Breaking Through Overseas: Reshaping Growth Acloudear Joins Forces with Industry Experts to Chart New Course for DTC Strategy

High traffic acquisition costs, formidable cultural barriers, and the challenge of capturing consumer mindshare… As Chinese brands navigate beyond the “traffic-centric” approach into deeper waters of global expansion, a consumer-centric, data-driven Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) strategy is emerging as the guiding light for brands to weather market cycles and achieve sustainable growth.

Recently, at the ‘Localised DTC Strategy’ online seminar hosted by the SAP Martech Alliance, Mr Wang Qi, Technical Partner at Acloudear (a Platinum Partner of SAP and core member of the Alliance), joined numerous alliance experts to share breakthrough approaches to DTC strategy.

01 From ‘Traffic Harvesting’ to ‘Mindshare Capture’

‘The DTC model is not only effective but will become increasingly so,’ stated Mr Min Yong, Chief Expert & Business Lead for CRM Cloud Solutions at SAP Greater China, succinctly capturing DTC’s contemporary value.

He noted that many overseas brands initially become fixated on advertising on platforms like Amazon. While this may drive short-term growth, it soon leads to escalating traffic costs and diminishing returns. Underlying this is a lack of brand value.

In response, he proposed a ‘three-stage evolution theory’ for enhancing brand power: progressing from merely making products “purchasable”, to ‘communicating brand philosophy’ through channels like official websites, and ultimately achieving ‘mindshare capture’ among consumers.

The DTC strategy is central to achieving this final leap. By capturing consumer data and leveraging AI to predict behaviour, it enables the delivery of ‘the right content to the right user, at the right time, through the right channel.’ This fosters deep emotional connections with consumers, transcending mere transactional relationships.

02 From Theoretical Concept to Digital Closed-Loop

Advanced concepts require practical implementation. While Mr Min Yong outlined the grand vision for DTC, Mr Wang Qi, Technology Partner at Acloudear, charted its robust implementation pathway.

Mr Wang Qi contends that the key to DTC’s practical success lies in constructing a complete customer journey from prospect to cash. By leveraging marketing tools like SAP Emarsys to achieve personalised marketing automation, a seamless end-to-end digital loop is formed. This loop efficiently enhances sales efficiency, quantifies channel ROI, ensures consistent experiences, and builds the brand’s private traffic pool.

He vividly illustrated this scenario using the example of a new energy vehicle brand expanding overseas: The system captures fragmented user behaviours—such as browsing review videos or downloading manuals—automatically synthesising comprehensive user profiles. This empowers sales teams to deliver pinpointed communications like: ‘We’ve noticed your interest in winter range performance…’

From prospect identification and personalised outreach to order conversion, data flows seamlessly. This not only dramatically boosts efficiency but also enables clear attribution of each order’s channel origin, transforming marketing ROI from a murky ledger into a transparent account.

This embodies Acloudear’s approach to implementing DTC: centring on SAP as the digital core, integrating front-end and back-end tools to ensure seamless data flow across marketing, sales, and service. This ultimately achieves efficiency gains, consistent customer experiences, and compliant private domain traffic development.

03 When ‘Chinese Wisdom’ Meets ‘Global Vision’

Another key consensus from the seminar was that successful DTC strategies must cultivate both internal and external strengths.

Brands expanding overseas must transcend ‘Chinese thinking’ to genuinely comprehend the demands of European and American consumers—such as their prioritisation of ESG over ‘ultimate value for money’—while simultaneously possessing global compliance capabilities.

This precisely represents Acloudear’s core strength. As an SAP Platinum Partner serving over 100 countries and regions, we not only deliver cutting-edge technological tools but, crucially, possess deep expertise in integrating technology with global localisation compliance capabilities (such as GDPR and national tax regulations). Through the SAP Martech Alliance, we consolidate global marketing resources to help Chinese enterprises overcome both technological and regulatory hurdles, enabling the finest ‘Chinese wisdom’ to seamlessly align with a ‘global perspective’.

This seminar conveyed a clear message: the era of expansive growth for Chinese brands going global has passed. The future belongs to refined, data-driven DTC strategies.

Acloudear stands ready to join all Chinese brands with global aspirations, using data as our sail and collaboration as our oar, to navigate together towards the vast starry seas of brand globalisation.

This article "Breaking Through Overseas: Reshaping Growth Acloudear Joins Forces with Industry Experts to Chart New Course for DTC Strategy" by AcloudEAR. We focus on business applications such as cloud ERP.

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