Just one year after its launch in China in 2013, Evernote was already claiming 4 million users. Last year, China has become its second largest market with reported 20 million users. Yinxiang Biji, it’s Chinese company, has recently announced its plans to go public in China.

In fact, Evernote has succeeded where many famous Western tech giants, such as Google or Facebook, have failed miserably. So, what was it that they were doing right? Let us break down main factors of Evernote’s remarkable success in China.

Navigating around Chinese censorship

Evernote has always stressed its main functionality as a private data storage for individuals, not a social platform and broadcasting service. Although, the original version does include some social functions such as note sharing, they have been either removed or played down in the Chinese product. This enabled Evernote to stay away from troubles with China’s powerful internet censors.

Speed and functionality

The company has realized that the key to good usability in China is the speed of synchronization and access – the core of its functionality. Keeping data centers in US would severely impact connection speed and turn away potential users, making it impossible to acquire critical mass of local early adopters. Hence the decision to setup local data center, which was also its first one outside of US.

Privacy assurance

Company’s CEO, Phil Libin, has published a letter assuring subscribers that Evernote takes securing the privacy of user data in China very seriously. The letter emphasized Evernote’s adherence to its three laws of handling user data by making it personal, protected, and portable.

Employing social media

Evernote quickly embraced Weibo and WeChat, two most popular Chinese social media platforms. The company has also been publishing its own blog filled with useful tips about efficient usage of its services while tailoring the message for the local audience. The blog was encouraging users to write about their personal travel experience with connection to Evernote apps – another good example of user engagement.

Localized customer service

When it comes to Chinese users, Evernote quickly understood the importance of speedy and high quality customer service . The company has been recognized for its efficient response to issues and complaints, both through social media, like WeChat channel, as well via chat on their website.

Successful choice of brand name

Evernote has made a smart choice in picking its Chinese brand name that proved to be an excellent fit on many levels. Evernote’s Chinese name is Yinxiang Biji (印象笔记) and can be translated as “memory notes”. Incidentally, the name also incorporates character 象, an elephant, that is used as Evernote’s logo. The name is both memorable and descriptive of the core functionality of the service.

Integration with local services

Part of Evernote’s China localization strategy was releasing API for integration with local apps. As a result, along with its support for traditional services like IFTTT and Pocket, its Chinese product integrates local services such as WeChat, Weibo, Duoguo (a restaurant guide website) UC browsers and others.

Localized Evernote Market

Most recently, Yinxiang Biji has launched its local version of Evernote Market store with products specifically selected and marketed for Chinese customers. Evernote’s fully functional web-based outlet was noted for its good user experience and original offers. It also itegrates Alipay as its online payment solution.

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If you are on a bootstrap budget, the first thing to try would be finding a freelance translator through sites like Upwork or Freelancer. It’s by far the cheapest option but could also be a hit and miss. Typically, we always suggest to have your site translated to both Simplified Chinese for Mainland China  audience and to Traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Even though, both Taiwanese and Hongkongneese  would have little problem reading content in Simplified Chinese, having those two choices would be seen as showing respect to millions of Traditional Chinese readers. Large number of corporate executives and managers of companies in China are from Taiwan and Hong Kong and it would certainly be a good idea to offer them proper translation as well.

Many freelance translators, who are native Chinese speakers, don’t have a good grasp of Traditional Chinese and would simply use machine translation program, like Baidu or Google Translate, that simply substitute Simplified to Traditional characters. As a result, Traditional Chinese translation would often look awkward and, sometimes, completely unreadable. If you use any of the freelance translators, make sure to test them first by asking them to translate a paragraph to both languages and have it verified with a native Taiwanese or Hongkongnese.

Never hire translators who are not native Chinese speakers, this would be a complete waste of your money. You should also make sure to verify the work before you release the payment.

Localization is not the same as translation of the content, although translation is the major part of it.

Another option is to hire a professional translation company but, unfortunately, many of them are simply a one-two man operation, regardless of what they say about themselves on their website. Large number of them would use machine translation software with some corrections afterwards. Be prepared to shop around for a while as, in our experience, 80% of such firms provide very low quality work.

Just like with the freelancers, you should test the quality first by asking them to translate one paragraph and, if you suspect that machine translation has been used for any of the languages (most likely Traditional Chinese), don’t hire them.

