Our China Blog
E-mail Marketing Campaigns in China
E-mail marketing remains one of the most efficient ways to spread your message and improve your brand awareness. Due to its low cost and ability to reach your clients directly, email campaign can be a powerful tool if designed and managed correctly.
According to some conservative estimates, there are over 300 million active email accounts in China and this doesn’t include corporate emails. Email is the first thing people look at it in the morning, often before they brush their teeth. Being able to put your message in front of a potential customer before your competitors do could make all the difference in the world. read more…
Choosing Email Marketing Service for Chinese Marketing Campaign
There is a healthy choice of cloud based email marketing solutions on the web that makes life much easier for online marketers. Those services can definitely fit the bill for most and the differences are mainly in cost and options.
I’ve personally tried iContact, ConstantContact and MailChimp. At the end I’ve chosen MailChimp due to convenience and the fact that it is still free for less than 1,000 subscribers: quite enough for my highly targeted mail list. Presently, iContact is the most expensive choice, followed by ConstantContact and MailChimp, although all are quite affordable even on a bootstrap budget.
The only drawback of using free MailChimp account is having their logo at the bottom of every email but it’s still quite inconspicuous anyway. read more…
Navigating Around Blocked Marketing Channels in China
Current access restrictions imposed by the “Great China Firewall” on some of the most popular social media networks has been the unfortunate reality in the past few years. While Facebook and Twitter are the most well known examples of the censorship, access to many other important marketing channels could be blocked permanently or intermittently.
Regardless of how one might feel about the whole issue of internet freedom, companies that are looking to use any of those marketing channels for their Chinese market are forced to make adjustments to their advertising strategy and mitigate the effects of restricted access by using alternative solutions.
Here is the short list of the currently blocked services (as of mid-2013), the implications of the restricted access and the suggested workarounds.
Should You Market on Qzone?
The answer to what is the largest social media network is quite obvious – Facebook. However, most people probably wouldn’t guess what would be second one. In fact, the second largest social media site is Qzone with over 600 million users (vs. Facebook’s 1.15 billion) and ranked at number 8 by Alexa ranking.
Qzone belongs to Tencent, Shenzhen’s company behind QQ – the most popular instant messaging service in Chinese speaking world with over 800 million users. With Qzone, Tencent was able to leverage its huge subscribers’ base to expand into social media environment that is geared towards sharing and spreading information. read more…
Infographic: The Rise of China’s Internet
Great infographic from China Internet Network Information Center illustrating:
- Top locations of the largest number of internet users;
- Internet users demographics;
- Total number of websites and domain stats;
- Top internet applications
The number of internet users in China has surpassed the entire US population by reaching 338 million users
Click on the picture below to open the full view: read more…
Mind Blowing Stats on Chinese Online Advertisement Market
While researching on the state of Chinese online advertisement market, I’ve come across some stunning numbers that I’d like to share. Everyone assumes that Chinese e-commerce user base is growing rapidly but how fast exactly?
Here are some numbers:
Internet usage growth (source: internetworldstats.com):
- Internet usage in N.America grew ~2.7 times in 10 years (from 108 mil in 2000 to 274 mil in 2013)
- Internet usage in Europe grew ~5 times in 10 years (from 105 mil in 2000 to 518.5 mil in 2013)
- Internet usage in China grew over 15 times in 10 years (from 22.5 mil in 2000 to 565 mil in 2013) read more…
Infographic: Top 10 Biggest Social Networks in the World
Today I’d like to share the infographic map (below) that shows 10 biggest social networks in the world as of mid 2013. Qzone and QQ occupy 2nd and 3rd places, although, there is a significant overlap between the two in terms if users as both belong to Tencent, Chinese social media giant.
Check out my other post where I discuss Qzone marketing value.
Click on the picture below to open the full view: read more…
IP Protection in China: Trademark Caveats
As soon as you make a decision to establish your presence in China, you should start considering registering your brand, your logo, your slogan and other applicable trademarks with a help of a reliable local lawyer. The application typically takes about 18 months to process and the cost is about $500 per trademark.
In China trademarks are registered on “first to file” basis regardless whether it’s been in use elsewhere for decades. This basically means that prior art argument wouldn’t work in 99% of the cases if someone has already registered your trademark, even though you may have been using it for years. Big brands have found themselves in this situation and were forced to fork out substantial sums of money to recover their brands. read more…
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