **ROI is positively correlated with livestream duration; match hosts according to traffic characteristics in morning, noon, and evening slots;**
* **Team assessment is not 'GMV-only,' but evaluates host professionalism and encourages hosts to be themselves, unleashing their potential;**
* **Livestream scene display is like store decoration, not just a simple KT board;**
* **Traffic investment should be restrained, with precise audience selection, and optimization strategies before, during, and after investment.**
## **3. Growth Period: Create Best-selling Product Combinations to Increase Average Order Value**
During the self-broadcast growth period, Yili's average GMV per session reached over 130,000, with a single session exceeding 200,000 on April 17. **During this period, Yili's core strategy was based on product assortment logic, optimizing product structure and creating best-selling combinations to increase average order value.**
Yili targeted women aged 30-40, used the DMP tool to exclude historical user groups, ensuring that every paid traffic touch was with new users, allowing brand traffic to grow.
At the same time, they promoted 5 main products based on the target audience, using limited-time and limited-quantity sales to create a sense of scarcity and drive sales through promotional tactics.
### **A. Yili's Product Structure = Traffic Drivers + Combination Products + Best-sellers + Customized Products**
* **Traffic drivers: promote transactions, increase followers, increase dwell time**
* **Combination products: best-sellers + profit products/new product combinations for testing, increase average order value**
* **Best-sellers: improve conversion rate, are the main GMV contributors, mainly used to accumulate audience**
* **Customized products: launch testing directions, a way to incubate new products and continuously hit best-seller status**
### **B. Create Best-selling Combinations to Increase Average Order Value**
Yili Flagship Store maintains 20-30 SKUs. After determining the product structure, Yili adopts a differentiated product strategy, adjusting product appearance and specifications based on users' average order value on Douyin, then conducts targeted livestream sales.
After long-term observation of Yili's livestream rooms, we found that the official flagship store focuses on the following 5 main products, differentiating assortment by taste and specification to cover multi-dimensional consumption scenarios of different users.
* **Sterile high-calcium low-fat milk:**
* **Ambrosial Strawberry Oat Yogurt**
* **Shuhua Low-fat Lactose-free Milk**
* **Ambrosial Original Yogurt**
* **Zhennong High-calcium Milk**
For example, 'sterile brick' high-calcium low-fat milk mainly meets the nutritional needs of cost-conscious consumers; 'Shuhua milk' targets lactose-intolerant people; additionally, if consumers do not have milk consumption needs, hosts guide them to buy Ambrosial yogurt, explaining selling points through different flavor experiences.
Furthermore, to increase average order value, Yili's strategies mainly include two types:
* **Combination packs of different products, emphasizing product differentiation**
* **Single best-selling product, encouraging increased order quantity**
Both are almost common industry practices, but in the latter strategy, Yili sets different benefit hooks to attract users to order.
For example, placing the discount on order quantity, hosts often say, 'Buy two boxes together, save XXX yuan,' to attract orders, while also giving gifts of different specifications to satisfy users' desire for bargains.
## **4. Daily Sales Stabilization Period / Holiday Promotion Period: 'Accumulate First, Then Sprint'**
At this stage, Yili sets different GMV goals for different time nodes. **From the early 'slow accumulation' to the holiday 'fast sprint,' Yili's core strategy is to break through traffic level limits, using a combination of voice and sales to break through the traffic ceiling under the intelligent distribution system.**
### **A. Daily Sales Accumulation Period: New Product Launches + Celebrity Endorsements + Regular Marketing Activities**
During the daily sales stabilization period, while ensuring stable daily sales, Yili focuses on account health maintenance and fan base growth, without adopting heavyweight tactics.
But to break through traffic levels and attract more new fans, at the level of average 250,000 GMV per session, Yili also participates in regular industry activities like the 'Hi Food Festival,' which lifted single-session GMV to 1 million.
Here, we need to introduce a concept—**traffic levels.**
To accommodate different levels of influencers, **Douyin adopts a parallel horse-racing traffic distribution mechanism.** Livestream rooms are layered by weight, with each level having a corresponding traffic cap. Douyin periodically assesses livestream room data metrics; **when data significantly outperforms peers at the same level, the traffic cap is raised, and the influencer enters the next level.**
The two most important data metrics Douyin assesses are **UV value and user dwell time.** User dwell time reflects the livestream room's ability to retain people, while UV value reflects its monetization ability.
After breaking through the single-session million GMV threshold, **Yili mainly adopted a strategy of new product launches + celebrity endorsements to build momentum for elevating the account to the next traffic level.**
For example, based on user insights, Yili found that the concepts of 'dietary fiber' and 'low calorie' were growing rapidly, and consumers' demand for plant-based protein beverages was becoming more refined.
Thus, Yili incubated Zhi Xuan Oat Yogurt and used Douyin e-commerce as the launch channel for the new product, with single-product sales nearing 700,000, accounting for about 45% of the entire livestream.