If you are prepared to spend anywhere around $1,000 or more, make sure to have a written contract with such company. The contract should stipulate that the company must correct the translation within 2-4 weeks after submitting it to you if you find any issues. There must be a legal recourse clause in the contract in case of substandard quality of the translation but it’s always time limited, so make sure to check their work carefully as soon as you receive it.

In the coming post, we will discuss other aspects of web presence localization specific to China market.

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Being a worldwide industry problem, China’s digital advertising market seems to be one of the worst affected ones. Chinese  internet is the second most popular advertising media after television and was estimated at $55.48 billion by the end of 2018 according to China Daily. Unfortunately, advertisers’ losses could account for up to third of that amount, mostly lost to non-human traffic and fraudulent CTR (click through rate).

The report by Miaozhen Systems, released about a year ago, claims that auto and telecommunications were hit the worst with up to a third of the traffic being non-human, i.e. generated by bots and crawlers, while food & drink and the fast moving consumer products industry saw the lowest rate at 8.52% and 11.88% respectively.

…many local computers still run on Windows XP that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Bots can infect such machines much easier and, in fact, a proportionally larger share of fraudulent traffic seems to be coming from lower tier cities where more people still use older Windows OS.

How do the losses occur exactly? A small piece of malicious software, a “bot”, is placed on a host computer from which it visits various sites in the background without user noticing anything abnormal with their machine. It’s even harder to spot for advertisers because it shares the real user’s unique “cookie” identifier.

Other pieces of software can stack hundreds of ads on top of each other on a website, or place the entire website into a small pixel on a page. This way, it would seem that a particular ad was displayed while, in fact, it was never seen by a visitor.

CPC (cost per click) ads are also affected as such bots can be smart enough to mix real clicks with the “fake” ones, making it harder to identify as a non-human activity.

There are number of reasons why China is one of the worst affected markets. First, many local computers still run on Windows XP that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Bots can infect such machines much easier and, in fact, a proportionally larger share of fraudulent traffic seems to be coming from lower tier cities where more people still use older Windows OS.

Second, not all the fake traffic is caused by bots, some is accounted for search engine crawlers. Since search engine market in China is much more fragmented than in the West, there are simply more crawlers visiting each site.

A third reason that is also specific to China is the fact that many people would willingly install special traffic software on their systems in order to attract more followers to their social media profiles, making their social activity appear more popular. However, such programs would do many other things without user’s knowledge or consent, effectively plugging such computer into a larger bot network.

Lastly, there is a lack of habit and willingness to go after the offenders and many in the industry still consider this problem to be the necessary evil that nothing much can be done about. Although, there is a technology in place to combat the problem, its adoption in China has been slow.

A new alarming trend is the increasing proliferation of online fraud in the growing mobile space. Android is by far the most popular mobile OS in China but the official Google Play store is not the usual place to go for apps. Most people would go to many smaller apps market which exercise very little control over quality.

While, at the moment, most non-human traffic in China is still PC based, it is reasonable to assume that with more people using Android devices to access internet, the worst of mobile advertising fraud is yet to come.

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There are considerable challenges in achieving success in the mobile apps market. Those have to do with launching and promoting an app in the right store, figuring out monetization model that works and is sustainable, overcoming China-specific technical challenges and, finally, making sure that your product is not easily copied by a competitor.

Here is the list of 10 most important factors to consider before venturing into China’s mobile apps market:

The right mobile OS

Thanks to the low cost of entry level smartphones in China, two out of three users are on Android system which makes it the one to target first. iOS still represents about one third of the total market but Android will certainly continue to dominate China in the near future. Windows phones didn’t get much traction in China yet, while Blackberry and Nokia’s Symbian systems being even less relevant.

Fragmentation of Android apps market

There are literally hundreds of Android mobile stores, each focusing on a specific niche, demographics or geographic region. Understanding complex Android ecosystem is crucial to launching your app in the right store. Simply applying to all or most of them is not an option because each store has its own QA and approval process as well as billing system. The best strategy is to focus on the top 5 stores and monitor the performance of each of them. The most popular Android independent stores in China include AppChina, Anzhi, Gfan, Hiapk, Liqucn,Wandoujia, eoemarket, and 91Market (note that Google Play is not even in the top 20).

In addition, many large companies, such as China Mobile (largest mobile provider), Baidu (top search engine), QQ (popular messenger), as well as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi etc., have their own store.

