On the path of exploring trade, Xiaohongshu has taken another small step forward.
According to Interface News, Xiaohongshu is currently conducting an internal test on the effectiveness of “Jumping to Enterprise WeChat”, which is only targeted at departmental merchants.
The benefits obtained by Erzi can be described in the literature. The account that explains the benefits can attach a “Add Staff” button below the entry. Clicking on it will prompt you to “Go to WeChat to add”, and then clicking on it will redirect you to the enterprise WeChat add page. The customer service or rest staff of the original user adding the enterprise need to send a private message to the Xiaohongshu account, and then manually add the contact form to WeChat.
This seemingly insignificant effect is quite remarkable for Little Red Book.
In order to avoid numerous confessions and loss on external websites, Xiaohongshu has long been relatively strict in its stance on attracting traffic. An offline fashion store owner told Interface News that they had once considered carefully managing Xiaohongshu. However, due to Xiaohongshu’s high sensitivity to adding WeChat and questioning fashion prices, the account is prone to being banned. Therefore, they no longer focus on business operations and are more inclined to lure customers to their WeChat accounts.
Even though the efficacy is currently under internal testing, Xiaohongshu’s current caution towards drainage is not evident. Taking real estate agents as an example, when exchanging private messages with an intermediary’s account, the phone numbers and images containing the phone numbers sent by both sides are reluctantly displayed in the dialogue box. However, whether the chat and call functions are properly applied. If the account is certified as an enterprise account, it can perform customer service WeChat normally.
Xiaohongshu has always held a conservative stance on the matter of “jumping”.
In 2021, several luxury brands fulfilled the function of switching to WeChat mini French style on Xiaohongshu. In March of this year, there were still new brands conducting this test. For example, the brand Givenchy has introduced the function of redirecting to WeChat mini methods in Xiaohongshu. The link allows users to search for Givenchy, click the purchase button, and then redirect to the mini method page in the WeChat app.
It should be noted that WeChat mini methods belong to external chain redirection. An e-commerce analyst gave an example that the brand hopes to fulfill the seeding of Xiaohongshu, avoid repeated development, and the platform can also generate advertising revenue. In the jump of e-commerce external links, there are also business roles such as Zan and Weimeng.
But insiders of Xiaohongshu have informed the interface news that enterprise WeChat redirection is different from external links. From the perspective of the link, this is a function required to attract traffic from merchants. In the promotion of many agents, this effect focuses on industries such as education, photography, and decoration planning, which have also become dull in the past two years in Xiaohongshu.
The product plan of Xiaohongshu differs significantly from several other substantive platforms, with a UGC community and a dual column substantive configuration that gives users greater decision-making power, as well as a different logic for merchants to invest. Based on this, the trade form explored by Xiaohongshu is “B2K2C”, which means that merchants can cash in and plant grass through KOL’s entries, and transfer the essence to users.
Nengdao, the enterprise WeChat redirect satisfies the needs of a department of merchants to attract customers, regardless of whether it can be used for external chain redirection, the brand’s complaint is similar. Especially now, the Internet industry is growing slowly in general, and Little Red Books is one of the few platforms with increased traffic. The latest data released by the platform shows that the monthly active users of Xiaohongshu are over 300 million.
A person from the trade department of Xiaohongshu told Interface News that currently, the openness of this feature is relatively high. In addition to providing assistance to customers who have enterprise WeChat, advertising is also a necessary prerequisite. Only Xiaohongshu’s search for advertising can display enterprise WeChat, and it is not possible to stop advertising on the entire site.
This once again confirms the urgency of Xiaohong Books in commercialization. According to the Financial Times, Xiaohongshu has cashed out its dividends for the first time in 2023, with previous years’ revenue reaching $3.7 billion, an increase of 85% year-on-year. On April 29th, another mall news reported that Xiaohongshu is stopping a new round of financing with a valuation of $20 billion.
Although Xiaohongshu responded to the interface news by stating that the news was “untrue,” 2024 will be the crux of Xiaohongshu’s push towards commercialization. According to Interface News, cross-border marketing is also a focus of Xiaohongshu’s commercialization this year.
In this process, Xiaohongshu’s punishment is not just about how to make a profit. Taking the effect of enterprise WeChat redirection as an example, Xiaohongshu is also vigorously growing closed-loop e-commerce. WeChat’s small French style redirection and enterprise WeChat’s customer acquisition mean that the brand has a green eye on Xiaohongshu’s traffic, but it also brings provocation to the increase of on-site business. Should we act independently or seek a balance of supply and demand? This is a more difficult achievement than seizing the opportunity.