Fashion brands in China work hard to get dedicated followers on WeChat

Julia Q. Zhu is the founder of Observer Solutions, a China-focused ecommerce consulting and research firm, and runs the China Ecommerce Pulse Newsletter. She formerly held management roles for Alibaba Group. She’s @juliaqzhu on Twitter.

In China, social media is more than just a way for people to stay ahead of the news and connect with friends. While Western companies tend to focus on advertising on social media, Chinese brands use social platforms for deeper customer engagement – and even for ecommerce.

WeChat, China’s most popular mobile messaging app with 438 million active users, has already become a handy tool for businesses in China – including foreign brands – to engage with Chinese customers. It’s used by more than two million bloggers, celebrities, media outlets, small companies, and major brands to reach out to people.

Italian online fashion store Yoox recently launched a shop inside WeChat (called the “Yoox online concept store”). The retailer not only uses WeChat for advertising, which is typically how businesses use social media in the US and Europe, but it also provides online shopping and customer service directly inside the messaging app.

From the Yoox store inside WeChat we can see a good model for how a brand can use the versatile social app. This is what the Italian brand does:

• Shares the brand story – As shown in the case study picture below, the first tab on the bottom of Yoox’s WeChat official account is called ‘explore’. It allows WeChat followers to learn about the brand story, receive the latest news and updates from the retailer, and play a social game called Shake the Style. This mini game allows the brand’s WeChat followers to shake his/her phone to make various fashion matches that the user can then share directly on WeChat or other social media. That in turn helps spread the Yoox brand in China.

• Online selling – The ‘shop’ tab is the second component. In this, Yoox’s WeChat followers can browse and shop in sections dubbed “New arrivals” or “Look book”. The store has “exclusive deals” for WeChat followers. WeChat’s own epayment system means that shoppers can complete payment directly within the app.

• Providing instant services – The last tab is called ‘service’. It includes live-chat customer service, chat-based fashion consulting every Friday, special discount codes, and a general guide to Yoox’s WeChat store. The fact that WeChat is a messaging app makes it well suited to conversing with a brand representative in this way. All replies from the brand trigger notifications in the same way as a chat message from a friend.

See: LV or not LV? WeChat has a big problem with fake brand accounts

Chasing a $29 billion luxury market

A number of other brands are also making full use of WeChat. Another good example comes from US luxury brand Coach. Consumers in China will account for about 20 percent of global luxury sales in 2015, according to a report from McKinsey – that’s worth RMB 180 billion, or US$29.1 billion. It makes China a crucial luxury market.