zalo whitepaper · partner of generation z (13 – 17 y.o), the tomorrow source of growth for...

Zalo WhitepaperIn-depth whitepapercovering Zalo history anddevelopment in Vietnam

May . 2019

Zalo Whitepaper 2019

Table of contents

Study introduction

Conclusion

Executive summary

Zalo users and their behaviors

Zalo introductionCore ValuesPositionGrowth and Scale

Zalo Official AccountOverviewCollaboration Platform Model with OABusiness Implementations

OverviewCommunication Behavior Snapshots

About AdtimaPublisher of the study

About the study

Adtima is the number one premium publisher in Vietnam with over 49,5 million audience (1) . It owns Zalo - the number one messaging app in Vietnam with 46,5 million monthly active users (up to March 2019); Bao Moi – top 1 news aggregator; Zing.vn – top 1 online newspaper; Zing MP3 – No. 1 music streaming platform and Zing TV- one of the top HD video streaming platform. The superior advantages of Adtima network are the integration and connection among five platforms to understand audience’s behavior and ability to launch holistic communication campaigns.

Launched in 2/2012, Zalo is a free message and call mobile app. By 05/2018, Zalo has about 46,5 million monthly active users (2) and become the most popular communication app in Vietnam. Vietnamese have seen Zalo as a fast, stable, easy-to-use and convenient platform to connect with friends and family. The emergence of Zalo has excited Vietnamese marketers when they find more potential opportunities to approach target audience and implement marketing strategy on a local platform. However, the progress to explore and deploy Zalo into marketing is not easy due to lacking of understanding about product and user behaviors on Zalo.

This paper is conducted to provide basic understanding about Zalo, including its development journey, values, key functions, user behaviors as well as to suggest some application models for integrating Zalo into marketing strategy.

Study Introduction


Source of reference:(1): Adtima Data Center (2019)

(2): Zalo Introduction (Feb 2019)

“Zalo is one of biggest OTT platforms that shaping mobile landscape in Vietnam. It has brought unlimited communication opportunities among internet users, especially to connected users in rural area where there are not many players can do. We believe Zalo will not stop at messaging platform. It will be not only an e-wallet, but it also will become an “e-market” being enabled with thousands of transaction per day for Vietnam users”

"Zalo has become one of the most widely used communication app in Vietnam across generations and regions. It is favorably perceived by Vietnamese audience as a user-friendly, private and comfortable platform.

The growth of Zalo in Vietnam has established new exciting channel for marketers to engage with their target audience. This whitepaper will give marketers not only essential understanding about Zalo development journey in Vietnam but also potential digital solution via Zalo to effectively approach their consumers. From Zalo, we can know how to deliver values to both business and audience"


Zalopositioningin Vietnam


Emotionally, users identify Zalo as a friendly and personal place

where they can comfortably interact with people who is close

to them such as friends, family, lover. That makes Zalo different

from other social media platforms that are open environments for

social expression.

To contact with family/relative or closed friends79%

To follow/update from closed ones73%

To share personal feelings/thoughts72%

To contact groups (e.g. hobby group, club, etc.)79%

Stable connection for audio/ video call as well as messaging83%

Image quality is not reduced86%

Fast file sharing speed85%

Large file sharing capability63%

Convenient when transferring file between PC/Laptop and mobile device

63%

Functionally, Zalo is appreciated thanks for its

high-quality transferring features such as sharing heavy files

with high resolution and fast sharing speed etc.

Source: Zalo Whitepaper studyin 2018 by Adtima

KEYNOTE FOR MARKETERSZalo is potential to be leveraged as a platform for:- One-to-one conversation channel for consultation and customer care services. - Encouraging users to become content creator and share those content with their close network circle.

Zalo growth and scale


2012 Launched massively. By end of 2013, got 5 million subscriptions

Grew dramatically with over 15 million subscriptions and 185 million messages.

Expended to Myanmar market with more than 2 million users. In Vietnam, Zalo kept on top with 60 million subscriptions.

Grew significantly by 14% audience growth.

Push the growth to 16% and got about 40 million monthly active users.

By 03/2019, reached to 46,5 million monthly active users and rolled out e-government model on Zalo in 40 provinces in Vietnam.

