Analysis of the promotional methods of WeChat Reading’s “Unlimited Card” activity!

1. Case highlights

1. One gameplay brought at least millions of users in half a year;

2. A classic case of "relying on user fission to acquire a large number of new users at a very low cost";

3. Many interesting new ways of playing have been created around a benefit similar to "VIP membership privileges", which is particularly worthy of reference and learning for many content products, e-commerce products or products with "membership privileges".

II. Basic Background of the Case

In September 2018, WeChat Reading launched the “Unlimited Card” feature. Since its launch, the number of active users has increased by more than 50%.

Let me share some basic information about the "Unlimited Card" first:

1.What is the Infinite Card?

WeChat Reading's "Unlimited Card" is essentially a VIP membership privilege - there are many books in WeChat Reading, both free and paid. The so-called "Unlimited Card" means that you can watch and read all the paid content in WeChat Reading for free within a certain period of time.

2. How to get an unlimited card?

Unlimited cards can be obtained by paying for them (refer to the picture above), or by completing tasks or winning certain special rewards. The tasks are generally related to "old users bringing in new users", that is, old users can get unlimited card privileges by inviting some new users to join. However, the unlimited cards obtained by completing tasks generally have some "time limits", such as only valid for 5 days or 7 days.

3. Development and evolution

The "Infinite Card" functional module has undergone many iterations from its launch in September 2018 to July 2019. The general evolution path in product mechanism and gameplay is as follows:

• Launched on September 4, 2018. You can get unlimited card for free for 3 days on the homepage, and you can extend the validity of unlimited card to 7 days by sharing the message to your friends.
• In October 2018, the "Team up + draw to win unlimited cards" gameplay was launched, which means that by successfully inviting 5 new users to form a team, they can draw for unlimited cards with varying validity periods, and the team leader can get one more chance to draw.
• In November 2018, users will receive an unlimited card gift package when purchasing books and paid chapters, and can randomly obtain unlimited card experience qualifications with varying durations.
• In January 2019, a small mechanism called "invite friends to come back and read" was launched. Users who have not read for 30 days can also get unlimited cards by returning to read.
• In March 2019, the homepage launched the "Share to Win Co-branded Unlimited Card" and "Flip to Win Lifetime Unlimited Card Membership" activities, which are held once a week and continue to this day, with an average of nearly one million people participating each time.
• In May 2019, the official account of the WeChat Reading team sent a large number of private messages to push users within WeChat Reading, allowing them to obtain unlimited cards for free.

So far, WeChat Reading’s “Infinite Card” gameplay has gone through 7 versions. During this period, the active user data of WeChat Reading is as follows (the data comes from iResearch Qianfan, for reference only). In order to better compare and reference, we selected two products that also focus on "mobile reading" - Get and Duokan Reading to compare with WeChat Reading.

The data shows that since September 2018, the number of active users of Duokan and Dedao has slowed down significantly or even declined slightly. However, after the launch of the Infinite Card of WeChat Reading in September 2018, the number of active users has increased by more than 50%. Except for the decline in user activity during the Spring Festival, the growth trend has basically remained relatively stable.

In addition, according to an internal survey of Sanjieke, 6 out of 15 students have participated in the use of WeChat's "Unlimited Card" gameplay, and 4 students reported that during the first half of 2019, they often saw "Unlimited Card" shared in their circle of friends or groups.

Although it may seem a bit arbitrary, we still believe that when WeChat Reading does not necessarily have much advantage over other similar products in terms of "readable books", the "unlimited card" gameplay has played a direct role in the growth of WeChat Reading, bringing WeChat millions of daily active users even when the market is almost saturated (millions of daily active users mean tens of millions of new users).

3. Analysis of official cases in three classes

Particularly good and worth learning from this case:

First, the "Infinite Card" itself is a very clever operating mechanism and product. It makes great use of the "scarcity" principle and the "anchoring" effect. Without the official WeChat Reading spending more additional resources and costs, it has created a product with both growth and paid conversion attributes through some clever mechanism design.

We can understand it simply - before the launch of the "Infinite Card" in September 2018, all books in WeChat Reading were free. Moreover, as a product focusing on "reading", regularly updating the bibliography is a must. However, starting some time before the “Infinite Card” was launched, WeChat Reading began charging for some of its better-selling, higher-quality, and more well-received books.

Because some books are charged and the content supply has increased, the "Unlimited Card" that allows unlimited viewing of paid content has become a valuable and scarce privilege.

Because the unlimited card has value, it has become a membership product that can be clearly priced at more than 200 yuan per year.

Due to the "anchoring" effect, the unlimited card is worth more than 200 yuan per year, and being able to "get it for free" has become a very attractive privilege for users, enough to attract more users to be willing to pay certain costs and take actions in order to obtain this privilege.

Imagine if the books in WeChat Reading were not charged and were still completely free, as a user, all the content in WeChat Reading would not be able to pose any additional attraction to you. Such free content would not constitute any "hook" for operation or growth for a product.

And the best part is that WeChat Reading does not require any extra cost. Because as mentioned above, book updating is what they should do well.

Therefore, WeChat Reading actually just converted some of the original free content into paid content, and packaged a "membership with unlimited free viewing" around the consumption of paid content, which gave itself a very good operation + growth handle.