Mobile network speed

The speed of China’s mobile networks still lags behind Western countries, Japan or Korea. If your app is graphics-heavy making it loading slow, it will most likely be abandoned. If you are considering localizing an existing app for Chinese market, you need to make sure that it works fast enough on much slower network speed.

Hopefully, the ongoing development and introduction of 5G infrastructure will help alleviate this problem.

Social media integration

Another challenge of localization is the integration of the local social media channels. Your app won’t work in China (unless used with VPN) if signup or login options use Facebook or Twitter as those are inaccessible from the Mainland. Same goes for sharing and retweeting. If social media is essential for your app, make sure to integrate the most popular local platforms such as Sina and/or Tencent Weibo, YouKu or WeChat.

Cloud storage issue

Popular cloud storage services, such as Dropbox or Box.net, are often too slow or inaccessible from China. Out of popular Western services, only Microsoft Skydrive seems to be relatively stable at the moment. If cloud storage is required for your app’s functionality, consider using one of the local solutions, although they may not be as fast and convenient. 

Payment system

Local mobile-based payment services have won the war against any other payment method. Two of the most popular services are Alipay and WeChat Pay. Remember that Chinese use of credit cards is very limited as they seem to entirely skip the credit card era straight to the digital money world. Another popular payment system with mobile in-app purchases works directly through mobile carrier, such as China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile. This, however, require more complex integration of your app into their payment system, something that can’t be done without an experienced local partner company.

Everyone takes a cut

Apps stores fees range wildly, something to be taken into account when choosing the most suitable one as well. QQ for instance, takes up to 70% of an app’s revenue, while China Unicom takes 30%. In addition, each store has its own guidelines and procedures as well as its own government tax and banking rates. Note, that government tax and various regulation fees can easily reach up to 30% on top of the app store cut!

Piracy concerns

If your app is successful there is no question that it will be copied. All of the world’s most popular apps have local copycats. Partnering with a local partner that is familiar with the apps store ecosystem can also help ensure that the copycat apps are pulled from the store to be replaced by the official ones. On the other hand, if you are simply coming up with a concept for an app and it is a good one, such “partner” can simply appropriate it. Therefore, due diligence is paramount in choosing your local partner.

Monetization model

Purchasing apps outright has been in decline worldwide. In China, people are even less willing to pay for an app, no matter how insignificant the price would be. This means that more creative monetization strategies should be considered. One of them would be selling ads. Recently, BBC ran a story about Chinese mother who developed flash card app for their kids which is now supplementing her income by $1,000 every month from the ads alone.

Another model is based on in-app purchases. It makes more sense to give away an app for free to get users more familiar with it. Once, hopefully, they start liking it, they would be more willing to pay for extras. This model works well for games and chat apps.

Finally, premium model is another one to consider: user downloads an app with limited functionality but has to pay for more enhanced features.

Apps for brands

Finally, there is another type of apps that aims at building brand awareness or serves as a marketing tool to supplement and support offline or web-based sales. If your app doesn’t require payment system or complex integration with other services, it can be launched much more easily. Also, such app would not be in any danger of  being copied as it has no value of itself without the brand behind it.

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As of now, China’s e-commerce sector is more than three times the size of the US market, which currently ranks distant second.

China has has been the largest ecommerce economy in the world since 2015. In 2019, it reached 1.94 trillion USD, representing an addition of 27% year over year and a quarter of China’s total retail sales volume.

Currently, the majority of Chinese are online shoppers which representing about 60% of China’s internet user base. When we compare this figure to US, where 88% of internet users shop online, it is evident why China still has plenty of room to grow in absolute terms. Needless to say, that the sooner your company taps into this vast market, the better off it will be.

Now, to the more practical aspect of China’s ecommerce. Generally speaking, there are two choices of selling online: opening a virtual store in one of the large online stores, or setting up your own internet store as an extension of your main website or as a stand alone site.

Plugging into China’s existing ecommerce ecosystem

The largest C2C ecommerce site in China is Taobao.com which as an equivalent to Ebay. Although, it is an entire universe in and of itself, selling on Taobao is more suitable to small retailers or individuals. It is a very competitive space and is notorious for fakes and pirated stuff. If your goal is building a trustworthy brand image you should stay away from Taobao.

Luckily, there is an alternative from the same Alibaba group that owns Taobao, called Tmall. The company goes to great extend to make sure that the product sold on Tmall are genuine. Sellers on that site have to abide by strict procedures which are even tougher for overseas companies. Read our earlier post for more details on how to establish a Tmall store and whether it’s a good fit for you.