Got over 40 million subscriptions.

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

- One-to-one conversation channel for consultation and customer care services. - Encouraging users to become content creator and share those content with their close network circle.

By the end of 2018, Zalo reached the milestone of 100 million users, which shows Zalo’s capability to dominate Vietnam messaging app across different ages, gender and region.

The majority of Zalo users are young people (18 – 34 y.o) who are internet savvy, open-minded and quickly adopt new trends adopters. Furthermore, Zalo has become a life partner of Generation Z (13 – 17 y.o), the tomorrow source of growth for Vietnamese society and economy.

Source of reference:Adtima Data Center (2019)


Zalo users and their behaviorsExtend drastically nationwide

Overview

Ages

Zalo attracts both male and female users. This gender-balanced user pool serves as potential platform

for promoting both male and female categories

Gender

18 - 24 25 - 34 35 - 4013 - 17

FemaleMale

45 - 64 55 - 64 65+

44% 56%

23%

7%5%

1%

30%

25%

10%

Source of reference:Adtima Data Center (2019)


Zalo has quickly widespread its coverage across 3 key regions in Vietnam, starting from South (46%) to North (35%) and Central (19%) Vietnam. It is promisingly become the popular connection ground at nationwide level.

Region

Zalo user pool are shared not only in urban (48%) but also in rural (52%). Urban is defined as top 70 key cities while rural is the rest. Overall, the number of Zalo users in rural is slightly higher than urban 4%.

Rural vs. Urban

Central NorthSouth

46%

19%

35%

48% 52%

Urban - Top 70 Cities

Rural - Exclude Top 70 Cities

Zalo in Rural: According to The study about Zalo users behaviors in rural conducted by Adtima in December 2018, Zalo is considered as an essential part of rural audience life thanks for its friendly and easy-to-use experience. They tend to interact with Zalo daily at high frequency. 77% of rural consumers are aware of and use Zalo and 68% of them use Zalo to chat everyday.

Zalo across Industries: On the other hand, from product point of view, Zalo starts to establish a digital ecosystem in which we integrate deeply with various key industries, such as transportation, medical care, education, finance, e-commerce, retail, and manufacturing etc., to improve business operational efficiency, reduce operational costs as well as bring more unified utilities to end users.

Source of reference:Study about Zalo usersbehaviors in rural (2018)


KEYNOTE FOR MARKETERS

With the huge coverage and open-integrated ability, marketers can find more business growth-hack opportunities by app-in-app model on Zalo. Based on business needs, we can leverage Zalo as a communication marketing platform,

CRM communication platform or O2O (online to offline) strategy implementation, etc.

Top 3 usage features of Zalo are chat, audio call and video call. Those features have more than 80% conversion rate.

In 2018, Zalo has more than 1 billion messages and 1 million audio call hours per day (1) . That is the inevitable result of 4G, 5G infrastructure adoption in Vietnam as well as the improvement in product development. In 2018, Zalo made a focus on video call by implementing lifestyle and modern features. It receives highly positive feedback from users, especially female (85% are happy with the quality of calls vs. average of 52% on other communication platforms) (2) .

About conversation interests, we see discussing about work getting tremendous engagement – over 70% in both personal and group conversation (3) . That explains for the high usage conversion of file transfer feature (PDF, PPT, Words, JPEG) on Zalo – about 83%. Users find file transferring on Zalo convenient, fast and high-resolution even in low-quality internet status. That statistic also shows the intrusion of Zalo in white collar segment.

On the other hand, we find users especially love to have group discussion about entertainment topics (sport, movie) with 30% - 40% engagement rate (4) .

Zalo features % conversion (From aware to hose who used Zalo in P1M, Base: 197)

Source: (1): Zalo Introduction in Feb 2019(2), (3), (4): Zalo Whitepaper Study 2018


Communication behavior snapshots

100%

65%

90%

78%

83%

80%

72%

Chat

Group chat

Phone call

Video call

File transfer

Sticker

(Diary)



Core value of Zalo is conversation. That is not only based on product features but also from users’ perspective. The better way for marketers to take advantage of Zalo is building up conversation marketing strategy that prioritizes native and constructive approach to audience such as developing chatbot, launching content marketing or integrating Zalo with Customer Service or Customer Relationship Management system to bring out true values to audience.