At the same time, to build voice and sales for the new product, Yili supported spokesperson Gong Jun's new product oat launch livestream.
Before the livestream, Yili preheated traffic by targeting the influencer's fan group labels, paired with short videos highlighting the new product's features, **bringing 9% video recommendation traffic to the livestream.**
Additionally, they included a 'Gong Jun signed poster lucky draw' in the livestream, **with over 1 million views, average dwell time of nearly 80 seconds, and single-session GMV exceeding 1.5 million.**
### **B. Holiday Promotion Period: 'Integrate Advance Forces, Concentrate Firepower for Quick Breakthrough'**
Through the accumulation of the stabilization period, at major promotion nodes, Yili's core tactic is one word—'fast.'
At this time, both funds and resources are concentrated, leveraging platform activities to break through traffic levels, and cooperating with top KOLs and influencers to achieve scale traffic ignition and brand-effect unity.
**a. Activities are the engine for scale sales explosion**
A series of marketing campaigns such as e-commerce promotions, marketing IPs, and industry activities—the 'C' in Douyin e-commerce's 'FACT matrix'—endow Douyin e-commerce with festival-like, thematic marketing capabilities, continuously creating reasons and mindshare for users to consume on Douyin. By leveraging scale traffic aggregation effects, they ignite high-conversion concentrated transactions in a short time, serving as an important way for merchants to grow rapidly with platform resources.
Douyin e-commerce activities generally fall into three categories:
* **Platform promotions: official Douyin e-commerce promotions like 618, 818, Double 11, etc.;**
* **Marketing IPs: multiple IP activities created by Douyin e-commerce, such as Douyin New Brand Launch, Douyin Opening Day, Douyin New Product Day, etc.;**
* **Industry activities: Douyin e-commerce organizes periodic industry activities based on industry and category divisions, allowing livestream accounts under different categories to gain new growth.**
**In utilizing activities, Yili leveraged Douyin e-commerce activities to concentrate firepower and ignite scale traffic, maximizing the traffic leverage.****
Specifically, from the daily sales stabilization period to the tens of millions GMV pull-up period, Yili participated in 5 major marketing activities: 4.27 promotion, 5.18 Hi Food Festival, 5.25 Peak Competition, 6.14 Super Flash Sale, and 6.18 Douyin Good Things Festival.
According to GrowthBox's research, Yili's e-commerce business is already very mature, and now it is more about seeking internal and external resource integration points. **The only differentiated approach is the difference in activity gameplay and the determination to set staged goals, that is, having the awareness to break through traffic levels.**
We will not elaborate on regular activity tactics, such as clean livestream room scene setup, clear benefit points like directly showing shelf life, free shipping via SF Express, and product quality highlights to enhance consumer awareness.
As for Yili's differentiated activity tactics, we selected the two most representative activities to dissect Yili's differentiated approach.
**b. Yili Super Flash Sale Day: Cooperating with Celebrities and Influencers, but Yili Insists on Being the 'Host'**
On June 14, Yili Super Flash Sale Day, Yili's livestream broke through the 5 million GMV level and surged to over 6 million. However, we found that **Yili is very cautious in cooperating with influencers,** partly to maintain brand stability and partly to control marketing costs.
But even when cooperating with top influencers and celebrities, Yili invites them to its own livestream room as guests, rather than directly selling in the influencer/celebrity's livestream. We speculate that this approach is more about retaining users in their own user pool.
To achieve this goal, Yili conducts precise traffic investment before the livestream based on the influencer/celebrity's audience profile. At the same time, they use continuous previews to build momentum for the celebrity/influencer livestream. Through the influencer's guidance, users are transferred to Yili's scene.
For example, before inviting Qi Ayi into the livestream room, Yili conducted precise traffic investment, and around 1 PM, the online presence in Yili's livestream reached its peak.
They also launched a 'Qi Ayi Exclusive Edition,' with Qi Ayi explaining the product 24 times, totaling over 1.5 hours, paired with a Redmi phone lucky bag draw, achieving over 1 million GMV for the single product.
Yili also has a 'go big or go home' style. That day, they also invited celebrity Luo Yunxi to support Yili Super Flash Sale Day. Through two rounds of high-profile 'fire attacks,' Yili's GMV exceeded 6 million that day, with user per-capita value reaching 2.2, outperforming 99.99% of Douyin broadcasters that day.
**c. Leveraging the 618 Promotion: Factory Traceability Livestream Breaks 10 Million in a Single Session**
During the 618 promotion, Yili unveiled its 'killer move'—factory traceability livestream. This directly pushed GMV to over 10 million. After watching the replay of that day's livestream, we summarized its core tactics as follows:
**Factory Traceability Scene Innovation, Building Strong Trust Relationships**
The livestream scene was set directly on the Ambrosial dynamic production line, showcasing real production operations, adding trust endorsement, and building strong trust relationships with users.
