Private domain digital development under the WeChat ecosystem of banking enterprises

More and more companies are beginning to use WeChat for Business to develop private domains. Changes in traffic have led to changes in operational strategies, from the initial frantic acquisition of new customers to the current "retention and maintenance operations." This article analyzes the development of private domain digitalization under the WeChat ecosystem of banks, hoping to inspire you.

Since the launch of WeChat for Business, more and more companies have begun to use WeChat for Business tools to manage their customers, gradually replacing the previous model of personal WeChat customer marketing. In fact, since the outbreak of the epidemic, various changes in the overall environment have forced more businesses to carry out overall traffic transformation, from the initial crazy acquisition of new customers to the current "retention and maintenance management."

The birth of WeChat for Business has led more and more companies to start deploying WeChat for Business and gradually carry out promotion work based on WeChat for Business tools. WeChat for Business has basically become a prerequisite tool for companies to conduct private domain operations under the background of the epidemic.

According to data from the 2020 annual meeting of WeChat for Enterprise, as of December 23, 2020, the number of WeChat account users connected to WeChat for Enterprise has reached 400 million; there are more than 5.5 million real companies and organizations on WeChat for Enterprise, and the number of monthly active users exceeds 130 million; the number of open interfaces has increased to 540, and the number of partners has increased to 80,000, a four-fold increase compared to 2019.

01

The latest private domain annual report shows that from the current layout of enterprises in private domain marketing, the private domain marketing models that occupy the most are mainly pure technology service providers deploying private domains, manual marketing + private domain technology service providers, and pure manual private domain marketing models.

Among them, in terms of the layout channels for private domain marketing, Enterprise Micro has become the largest Enterprise Micro traffic layout channel besides WeChat, followed by its own apps, websites, and third-party short video platforms and graphic platforms.

From this we can see that WeChat for Business has gradually become an important channel for major corporate businesses to manage their customers, especially for some mid- to high-end companies, because the diversified functions of WeChat for Business can meet the company's various marketing needs in the customer operation process, saving the company a large part of labor costs and marketing costs.

In the digital transformation process under the entire enterprise micro-economy, enterprise micro-economy can conduct marketing and operations completely around customer-centricity. In terms of resource linking: with the help of enterprise micro-economy, enterprises can link to resources from portals such as WeChat, allowing users to reach users without intrusion;

In terms of process: Based on the enterprise micro-preset light OA, rich third-party applications, and flexible API interfaces, enterprises can unify office applications and allow employees to obtain efficient mobile collaborative office experience;

At the same time, in terms of data empowerment: based on the enterprise micro-platform, enterprises can accumulate all-round operational data including customers, supply chains, and employees, so as to obtain high-quality data assets and support front-end business application empowerment.

Judging from the industry entry penetration data, according to the data from the Enterprise WeChat 2022 press conference, the current penetration rate of Enterprise WeChat in industries such as consumer goods (supermarkets, clothing, daily chemical beauty, luxury goods, etc.), medicine, home furnishings, finance (banking, securities, insurance, etc.), real estate, etc. is relatively high, all reaching more than 80%.

Among them, consumer goods, as high-frequency and low-order products, are suitable for private domain traffic marketing. Before enterprise microblogs became popular, this model had already been verified in personal WeChat. However, after enterprise microblogs went online, more marketing functions were added to merchants, and companies also needed to carry out corresponding marketing upgrades. However, in the overall marketing strategy direction, its model remained unchanged and it became just a platform for customers to undertake.

In the process of enterprises transforming into micro-enterprises, some classic cases often appear in the industry market, such as:

• Watsons' cloud store increased sales fivefold through private community sales;
• Xibei operates WeChat online customer services and conducts online marketing in a membership-based model, which accounts for 80% of total revenue.

02

Back to the development stage of the micro-enterprise market in banking finance, in fact, starting from 2022 or even 2021, major banks have also begun to vigorously develop micro-enterprise customer management.

Of course, banks are different from other industries. First, they have a large customer base. Second, due to some of the particularities of the industry, they have to first consider and weigh the pros and cons before making an overall strategic transformation. This is also one of the reasons why banks lag behind other industries, especially e-commerce, education, consumer goods and other industries, in the layout of corporate WeChat.

In the current bank micro-enterprise market, it can be temporarily divided into two categories: one is still in the preparation stage, and the other is in the formal stage;

The preparation stage is mainly about the bank conducting industry investigations and research, as well as formulating overall plans and budgets. This type of bank is actually progressing relatively slowly, such as some urban and rural commercial banks, and third- and fourth-tier city joint-stock banks.

Due to some geographical reasons, information is absorbed slowly, and bank employees do not have a mature concept of the entire development of private domain marketing. They are also not as quick to accept information about some changes in the market, which leads to a certain lag in the overall transformation of customer management.