Referral marketing can be considered as strategic implementations on Zalo, especially for brands related to with shopping, music, travel, movie, entertainment owing to high engagement in group discussion. That can help brand leverage existing customers to acquire new ones with efficient cost and time resources.

90%

50%

75%

Source: (1), (2):Zalo Whitepaper Study 2018


Sticker is one of the features that differentiate Zalo from competitors. 61% of Zalo users have used stickers in their conversation. Within this group, the sticker usage frequency is extremely high. On average, users tend to use stickers 4 out of 5 chatting times. Free and easy to express their emotion are two key factors making users choose to use stickers (1) .

74% of sticker users have seen and engaged with branded stickers. 72% of them claim that “Stickers make me want to stick to the brand” showcases the positive impact of leveraging stickers into communication strategy, boosting brand love and reference. Modern users expect more relevant and native contents rather than pushed-branded information (2) .


Branded Sticker can be leveraged on Zalo to enhance brand interaction with users. Content for stickers should be native and casual. Imagine that your audience will use stickers for daily conversation so they need something simple and playful to express emotions. Too much information or branding will affect stickers performance.

Keynote For MarketersZalo Official Account works as an opt-in model that requires users to follow a specific OA to receive messages. That is to protect users’ privacy when they have active rights to choose which stakeholder to connect as well as to bring out positive impact to business when brands can repeat exposure, advertise freely, personalize communication and build loyalty.

With that strategic foundation, Zalo is a platform for both push & pull marketing application. That does not only allow advertisers to push contents to audiences but also builds up communication hubs for audience to proactively access such as chat with CS, update content, query information etc.

Zalo Official Account


Zalo Official Account (OA) is the two-way and personalized communication hub of individuals, businesses, communities and government with the aim of interacting, connecting, transmitting information to audience.

OA is divided into 3 types of accounts:

OA is aimed at becoming the content hub for users where they can passively or actively update brand information.

SERVICES

an OA to build brands communica-tion, announce pro-

motions and do customer care

MEDIA

a content-oriented OA to provide

news and valuable information to

users every day

SHOP

an OA to sell products and services,

optimized for Zalo Shop integration and chat with customers

Zalo Official AccountKey Features


1. BROADCAST MESSAGE

Send message to target customers and preset timing

2. CONTENT CREATION

Create and store unlimited content in various formats (e.g. image, video etc.)

3. CUSTOMER CARE

Automatic and interactive communication platform with customers

4. MENU

Facilitate browsing navigation for customers based on target service

Collaboration Platform Model with OAIn Zalo, we believe in shared community and evolve towards mutualistic win-win solutions to create sustainable and replicable values. We have established Collaborative Platform Model that allows various economic and social sectors to explore and integrate rich features to Zalo Official Account.

As a platform owner, Zalo continues to drive collaboration by opening APIs to more partners. In return, partners intensify Zalo’s connectivity, contents and contexts. That fraternization will create surplus value for multiple stakeholders, including end-users and community.

OA offers users access to information and services. Users can follow OA across different fields in life according to their preferences and needs. In that way, users can enjoy various online convenient services directly on Zalo OA such as e-Gorvernment, food delivery, finance & banking, transportation, booking service, entertainment etc.


Implementations


CONTENT CONSUMPTION STIMULATION

ONLINE TO OFFLINE

OPPORTUNITIES

CUSTOMERS CARE

PROGRAM


More than just a messaging app, Zalo starts to establish itself as an essential partner in users’ daily lives. Users tend to interact with Zalo for their daily needs such as reading news, finding information, etc. 90% users perceive Zalo as a convenient and quick way to update news. When coming to Zalo, users tend to look for value and relevant information, news (1) .

Source: (1): Zalo Whitepaper study in 2018 by Adtima

Content Consumption Stimulation

Launch in 2006, Baomoi promptly became the number one news aggre-gator in Vietnam with more than 110+ publishers integration daily. The key for their success is focusing on personaliz-ing users reading experiences. They built on AI technology and integrated to Zalo by open APIs.

