One Billion Customers Can’t be Wrong: Why WeChat Should Be A Part Of Your Omnichannel Strategy

WeChat in China

04

WeChat – Multichannel or Omnichannel

06

WeChat should be part of your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

09

Final Thoughts

14

Contents

WeChat is one platform that has absolutely imploded in popularity in Asia-Pacific. Developed by Tencent in 2011, the Chinese-based app has grown tremendously over the years with over 1 billion daily active users (10% YoY increase sending 38 billion messages per day.

Commonly referred to as the ‘app for everything’, users on WeChat is recorded to spend more time on the app than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat put together.

If you’re a marketer or business owner hoping to enter this lucrative and increasingly accessible market - WeChat may be the best and most direct way to reach, build a relationship, and/or sell to a large customer/market pool.

One of the greatest attributes to WeChat’s immense success is its foundation of convenience and user-friendliness in terms of social communication, content sharing, and mobile payments. Given this realisation, this super app presents a fertile ground for you - be it as a local or global brand marketer - to extend brand awareness to an increasingly lucrative Chinese market.

Yet, WeChat is a crowded marketplace with over 14 million official accounts (corporate WeChat accounts and exclusive lifestyle partners. Its closed platform nature spells limited opportunities for businesses to make it work with a user – if you’re not providing sufficient or quality value to your followers, they will simply choose to opt out.

To maximise marketing efforts on the app, WeChat should be treated as part of an omnichannel strategy rather than as a silo channel – allowing your marketing team a more consistent and seamless way to engage with the Chinese market.

Introduction

One Billion Customers Can’t be Wrong: Why WeChat Should Be A Part Of Your Omnichannel Strategy | 3

daily active users

YoY increase

messages per day

1 Billion

10%

38 Billion

Just look at these striking numbers: 64% of its users open the app over 10 times a day, and 17% of them spend over 4 hours of their day on the app. WeChat’s pioneering business model has completely transformed mobile technology and social media in China – becoming the society’s norm for a mobile lifestyle. In China’s Tier 1 cities, user penetration rate is as high as 93%. Overseas businesses eager to capture a portion of this lucrative market may find it crucial to have a solid WeChat marketing strategy to elevate their brand presence – in particular, the luxury, retail and lifestyle brands targeting the mid to top percentile of Chinese consumers.

The popularity of social selling within the WeChat ‘centric’ society, and increased accessibility to billions of Chinese mobile

e-commerce consumers, have paved the way to a myriad of opportunities for organic marketing on a surprisingly personal level. In-app functions such as the WeChat Wallet and WeChat Shop further support these opportunities for mobile e-commerce, especially with a cashless society actively choosing e-payments for both online and offline transactions.

It is now easier than ever for foreign companies to accelerate the brand engagement and the customer purchase process via this medium. In the next chapter, we will explore how you can optimise your marketing efforts on this super app with omnichannel management.

WeChat in China

4 | One Billion Customers Can’t be Wrong: Why WeChat Should Be A Part Of Your Omnichannel Strategy

WeChat in China

Known as a “super app” for good reason, WeChat has massively spun out from its humble beginnings as a personal messaging app. Since its launch, WeChat’s functional capabilities have absolutely imploded from strength to strength, and is today, an indispensable part of modern life in China.

One Billion Customers Can’t be Wrong: Why WeChat Should Be A Part Of Your Omnichannel Strategy | 5

6 | One Billion Customers Can’t be Wrong: Why WeChat Should Be A Part Of Your Omnichannel Strategy

What’s the difference between omnichannel and multichannel? Omnichannel and multichannel marketing are two very distinct and separate marketing strategies - even if both does focus on the use of multiple channels to reach both current and potential consumers. The lines are blurred here, and the debate ever so frequent.

Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel marketing refers to the ability to interact with potential customers on more than one platform. These channels could be

anything from a print ad, a retail store, a website, a promotional event, a product package, or word-of-mouth communication.

Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel refers to the multichannel sales approach that provides the customer with an integrated shopping experience. The customer can be shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, via phone, or in a brick-and-mortar store, and the experience will still be seamless.

WeChat – Multichannel or Omnichannel

WeChat – Multichannel or Omnichannel With the advance of technology and the evolution of strategies in today’s marketing landscape, comes a new wave of terminology with which marketers need to become well- acquainted with. Two new-age definitions that immediately come to mind are multichannel marketing and omnichannel marketing.