While Tmall holds about 50% of B2C ecommerce market in China, Jingdong Mall (JD.com) is the second in size at about 22% market share as of 2013. The idea is similar to Tmall – Jingdong Mall is for branded products only and you will be expected to prove that you either own the brand or are authorized to sell it.
There are a few more such “online shopping malls” in China: Suning that focuses mostly on electronics and Amazon.cn – scaled down Chinese version of Amazon.com.

The pros of working with the existing ecommerce site can be summarized as follows:

• Traffic that goes through those sites is enormous and you are almost guaranteed to get some of it;
• Setup is not very complex, although it could be a bit tricky for a non-Chinese company. If everything is done right, your store can be up and running within 2-3 weeks;
• You can also benefit from marketing programs within the platform, although it would cost extra;

Of course, there are some cons too:

• It isn’t cheap. There are setup and running costs and a deposit, in case you are found in violation of the terms of the agreement (by selling counterfeited products for example). I discuss the cost of setting up Tmall store in more details here;
• Fierce competition from other sellers, pretty much like what you have in a traditional brick and mortar shopping mall but with more ads from every direction;
• Limited opportunity for differentiation by expressing your unique style or brand experience;

Setting up a stand alone online store

If you have a technical expertise to setup your own functional internet store than this could be an alternative route for your Chinese ecommerce strategy.

The obvious advantages of that approach are:

• You are in full control of your own store as there is no need to comply with anyone’s policies;
• Your store can provide a unique brand experience for a shopper that may not be available in Tmall or JD.com;
• There is no commissions on your sales to a 3rd party and no maintenance fees;

Disadvantages of building your own store could be as follows:

• You don’t benefit from the online mall’s traffic and acquiring it through marketing campaigns may become more expensive than paying to Tmall or JD.com for their marketing programs;
• Building your customers’ trust takes time. In the existing online mall like Tmall, trust level is high – shoppers know what to expect, fairly familiar with how it works and are quite sure that they’ll get what they pay for (and if they don’t there is proven recourse). Your customers have to be just as confident that they won’t be ripped off;
• The technical challenges can be substantial: you have to have the right payment system such as Alipay, Tenpay or Baidu wallet setup; take care of all the technical challenges related to traffic and transactions; having live support through chat; manage inventories; get a delivery system in place, just to mention a few.

As most of the examples show, and considering your marketing budget allows that, the best strategy is the combination of both approaches. Setting up Tmall or JD store for building brand recognition and attracting new customers in addition to having your own internet store for more immersive brand experience targeted at existing customers and brand followers.

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The number of surveys indicate that Chinese are increasingly looking toward foreign brands at the expense of Chinese brands for everything from food and cosmetics to airlines and hotels. This means more opportunities for foreign companies considering increasing their foothold in Chinese market and winning more customers at the expense of the local competition.

According to the surveys, China’s food and entertainment industries are at the bottom of the “brand trust scale” while local technology firms are perceived as the most trustworthy brands. In retail, Western companies Nike and Zara enjoy the best reputation, however in grocery market, consumers show more price sensitivity. For instance, Taiwanese grocery chain RT Mart is doing well on the brand trust and overall value while British Tesco is leading among Western grocers in China.

Remarkably, large number of Chinese brands in retail are still perceived as not delivering enough value, even at throwaway prices. As a result, consumers are willing to pay premium for Western branded products as long as the price difference is reasonable.

Companies should learn to engage with their customer from the senior level. A company’s president or a CEO should be able to come out and address important issues head on.

Apart from the food safety scandals, social media has been playing increasing role in shaping brand perception of local products and companies. Chinese netizens are typically more likely to leave negative comments in social media following disappointing experience as opposed to writing raving reviews if the experience was positive. This situation often leads to brands falling out favor very quickly, especially if a company fails to address its social media crisis fast enough.

In one of the episodes of Thoughtful China program, Chinese consumers’ trust was the topic of discussion between several participants across number of industries. The interviewer was asking questions about the best ways of building brand trust, manage brand reputation and respond to crises. Below is the summary of the answers that made the most sense to me:

Companies should learn to engage with their customer from the senior level. A company’s president or a CEO should be able to come out and address important issues head on. Communication by senior level management would build trust and put such company on a different level of engagement with its customers.

