WeChat personalization is the process of creating customized experiences for your Official Service Account followers and mini program users. Rather than providing a single, broad experience, personalization allows companies to present consumers with unique experiences tailored to their needs and desires.

Why is this important? In this era of information overload, a one-size-fits-all model doesn’t work. Many consumers have grown accustomed to personalized experiences from their favorite news feeds and social networking platforms, as well as shopping recommendations on e-commerce sites, and now they are expecting personalized experiences across all digital platforms.

But creating customized experiences isn’t just about pleasing consumers - it has clear benefits for brands. Relevant content and offerings can cut through the noise, and personalization, when done right, is proven to increase engagement, retention, and conversion rates.

Here we’ll share five ways you can be creating personalized experiences on WeChat, but first, we just wanted to note that these personalization features are only available for Service Accounts as Subscription Accounts have very limited APIs. Check out this blog post to learn more about the differences between these two types of accounts.

Your WeChat Official Account menu is a key tool to drive your followers to take action or to provide them with the resources they are seeking. Yet there is limited space (3 main menu spots each with 5 sub-menus) and not all users come to your account for the same reason, making it difficult to create a menu that resonates with each user.

But this is solvable! What you may not know is that you can create multiple menus based on different user personas. When a user meets certain parameters they will be shown an alternative menu customized for that user segment.

For example, you can set a personalized menu bar for female users with an Android operating system. Users must meet both parameters (female & Android) in order to see that specific menu bar. If you have set tags to segment users, you can also create personalized menu bars for those specific tags/user groups.

Personalized menus parameters can be based on the following:

High-end cosmetics brand Cle De Peau Beaute’s Hong Kong account has developed two menu bars with the main difference being the center main menu item.

The first menu is for unregistered users and the center menu item is a standalone menu titled “Personal Info” that leads directly to the membership registration page. Standalone menus, meaning a menu with no sub-menus, tend to see higher click-through-rates, so by doing this, Cle De Peau can drive more followers to the membership registration page.

But this would not be relevant and might even bother followers who have already registered, therefore the second menu is created for registered members who instead will see “Personal Tab” with the sub-menus of “Personal Info” and “Gifts”.

This slight personalization is likely to increase membership sign up rates while simultaneously avoiding bombarding current members with requests to sign up.

The main downside of a Service Account is that it limits brand to sending 4 broadcast posts (articles) to each user each month. This often gets misconstrued to mean the brand can only send out 4 broadcast messages per month, but that’s not true.

In fact, you can send different broadcast posts to different users based on segmented groups or users who have triggered a specific tag. So if you and I both follow a car brand’s account, and I’m interested in SUVs but you’re interested in sports cars, then I can receive 4 broadcast messages about different models of SUVs and the benefits of owning an SUV, while you receive 4 entirely different messages sharing the specs of different sports cars and most fun roads to drive on in the suburbs of Beijing.

This is especially useful when you have a lot of content you want to send to specific segments of users. For example, when you have an event invitation post that you only want members in Shanghai to see or a post about top deals that you only want your most active fans to see.

However, since the Tencent limitation of 4 broadcasts per user per month still exists, you have to be mindful of users whose tags overlap in the targeted segments. For example, if a user has triggered both tags A and B and one broadcast is sent to users who have triggered tag A and the other for users who have triggered tag B, the user will receive both broadcasts.

WeChat Service Account have what is known as a 48-hour journey feature. Any time a follower initiates engagement with the account, the 48-hour unlimited message window is triggered and the account can send that user an unlimited number of messages and content, meaning that brands can create customer journeys similar to an automated email sequence.

What’s more, this series of messages can be customized depending on how that person entered the account (for example, scanning a QR code at a store vs entering through an article shared by a friend) or based on whether they are a customer or loyalty member. This is comparable to a Western consumer receiving a different email depending on which lead magnet they download or what item they purchased.

The responses and engagement with this series of messages help the brand tag the user, group them, and know which type of content to send them, as well as drive the user to take immediate action such as making a purchase or joining a loyalty program.

Returning to the Cle de Peau account, not only do members see a custom menu, but different types of members will be entered into different 48-hour journeys depending on how they registered to become a member.

The user journey for users who follow the account through an in-store registration binding QR code is different than for users who followed the Official Account and registered for membership via the menu button. For the first kind of users, they would receive customized content for the specific store they registered at. This creates a highly personalized experience for your users.

Just as an e-commerce platform will show visitors products they may be interested in based on their past purchases and browsing history, the same can be done with WeChat ecommerce mini-programs.

Once a user logs into the e-commerce MP, we are able to access the user’s profile and based on their attributes, how they have interacted with the brand’s weChat Official Accounts and other mini programs, show them a customized selection or products.

But that’s not all, personalized mini programs can also deliver:

• Personalized navigation

• Personalized search results based on past search history

• Category specific coupons based on past purchases and browsing history

• Product availability and shipping delivery time by geo location

• Personalized offers based on past purchases and loyalty status
  

A key feature of a WeChat Service Account is the ability to send Template Messages.

Service Accounts can push an unlimited number of template messages to their followers but the content and format of these messages is highly restricted must follow strict industry specified template provided by WeChat. These messages are meant to be purely transactional and can be used to send followers notifications such as purchase notifications, payment notifications, booking notifications, etc. They cannot be used for marketing blasts.

While brands can send out template messages to all of their followers, they can also send messages to specific types of followers based on their attributes, what they look at or click on in the account or mini program (ex. showing interest in newest collection) or based on a QR code scan.

Some of the more personalized template messages brands can send include:

• Personalized Birthday Gift

• Coupon Expiration Reminders

• Abandoned Cart Reminder

• Loyalty Point Notices

• Replenishment Reminders

Marketers in China have a huge advantage when it comes to personalization. Because Chinese consumers spend so much of their time within the WeChat ecosystem, it is incredible the amount of data you can gather on one user. Don’t let that data go to waste! Instead, begin developing truly personalized experiences for your followers and increase your WeChat Account’s engagement, retention, and conversion rates.