WeChat remains one of the most powerful channels for brands to reach and engage Chinese audiences. However, the introduction of China privacy law, the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) has made understanding and communicating with followers more challenging than ever.
While these regulations are a step forward for China data privacy, they’ve also created new hurdles for marketers trying to deliver personalised and data-driven experiences.
The challenge: PIPL and anonymised WeChat followers
PIPL, China’s equivalent to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), was introduced to safeguard how personal information is collected, stored, and used.
For WeChat Official Accounts, this means follower data is anonymised, you can no longer access information such as name, gender, or location directly.
For organisations, this creates several key challenges:
- Limited segmentation: It’s difficult to group followers by demographics, interests, or buyer stage.
- Generic communication: Broadcast messages must stay broad, resulting to lower engagement rates.
- Reduced visibility: Without identifying data, tracking a follower’s journey from awareness to conversion becomes difficult.
In short, while WeChat remains essential for digital engagement in China, PIPL compliance limits the insights marketers once relied on.
Using WeChat forms to better understand your audience
WeChat forms offer a privacy-compliant way to collect customer data and rebuild this missing visibility.
Each form can include an email or phone number field which acts as a unique identifier. Once submitted, the lead is automatically captured in the Sinorbis platform, allowing all interactions to be linked to that identifier for a complete view of contacts engagements across the customer journey.
WeChat form fields are also highly customisable and can be easily adapted to collect information based on your organisation’s needs. Therefore, forms allow followers to voluntarily share key details such as:
- Name and contact information
- Location or region
- Product or service interests
- Purchase intent or timeline
- And more.
As these form submissions are key to learning more about your followers, it’s important to set your WeChat account up to maximise for conversion. Often these forms are embedded inside WeChat Menus, however while it’s a good practice to have forms on your menus they are more of a passive method of collecting leads.
It's also important to actively push your forms to your audience to ensure you can collect as many leads as possible. That’s where one of the new features on the Sinorbis platform is especially helpful - we’ve made it easy to embed forms into welcome flows or automated messages to ensure they receive the form when they are most engaged and most likely to complete a form.
As a result, all data collection and consent mechanisms are fully compliant with PIPL. Users understand what information they’re sharing and how it will be used, maintaining transparency while giving your organisation the insights needed for more meaningful engagement.
Request a demo to learn how you can build compliant WeChat forms and capture valuable customer insights on the Sinorbis Experience Platform.
Turning anonymous followers into actionable leads
When a follower completes the form, their information automatically syncs into the Sinorbis platform, creating a complete profile where users can get a complete understanding of their journey on WeChat.
This changes the way you use WeChat in three major ways:
- Pipeline visibility
Integrate with your CRM to ensure complete visibility of your WeChat followers, allowing you to track journeys as prospects move through your marketing and sales funnel, from initial contact to lead conversion. This visibility helps you measure ROI and optimise future campaigns.
- Segmentation and targeting
With this complete information, marketers can segment followers by interest, location, buying stage and more to deliver personalised messages that really resonate, instead of one-size-fits-all broadcasts.
- Automation and integration
Collected data integrates seamlessly with Sinorbis’ automation tools, enabling you to trigger follow-ups, send targeted campaigns, or enrol contacts in tailored nurture journeys.
The result: A compliant, insight-driven WeChat strategy
China’s PIPL has changed how brands need to operate in China. By using WeChat forms, businesses can regain visibility over followers, collect first-party data with consent, automate personalised engagement, and strengthen compliance and brand credibility. With Sinorbis, you can easily design, publish, and automate WeChat forms to stay compliant while creating stronger, data-driven connections with your Chinese audience, request a demo to see it in action.
See Sinorbis in action
Contact our team to learn how we can help bolster your digital experience in Asia.