China is still largely a relationship based society which explains the phenomenon of KOL (key opinion leaders) in the social media – individuals whose opinions are held in high regard by the large number, sometimes hundreds of thousand, of followers. Building relationship with KOL in the area of company’s operation is extremely important for brand reputation management.

Company should consider cultivating internal KOLs, the process that takes time and requires close engagement in social media. Once again, company’s CEO with enough charisma could be the best candidate for KOL. Chinese customers are very likely to appreciate such company’s efforts to build direct relationship with consumers from the highest level.

Chinese consumers tend to put more trust in large companies that are viewed as more reliable. In the West, on the other hand, people are more likely to distrust big corporations. Communicating the size, global reach and long history of a particular company will actually be beneficial in China in terms of brand perception.

Consumers in China are becoming increasingly demanding for greater social responsibility from companies they deal with. Issuing periodic social responsibility reports by such companies, as it is common in the West, will also help in building better reputation and, ultimately, solid and sustainable brand trust.

Overall, local brand trust situation in China shows signs of improvement, partly due to increased pressure from the government on corporations to become more transparent. Also, China’s market is still young and, since building trust takes time, foreign brands with established history and track record are likely to still stay ahead of local competitors for some time in the area of brand trust .

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In this post, we are going to review the primary routes for promotion and advertising on Sina Weibo. There are three basic ways to promote a brand on Weibo:

• Weibo Fans headlines (粉丝头条)
• Weibo Fans pass (粉丝通)
• Weibo Micro task (微任务)

Weibo Fans Headlines

This is the simplest way to promote a post by pushing it to the top of followers’ feed. At present, Weibo charges 2.37 RMB per post to be displayed above others in the feed for 24 hours. There is 40% discount for any posts that mention anything related to Weibo itself.

Making a post more prominently displayed can be an effective way to attract clicks from brand followers by having them notice the content as soon as they log in. The obvious disadvantage is the fact that it only improves your content’s visibility with your existing followers and does little to acquire new ones. On the other hand, the price for this type of promotion is fairly affordable.

Fans Pass

This type of promotion involves an ad campaign and can be initiated and managed with an ad account. The ad account opening process requires local ID and usually takes about 3 days to complete the approval process.

There are two pricing models: CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPE (cost per engagement) which are determined by automated bidding process, similar to the familiar Google Adwords.

CPM prices start at 5 RMB per CPM and can be increased by bidding up with 0.1 RMB increments.

“E” in CPE type of Weibo advertising stands for “engagement” that can be either click, a forward, a like or a follow. The initial price is set to minimum 0.5 RMB per CPE and can be increased at 0.01 RMB increment. The final price will be ultimately determined by quality of the content and competitive offers. If the price is set too low and the content is not engaging enough, the ad may not receive enough exposure, so setting the right bid and making adjustment to the content takes a bit of tweaking.

Weibo ad account provides some analytics tool to judge the effectiveness of an ad campaign but finding the right combination of all the parameters takes some skills and experience.

Micro task

The third type of promotion, which is also unique to Weibo, is called Micro Task and involves engaging KOLs, or Key Opinion Leaders.

KOLs are basically people with a lot of followers and are considered to be authority figures in their areas of expertise. Some KOLs have millions of followers which enables them to broadcast a targeted message to a very large audiences.

Depending on a specific industry, Weibo offers a range of KOLs to choose from. Typically, those with the largest following are more expensive to engage.

Working with KOLs requires opening an account and paying a deposit that is currently set to 2,000 RMB for companies. Once a suitable KOL is chosen, you can set a task (hence the name of this feature – “micro-task”) that normally involves posting your content in KOLs account that should appear at the time of your choosing and remain visible for a set period.

Depending on a specific KOL and the type of promotion task he/she receives, the price is set by Weibo automatically.

Individuals (as opposed to companies) can also use micro-task to promote posts. There is no deposit for individual account and you pay as you go per each task. On the other hand, individuals can’t pick KOLs that will be assigned by Weibo automatically.

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Should marketers adopt cross-cultural approach in marketing communication or attempt to take into account psychological and socio-cultural associations and meanings that different colors convey in various cultures?

Most of the research on color theory has been done in the West and was primarily focused on Western color perceptions. It comes to no surprise that those perceptions differ significantly in the East. Since the color is an integral element of corporate and marketing communications it is important to understand those differences and make necessary adjustments in order to induce desired moods and emotions, which in turn, will help influencing consumers’ perceptions and behavior.

