WELCOME TO THE JING DAILY WECHAT EDITION

Our weekly briefing on all things WeChat, featuring the latest news, campaigns, reports, case studies & events.

—What's New—

The latest WeChat news gathered from top sources

ads = $$$

Despite some economic experts expressing disappointment over Tencent's Q4 2018 results, other industry analysts have urged investors to focus on the Chinese gaming giant's online advertising division as it is expected to greatly expand this year.
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social forces

China’s Pinduoduo was all the rage in 2018 as the e-commerce upstart quickly rose to challenge Alibaba and raised $1.63 billion through its Nasdaq listing. Much of its success was attributable to its link to WeChat, China’s messaging leader. Now, another emerging e-commerce player that has leveraged WeChat is gearing up for a listing in the United States — meet Yunji.
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french pride

French institutions and brands have been at the forefront of embracing WeChat in order to reach a larger audience in China — and it’s paid off for many. The Louvre, for example, was an early adopter of the platform, in June 2015, as a way to welcome the growing number of Chinese travelers to the storied museum. And the Guimet Museum, Paris’ Asian art museum, recently teamed up with WeChat’s parent company Tencent Holdings to digitize its entire collection in an effort to reach a larger Chinese audience.
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—The Campaign—

Recent noteworthy WeChat campaigns & case studies

winning

How King Power's Stepping Up to Get the Chinese Travelers’ Money
Facts: Amid slowing economic growth and stricter daigou regulations in China, overseas retailers and brands have struggled to maintain the level of sales generated by Chinese tourists in recent years. It’s a watershed moment for the industry, as the winners quickly learned to adapt to Chinese technology, exemplified by the duty-free group like King Power that has utilized WeChat Moments ads to capture the attention of Chinese travelers before they even depart China.

Way to pay: The checkout process on King Power’s mini-program store. Photo: Azoya Group. Click to enlarge.

Features: The goal of the campaign is to target female Chinese tourists who are traveling in Thailand. The Moments Ads use popular products and promotional information to attract users’ attention. Once clicked, users are directed to the mini-program e-commerce page where they can place an order directly and pick up their goods from the airport.
The Result: The click-through rate on the ads was 5.5 times the industry average.
Our Take: Combining the power of WeChat Moments ads and the mini-program, King Power allows travelers to avoid the hassle of shopping offline. They have designed a seamless experience where travelers can place an order before arrival while taking their time browsing products on the mini-program, and they can pay with WeChat Pay without switching currencies. Customers don’t have to deal with long lines or get frustrated when their desired item is out of stock as they would in a retail outlet.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“In Shenzhen, I open my WeChat at least 50 times a day. It’s essential for getting around the city: riding the subway, getting a visa to go to Hong Kong or Macau, or getting access to membership benefits at the clothing store Muji." —Jiaqi Luo, WeChat user/Chinese consumer trend writer, Paris.
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—WeChat Video—

First-hand look into WeChat innovation

Take a look at how The New York Times breaks down WeChat, the super app

—Deep Dive—

Must-read, in-depth guides, tutorials & reports

wechat earning

What does Tencent’s Q4 earnings say about WeChat?
Last Thursday, Tencent Holdings released its fourth quarter 2018 and full-year 2018 financial results, the first since it restructured in September. Unfortunately, the news was not good. Tencent suffered its largest quarterly profit drop in 13 years. Clearly, the government’s freeze on mobile gaming as well as Tencent’s own business shift certainly hasn’t helped the massive company.

On a brighter note, online advertising business achieved RMB 58.1 billion in revenues, up 44% YOY. The “Social and Others” category grew even faster at 55% YOY. This explosive growth was due to several contributing factors: an increase of inventory (about half of WeChat users started to see 2 ads per day) and an improvement in advertising quality. Given this, if you are an advertiser, here are some earnings highlights to help you decide whether or not to continue to invest in WeChat ads, written by Thomas Graziani, co-founder of Marketing & IT agency WalktheChat:

In particular, WeChat introduced new advertising features, which have long been popular on Facebook, such as retargeting (ability to show ads to users who have been involved in past campaigns) and lookalike audiences (ability to submit a list of WeChat users / phone numbers to WeChat and ask WeChat to look for similar profiles through its artificial intelligence algorithm).
Tencent also underwent a major advertising restructuring during February 2019. This drastically decreased the number of authorized WeChat advertising agency, leaving only the largest company to control the market. Tencent also started to offer a lower rebate rate to advertising agencies. This reduced the admin cost of supporting advertising agencies and will have a positive impact on the next financial quarter.

Ian Chan, Senior Director of Business Development at Tencent speaking.

—Event Recap—

First-hand information from the event

On March 6, 2019, representatives from more than 100 global brands gathered at the Royal Plaza Hotel in Hong Kong to attend the second annual International WeChat Strategy & Innovation Summit. As one of the world’s premiere WeChat marketing events, this year’s conference featured speakers from Salesforce, Tencent, and WeChatify, who taught the audience how to take full advantage of the WeChat ecosystem through the use of WeChat ads, intelligent customer experiences, and marketing automation.
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—System Update—

Stay on top of WeChat's evolution

two worlds

Separating personal and work lives is now much easier on WeChat
WeChat Work version 2.7.5 is out and brings multiple new updates to the platform. Most notably, adding WeChat contacts to your WeChat work is now easier than ever: when you get a friend request on WeChat, you can add them as a contact directly in WeChat Work by simply tapping one button, moving one step closer to solving the common user complaint — you can’t separate work from personal on WeChat.

System Update Provided by Michele Mascolo, Marketing Manager at IT Consultis

Other notable updates include:

WeChat Pay: it is now possible to connect multiple accounts to one single WeChat work account, as well as adding multiple WeChat Work accounts to one single WeChat Pay account.
Mass/Bulk Message (群发助手): users can now simultaneously send the same message to multiple customers separately. Full changelog available here (at the bottom).