In a year where the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a paradigm shift for businesses and consumers alike, advanced digital solutions have become paramount. In this challenging context, AI omnichannel marketing platform EternityX continues to solidify its position as the cross-cultural and cross-border bridge connecting regional and global brands with the Chinese market. With China’s digital advertising spend projected to hit US$134 billion over the next three years, EternityX sees several emerging trends for digital marketing across the region in 2021 and beyond.
EternityX: Fueling global brands’ success by engaging China’s increasing affluent consumers
As China’s leading AI omnichannel marketing platform, EternityX derives real-time insight into Chinese consumer behavior – what they need, when and how to reach them, effectively eliminating the significant guesswork and challenges that EternityX’s international clients previously faced in the ever-evolving Chinese digital landscape. EternityX’s exclusive capabilities boosted digital marketing across an increasingly diverse client portfolio that increased by 63% even in the face of the pandemic; with a client retention rate over 90%, EternityX’s expertise, precise audience targeting and auto-optimization boast a successful track record of enhancing clients’ digital marketing performance by a minimum of 20-30%.
Charlene Ree, Founder & CEO of EternityX, comments, “Vaccine rollouts across the globe have raised hope for a long-awaited economic recovery as well as potential lift on travel bans, which is a good sign for both domestic and tourist-driven consumption. While the safety of international travel might still be a concern for many, market researches have shown that Chinese travellers’ sentiment for both shorter and longer distance trips is improving. It is imperative that brands stay abreast of the changing consumer landscape and begin to re-engage with customers in the most cost-efficient way to uncover new opportunities, especially with marketing budgets under close scrutiny during this challenging time.”
“Our mission is to help businesses maximise limited resources to reach and convert targeted and prospective customers. Not only do we ensure every critical marketing dollar is invested wisely – as seen in our clients’ drastically improved digital marketing performance – we also positively impacted these organizations by simplifying complex operational processes and reducing high manpower required by up to 80%, thus creating significant cost and productivity improvements.”
Future trends that will shape the Chinese and APAC digital landscapes in 2021
Stepping into 2021, EternityX continues to drive innovation by unlocking the potential of AI marketing. With a focus on simplicity and optimization, EternityX will further cultivate its ad trade desk. EternityX also observes these emerging trends in China and APAC digital landscapes:
- Affluent consumers are prioritising finance, insurance, property and advanced overseas education – A fundamental shift is underway as both young consumers and the general public become more prudent. Enthusiasm for savings, insurance and investment – particularly among high-net-worth individuals – has increased dramatically during the pandemic. Affluent consumers are also increasingly interested in graduate study abroad programmes. In this context, EternityX has helped finance and education service providers reach the affluent niche; online enquiries increased by 70% compared to similar campaigns last year and advertising clickthrough rates are also up by 21%.
- After financial wellbeing, health and wellness is the ascending focus – Based on EternityX campaign data, advertising messages featuring healthy lifestyle and wellness tend to have 40% higher response rates than similar products without such messaging.
- Leverage Southeast Asia’s optimism on tourism to rebound – Markets across Southeast Asia have high hopes of recapturing the Chinese tourist market with the promise of vaccine rollouts and easing of regional travel restrictions later this year. Tourism-related industries and travel retail brands should act now to maintain brand awareness among eager travellers. For example, to ensure Thailand remained top-of-mind ahead of a forecasted 2021 rebound, EternityX advised the Tourism Authority of Thailand to leverage this optimism by working together on a campaign utilizing EternityX’s technology to promote Thailand as a trusted health and wellness destination. The campaign achieved a 35% higher clickthrough rate than expected, showing that the audience is receptive.
- Expanded special duty-free areas and quotas fuel spending on luxury brands – By understanding location and travel data as well as affluent consumers with a history of purchasing luxury products, EternityX helped global luxury groups focus their initiatives on targeted audiences traveling to duty-free shopping areas. With this, EternityX data showed that layering programmatic advertising strategy on top of content marketing led to a 10x average increase in reach (with variation depending on target audience size).
With their global office headquartered in Hong Kong, EternityX currently operates in 7 markets with its global platform performing 2,000+ campaigns for 300+ local, regional and international advertisers, including the likes of The Peninsula Hotels, LVMH, L’Oréal, P&G, HSBC, Manulife and MTR Corporation. Moving forward, EternityX sees several exciting areas of opportunity for the future of cross-border, cross-culture digital marketing in China and APAC. For more information on the EternityX platform and case studies, please visit https://eternityx.com/
