It’s not always easy for a company to enter an adjacent
market, but WeChat has successfully leveraged a mobile and social media
strategy to do so. WeChat is a messaging
and calling platform and app, similar to WhatsApp. In 2014, with a focus on the Chinese market, WeChat
allowed users to send their friends and family “virtual red envelopes.” In Chinese tradition, these are gifts of
money delivered in red envelopes on holidays and special occasions.
WeChat offered users the option to either send a specified
amount direct to a friend or to distribute a fixed amount randomly across
friends, lottery style. The response
from users was astounding, as billions of yuan were exchanged over the holiday
period. Users felt that even if the
envelopes only contained a few cents, it was still a great way to engage with
friends.
They went on to add a strategy last year that the user had
to shake their device to reveal their gift.
And for 2016, their campaign has a new feature. Users can upload a ‘secret’ photo that is
blurred. Friends will have the image
revealed once they send through a red envelope.
(A funny example cited is that a user posted a comment ‘Come to see my
secret honey,’ and it ended up being a photo of her cat).
We can learn from WeChat how a simple digital engagement
strategy can create sticky, repeat users.
Not only have they entered a new market with peer-to-peer payments, but
this drives further chat behavior between friends. Hundreds of millions of WeChat users have
since adopted the brand new payment system as a result, migrating from the
traditional chat platform.
Tenpay, the owner of WeChat and competitor to Alipay of
Alibaba, more than doubled its market share as a result of the red envelope
campaign. And Vouchr, a new player in
mobile gifting, is now mimicking WeChat’s strategy with mobile game sharing to
‘unwrap’ a payment. It will be
interesting to see what other companies might take advantage of a ‘red envelope’
type campaign, especially in the US market.
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