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WeChat’s role connecting brands with Chinese shoppers is evolving fast as it adds features like e-commerce aggregation and integrated clienteling.

Avid users of Chinese social media apps are familiar with a certain type of content that has become even more prevalent in the wake of the pandemic. Customers boasting about hard-to-find luxury purchases now feel compelled to share their sense of triumph over the shopping experience — almost as if they had a narrow escape.

“Today my sales associate sent me a WeChat message saying there was only one more left in stock so I bit the bullet and grabbed it,” wrote one Xiaohongshu user, under a photo of Louis Vuitton’s petit sac plat bag, during the first year of the pandemic. In the second, another user was more matter of fact when they posted a photo of Chanel’s iconic quilted flap bag, fresh out of its box. “I [only] got the bag [after] I connected with the store sales associate on WeChat,” they wrote.

For many of these clients, the post is about more than just showing off an enviable relationship with a retail gatekeeper. At a time when shopping abroad is impossible for most Chinese and long queues often form outside local boutiques for those fortunate enough to not be in lockdown, luxury goods’ perceived scarcity feels more tangible than ever. Though shoppers’ real intention may be to earn brownie points with their sales associate by stroking their ego in a public forum, they often inadvertently promote something else when recounting their luxury haul online: the growing power of WeChat as it adapts to the customer journey.

It’s no secret that WeChat has fared well in recent years. Even as it plays second fiddle to Alibaba in terms of sales channels, the super-app continues to rise in importance as a marketing channel for fashion and beauty brands. As the digital infrastructure that makes everything from messaging to group-buying groceries possible, the platform has never been more top-of-mind for shoppers and marketers alike. But some of the credit to WeChat’s ongoing success goes to parent company Tencent, which has been busy launching and fine-tuning features throughout the pandemic.

From personalising CRM (customer relationship management) to upping traffic in an open ecosystem, here’s what brands should consider as they update strategies for China’s most popular app as it, in turn, evolves in double time.

As China’s ‘zero-Covid’ policies continue to disrupt the country’s logistics sector, and companies prioritise getting everyday essentials (rather than luxury goods) to residents of Shanghai and other cities, clienteling remains an essential tool for brands looking to stay top-of-mind with homebound shoppers. It is also increasingly important for those who aren’t living in cities under strict restrictions and can still visit physical stores across the country. One way WeChat has bolstered brands’ ability to do clienteling is through upgrades to its sister service WeCom.

Though WeCom, Tencent’s dedicated business communications platform, was officially launched in 2016, it has seen several rounds of updates and risen in prominence over the last two years to become one of WeChat’s main assets, says Michel Tjoeng, senior vice president of sales and marketing at ChatLabs, a WeChat-focused marketing, e-commerce and data management firm.

Though WeCom is technically separate to WeChat, in practice the two are integrated: A WeCom update in January 2022 upped visibility and access between employee and client channels. Crucially, it centralised communications by allowing sales associates to carry out brand-supported engagement through an official corporate channel, rather than selling via their own private messaging accounts. Until this happened, a sales associate who left their brand for a competitor could easily take their list of VIP clients — the “gold dust,” as Tjoeng calls it — with them.

Now, brands use WeCom to share official marketing material, conduct event management, and set up private sales via mini programmes. When customers book appointments to see items in-store, sales associates can more seamlessly access the pieces they’re eyeing and prepare them in advance. “[WeChat] is really the only platform that can facilitate these online to offline synergies,” says Tjoeng.

While WeCom has until recently been the preserve of bigger brands, Tjoeng says that smaller brands are now coming on board. The platform is extremely malleable, meaning brands can invest in personalising their CRM (customer relationship management) systems. Many beauty players, for example, use chatbots to answer frequently asked questions on their official accounts, but for hard luxury players that benefit less from impulse buys, connecting prospective customers to real salespeople is key.

Tjoeng cites British jeweller Graff, a ChatLabs client that used WeCom to build an auto-response function that, after establishing a customer’s city and preferred store, has them scan a QR code to assign a salesperson to take over the relationship.

WeChat has long been a comparatively open ecosystem thanks to its mini-programmes. It is also known for allowing brands wider and more creative control over the user experience as well as greater access to data and analytics than other content-centric channels. Tjoeng raises the example of Burberry’s Chinese New Year campaign, which included giving out points to users after they interacted with the brand’s content, allowing them to buy Burberry outfits for their online avatars.