In terms of the work in the formal period, the current status of most banks can be divided into three stages: basic construction, basic operation and refined operation;

Basically, the basic construction is still in the stage of system development and the activation and trial of various enterprise micro-business functions. Especially for some branches, the bank's financial support is very large. In addition, they need to link and cooperate with the bank's own system to integrate the enterprise micro-business to operate together. Therefore, the front-end enterprise micro-business function construction and the interoperability of system interfaces are also a pain point demand of many banks at present.

• In terms of basic operations, the bank has already pulled most of its customers into the enterprise microblog, whether it is the account manager's personal account or the community. At this stage, the enterprise microblog management team has gradually been formed. At the same time, it has also formed a unified operating model with the sub-branches or branches, and has certain standardized operating SOP processes.
• At this stage, refined operations are basically mature. Banks have formed separate and accurate customer labeling systems and user portraits for all corporate and micro-customers, and have different marketing strategies for different customer groups, which is what we call refined customer operations.

Among them, for internal control, the bank also has its own relatively complete performance indicator system and reward and punishment system for account managers.

Of course, in the development of the entire banking enterprise WeChat ecosystem, its customers cover many types. After all, everyone needs a bank card, especially for adults, so there are many types of bank customers. We all know that even when doing private domain customer marketing, they can be classified;

For example, which products are more suitable for private domain marketing? Among them, credit cards, compared with banks, are currently the most suitable product customer group for private domain marketing.

The reason is that the target user threshold of credit cards is relatively low. At the same time, users of this type of product have a higher demand for some rights and interests. Credit cards can just be combined with local merchants to carry out some activities, which not only provides value-added services for their own products, but also brings traffic to offline merchants.

Among all the private domains of banks at this stage, China Merchants Bank currently has the largest private credit card community. At the same time, I personally believe that China Merchants Bank's current localized community is also relatively mature. Basically, each credit card community is built based on a certain business district, and the customers in the group are very precise.

03

In the entire transformation of the bank's enterprise micro-private domain, we can generally divide the current bank's private domain model into three categories: direct operation by the head office, coordinated operation by branches, management and operation by front-line account managers, coordinated operation by branches, and direct operation by branches.

Direct operation by the head office: The head office builds the entire micro-enterprise system and authorizes each branch to have management authority. The entire micro-enterprise management team is also fully responsible for the head office, which directly directs customer traffic to operational conversions.

This type is more suitable for purely online customer acquisition, because the scale is large enough to rely on online operations to continuously bring in new customers and maintain old customers; and because it is managed and operated by the head office team directly, the control over all aspects of the project and the operational results will be stronger;

However, its execution conditions require that the head office has a complete remote operations team that can remotely support internal marketing support for private domain operations in various regions, and at the same time have a relatively complete business strategy and supporting marketing tool system.

Branches coordinate operations, and front-line account managers manage operations: This is almost the current situation of most banks, and is more suitable for small and medium-sized banking systems. Branches coordinate business content and marketing strategies, and front-line account managers then carry out the specific implementation from customer flow to conversion.

One of its advantages is that because first-line account managers directly conduct customer marketing, the information transmission process will be more agile. At the same time, because the account managers themselves are the people who specifically conduct customer marketing, they are more clear about some of the customer's needs and pain points, so the customer marketing scenarios will be richer.

But at the same time, this type of model has certain requirements for account managers, such as execution ability and stability of account managers. After all, they need to face customers directly and have self-drive in execution. At the same time, they are usually the ones who contact customers, so stability is also a point that needs attention. Otherwise, the group administrators need to be changed frequently, which is also a bad experience for customers.

At the branch level, it is necessary to formulate a complete supporting assessment and reward and punishment plan for the long-term customer marketing management of front-line account managers. Rewards provide motivation, and punishments provide driving force to ensure that the account managers' execution is in place.

The branch coordinates operations and the branch directly operates the middle platform: the branch is used as a unit to build the entire enterprise micro-customer direct operation middle platform, and the branch coordinates business content and marketing strategies.

The advantage of this type is that it can directly cultivate the customer management capabilities of the branch, and at the same time, it can centrally operate the customers of the entire branch; usually, most branches adopt this model in the early stages, because they need to practice to get results, and dare not put all of them online rashly. The branch can only select some account managers to form a management team, conduct pilot operations in a small range or in the city, and then cover the entire bank later.

Similarly, one of its execution conditions requires the branch to have certain system development capabilities, such as building a direct-operated middle-office system, the entire customer management strategy and tools.

In general, no matter which of the above models is adopted, banks must learn to build their own customer ecosystem operation methodology to achieve optimal resource allocation, enhance traffic exposure, fan-collecting ability, and high-net-worth customer conversion ability. To achieve the above goals, enterprise micro-digital transformation + private domain marketing is the first step.

Author: Liu Zhixing, WeChat public account: LZX's study notes