In this post we’ve pulled together information from several sources: article by MUBEEN M. ASLAM in Australian Journal of Marketing Communications (Vol. 12, No. 1, 15–30, March 2006); A Look into Color Theory in Web Design by Sixrevisions.com and Color Branding: The Meanings Behind Colors by Everyjoe.com.

Let’s start looking at each of the main colors:

Red

Western perception: Masculine, Love, Lust, Fear, Anger

Chinese perception: Love, Happiness, Luck

Summary: while powerful and strong, red also carries some negative connotations in Western culture. For Chinese, however, red is almost universally associated with the positive and good taste;

Yellow

Western perception: Happiness, Energy, Jealousy

Chinese perception: Pure, Good taste, Royal, Authority

Summary: yellow is perhaps the second most culturally important color after red for the Chinese. Historically, red & gold (yellow) were the colors associated with royalty;

Green

Western perception: Growth, Harmony, Good taste, Lack of experience

Chinese perception: Pure, Reliable, Happy

Summary: green has been extensively used in web design and remains popular across all the cultures, one of the “safest” colors in marketing design;

Blue

Western perception: High quality, Trust, Dependability, Coldness

Chinese perception: High quality, Trustworthiness

Summary: universally perceived as a “color of trust”, blue remains the most popular design choice for corporate sites across the continents, excellent fit for health products;

Purple

Western perception: Authority, Power, Sophistication, Luxury, Feminine (lighter), Sadness (darker)

Chinese perception: Expensive, Luxury, Love

Summary: there are definite similarities in the perception of purple across most of the cultures and it remains a popular choice for designs reflecting sophistication and high value;

Black

Western perception: Expensive, Elegance, Sophistication, Fear, Grief

Chinese perception: Expensive, Powerful

Summary: for the Chinese, black doesn’t carry the same negative association common in Western cultures (death, unknown) which may complicate its usage to fit both markets.

White

Western perception: Purity, Happiness, Innocence, Cold, Distant

Chinese perception: Death, Mourning

Summary: perception of white couldn’t be more different between Western and Eastern cultures. While gaining popularity in modern design in the West, it should be used with caution for the Chinese audience;

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The biggest problem with email marketing in general and China email marketing in particular is, of course, spam. Most countries around the world have introduced laws and regulations designed to limit amount of spam by specifying requirements to emails and imposing various degrees of penalties for violators. For example, federal anti-spam legislation CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires proper opt-out link to be included in a promotional mail, valid “from” email and a clear “subject” line.

The Chinese equivalent anti-spam legislation is called “Regulations On Internet Email Services” and is, by far, more complex and severe compared to its US equivalent. This law applies to emails sent to all Chinese residents and, at least in theory, covers users who happened to receive emails while in Chinese territory.

Your China email marketing checklist

Here is the brief summary of the requirements to a promotional email according to the law:

Verifiable Permission.

Chinese law requires recipient’s explicit permission to be given in order to include an email to a mass mailing list. Unsubscribe or opt-out option is not enough. The permission has to be verifiable and stored indefinitely in case of an audit;

Word “Ad” in subject line.

Either English “Ad” for English language emails or the equivalent Chinese word for “advertisement” is required in the subject line;

Content requirements.

Chinese promotional email definition is much broader than the one of CAN-SPAM Act and includes all kinds of messages containing any type of advertisement;

Downloadable content requirements.

If a message contains any links to external content, such as a piece of software or an app, the law requires a written guarantee that they do not contain any spyware or anything that can facilitate hackers. It is not clear whether this applies to downloadable graphics such as images or thumbnail icons;

Content restrictions.

Article 57 of the Regulations on Telecommunications stipulates the content of the allowable email which is purposefully left quite vague. There are thousands of words and topics that are currently banned and the list is very dynamic.  Politically sensitive topics are the obvious examples as well as everything that is deemed obscene or pornographic. It’s a good idea to refer to the list of blacklisted keywords before starting your China email marketing campaign.

According to the law, the penalty goes from 10,000 yuan  and up to 30,000 yuan per email in case the violation involves “unlawful proceeds”. The law doesn’t specify what such “unlawful proceeds” might mean.

