Analysis of Tongcheng Travel’s User Operation System

I believe everyone is familiar with Tongcheng Travel . It has become popular with the blind box of air tickets and relied on the traffic brought by WeChat to develop rapidly in the OTA industry, becoming a three-way competition with Ctrip and Qunar. Today, we will dismantle Tongcheng's user operation system from the following three aspects:

1. User tiering system;
2. User incentive system;
3. User life cycle management system.

Of course, these three systems do not exist completely independently, and most of the time they are used in combination with each other. The end point of the user operation system is to return to user life cycle management, which is to enhance user value and extend user life cycle services .

Next, we will start to disassemble Tongcheng Travel’s user operation system, starting with Tongcheng’s user stratification system.

User stratification is the first step in refined operations. Generally speaking, user stratification uses the following four main stratification methods:

1. User personalized characteristics/demand segmentation and stratification, such as user's natural basic characteristics + behavioral characteristics + business line type, etc.;
2. User identity stratification, such as user growth level, user identity, etc.;
3. User value stratification, such as the RFM model;
4. AARRR model stratification.

So what aspects does Tongcheng’s user stratification include? Let’s take a look.

1. Tongcheng’s user stratification system

User segmentation itself is difficult to form a system. The user segmentation system must serve business indicators/user life cycle management. Appropriate user segmentation + user strategy are the real meaning of segmentation . Therefore, under Tongcheng Travel's large user stratification system, it can be roughly divided into the following large user stratification systems:

1. To improve the conversion rate of new users who have not placed orders in the business line

I believe everyone is familiar with this. For new users, the platform is particularly cherished. Therefore, we will try every possible means to retain users within the first 7 days when they enter the product and better convert users.

For a relatively low-frequency product like Tongcheng Travel, the core for new users is still to promote the user's first conversion, especially the conversion of various business lines, such as air tickets, hotels, train tickets, etc. The simplest, direct and effective way for this group of users is to convert them in the form of new user red envelopes (coupon packages) and use the resource positions on the homepage to reach them efficiently .

It can be seen from Tongcheng Travel’s new member coupon package that this is a combination of coupons for all major business lines: train tickets, hotels, air tickets, entrance tickets, bus tickets, etc. Among them, the 5 yuan train ticket and the 15 yuan no-threshold air ticket are quite attractive.

If your product has multiple business lines, rather than a single business line product, you may want to try Tongcheng Travel's combination of coupon packages for all business lines to distribute to users, thereby increasing the conversion rate of each business line.

2. Improve user activity/retention and stickiness of user growth members

Many products have two sets of membership systems coexisting, such as JD.com's free growth-level membership and PLUS paid membership, Ctrip's mass, silver, gold and super memberships. Of course, Tongcheng Travel also has two sets of membership systems coexisting: ordinary, silver, gold and other growth-level memberships, and the other set is the paid Black Whale membership.

After registration, you will immediately enjoy the lowest level of ordinary card membership. The corresponding level can enjoy different privileges. The higher the level, the more privileges (number of times) you can enjoy.

As a general card member, the privileges you can enjoy can be roughly divided into three categories: first, you can use your miles (equivalent to points) to offset cash and redeem things, and you will also receive mileage gift packages; second, you can get airport pick-up and taxi coupons; third, you can get birthday benefits, etc.

How can we upgrade quickly? Users need to complete the ordering and consumption actions under the business line. It can be seen that they are all related to the main businesses such as hotels, air tickets, and train tickets. The more consumption in these three business lines, the faster the upgrade will be.

This type of growing level membership generally uses the platform's profits to provide users with better benefits. Generally, the distribution of these users shows a 28-principle distribution. Less than 10% of platinum users bring more income to the platform, so the platform provides these users with a lot of benefits and privileges, and some benefits are even better than those of Black Whale members. After all, these users have upgraded themselves through consumption with actual money, rather than buying the privilege for 99 yuan.

However, it is difficult to evaluate the business impact of user stratification based on growth levels. Therefore, it is generally evaluated from dimensions such as upgrades and use of benefits. However, if it comes to ROI, it is actually difficult to tell whether users spend more because of the privileges brought by level membership or because of the users' active choice.

3. Paid membership to increase user order frequency

Why are many platforms starting to promote paid memberships? On the one hand, we have discovered that although growth-level memberships can retain some users, the switching costs are too low and user stickiness is not strong (except for the highest-level memberships). On the other hand, each company has begun to recruit users through paid membership. By using paid membership, users are locked into the platform and the cost of switching users is increased, and thus paid memberships of various companies have emerged.

However, for low-frequency products such as Tongcheng Travel, the platform's privileges cannot fully attract users, so each OTA sells them in packages in the form of high-frequency products + its own membership, giving users the feeling that they can make their money back with one order. However, the design game here is a gamble with users. High-frequency products are paid monthly, so there is a problem of utilization rate. Therefore, with the problem of utilization rate, there is price space for operation.