BAOMOI - Enriches Users Experience By AI Technology


Customer journey optimization always plays an important role in business to help brands bring out good experience for users as well as to establish strong founda-tion for sustainable performance. However, in order to do that we first need to over-come the challenge of integrating multiple channels and devices into an online to offline (O2O) customer journey. We see an opportunity for brands in leveraging Zalo as a bridge between online to offline when 78% Zalo users love to look for sale and promotion on OA (1) Source: (1): Zalo Whitepaper study in 2018 by Adtima

Online To Offline Opportunities

New year is the peak time that beverage and alcoholic brands make unique and interesting advertising campaigns to attract consumers' attention, thereby increasing sales. Budweiser also did stand out from the exciting playground of the industry during the 2019 Tet holiday with the campaign "Shake and win" to bring impressive results and attracted the attention of consumers. By building up minigame directly on Budweiser OA, they optimized game flow and stayed to remind audiences, drive them to offline transactions. As a result, the campaign attracted 112 million impressions; 1,4 million turns of playing game; 258,400 users engaging with the game. From then, 199,800 QR codes were delivered and 45,000 Bud's Tet aluminium bottles were redeemed

BUDWEISER – OA CAMPAIGN TO DRIVE ACTIVATION ENGAGEMENTS

Exchange gift at suggested supermarket

Join game “shaking beer” to receive QR code for receiving beer gift

Access to Zalo OA of Budweiser via mobile phone


Customer care is at the heart of all successful companies. It can help develop customer loyalty and improve relationships with customers. While 58% of Zalo users want to get brand updates on OA, we see their needs and engagement intention in customer care program on Zalo.

Customer Care Program

FE Credit is one of the largest financial service companies in Vietnam counted for more than 70% market share . With a large number of customers, FE Credit needs to find a smart and fast customer care solution with optimal costs. That also needs to ensure automation, personalization and high security. FE Credit opened OA as an official customer care channel on Zalo. That sets two-way conversation to FE Credit’s customers. Customers can look up personal information, loans and choose the services, receive incentive programs and chat with FE Credit staff directly on Zalo.

FE CREDIT – Customer Care Finance Industry

The Study SummaryAs a part of Adtima ecosystem which owns the most active mobile platforms across different passion points of Vietnamese from consuming contents, entertaining to communicating, Zalo grasps holistic understandings of audiences' behaviors and interests across those passion points.

Zalo is recognized as a friendly and personal place where they can comfortably interact with people who is close to them such as friends, family, lover. That makes Zalo different from other social media platforms.

By end of 2018, Zalo reached the milestone of 46,5 million monthly active users that shows Zalo’s ability to dominate Vietnam messaging app across different ages, genders and regions.

Official account (OA) on Zalo provides an advanced platform for executing both pull & push marketing strategies.

OA works as Collaboration Platform Model that that allows various economic, social sectors explore and in-depth integrate rich features to Zalo Official Account by open APIs.


Zalo Whitepaper 2019Zalo Whitepaper 2019

Thank You.

Cảm ơn!

HI :)

Love <3


APPENDIX


Adtima owns the most active mobile eco-system including Zalo – Top 1 messaging app; BaoMoi and Zing.vn - the two top news apps; Zing MP3 – No.1 music streaming app; and Zing TV – the most popular movies app in Vietnam.

With deep engagement with Vietnamese mobile users, Adtima desires to cover holistic daily habits of Vietnamese consumers across various platforms within its ecosystem:

About Adtima Ecosystem

Any new message for me?

Any interesting news today?

Any shocking news today?

Shopping on Zalo to relax

Shop

Listen to Zing MP3 music to chill after work/ school time

Use Zalo Video Call to communicate with colleagues and friends

7AM

8AM

9AM

12PM-1PM

3PM-4PM

5PM-6PM

7PM-8PMDINNER TIME

9PM-11PM

WAKE UP

HAVE BREAKFAST

OFFICE/ SCHOOL TIME

LUNCHON THE WAY HOME

AFTERNOON BREAK

Watch Zing TV to relax

RELAX TIME

NEW DAY START!

zalo whitepaper · partner of generation z (13 – 17 y.o), the tomorrow source of growth for...

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