11.11 sale plan: a 30-day checklist for Shopee, TikTok Shop and 12.12

October 13, 2026

Tin Le

Updated on October 19, 2026: data reviewed and updated.

In the first six months of 2026, Vietnamese shoppers spent an average of more than VND 1.6 trillion a day on Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada and Tiki, according to data from Metric. Over the same period, YouNet ECI counted about 162,700 stores that had stopped generating revenue compared with the same period of 2025. Money is still flowing into the marketplaces, but transaction processing fees on both Shopee and TikTok Shop rose to 6% in May 2026, and an 11.11 sale plan copied from last year’s habits can grow sales and still lose money.

An 11.11 sale plan is a preparation schedule of about 30 days before the November 11 sale on Shopee and TikTok Shop. It covers locking in targets and inventory, working out discount depth after platform fees, optimizing the store, launching ads together with KOCs and livestreams, getting operations ready, and then holding on to customers for 7 days after the sale to carry them into 12.12. November 11 is D-0, so October 12 is D-30. If you are reading this in mid-October, the clock is already running.

How is the 2026 year-end sale season different from last year?

The biggest difference is that the market is now essentially down to two marketplaces. A Q&Me report (May 2026) shows that in the 12 months from May 2025 to April 2026, total GMV across the four major marketplaces reached USD 13.6 billion, up 37%. TikTok Shop grew 83% to USD 5.96 billion and took a 44% share, while Lazada was left with about 3%. Shopee is still the leader in total sales. This year’s plan needs two sets of targets for two marketplaces that work differently: Shopee leans on search, TikTok Shop leans on video and livestreaming.

Second, buyers have become more price-sensitive. YouNet ECI (February 2026) recorded that in Q4 2025, unit volume sold across the four marketplaces fell 8% year over year, while the average selling price rose 33%. Sales grew because of prices, not because of more orders.

Third, costs. From May 9, 2026, TikTok Shop raised its transaction fee from 5% to 6% and its Voucher Xtra fee from 3% to 4% (capped at VND 50,000 per product). Shopee raised its transaction processing fee to 6% from May 1, 2026 (from May 8, 2026 for Shopee Mall), on top of the VND 3,000 per-order infrastructure fee in place since July 1, 2025. Shopee’s planned visibility program (“Duy trì hiển thị”), with a standard rate of 1% of revenue due to start on May 29, 2026, was postponed after Vietnam’s National Competition Commission stepped in. TikTok Shop also charges a logistics operations fee of VND 3,000 to 65,000 per parcel over 10 kg starting October 12, 2026, exactly at the D-30 mark. Fee schedules changed several times this year, so pull the latest numbers from Seller Centre before you set prices.

Livestreaming is no longer a side channel either. Shopee said its 2025 11.11 season sold more than 45 million products through Shopee Live and Shopee Video, and on November 11 alone Shopee Live viewership was 23 times a normal day.

How deep can you discount and still make a profit?

Do this calculation before anything else, because voucher depth determines your ad budget, KOC commissions and how much stock to bring in.

Breakeven selling price = (cost of goods + fixed cost per order) / (1 minus total % platform fees minus 1/ROAS).
Breakeven ROAS = 1 / (margin before advertising as a share of the selling price).

Worked example (hypothetical figures, not the fee schedule of any specific category): a serum listed at VND 400,000 with a cost of goods of VND 120,000. Assume a 14% fixed fee, a 6% transaction processing fee, a 4% Voucher Xtra fee, a VND 3,000 infrastructure fee and VND 8,000 per order for packing and handling. Ad cost is converted from ROAS (a ROAS of 8 means spending 12.5% of revenue on ads). To keep it simple, fees are calculated on the discounted selling price.