But in order to take advantage of this malleability, brands need to take matters into their own hands when driving traffic to their e-commerce mini programmes and other WeChat touchpoints. Unlike on Alibaba’s Tmall or JD.com, where users can search for items across the whole platform and discover brands they’ve never heard of through an algorithm, the way WeChat works means brands need to work harder for their traffic.

“Traffic has always been WeChat’s weak spot,” says Tjoeng — the platform last year moved to bolster traffic to luxury brands by way of Huiju, an e-commerce platform that aggregates mini programmes to drive traffic to brands’ WeChat storefronts, but it’s too soon to say whether it is a success.

The breadth and multifaceted nature of WeChat also means that unlike content-focused channels including Douyin, content is much less likely to go viral. This remains the case despite the platform’s efforts, through its 2020 launch of the Channels feature, to challenge the TikTok sister app and other short video players. “Channels still has a long way to go; I still don’t think it’s a competitor to Douyin,” says Rui Ma, host and founder of the Tech Buzz China podcast and partner at Synaptic Ventures. The average time spent daily on Douyin, 107 minutes, dwarfs the 35 minutes users typically spend on WeChat’s Channels.

That said, Tencent isn’t giving up. With Channels pushing branded live entertainment since Q4 2021, with performances by musicians reaching 40 million viewers, it’s only a matter of time before fashion and beauty brands with deep pockets play a bigger role in these celebrity experiences.

The most sustainable way for brands to take an initiative on WeChat is still to focus on data insights. “Not leveraging the full potential of WeChat is where most brands fall short, whether it be through minimal targeting efforts, poorly monitored followings or simply underutilising the app’s features,” says Kim Leitzes, influencer marketing firm Lauchmetrics’ managing director of APAC.

Leitzes urges brands to create clear and tailored plans to leverage data to inform future campaigns. This pertains to both official accounts as shoppers’ first port of call, as well as mini programmes, where greater opportunities for user interaction will result in more accurate insights.

How a brand structures their framework should be tailored to their target audience. According to an October 2021 report released jointly by Tencent Marketing Insights and Boston Consulting Group, brand-run mini programmes are especially popular among post-90s generation shoppers and are expected to see sales grow almost 30 percent in 2022. The report adds that while post-90s users prioritise an innovative shopping experience, older users place more stock on efficient, personalised services.

When it comes to attracting users to the account to begin with (and collecting data as they make their way there), creating small incentives is key. Tjoeng sees the likes of Coach and Calvin Klein tap into what he calls the reverse loyalty approach, where rather than giving out loyalty points post-purchase, customers earn points by scanning QR codes, starting conversations with sales associates and watching videos.

Though Tencent doesn’t break down revenue figures, WeChat’s slower pace of growth after exceeding the 1 billion monthly active user (MAU) mark in Q3 of 2019 isn’t undermining its hegemony as China’s communications giant, says Ma. “There’s still no alternative to WeChat,” she offers.

In recent years, officials and government agencies have made clear their intentions to do away with China’s digital “walled gardens” — closed loop ecosystems, like WeChat, intended to restrict user value to single apps and thereby limiting users’ abilities to move between apps as well as brands’ cross-platform insights. While some links are now interoperable, progress has been slow, says Ma. “It hasn’t really happened; I expected a faster push.” Even so, she believes that it’s only a matter of time. “The government is very serious about walking down this path; I don’t think they’re just saying it.”

But stricter regulations won’t necessarily affect the ecosystem’s screen time or standing as a one-stop-shop for China’s personal digital needs. “[WeChat] has a very unique position in peoples’ lives,” says Ma, who reckons the ubiquity of its core communications service will insulate it while platforms with a narrower range of services, such as Alibaba’s luxury behemoth Tmall, face a greater danger of losing their dominance.

A threat to WeChat could come by way of newer, innovative players — but even that seems implausible. “Some things are just sticky because of crazy network effects, and [WeChat] has a strong network effect that will be here for the foreseeable future,” says Ma. Indeed, it wouldn’t hurt brands to experiment with planting their flags in buzzy new platforms like metaverse social media app Zheli, but WeChat is going to remain a high priority for most brands. Those who continue to allocate significant resources for the platform and strategise well for it will likely continue to be rewarded, especially considering its lower acquisition costs.

Of all the major tech players, Ma worries the least about WeChat when it comes to Beijing’s regulatory agenda. “No one, I think, has the capability right now of overturning WeChat’s 1 billion user lead. The more they become an ecosystem, the harder it’ll be for other people to disrupt it.”