New Ideas! Retail Brand Mid-Autumn Marketing Strategy Summary

By my calculations, there's still more than half a month until Mid-Autumn Festival, but this doesn't stop retail brands from rushing to be early birds. They're probably thinking: if I start early enough, I can outpace the competition!

It’s simple if you think about it this way! Doing it early isn't as effective as doing it smartly. Mid-Autumn Festival marketing has many nuances. Observing recent years, brand leverage marketing is no longer surprising; we've seen countless poster and copywriting innovations. The main themes of "reunion" and "homesickness" are now ubiquitous, making it increasingly difficult for brands to stand out during holiday marketing. Some savvy brands have already noticed this and are employing innovative tactics to captivate the younger audience.

Take for instance the zongzi brand Wu Fang Zhai, which was early to take holiday marketing to new extremes. They not only produced a quirky "fake documentary" about mooncakes but also release at least one entertaining promotional video each year. With quirky perspectives, serious narration, and whimsical effects, they make young people laugh and share widely. This has deeply ingrained the image of Wu Fang Zhai as a "playful old-timer" in people's minds. Meanwhile, their mooncakes, though not their main product, still manage to sell billions each year.

Another example is the international supermarket chain Walmart. Last Mid-Autumn Festival, they leveraged the popular IP Tang Palace Night Banquet in their advertisement short film Moonlit Fantastic Night. By combining classical Chinese elements with modern scenes and eschewing the clichéd "forced sentimentality" in favor of popular elements like "time travel" and "comedy", they transformed Walmart, a traditional supermarket, into a trending "internet celebrity."

This shows that major brands are always creative and competitive about Mid-Autumn Festival marketing, and other retail brands naturally cannot afford to lag behind.Aside from innovating in content marketing, the use of marketing hardware and overall strategic deployment must also not be overlooked.

Webpower has compiled a "Mid-Autumn Marketing Guide for Retail Brands", focusing on tool and strategy application to provide insights for Mid-Autumn marketing in the retail sector. Just make sure not to share it with your competitors.

1. Touchpoints! High-Efficiency Touchpoints!

Brands that have engaged in online holiday marketing know that pre-warming is crucial, but how is it done? Through which "channels" do we reach our customers? This so-called "channel" is what marketers refer to as "touchpoints."

Currently, we observe that common touchpoints for retail brands include SMS, email, WeChat public messages, template messages, and mini-program messages, either one or several of these. For example, a large international sports brand serviced by Webpower sends pre-warming emails to existing users before holidays and events, informing them of event details, issuing discounts, and extending holiday greetings. Conversely, a luxury beauty brand prefers to send video SMS and messages within the WeChat ecosystem, using messaging about holiday benefits, point redemption, and new arrivals to enhance users' holiday and event awareness.

Both SMS and email are standard practices. However, in today's landscape, there are some new touchpoints full of potential, such as AI outbound calls.

1 ► Is AI outbound calling considered spam?

First, it must be stated that AI outbound calling is absolutely not the annoying spam calls that people despise. It is a product of AI smart technology and compliance with data security laws. The purpose is to provide dual value for both customers and brands without disturbing the users.

In fact, AI outbound calling has developed quite rapidly in recent years, with major companies like Baidu entering the field early on. Webpower, in collaboration with JD Technology, has also developed its own AI outbound calling solution, which can......use JD's platform, which boasts 500 million second-party data points as a traffic foundation, to funnel traffic into the brand's own private domain pools and deeply revitalize the brand's first-party data.

2 ► How effective is AI outbound calling for conversions?

Currently, many retailers use AI outbound calling as a touchpoint alongside SMS and email, making it an important tool for private domain traffic generation and customer relationship management.
For instance, a large beauty brand achieves a follow rate of over 6% by directing traffic to their WeChat account through AI outbound calls, with precise and intelligent call strategies. These strategies intelligently manage call timing, frequency, and touchpoints, significantly reducing users' aversion to traditional telemarketing and saving substantial costs for the brand.

Of course, the effectiveness metrics of AI outbound calls are not just as straightforward as the follow rate. Similar to SMS and email, metrics such as reach rate and effective reach rate are essential standards of measurement. According to reports, currently......the connection rate for AI outbound calls is typically over 40%, and the conversion rate is more than three times that of SMS marketing!

Therefore, for this year's Mid-Autumn Festival marketing campaign for retail brands, why not try AI outbound calls in addition to the existing touchpoints?

2. Pipeline! An Interconnected Marketing Pipeline!

02The biggest feature of digital marketing today is its emphasis on holistic and systematic strategies. This means that when making a marketing decision, we don't just focus on the effect of a single step or specific time point; instead, we expand our perspective to consider its impact on the entire marketing operation.