Line item (VND per order)	Normal day, price 400,000, ROAS 8	11.11, 30% off, ROAS 8	11.11, 30% off, ROAS 5
Selling price	400,000	280,000	280,000
Fixed fee 14%	56,000	39,200	39,200
Transaction processing fee 6%	24,000	16,800	16,800
Voucher Xtra fee 4%	16,000	11,200	11,200
Advertising	50,000	35,000	56,000
Cost of goods, infrastructure fee, packing	131,000	131,000	131,000
Contribution profit	123,000	46,800	25,800
Margin on selling price	30.8%	16.7%	9.2%

A 30% discount wipes out about 62% of the profit per order, so volume has to grow at least 2.6 times just to keep total profit flat. Breakeven ROAS rises from about 2.3 on a normal day to 3.4 at 30% off, which means the ROAS target you use all year may no longer hold during the sale. And if ROAS slides from 8 to 5 because bids go up, which is common on peak days, the margin drops to just 9.2%. At a ROAS of 8, the breakeven discount is about 48%; at a ROAS of 5, it is about 41%. Going deeper than that is selling at a planned loss, and it only makes sense for traffic-driving products in limited quantities.

Your 11.11 sale plan week by week: a 30-day checklist

D-30 to D-22 (October 12 to 20): lock in targets, inventory and prices

Set separate GMV and profit targets for each marketplace, broken down by source: ads, affiliate, livestream, organic. Use your store’s own 11.11 and 12.12 numbers from last year as the baseline.
Pick 5 to 10 hero SKUs from the last 90 days of data, and give each one a role: driving traffic, generating profit or raising order value through bundles.
Run the breakeven sheet for every SKU using the current fee schedule, and fix the discount ceiling, minimum ROAS and maximum affiliate commission before you make any promises to the marketplace or to KOCs.
Plan inventory using your store’s historical ratio of sale-day to normal-day sales, plus safety stock for 12.12. Imported goods need to be ordered this week.
Register for the 11.11 program by the deadline in Seller Centre. Keep list prices stable, and do not raise prices before the sale to fake a bigger discount.

D-21 to D-15 (October 21 to 27): store, content and KOCs

Rewrite product titles around the keywords buyers actually type on the marketplace, with the main keyword first. Add images, video, category attributes and variant names that are easy to understand.
Create bundle SKUs and sale-only gifts to raise order value without undercutting the price of single products.
Lock in the content calendar from D-21 to D+7: product videos, countdown videos, add-to-cart reminder posts, sale-day content and post-sale content.
Send samples to KOCs this week, because affiliate videos need a few days to build views. Combine open commission with a private commission rate for KOCs who have already driven good orders.
Check the legal paperwork of every KOC and KOL who will livestream for the brand (details in the law section below).

D-14 to D-8 (October 28 to November 3): ads and the livestream schedule

Start ads at D-14 so the system has data to learn from. TikTok Shop’s GMV Max is an automated ad type that optimizes for total sales, with Product GMV Max for products and LIVE GMV Max for livestreams, both already available in Vietnam. On Shopee Ads, prioritize target-ROAS campaigns for hero SKUs and keep a separate budget for brand keywords. How each type of marketplace advertising works is explained in a separate article.
Set target ROAS based on the breakeven ROAS at the sale price. Write down budget scenarios for D-3, D-1 and D-0 in advance, with the conditions for raising or cutting spend.
Prepare 15 to 20 ad videos and track CTR during the warm-up week to pick the best group before the peak. If you also run ads on Facebook and Instagram, the videos need genuinely different ideas: Meta recommends creative diversification for its Meta Andromeda system, and advertisers have noticed that ads that are too similar often get treated by the system as one.
Schedule the livestreams: brand sessions, KOC sessions, who hosts, the product script for each time slot, and live-only vouchers. Prioritize the midnight sale opening and the evening of November 11.

