How Flipkart and Amazon are battling it out with influencers this Independence Day sale

New Delhi: KlugKlug, the Influencer Marketing SaaS platform, released a report on the first day of the Independence Day sales campaigns for e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart. 

The analysis, which focused on influencer marketing, reveals that while it's still too early to call, Flipkart's strategy is currently ‘batting bigger’. 

The KlugKlug report provides a breakdown of the two companies' approaches to influencer marketing through an ‘influencer lens’.

KlugKlug found that Flipkart has deployed influencers at three times the scale of Amazon. This has resulted in Flipkart accounting for 75.89% of the influencers and 71.01% of the posts, while Amazon's share was 24.11% of the influencers and 28.99% of the posts. 

Flipkart's deployment volume is dominated by macro and mega influencers, whereas Amazon's lower-volume deployment includes both nano and mega influencers.

Despite fewer posts and influencers, Amazon is winning on efficiency with their mega influencers, while Flipkart has done a better engagement rate across nano, micro and macro influencers. 

The overall engagement rate for Amazon India was 3.02%, compared to 1.32% for Flipkart. Nano creators on Flipkart achieved a 4.70% engagement rate, while Amazon's mega-influencers saw a 3.50% engagement rate. 

In terms of total reach, Flipkart leads with its deployed influencers generating over 136.91 million total views, compared to Amazon's 11.73 million total views. 

This reach has led to Flipkart getting double the engagement of Amazon. Flipkart received 1.56 million likes, 423.19K comments, and 31.4K shares, for a total of 2.02 million in engagement, whereas Amazon had 806.07K likes, 226.5K comments, and 16.89K shares, for a total engagement of 1.05 million.

"The Independence Day sales are a battleground for e-commerce and brands, and what's unfolding is a tale of two very different strategies. While it’s still early to definitively call a winner, Flipkart's aggressive, high-volume influencer deployment strategy is clearly leading in terms of reach and overall engagement at this stage," said Kalyan Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO of KlugKlug.

"The first day of the sales highlights two distinct strategies in action. Flipkart is focused on a high-volume, wide-net approach, deploying a massive number of influencers to maximise their reach and views. This is a powerful tactic for creating a huge initial splash and generating significant buzz. Amazon, on the other hand, is demonstrating a more surgical approach. While their influencer deployment is smaller, their engagement rates are higher, driven by their mega-influencers. This suggests a focus on quality over quantity, targeting specific, highly engaged audiences to drive more meaningful interactions. Both strategies have their merits, and it will be fascinating to see which one proves more effective as the sale progresses," said Vaibhav Gupta, Co-Founder & CPO of KlugKlug.

KlugKlug also found that Flipkart's mega-influencers generated 121.64 million views, while Amazon's mega-influencers generated 10.77 million views and their macro-influencers generated 11.98 million views. This highlights the significant difference in the scale and impact of the mega-influencer strategy employed by Flipkart in comparison to Amazon.