Marketing on WeChat has been accepted and adopted by more and more
companies. According the financial report released by Tencent in 2014 (京华时报, 2014),
the active users of WeChat has been over 430 million. More than 50% of the
mobile phone users have registered as WeChat users and over 25% of the mobile
phone users are active WeChat users. That’s to say, WeChat is becoming one of
the most important communication tool of Chinese people. To increase followers
on WeChat is to increase the opportunity to directly and instantly communicate
with potential customers.
Without proper goals, the promotion actions will never be effective.
However, since WeChat is still a newly grown up social media and instant
message platform, and it is quite different from website witch can be seen by
any Internet user, or other social media like Weibo witch can be easily
searched, it should be thought through what should be set as proper KPIs for
the promotions on this unique platform.
With a simple exploration of the background of WeChat, we can easily
see what kinds of data are collected. As many companies has noticed, it’s true
that the increased number of followers and number of views of each article or
message are important metrics, but there are another two metrics which are also
important but easy to be ignored.
l The arrival rate
The arrival rate = number of followers who received the content sent
by the company/the total number of followers.
This is a metric easy to be misunderstood. Many people, even some of
the professionals thought that it always equals the number of followers and
therefore never examined this number. Actually, since WeChat users may choose
to block the messages from the public accounts, the actual arrival number may
be less than the total number of followers.
If the arrival rate is higher than 90%, usually it’s Okay, because
different users have different habits. Some of them may block messages only to
avoid interruption during their work time, instead, they prefer to check the
message when it’s convenient to them or when they see it’s followed and shared
by their friends. If this is the case, it won’t hurt the number of views too
much.
However, if the gap between the arrival number and the total number
of followers is larger, there may be some problems. It is dangerous because it
may lead to “unfollow” behaviors among the target customers. The most possible
reason for the decrease of arrival rate is too intensive promotion which makes
the followers annoyed. It may also be caused by improper target strategy or bad
promotion activity design. For example, the interactive activities are not
attractive to the target customers or the promotion activity is too complicated
and long. In this case, some revision of the promotion plan is required and
some research is needed to understand the psychological background of the
target customers.
l The open rate
The open rate = number of followers who clicked and opened the
public account after they received the content/total number of followers who
received the content.
The open number is not the same with the number of views. In WeChat,
users may click into the public account to see the titles of the newly
published articles, and if they have any further interest, they may click into
the page of articles and read for further information. Not all users will click
into the article page after they have a glance at the titles.
Whether they will click and read the articles is influenced by many
factors, including the quality of the main picture, the title and the summary.
But factors that may have influence on the open rate is much simpler. Usually
it depends on the choice of time to publish or send the content. For example,
it was reported that the peak of views on WeChat is from 20:00–22:00 (契约, 2015), they
may also read during the hour before their work day or during the break of
work. It needs further investigation to determine when is a better time
particularly for certain target customers.
Low open rate may implicate that the content is sent at a time the
followers are busy or inconvenient to use WeChat. And this will decrease the
opportunity of the content being seen by target customers. Therefore, just like
any other promotion, thorough understanding of the target customers’
background, media using habits and psychological characteristics is really
important for successful WeChat promotion.
Reference:
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