D-7 to D-1 (November 4 to 10): operations, customer service and a dry run

Double-check voucher settings, flash sales and bundle prices. Unplanned voucher stacking is the most expensive mistake of the sale season, and it usually only surfaces after hundreds of orders have come in.
Work out packing capacity for the expected order volume on D-0 and D+1: shifts, packaging materials and pickup schedules with the carriers.
Get customer service ready: template replies, a chatbot, staff on shifts and a returns process.
Run content that reminds shoppers to add items to cart and follow the store to receive vouchers. The number of items in carts on D-1 is the closest indicator of D-0 sales.
Assign roles for sale day: who raises budgets, who pauses SKUs that are about to sell out, and where incidents get reported.

D-0 (November 11): track by the hour

Sale day needs just one hourly tracking sheet: GMV, orders, ROAS per campaign, conversion rate, stock of hero SKUs and messages waiting for a reply. Set the rules beforehand: when a SKU falls below a stock threshold, turn off its ads; when a campaign stays below breakeven ROAS for two hours in a row, cut its budget.

Which KPIs should you track during the sale season?

Metric	When to track	Why it matters
Contribution profit per order	Before the sale and after D-0	Higher GMV does not mean profit
ROAS versus breakeven ROAS	Hourly on D-0	Bids rise sharply on peak days
Conversion rate, average order value	Daily from D-14	Measures how well bundles and product pages work
Items in cart, store follows	D-7 to D-1	Forecasts D-0 demand
Cancellation, return and late delivery rates	D-0 to D+7	Affects store ratings and costs
Chat response time	D-0 to D+3	Affects store ratings
Repeat purchase rate	30 to 60 days after the sale	Measures the real value of new customers

What should you do after 11.11, from D+1 to D+7?

The week after the sale decides whether new customers buy once or come back. The first job is delivering on time, because orders stuck at D+1 and D+2 lead to cancellations and bad reviews. After that, ask for photo and video reviews on hero SKUs so you can use them for 12.12.

For new customers, send comeback vouchers that expire before 12.12 through store messages and follower vouchers. Track retention rate for the group who bought during 11.11 to find out whether your discount spend bought real customers or just a single order. With that data in hand, D2C strategies such as building a community or a membership program on your own channels have a basis for investment.

By D+7, wrap up with numbers: real profit after fees, returns and cancellations by SKU, real ROAS by campaign, which KOCs drove orders and which videos had high CTR.

How do you carry 11.11 into 12.12?

There are 31 days between the two sales, enough to rerun your 11.11 plan for 12.12 faster now that you have real data. During the D+7 week, restock SKUs that sold above forecast, keep the KOCs and videos that worked, and recalculate discount depth based on actual ROAS.

The 12.12 season is also the doorway into Tet (Lunar New Year) shopping, where TikTok Shop has already overtaken Shopee. According to Metric, in the 6 weeks before Tet 2026 (December 15, 2025 to January 25, 2026), shoppers spent VND 67.7 trillion on the two marketplaces, and TikTok Shop took 51% of it. Brands that are still weak on TikTok Shop should use 12.12 to rebalance budget between the two marketplaces before Tet.

How does Vietnam’s new E-commerce Law affect sale-season livestreams?

Vietnam’s E-commerce Law No. 122/2025/QH15 was passed by the National Assembly on December 10, 2025 and took effect on July 1, 2026, so every 11.11 program this year has to comply with it. Brands should check two points before locking in the livestream schedule:

Article 24 sets out the obligations of livestream sellers, including providing information so the platform can verify their identity and not giving false or misleading information about a product’s uses or quality. A KOC who has not been verified can break your live schedule at the last minute.
Article 23 requires sellers to give livestreamers documents proving they meet the business conditions for regulated lines of business before the livestream. For cosmetics, dietary supplements or medical devices, send this set of documents to KOCs at the same time as the product samples.

Livestream scripts should be approved in advance, especially any claims about what a product does. Adtek will analyze these rules in a separate article.

Adtek runs ads on Shopee, TikTok Shop and Lazada, as well as mega sale campaigns, for cosmetics, fashion and electronics brands. If you need a second look at your pricing sheet, ad budget or KOC schedule for 11.11 and 12.12, talk to the Adtek team.