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The Complexity of Email Marketing in China

The number of Internet users in China is growing every day, and the number of email users is far bigger that the total population of the US. This figure is due to Chinese Internet users confessing that they have different email addresses. One out of two has a work email address and a quarter uses a social network. And it’s not stopped going upwards. But how easy is it to reach them?

Either your e-mail server is located in China or not, you still can reach the majority of mailboxes with a deliverability rate of 94 to 96 percent. Plus, a standard anti-spam system (Corpease) added to a large Internet company (Netease) with a gaming site and a very popular online portal are different possibilities which may make you believe that sending emails in China sounds quite easy. But you may consider a few things before conquering the Chinese Internet market.

First of all, the Internet activity in China is far from what we are used to seeing, for example in the US. The email saturation figures are not what we could be familiar with: 91% in Korea and the US against only 55% in China. Then, the Internet Society of China created the CAN-SPAM which states that if your email has a business transaction purpose, Chinese authorities require that it has to be tagged as an advertising one with a subject beginning with “AD”.

Besides, China is not ONE market but has regional spoken and written language differences. If your email is published in English, it will be easier for the mailbox providers to consider it as a spam. It would be more difficult to recognize the reason of blocking it if it is written in simplified Chinese (embraced by most of China mainland) or traditional Chinese characters, more ancient and fancier. However, some consumers may request that e-mails delivered to them are in English, so consider allowing the content of your campaigns to contain both languages, with an English version of the message published below the Chinese version.

Web design conventions are also completely different in China. Chinese people like their sites to be packed with information, animation, and colors. And, you want to make sure you aren’t posting something that is a cultural no-no, such as the wrong colors or phrases.  We also know, Chinese authorities are very strict about the Internet content. So you should make sure to steer well clear of any “adult”, weapons-related content or anything that should be viewed as compromising to China Internal Security