WeChat has recently rolled out a significant update: Service Accounts are now grouped into a single folder, mirroring the layout of Subscription Accounts.

In this article, we will explore the details of this update to Official Accounts and its impact on user engagement and brands’ marketing and CRM strategies. Dive in to uncover actionable insights and strategies to adapt to this major shift in WeChat’s ecosystem.

What is a WeChat Service Account?

Service Account is a type of WeChat Official Account, designed for businesses and organizations to engage with their audience in a structured and professional manner.

It is ideal for companies looking to sell products/services to provide customer support and deliver promotional content, offers, and activities.

With this type of Official Account, brands can share up to 4 posts per calendar month.

The Evolution of WeChat Service Accounts

The Birth of Service Account (2013)

WeChat Official Accounts were first launched in 2012, initially known as “Subscription Accounts”, designed to mainly deliver information to users on WeChat – functioning similarly to publications like newspapers and magazines.

They later evolved to introduce a new category called “Service Accounts” in 2013 to enhance business functionality, meeting the growing needs of brands.

Functional Enhancements and Adjustments (2014)

In 2014, WeChat significantly enhanced Service Accounts, increasing their broadcast frequency and adding new communication features to provide richer user engagement.

• The broadcast limit for Service Accounts was raised from once to 4 times per calendar month.
• Certified Service Accounts gained access to "Template Messages," enabling timely notifications such as transaction alerts and login reminders.

Feature Discontinuation and New Strategies (2018 & 2021)

WeChat took steps in 2018 and 2021 to streamline its Service Account capabilities further:

• On December 27, 2018, WeChat discontinued the option to upgrade Subscription Accounts to Service Accounts. This clarified the positioning difference between the two types of WeChat Official Accounts.
• On April 30, 2021, Template Messages were replaced by "One-Time Subscription Notifications" and "Long-Term Subscription Notifications." The changes were aimed at simplifying the experience while reducing unnecessary disruptions.

Further Optimization (2023)

In 2023, WeChat implemented simplifications to further reduce the complexity of Template Messages and introduced less intrusive notification mechanisms.

• Customizable features like colors, emojis, footnotes, and first-line content in Template Messages were removed.
• Notifications for Service Accounts switched from numerical red badges to just red dots. While WeChat aimed to enhance the overall user experience by minimizing alert fatigue, this shift has massively affected brand accounts’ open rates.

WeChat Service Account Foldering (2024)

Details of the Update

As noted earlier, all Service Accounts and their notifications are now grouped into a single folder, much like the existing Subscription Accounts folder.
 
(Please note that this feature is currently being rolled out, and as of the time this article was written, an official announcement had not yet been made.)

The folder occupies the same amount of space as a single chat, making it less intrusive in the chat list. Notifications for the folder include the same red dot indicator and may display the number of unread messages in text format.

Impacts on Users and Brands

The recent change to fold Service Accounts into a secondary inbox brings both opportunities and challenges for users and brands: 

For Users:

• Decluttered Interface: The cleaner layout prioritizes personal chats (1-on-1 and group conversations), enabling users to focus on social interactions without frequent brand notifications.
• Reduced Visibility: Important real-time notifications—such as delivery updates, bank statements, or travel itineraries—are now less prominent, increasing the risk of missed critical information.

For Brands:

• Lower Visibility and Engagement: Users are likely to engage less frequently with Official Accounts, reducing touchpoints for brand interaction. Already modest open rates of 3–5% for marketing content may drop further, negatively impacting visibility and conversions.
• Immediacy Challenges: Brands face delays in reaching users with time-sensitive updates, which could affect customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this update appears to be WeChat’s effort to:

1. Restore Service Accounts to their tool role: This update simplifies Service Accounts to focus on their core purpose: providing tools for users to access essential services efficiently. It reduces chat clutter and distractions from persistent notifications, improving overall user experience.
2. Lower unsubscribe rates: The new setup minimizes direct competition between Service Account messages and personal conversations. This reduces annoyance from promotional content, potentially lowering unsubscribe rates while providing equitable access to all accounts.
3. Adapt to market trends: This change reflects WeChat’s response to user behavior shifts, such as increased engagement with WeChat Channels (videos). Brands are encouraged to explore new strategies, like video marketing, to maximize their impact within the evolving platform.

Overall, the folding of Service Accounts is a significant step in WeChat’s ongoing optimization of platform functionality and user experience, aimed at making it a more efficient, organized, and user-friendly communication and service platform.

It also highlights the need for brands to adapt their communication and CRM strategies on WeChat to maximize engagement and conversions.

How Brands Can Stay Ahead with WeChat Official Account and CRM

Strategy 1: Elevate Content with Visual Optimization

To capture attention within the folded Service Account inbox, brands should prioritize high-quality visuals and videos that stand out. Leveraging data-driven analytics can help identify the most effective visual strategies and the ideal posting times to maximize engagement.

Additionally, brands can reinforce their identity by emphasizing distinctive content designs. Incorporating bold visual contrasts and signature brand colors can enhance recognition and ensure messages stand out in a crowded stream.

Strategy 2: Layered Precision Content Push

Brands with substantial followings can leverage WeChat’s user data and tagging capabilities to segment their audience into targeted groups. Delivering personalized content to each segment ensures relevance and appeal while reducing the risk of overusing broad, ineffective pushes.

To further enhance operations, brands can integrate AI for advanced data analysis and the creation of highly tailored content.