The same applies to retail brands; it's crucial to implement a comprehensive strategy. Therefore, creating an interconnected marketing loop is of utmost importance.

Many brands focus on pre-warming before a holiday marketing campaign but often neglect engagement during and after the event. In today's market, where the traffic dividend has peaked and the value of existing customers is more pronounced, engagement during and after the event is equally indispensable. For example, a mother and baby brand uses SMS and WeChat messages before the holiday to create user awareness of the event; during the holiday, they use SMS, WeChat, and platform messages for inventory, payment, and event updates; and after the holiday, they use WeChat messages and AI outbound calls for event summaries and customer follow-ups. This strategy significantly enhances user stickiness and GMV.

3. System! Leverage Marketing Automation!

In the era of digital marketing, traditional market strategies that rely heavily on manual efforts are becoming increasingly inefficient. It's not that people are becoming less capable; it's that the times have progressed.Both users and executives have higher expectations for marketing. To meet these expectations, in addition to effectively utilizing touchpoints and improving marketing strategies, an integrated marketing automation system is essential.

Traditional retail brand marketers know how challenging it can be. The enormous amount of user data during holiday campaigns often goes underutilized, and the sales effects across different channels are difficult to differentiate and track. The consequences are blurry user profiles and ineffective post-campaign analyses, leaving sales performance to guesswork and luck. This is why I recommend retail brands make good use of marketing automation tools, but I don't believe that simply purchasing a system will solve all problems. Here's a shocking fact: in a Webpower survey, it was found that more than 50% of retail enterprises wasted money on marketing automation. Many retail brands have attempted to invest in various marketing automation tools, including systems and software, but many companies found they did not achieve the expected results. Our diagnosis revealed a very absurd reason: even though they had purchased costly marketing automation tools, their utilization rate was below 30%. For example, one of our clients had purchased a marketing automation system, but they were only using it as a bulk email and SMS tool, and as a data archiving tool—essentially buying a fancy box but discarding the pearl inside.

Influential marketing companies in the industry today talk about the concept of marketing automation as not merely a tool but a comprehensive range of services, including tool application. They not only offer self-developed tools and assist enterprises in system setup and basic usage but also provide support for operational strategies. Because the application of marketing automation tools varies greatly from person to person—it's not as simple as using a phone where you just need to learn a few buttons to make calls or send messages. A thousand people will have a thousand ways to use it. Companies like Webpower, which have strong capabilities, combine their expertise with the specific needs of the enterprise to advise brands on how to use these tools, what strategies to deploy, and even customize unique features and personalized marketing strategies and plans. Therefore, Webpower suggests that brands first change their preconceived notions about "marketing automation." It is not narrowly defined as a single tool, but rather a comprehensive marketing ecosystem.

With the support of marketing automation, we can achieve not only the legal collection and analysis of massive user behavior data to form clear user profiles; we can also monitor the effectiveness across multiple channels to ensure that every penny is well spent. Additionally, through intelligent scoring systems, we can segment users and operate with personalized marketing strategies tailored to individual preferences. We can even define custom marketing journeys where user actions automatically trigger the next steps in marketing... ``

It's hard to imagine that these advanced strategies have a utilization rate of less than 30% among brands that already have marketing automation systems! However, this only further indicates that the growth potential for marketing automation is enormous and worth taking a bold leap. As we enter the second half of the year, for retail brands, after Mid-Autumn Festival, even more exciting events such as Double 11 and various year-end promotions await. Before embarking on this fast-paced journey of holiday marketing, it's essential to take stock of your tools. After all, being well-prepared is key, and the fast lane is always crowded with formidable competitors.

About Webpower

Webpower was founded in 1999 in the Netherlands and entered the Chinese market in 2006. Currently, it operates through 11 branches worldwide. As an omnichannel intelligent membership marketing service provider, Webpower has spent over a decade deeply rooted in China's market, consistently addressing the multifaceted marketing needs of enterprises by delivering innovative, cutting-edge, and effective marketing products and services.

In 2018, Webpower launched the "Intelligent Marketing" system, designed to create a comprehensive marketing loop for enterprises, encompassing omni-channel data integration, marketing automation, multi-dimensional data analysis, and scenario application with custom development. Webpower now provides professional marketing services across ten major industries, including retail, IT, tourism, aviation, exhibitions, and finance. Among its clientele are globally renowned companies such as Starbucks, SONY, Walmart, GIVENCHY, Rémy Martin, Lenovo, Disney, China Eastern Airlines, DBS Bank, and Pacific Insurance. With its "Intelligent Marketing" philosophy, Webpower's goal is to leverage technology to drive marketing, deeply uncover customer value for enterprises, help businesses build "Intelligent Marketing" frameworks, and extend the boundless imagination of digital marketing.

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