WeChat fashion & luxury market is growing, and the platform has now been used by a large number of Western Fashion and Luxury brands including Nike, Coach, and Burberry to communicate with consumers on a one-to-one basis. This offers a real opportunity for companies to develop brand loyalty in the most innovative ways.
Let’s see 10 features of the corporate accounts available to brands and get insights on effective WeChat marketing campaigns from best practices on fashion and luxury brands.
1. ONE-TO-ONE MARKETING: YVES SAINT LAURENT “KISSING HABITS SURVEY”
The French Fashion house YSL launched last year a campaign called “Kissing Habits Survey” on WeChat featuring its lipsticks collection. Followers had to select their gender and star sign before answering to the eight-question survey about kisses and receive the results.
Basically, the survey featured questions such as “What makes a good kiss?”, “How long would you wait before a first kiss with someone?” and “Where do you like to kiss your partner?”. At the end of the survey, participants also received lipstick recommendations that were shareable on their WeChat Moments.
2. O2O MARKETING: TAG HEUER CREATES OFFLINE-TO-ONLINE EXPERIENCE
The Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer, for its traveling exhibition “La Maison”, created an O2O campaign on WeChat. Through its WeChat official account, the company invites Chinese users to interact with the exhibition and learn more on its history in the form of a treasure hunt. “La Maison” exhibition tour started in Kuala Lumpur and moved to Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.
The brand also used QR codes, pulling up TAG Heuer’s WeChat account, to transform the offline experience to a digital treasure hunt. The WeChat account serves as a guide throughout the exhibition and provides “keys” to visitors to unlock checkpoints. With this innovative creation, TAG Heuer has introduced a richer interactive experience to its users, while bringing them through every milestone of the brand’s 154 years of history.
3. GAMIFICATION: KATE SPADE LANTERN GAME TO CONNECT WITH FOLLOWERS
The American Fashion House Kate Spade has taken advantage of the gamification and launched a sky lantern-flying game on WeChat to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in China last year. The game aims at connecting followers to the brand and developing brand awareness. It allowed followers to choose the lantern colour, write wishes and greetings on it and release it to the sky. Users could invite friends via QR code scanning to fly the same lantern as well. On top of that, the company was also offering a chance to the participants to win gifts from Kate Spade.
4. VIRAL SHARING: COACH RED ENVELOPES
Mass viral sharing is the key to social marketing on microblogging platforms. Since 2014, many luxury brands focused Chinese culture to encourage one-to-one sharing between close family and friends. The American leather goods brand Coach launched its own WeChat fashion promotion through a red envelope game in which users could send special offers to friends and family.
5. LOYALTY PROGRAM: SEPHORA’S LOYALTY
The loyalty card is basically a CRM tool for companies to send discounts, promotions, points, or even rewards.
Sephora has created a page dedicated to its loyal customers on its WeChat mini-website. They can check their points balance and benefits, as well as update their personal details to not miss out on special offers and the latest news, and all this without leaving the app. This helps to drive fans to the corporate WeChat account of Sephora and give them reasons to go back frequently to check for the new things.
6. FULL WECHAT FASHION MINI-WEBSITE: THE CHANEL BRAND EXPERIENCE
WeChat enables more than the basic interaction via chat (quizzes, sharing, stickers) as it offers brands a complete brand experience with the possibility to develop a full mini-website. The mini-website is divided in two-levels menus, which can serve a series of marketing objectives.
Chanel has built a WeChat fashion mini-website to better manage the interaction with its followers. It has many features including the latest news, the history of the brand, new products, make-up tips, etc.
7. STORE LOCATOR APP: ZARA’S GPS-ENABLED STORE LOCATOR APP
With its service account, Zara created a micro-site under the navigation bar to serve all of its content to the user, including a store locator page. The locator feature is only available when the user has accepted to share its location. Then, the brand replies with the closest stores to the current location of the user.
Besides, WeChat LBS (Location-based service) is one of the most practical functions for retailers. It also allows chain stores to push automatically messages such as latest promotions to followers close to a store.
8. IN-APP WECHAT SHOP: H&M “LITTLE SHOP”
Brands that have a verified WeChat service account can use the platform to showcase their products to consumers though an in-app shop. Storeowners can therefore upload products, manage orders, and take care of customer relationship.
H&M, the Swedish fashion multinational company, created an online “little shop” for customers to shop easily without leaving WeChat. When users are accessing the in-app shop, they can use the app as a billing system to checkout through a “one-click-payment”. This function enhances the user experience and increases significantly the sales conversion rate.
WeChat fashion shops can be developed into your WeChat micro-APP or set-up on third party services like Weidian (the WeChat equivalent of Amazon or Taobao).
9. CUSTOMER ASSISTANCE: LOUIS VUITTON MOBILE CUSTOMER CARE
The WeChat official account admin platform provides companies with a Message API to manage incoming messages and reply logic.
Louis Vuitton is using this feature to provide customer assistance. They have set up a welcome message, as well as automated responses based on keywords in order to anticipate customer’s needs and questions.
Here is the translation of Louis Vuitton’s welcome message:
“Hello! Thanks for following Louis Vuitton official channel. We are here daily, 10:00 to 19:30, to answer your questions, explore Louis Vuitton and embark on a wonderful journey!”
10. PROMOTE SOCIAL EVENTS: MICHAEL KORS “JET SET EXPERIENCE”
U.S. Fashion label Michael Kors developped an app on WeChat for the opening of its flagship store in Shanghai on 2014, May 9. The primary goal was to allow fans to experience the entire Michael Jors Jet Set Experience via live images and interactive news feed, which made the opening accessible to all. This was the first-ever live-feed app on WeChat.
Through the “Jet Set Experience” campaign on WeChat, Michael Kors took another step towards achieving brand recognition in China.