With Salesforce CRM making significant strides in China, its localization efforts are now more essential than ever for brands aiming to master the unique Chinese market dynamics for effective customer engagement and conversion.

In this article, we will dive deep into Salesforce China's marketing automation capabilities and seamless WeChat integration thanks to its connection with Quick Audience.

Why Salesforce China as your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System?

Importance of WeChat Ecosystem in the China Market

As previously mentioned, in China, meeting consumers' desire for seamless, personalized experiences hinges on data acquisition to gain insights and craft effective consumer engagement strategies.

However, public traffic platforms pose data collection challenges, as user data belongs to the platforms instead of the brands.

Therefore, businesses are increasingly investing in private traffic platforms to get full liberty to capture 100% of the data for future targeting strategies. This makes private traffic management an excellent first step to building more comprehensive CRM in China.

Discover why exactly brands need to fortify their Customer Relationship Management system in China.

With a massive monthly active user base of 1.3 billion people, WeChat stands out as the most important private traffic domain, offering a wide range of touchpoints throughout the customer journey, from discovery to engagement, conversion, and retention.

Salesforce in China understands this significance and has introduced Connected Experiences Gateway (CXG) to enhance its connection with the WeChat ecosystem for brands to better serve customers in China.

What is Salesforce Connected Experiences Gateway (CXG)?

On top of its core Salesforce Customer 360 products, Salesforce Connected Experiences Gateway (CXG) is a collection of tools and services specifically tailored for integrating Salesforce CRM with touchpoints and channels in China’s market. Its key features include:

• Social Commerce: A headless platform that helps build multi-channel e-commerce websites and Mini Programs
• Social Integration: Seamless integrations of the Salesforce CRM services with key local social platforms like WeChat and WeCom
• Local Ecosystem: Integrations of Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud with other services from local ecosystems, including local payment methods (e.g., WeChat Pay, Alipay, UnionPay), AI, business intelligence (BI) systems, etc.

The key here is that brands can use CXG’s Social Integration to connect Salesforce China with the WeChat ecosystem.

CXG streamlines data flows from different WeChat touchpoints (including WeCom clienteling, Mini Programs, Official Accounts, etc.) back to Salesforce CRM. Furthermore, CXG allows brands to directly use Salesforce Service Cloud interface to communicate with WeChat users in real-time. This eliminates the need to navigate across multiple platforms, making interactions more efficient and seamless.

To further assist brands in optimizing data utilization and consumer interactions, Salesforce has developed a comprehensive integration with Quick Audience. This Salesforce marketing automation tool specifically tailored for China, is now a part of the CXG solution.

How Does Quick Audience Empower Salesforce China Marketing Automation?

In essence, Quick Audience serves as a market automation engine and Salesforce China serves as a central CRM hub and the source of truth. Consumer data collected from various private, public traffic, and offline channels are synchronized between both Salesforce and Quick Audience.

The integration allows Quick Audience to use data from Salesforce to generate more data-driven insights and build and deploy marketing automation journeys on WeChat. Specific integrated functions fall into the following 2 domains:

Data Cloud:

• Lead and customer tagging
• Consumer profile generation
• ID-mapping (linking IDs across datasets/platforms/channels to unify profiles of the same person)
• Strategic customer segmentation (target audience filtering, analysis, and management)
• Seamless data synchronization with Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud

Marketing Automation:

• WeChat/WeCom user journey mapping and setup
• AI automation in WeChat/WeCom interactions
• Multimedia-targeted messages and content marketing
• Performance monitoring
• Data analysis and insights generation
• Integrated content management hub building
• Marketing campaign progress tracking

These added Salesforce marketing automation capabilities can empower brands in both B2C and B2B to efficiently push the right content to the right person (lead/customer) at the right time on the right channels.

Additionally, it contributes to building more holistic consumer profiles on Salesforce in China for future targeting strategies. Whether using Salesforce & Quick Audience on WeChat or other touchpoints, this approach unlocks more precise and effective engagement.

It’s worth noting that moving to this new Salesforce China Marketing Automation system is not a must. Thanks to Salesforce’s out-of-the-box open APIs, brands can choose to easily integrate their current Marketing Automation/Social CRM systems within the CRM.

The decision to fully adopt CXG solutions or keep specific existing setups when onboarding Salesforce China will be a case-by-case discussion.

Future Salesforce China Roadmap to Expect

Aside from CXG, Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud plans to further integrate its localized CRM services with more consumer data channels and touchpoints, such as Gaode Map geo-location, e-commerce, mobile applications, event monitoring, and many more. Specific products to be introduced may include Health Cloud, Revenue Cloud, Data Mask, and Industry Cloud.

Notably, AI-powered features are also set for release in 2024. This includes innovative chatbots that enhance customer interactions, case study insight generation to drive strategic decision-making, and dynamic content recommendation systems that personalize user experiences to the next level.

How ITC Can Help

Salesforce China is solidifying its position as the go-to answer for brands seeking a more comprehensive CRM system in China.

As an award-winning digital transformation agency, IT Consultis (ITC) is becoming a certified partner to assist you in Salesforce China onboarding and implementation to craft a tailored holistic CRM framework that seamlessly integrates with your global CRM and all the local business systems.