One Billion Customers Can’t be Wrong: Why WeChat Should Be A Part Of Your Omnichannel Strategy | 7

WeChat – Multichannel or Omnichannel

Regardless of which channel the customer prefers to use, they typically demand a smooth, consistent, relevant and personalised experience with your brand. Omnichannel marketing strategies take that expectation into consideration, and build on the understanding that a customer may begin their journey on one platform, only to jump to another, and finally convert by way of the third. This approach is about creating a truly unified brand experience, regardless of the number of channels or the type of channel.

The multichannel approach looks to blast messaging out via the maximum possible number of channels. By walking through the importance of having WeChat as one of your channels for customer engagement, it is crucial to use it wisely – managing it in silo could significantly lower your efficiency.

Unlike other social media channels, WeChat has a strict control on the number of messages that can be sent by official accounts. WeChat Subscription accounts can send up to 1 push message per day to their followers, and are grouped together in a dedicated folder appearing alongside friends in the “chat” section of WeChat. WeChat Service accounts appear as friends in the “chat” section of WeChat. They allow up to 4 broadcast messages per month.

Since multichannel marketing is about casting the widest possible net to get the most customer engagements, WeChat might not be an appropriate channel for this purpose.

Conversely, the omnichannel approach interrelates every channel to engage with customers as a whole, to ensure they have a wonderful overall experience with the brand through each and every channel. The messages sent across channels should be consistent, as well as personalised. Companies with well-defined omnichannel customer experience strategies in place achieve a 91% higher year-on-year increase in customer retention rate on average, as compared to organisations without omnichannel programs in place.

Under omnichannel placement, a brand’s official WeChat account, mobile app, website and in-store experience, are all reflective of each other. Marketers should be able to see different channels as one. For example, in a loyalty program, the membership points in an individual customer’s account is synchronised with their WeChat account from the redemption system so that the brand can schedule timely and more targeted messages to this individual.

SINGLE CHANNEL MULTICHANNEL OMNICHANNEL

Subscription Account or Service Account?

Subscription Account

Content-centric user activation and interaction. Limited features, but best for content reach

Service Account

Capabilities that allow for full user experience. Best for post-sales interaction and sophisticated

activation

▸ Fewer than 4 articles published per month

▸ Daily push, but notifications are placed in the “Subscription folder”

▸ Content is searchable on Sogou search engine

▸ Original content can be certified and re-shared by other accounts with mention to the original publisher

▸ Gain revenue from reader “tips”

▸ Gain revenue from displaying third-party advertisements on owned articles

▸ 4 push notifications per month

▸ Follower segmentation

▸ QR code tracking

▸ In-app e-commerce and e-payments

▸ Capability to store coupons and integrate loyalty programs

▸ Ability to connect to a customer service team (multiway chat)

▸ API access for follower input processing

▸ Ability to advertise on WeChat

▸ Content not searchable on search engine

8 | One Billion Customers Can’t be Wrong: Why WeChat Should Be A Part Of Your Omnichannel Strategy

WeChat – Multichannel or Omnichannel

WeChat should be part of Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy 86% of shoppers are regularly channel-hopping across at least two channels,

maximise your customer engagement and revenue on investment.

With 1 billion daily active users, the linear path of brand communications is no longer valid. You need to start treating each user as an unique individual based on information derived from their digital ID.

In this chapter, we will look at how to implement WeChat in the omnichannel marketing strategy to accelerate personalised communications as a seamless customer journey on a single platform.

Unified Customer Profile

Identification is possibly the most valuable data that comes with an omnichannel marketing strategy. Thankfully, each WeChat user has a WeChat ID, that gives you some idea of who your leads are through this digital verification.

With an omnichannel approach, when you match a user’s WeChat

in-store frequency data, location, national ID, phone number etc.), you get a fuller picture of the person behind each user. This allows you to

channels.

If you have more than just an official account in WeChat, such as a mini program, or you have linked a mobile or web-based app to your WeChat account, you are then able to retrieve deeper user data within WeChat. For this, you have to know a little bit about OpenID, and UnionID.

WeChat should be part of Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

f

Personalisation

Once you are able to identify and match your WeChat followers with

greater

Segmentation Segment followers based on lifecycle stages or consumption

may set up triggers with automatic replies to a user reaching robotic

responses are more of an annoyance then a welcomed communication in our need for interaction especially

WeChat should be part of Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

OpenID

or

UnionID

or

based promotion and more accurate customer segmentation and

Contact Section Registration and Binding

a

t

Loyalty Program your

yourwould save consumers much time to download an additional app

much unnecessary hassle on their

To make all these happen, you have to know your leads, which re

the service othe

to produce personalis often their content posts fail to strike a chord with

sation

Use Case Example:

First Time Buyer C ampaign

Marketers place tremendous effort in acquiring new customers.

However, increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can

to Harvard Business School.

First engagements with a first time buyer is crucially important (first-impressions

count) as it is a great opportunity to turn that first time buyer into a repeat purchase

customer.

When a first-time buyer has completed the purchase either online or in store, they

will then receive a thank you message via WeChat, together with their relevant

purchase information such as shipping status and invoice.

In addition, since WeChat service accounts can only push up to 4 broadcast messages

per month, it is important for brands to send relevant information to their followers

wisely. For example, based on the first purchase, it is easier for marketing staff to

predict which product categories the consumer might like, and the platform of which

the brand should push subsequent relevant product information to them.

WeChat should be part of Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Automation throughout the entire Customer Journey

capabilities and what you as a marketer can do with them if you

Use Case Example:

Loyalty Membership Renewal Campaign

With a linked loyalty program, a member can follow their favourite brands via

WeChat, where they can access their profile and keep track of their

membership status . With each following purchase, and newly earned points,

they will also receive a personalised message via a trigger to their WeChat

account with details of their latest membership status – keeping

them constantly engaged.

Same goes for a membership renewal campaign. When a user’s

membership expires, the brand is able to send reminder messages

via WeChat to the respective member, and remind them of their

membership expiry date to keep them within the brand

environment. And at the same time, they can also smartly offer

some membership extension promotions to allow members to

redeem their points and stay within the program to enjoy the

exclusive discounts.

WeChat should be part of Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

your omnichannels.

▸ and receive personalised and relevant social feeds and promotions.

▸

invoice and shi

▸ Brands can keep their customers updated on the latest membership status, offers and redemptions.

▸ integrating both online and offline activities and behaviour.

▸ for defecting customers can be

Managing the customer journey in a single platform

With a single better truly

personalis se customer lifetime value based on the acquired lead and customer data across

a single platform also frees your hands and time upo helming

time you access the

WeChat should be part of Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

WeChat is one of the few social platforms globally where a brand can manage the customer journey well throughout all stages and migrate revenue-generating behaviour offline to online, all while supporting value-added communications and meaningful interactions. Adding this super app to your omnichannel marketing strategy could help you retrieve those missing pieces of data and deeper insights from the WeChat ‘centric’ market.

From the get-go, WeChat has been positioned as a closed social network. Thus, traditional digital marketing strategies will not work, and is not meant for the super app. WeChat presents plenty of opportunities for targeted marketing and access to a pool of high potential leads. Data convenience, quality personalised content, and social sharing can all be merged into one platform to pave the way forwards for brands looking to succeed on WeChat.

Make use of WeChat to complete your marketing strategy with a marketing automation partner like Emarsys, to deliver truly personal and consistent customer interactions across offline (physical stores, SMS) and online (email, social, web, and now WeChat), through an innovative and easy-to-use integrated dashboard. To learn more about how we can help you achieve your marketing goals, visit Emarsys.com.

How Emarsys can help to achieve your WeChat KPIs:

▸ Contact identification, binding WeChat open ID with identified profile

▸ Multichannel integration – using WeChat as one of your communication channels to enhance better customer engagement

▸ Allows for a holistic customers behaviour analysis within a single platform

▸ One platform to manage multiple campaigns across channels.

▸ Personalisation of organic WeChat content

▸ Achieve higher efficiency and targeted messaging through contact segmentation

Book a demo

Final Thoughts

14 | One Billion Customers Can’t be Wrong: Why WeChat Should Be A Part Of Your Omnichannel Strategy

Resources

https://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-wechat-messenger-accounts/

https://technode.com/2018/05/15/wechat-impact-report-2018/

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-11/10/content_34372396.htm

https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/22799/wechat-official-accounts-snu/

https://www.emarsys.com/en-hk/resources/blog/multi-channel-marketing-omnichannel/

https://www.businessinsider.de/wechat-has-hit-1-billion-monthly-active-users-2018-3?r=US&IR=T

https://open.wechat.com/cgi-bin/newreadtemplate?t=overseas_open/docs/oa/getting-started/account-types#getting-started_account-types

https://chinachannel.co/wechat-official-account-features-whats-possible/

www.emarsys.com

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