So, considering such tight restrictions and severe penalties, why would anyone even entertain the idea of mass email marketing campaign in China? Well, here is the upside: so far, there have been no known or, at least, reasonably high profile cases of the actual application of the law or prosecuting any offenders. In fact, the law does little to help with the major spam problem that exists today in Chinese internet space.

Obviously, one has to be aware of the legal aspect of email marketing in China and continue following common practices such as including unsubscribe links, acquiring and growing email mailing lists by legitimate means and, of course, staying away from sensitive topics. Violating such rules can have your domain blacklisted risking completely blocking your company’s access to users in China. One should keep in mind that the famous China’s Great Firewall is notoriously effective and you don’t want to find yourself on the other side of it one day.

Talk to us about your next China email marketing campaign.

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In the second part we are going to look at each of the remaining communication channels:

Email

Email communication is one of the preferred ways to communicate with your customers in China, also being the most convenient method to maintain contact with your existing clients. While many Chinese may feel embarrassed of the low level of their oral English communication abilities, they would feel quite comfortable discussing the same issues in the written communication.

In fact, most business people in China today have a very decent level of written English making it preferable to direct phone calls. Email is a great way to follow up on meetings and provide more details after initial contact. Make sure to write your emails in plain language and avoid long sentences to keep it more readable.

Websites

Having a localized website is essential for promoting your business in China, a country with the estimated 400 million email users. Localization of your website requires a well planned effort with the most important aspect of it, translation, discussed in our previous post.

 92% of Chinese internet users use some sort of social media platform making it essential to maintain your presence there as well.

Having professionally designed, modern looking website may also set you apart from most Chinese based competitors that tend to have messy and cluttered sites. Remember, that your website is probably the first place an interested client will go to after meeting your for the first time.

Social Media

92% of Chinese internet users use some sort of social media platform making it essential to maintain your presence there as well. Sina Weibo, Chinese micro blogging platform and WeChat, mobile network, are by far the most popular of those services. The great thing about Weibo and WeChat is the ability to spread your message instantly and directly to your followers’ mobile devices.

Once you’ve setup your Weibo account, make sure to put its URL and QR code on your printed and digital marketing material and encourage your customers to connect (WeChat is different from Weibo in that way).

LinkedIn is currently not as popular in China as the alternative professional networks, we will review those services in subsequent posts.

Face-to-face meetings

Personal connection still rules in Chinese business environment. Taking time to personally visit your customers is one of the best investments you can make.

Insist on accompanying your sales people, your agent or distributor on their visits even if you don’t speak any Chinese. If you make a presentation, make sure that someone from your company, who knows the material, provides proper translation.

Phone calls

While phone calls can be of limited use if your clients have a difficulty understanding your English (or your accent) they still can be an efficient way to keep in touch with those who do speak it well enough. However, with the proliferation of instant messaging, where one can control his/her availability, calling someone’s cell phone directly may seem less considerate.

Great mobile instant messaging services, such as WeChat, could be a great way not only to communicate but also to spread your marketing message as well.

Post (Regular Mail)

Mailing printed material is one of the least efficient ways to communicate in modern times and China is no exception. In B2B marketing settings, mailing information by post is quickly losing its value and I’d advise to avoid it;

Relationship and Networking

Chinese guanxi remains important in Chinese business environment, although the whole concept can be alien to many foreigners. Guanxi refers to one’s network of personal relationships in a business context. The concept of guanxi also implies that business relationships can often transform into personal friendships, and indeed many Chinese business people consciously spend a great deal of time and energy nurturing such relationships. This can take the form of banqueting, evening entertainment or gift-giving – activities that can seem onerous and unnecessary to many Westerners.

As Matthew Harrison and Mark Hedley of B2B International write in their white paper: “Although such networking and relationship-building is clearly important to the sales process in China, there is a tendency among some commentators to overemphasize its importance when trying to penetrate the Chinese market.

As in any market, building strong relationships is extremely important to achieving market success, although guanxi is no substitute for a strong product offering or a trustworthy supplier. What Western companies sometimes have difficulty coming to terms with is the way in which this trust is gained, and the time it often takes to convince the customer that yours is the product or service that meets their needs. The overriding piece of advice for Western companies would be to understand the importance of establishing relationships when targeting Chinese companies, and to be prepared for the patience required for this.”

The post Targeting Chinese Companies: Part 2: Communication Channels first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Targeting Chinese Companies: Part 2: Communication Channels appeared first on Sampi.co.