For high-value users, focus on delivering exclusive and engaging content to foster deeper connections and loyalty.

Strategy 3: Expansion to WeChat Channels (Videos) and Mini Programs

Most importantly, brands need to re-evaluate investment allocations. For better marketing reach, it’s high time to expand more into WeChat Channels (Videos) and Mini Programs.

Organic content, media buying, and strategic linkage to Official Accounts can facilitate seamless transitions from browsing to transactions.

Moreover, WeChat Channels and Mini Programs can provide valuable user data that, when integrated into centralized CRM systems like Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud, can allow brands to gain a comprehensive view of the customer profiles and journey on WeChat.

By analyzing video engagement, transaction histories, and behavior patterns, brands can craft better-personalized campaigns across WeChat’s ecosystem, such as pushing tailored content on Official Accounts, WeCom chats, and ads on Channels...

This data-driven approach can optimize messaging and media buying strategies, enhance ROI, and ensure cohesive engagement.

Strategy 4: Optimizing for WeChat Search

WeChat Search has also been evolving into a powerful tool for driving traffic across the ecosystem. It seamlessly connects users to various touchpoints - like Channels, Official Accounts, Mini Programs, chats, and Moments - offering engagement opportunities without disrupting the user journey.

By 2022, WeChat Search reportedly contributed to:

• A 27% increase in Official Account followers
• A 20% boost in daily active users for Mini Programs
• A staggering 120% surge in WeChat Channels followers

Moreover, with the integration of AI-powered search features, brands can now optimize their content across touchpoints to not only rank in WeChat Search results but also appear in AI-generated answers.

These answers are curated from content within the WeChat ecosystem, providing contextual relevance and improving user engagement with brands’ channels on WeChat.

The real advantage of AI-driven search lies in its seamless integration into key interfaces, such as Official Account articles and chat windows, ensuring a natural, immediate, contextual, and intuitive experience for users.

As WeChat continues to enhance its AI capabilities, brands must stay proactive, ensuring their content is well-optimized, highly visible, and search-friendly across all touchpoints. This will help them remain competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Strategy 5: Elevating Clienteling with WeCom

With the shift toward prioritizing conversations over notifications, brands can focus on managing their private traffic pools more effectively by leveraging WeCom clienteling for personalized 1-on-1 and group interactions.

WeCom, Tencent's enterprise solution, enables businesses to seamlessly engage with customers on WeChat while streamlining internal team coordination. According to the WeCom Whitepaper 2023 by Tencent Advertising Team:

• Every hour, over 1 million enterprise employees (e.g., Sales Associates, Client Advisors, Customer Service reps) engage in more than 140 million interactions with customers on WeChat through WeCom.
• Over 10 million businesses and organizations across various sectors (e.g., luxury, beauty & personal care, fashion, retail, automobile, B2B...) have adopted WeCom as a critical clienteling tool.

Brands can also use WeCom to amplify their marketing efforts by sharing tailored content from their WeChat Official Accounts, Channels (videos), and Mini Programs directly through WeCom chats and Moments. This approach not only deepens customer relationships but also enhances reach and engagement across the WeChat ecosystem.

This can be further amplified when integrated with the centralized CRM. Data captured from offline and online clienteling via WeCom can be consolidated on systems like Salesforce China, enabling brands to craft hyper-personalized content for future targeting initiatives on WeCom, in-store, or on other touchpoints within WeChat.

Strategy 6: Supercharge CRM in China with Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud (SFOA)

Overall, the latest updates to WeChat’s ecosystem underscore the critical need for brands to adopt holistic CRM solutions like Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud (or Salesforce China).

As visibility and engagement from traditional Official Account notifications and Marketing Automation initiatives decline, the ability to centralize, analyze, and act on customer data (consolidated from as many online and offline sources/platforms as possible) becomes paramount to staying competitive.

Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud (SFOA) delivers a cutting-edge CRM platform, uniquely tailored to the Chinese market, that enables brands to:

• Seamlessly empower broader customer journeys: Connect WeChat interactions — across Official Accounts, Channels, Mini Programs, and WeCom — with offline touchpoints like stores and events.
• Unlock actionable insights: Leverage data-driven analytics (from consolidated data) to build more holistic customer profiles, segment audiences, understand preferences, and predict behaviors.
• Deliver hyper-personalized content: Automate tailored messaging and content everywhere that resonates with specific user needs, compensating for reduced visibility in Official Account notifications.
• Optimize multi-touch engagement: Drive deeper connections across the entire WeChat ecosystem and beyond, ensuring consistent and meaningful interactions at every stage of the customer journey.

The synergy between Salesforce’s world-class CRM capabilities and Alibaba Cloud’s localized infrastructure equips brands with the tools to adapt to this paradigm shift effectively.

From leveraging powerful APIs for seamless data integration to scaling engagement campaigns that maximize ROI, Salesforce China is more than a CRM — it’s a game-changer for navigating China’s evolving digital landscape.

Overall, WeChat Official Accounts have undergone major transformations, with enhanced integration across Channels and Mini Programs. These updates reflect WeChat's commitment to optimizing the functionality and user experience of its super-app.

For brands, these changes mark a pivotal opportunity to reimagine their CRM strategies in China. By delivering the right content to the right audience on the right channels at the right time, brands can effectively drive more traffic, capture more data insights, better tailor engagement, and accelerate sales.