**Core Best-sellers with Price Protection Mechanism, Boosting Conversion and Sales**
For core best-sellers, a price protection mechanism was set to promote traffic conversion. Core single products exceeded 2 million GMV in 5 hours, with the top 3 best-sellers accounting for over 40% of transaction value. The million-level product Yili Sterile Brick High-calcium Low-fat Milk's **product click-through rate (PV)** on June 18 increased by **+100% compared to usual days, rising from 5-6% to about 10%.****
**Targeted Precise Traffic Investment, Leveraging Organic Traffic**
Yili Official Flagship Store started broadcasting at 7 AM on 618, and after precise targeting via Qianchuan, viewers quickly exceeded 10,000 in 15 minutes; the viewer and buyer profiles highly overlapped, seed users sustained livestream heat, **with organic traffic accounting for over 80%.****
**Host-Guided Benefit Draws, Maintaining High-Frequency Interaction in the Livestream**
Host scripts focused on highlighting the brand factory's 618 promotional prices, combined with comparisons to regular offline supermarket prices, driving a wave of users to place orders.
During the livestream, hosts also guided benefit draws and interactive likes through scripts, with online presence quickly exceeding 10,000, reaching the day's peak near 12 PM, with click-through and conversion rates doubling compared to usual days.
* **Total views exceeded 7 million**
* **Peak online presence reached 45,000**
* **Interaction frequency exceeded 150,000+**
# **After Crossing the 10 Million GMV Threshold, Yili Still Feels Anxious**
After breaking through 10 million GMV, Yili did not immediately pop champagne and celebrate. Instead, the giant also has worries, and these worries stem more from **'slow thinking' about maintaining long-term healthy brand operations.**
For brands, whether you join a multi-platform or single channel, you must follow the game rules after entry. For example, whether in malls or supermarkets, merchants must participate in healthy competition under established mechanisms and rules to facilitate transactions and purchases.
Currently, in the Douyin e-commerce ecosystem, member system construction is still in its early stages. For brands, after users enter the livestream room or account, how to retain them within their own account system for private domain operations is a common challenge.
To solve this problem, **all brands will return to a common starting point—content. In the Douyin ecosystem, the attractiveness of content determines user loyalty.**
Whether new consumer brands or traditional brands, in our communications with them, almost every company acknowledges the importance of content, but it is difficult to form a systematic approach.
The difficulty lies in the fact that content creation is essentially creative expression, and creativity is hard to produce continuously on a large scale. For Yili, how to continuously produce quality content to satisfy Douyin users' curiosity is a question they are always pondering and one of their main anxieties.
However, **while Yili continues to explore the long-term project of content building, they have also adopted another parallel strategy—product as content.**
In the future, Yili's focus on Douyin e-commerce will remain on product quality improvement and innovation, returning to the essence of business, using ultimate product experience as the ignition point to drive brand and user operations.
For traditional brands, on Douyin e-commerce, original advantages often easily lead to habitual mistakes.
The previously adept high-profile marketing strategy can have a strong initial effect on Douyin e-commerce, but long-term operations may fall into advertising dependency, where high sales may bring thin profits.
**Therefore, traditional brands often need restraint to succeed on Douyin e-commerce. But under restraint, they also need to pursue quality high GMV growth, after all, on Douyin e-commerce, you still need to do the traffic business well.**
As a traditional dairy giant, Yili has strong brand asset advantages on Douyin e-commerce, but they actively chose strategic 'slowness' and deeply coupled it with tactical 'fastness.'
Through this case analysis, we felt Yili's classical yin-yang philosophical wisdom of acting at the right time and following the trend. 'The Tao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, three gives birth to all things...' In Yili, we also see a harmonious entity formed by the interplay of yin and yang.
At the end of this article, we summarize Yili's strategy of 'upholding integrity while innovating' as follows:
**1. Yili's entry into Douyin e-commerce is not a short-term opportunistic mentality of traffic harvesting, but a 'no regrets' move in its digital strategy;****
**2. In the early start-up phase, Yili adopted the approach of 'build reserves, delay claiming kingship,' abandoning the traditional high-profile strategy advantage, instead seeking precise traffic investment and focusing on brand health;
**3. Yili is traditional but not conservative, daring to innovate in livestream strategies, playing with livestream scenes and methods to new heights;
**4. Focus on integrating platform advantages and its own strengths, concentrating all advantages at major promotion nodes to break through traffic levels with lightning speed, self-breaking the traffic ceiling;
**5. Team assessment is not 'GMV-only,' but focuses on host professionalism and emphasizes tapping and unleashing the potential of 'people';
**6. Maintain reverence and humility towards users, incorporating user maintenance into the memorandum of long-term brand operations.****
**Are you 'watching' me?**


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