The privileges of Tongcheng Travel's paid members are similar to those of the highest-level platinum card. In order to increase the conversion rate of paid members, Tongcheng Travel also bundles Tencent Video.

In terms of member conversion, the main focus is to integrate with various business lines and convert Black Whale members through bundling sales with business lines.

4. Recall users who have not placed an order in the past year

Use bargaining, SMS recall and other methods to recall users who have not placed an order in the past year. Recalling old users and converting new users actually have the same purpose. After all, old users who have not placed an order for a year can actually be treated as new users. The benefits of new users can be given to these old users again to convert users, and even more benefits can be given to convert lost old users.

In fact, user recall itself is a post-processing behavior after user loss. On the one hand, it is difficult to find an efficient way to reach and convert users, and on the other hand, the probability of pulling them back after loss is also very low.

So before this behavior, some companies will build user churn warnings based on users' recent behaviors. For example, we may find that the overall privilege of users before churn is that they open the App less frequently and place fewer orders. Therefore, we need to seize every time the user comes during this shorter period of time and make them linger every time they come, so that more stories can be generated next.

5. Cross-frequency increase for users who place orders under the business line

This is very critical. Generally speaking, there will be more conversions for air tickets + hotels, train tickets + hotels, and cross-frequency promotion of train tickets + air tickets + hotels.

Since the user has already placed an order to buy an air ticket, it is very reasonable and easy to convert users to recommend business lines such as airport transfers and hotels based on the user's scenario.

Generally speaking, the platform will give hotel coupons to users who have purchased air and train tickets, thereby directing traffic to the hotel's business line and increasing the frequency of consumption at the hotel. On the OTA platform, after booking a flight/train ticket, we can see the part that directs traffic to the hotel: hotel coupons are issued in the after-sales scenario to guide users to place orders at the hotel.

In the scenario of train tickets, a combination of train tickets and air tickets will be recommended to the user based on the user's current destination and departure point.

The core of this stratification is to recommend suitable travel methods to users based on their scenarios and needs as much as possible.

In fact, we can see that the user stratification above is a very large user stratification, and they all have certain operational purposes, all of which serve to increase user orders and increase the frequency of user orders.

Another point that needs to be noted is that the three major user operation systems do not exist completely independently, but are mixed and superimposed on each other to ultimately achieve optimal efficiency. Next, let’s talk about Tongcheng Travel’s user incentive system.

2. User Incentive System

In Tongcheng Travel’s user incentive system, mileage plays a very important role, which is equivalent to the existence of points products. Miles can be redeemed for prizes, and in some scenarios, miles can also be spent as money.

In this system of user incentives, there are three core keys: one is how to obtain points/mileage, two is the equivalent monetary value of miles/points, and three is how to consume points/mileage. The three links form a complete closed loop.

For Tongcheng Travel's user incentive system, miles can be earned through check-ins, business line consumption, etc., and miles can be consumed through the mileage mall (equivalent to an e-commerce travel mall), generally 200 miles can be deducted for 1 yuan.

When spending on air tickets, hotels, and train tickets, you can generally get hundreds to thousands of miles. The number of miles earned is related to the revenue and profit of the consumption order for the platform. Generally speaking, the higher the profit, the higher the mileage. So basically the hotel's mileage is relatively higher than other business lines.

Generally speaking, the platform's incentive system is generally divided into two types: one is spiritual incentive, and the other is material incentive. Tongcheng's mileage can be said to be a very typical material incentive system.

The number of people who have taken spiritual motivation to the extreme should be counted, and the psychology of knowledge paying users' love of sharing has been utilized to the extreme.

JD.com's PLUS members have also made full use of the Jingdou incentive system. JD.com PLUS members can receive 3 times the Jingdou back and use Jingdou as money, which has greatly improved everyone's awareness of Jingdou.

Therefore, if you want the incentive system to be deeply rooted in people's hearts, the key is to bring real benefits to users, spend points as money, and link it with the main business process to deepen users' perception of points.

The reason why the point system of many products is ineffective is that, on the one hand, the monetary value of points is not connected with the main process, and on the other hand, the prizes redeemed for points are not attractive enough, resulting in a decrease in the attractiveness of points.

3. User Lifecycle Management

In the user stratification system, there is actually management of the user life cycle. There are corresponding operational strategies to support the user acquisition, conversion, retention, and activity, from the time the user contacts the product to the time they leave the product.

The core is to better enhance the value of all users and amplify the value of individual users.

The user life cycle management here includes both the process from when the user comes into contact with the product to the product itself, and the process from when the user comes into contact with the business line of the product to when the user eventually leaves the business line.

So the various links must be mixed with each other.

The core of the user operation system is data-driven + refined strategic operation, which makes the operation strategy evaluable, drivable and influential. In this process, user behavior is disassembled to find the factors/handles that affect the user value of the entire site, and targeted operation strategies are formulated to enhance user value.

Author: Operation Wang Diary

Source: Operation Wang's Growth Diary