The Sinorbis Experience platform will aim to allow institutions to easily diversify their student marketing portfolio, showcasing themselves not just in China – Sinorbis’s main base – but also across Asia.

“What we’re trying to address is going beyond just translating content. It’s actually to adapt this content, but also take into consideration technology constraints that you might have when you expand into new countries,” explained Sinorbis CEO Nicolas Chu, in an interview with The PIE.

“It is also to take into account not just cultural nuances, specificities, and regulations, but also marketing channels. When we launched Sinorbis the idea was to do that for China and to be able, through technology, to address that issue – but now to do it across Asia too.

“What we have decided by working with more than 130 institutions from all around the world is that diversification is key. Ultimately, China remains the largest market, so they need to be able to still tap into the Chinese market and perhaps they can actually leverage the Chinese market to allow them to diversify,” Chu continued.

The new platform has been developed based on findings from an 18-month research period with its existing clients examining the challenges in the Asian market.

It is already available to those clients and will be rolled out officially on September 14 for the public.

It will have three key facets. The first is a centralised hub for creating and managing digital marketing content, which Sinorbis said will “ensure a consistent brand experience across multiple Asian markets”.

The second will feature an advanced analytics suite to help drive “data-driven decision making”, with constant measurements of various campaigns.

The third, and most technologically advanced, will be messaging feature using automation, which allows institutions to effectively communicate with students in whatever target language necessary.

Part of the system will be the ability to create “digital assets” – these can be landing pages, websites, posts, or segments within a channel, all developed for any target language needed across Asia – which can be done through leveraging AI.

“It would be fully automated and you could chat with your prospective students, whatever the language, whatever the channel, whatever weather, wherever they are,” Chu said.

“Technology should be able to address what was extremely complicated before”

This will also feature integrations with key social messaging apps in the region, including WeChat (China), Line (Japan), and WhatsApp.

Zalo (Vietnam) and Kakao Talk (South Korea, Taiwan) will also be integrated in the coming months.

“Technology should be able to address what was extremely complicated before, where you needed to have representation on the ground, you needed to speak those languages to understand, to be available at the right time.

“[The countries] all have a specificity; we say that digital marketing is complicated, our platform makes it easy. That’s the whole idea – you make [the process] as easy as if it was in the UK.”

Chu called the platform a “natural evolution” of what Sinorbis was already offering and while it took a while to arrive, he said it was worth the extra time – the result being he can save clients more time.

“It is a common thing to do more with less money and less this time – and we we are hoping that through our small contribution we can help achieve that.”