At the same time, the "Unlimited Card" function is also a means of monetization. When the "Unlimited Card" shared or drawn by users is about to expire, WeChat Reading will no longer guide sharing, but will more strongly guide users to renew. The main point of guiding renewal is a feeling similar to "only 9 yuan per month".

This actually fits 3 very important principles:

1. If a content product has too much content, it may gradually lose its appeal to users. On the contrary, sometimes, deliberately making some content "scarce" or creating "value anchoring" may actually make users more willing to consume content.

2. A product with a price anchor can often truly have the "leverage effect" that can motivate users to take certain actions in order to obtain it.

3. In a product, if there is a certain function or benefit that can have the "leverage effect" to leverage user actions, you should definitely find a way to amplify it.

Second, around the seemingly simple membership benefit of "Unlimited Card", WeChat Reading has derived many ways to increase user growth. It is rare to be able to come up with so many different products for operational growth based on a single "VIP membership". Many of these gameplays have achieved very good results, and there are many aspects that are worth learning from.

As mentioned earlier, the "Unlimited Card" is both a means of monetization for WeChat Reading (users can pay monthly or annually) and an operational tool for user growth. Here we will focus on how the "Unlimited Card" plays a role in user growth.

What is more interesting is that in terms of user growth for "Infinite Card", there are actually four more mainstream ways of playing. However, the rules, typical processes, etc. of the three ways of playing are not exactly the same. However, there are things worth learning from all four ways of playing. Below we will share with you the rules, processes and details of the four ways of playing in turn.

1. The first way to play is the most common, and may also be the most popular and bring the strongest growth driving force: teamwork.

The team play is similar to the familiar "group play", the basic rules are:

Anyone who enters WeChat Reading and finds the "Team Play" entrance can initiate a team. By sharing it on Moments or friend groups, friends can be invited to join. A team of 5 or more people is formed. After forming a team, everyone will have one free chance to draw an unlimited card. The prizes include unlimited cards with different time limits, such as 1 day, 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, 30 days, 365 days and lifetime unlimited cards.

After the team is formed, prizes will be drawn every Saturday. The team leader (i.e. the initiator) will get one chance to draw a card. Moreover, the more new users there are in the team, the higher the chance of getting an unlimited card with a longer time limit.

The basic process is as follows:

Users see the team-building activity on the homepage, click to become the team leader, then share it to the WeChat group chat to invite friends to join, wait for them to join, and form a team of five.

Or when you see that a team shared by a friend is full, you can also form a new team, become the captain, and then invite your friends. The same sharing logic applies to invitations.

After seeing the link, friends may become interested in the lottery and prizes. By clicking the link, they can jump to the WeChat Reading App, choose to join the team, and wait for the team to be full. The prize will be drawn on Saturday.

When the prize is drawn on Saturday, the WeChat Reading APP will send a push recall, and users can see the number of winning days and historical winning records.

Overall, in the "team" gameplay, the process is relatively clear and there are not too many doubts. Among them, the card copy shared to WeChat groups or Moments focuses on "100% winning rate", which can have a strong inducement effect on other users who see the share.

However, I am a little unsure why it is “prize draw every Saturday + targeted push to recall users every Saturday”. Perhaps judging from the data, more users will use WeChat Reading on Saturdays?

The design of the incentive rules for the entire "team" gameplay is also quite interesting.

As you can see, there are three core incentive rules for "teaming up":

• 1) When the team is full, the captain will get an extra chance to draw a prize. This will encourage more people to become team leaders, which is the same principle as giving cash back to group leaders.
• 2) Prizes are awarded randomly, but the higher the proportion of new users, the greater the probability of winning the grand prize. This will encourage users to attract new users.
• 3) The members of each period cannot be exactly the same as those of previous periods. This is to prevent being repeatedly fleeced by a group of freeloaders.

In addition, the rules of team play have been slightly adjusted in the later stage (starting from January 2019) - inviting registered users who have not used WeChat Reading for 30 days can also increase the probability of winning the grand prize.

From the above, we can see that the "team gameplay" is completely similar to conventional gameplay such as "group buying". It aims to attract new users. In terms of incentive mechanism, it focuses more on encouraging team leaders to appear + attract new users/promote activation.

From our perspective, "team play" is particularly suitable for reference by various learning, gaming, and e-commerce consumer products.

2. The second way to play is the simplest - share the link with friends and have them click on it to get a 1-day unlimited card.

The basic rules of this game are:

Share a link with friends. As long as the friend (new or old) clicks on the shared link, the sharer will be eligible for 1 day unlimited card.

The core process is as follows:

The detail here is that after the user shares to a group chat or Moments, a small pop-up window will pop up, prompting the user to ask friends to click on the sharing link.

After the friend clicks the link and jumps into the App, it is considered a successful assistance. At this time, the user will receive a private message from the WeChat Reading Team, and a push notification will be sent to remind the user that he has successfully obtained the 1-day unlimited card reward.

This gameplay is relatively simple and crude. It feels like it is just for the purpose of boosting stats, so I won’t go into details…

3. The third way to play is more unique and the effect is also very good - flip it.

The basic rules of flipping are -

Every week, WeChat Reading launches a special “Turn Over” activity on its homepage. There are black cards and gold cards in the special event. Black cards can get a paid book for free, while gold cards may get book coins (book coins are the virtual currency of WeChat Reading) and unlimited cards.

Each user has two free chances to draw a black card. If they want to continue to draw a black card or a gold card after the draw, they need to complete the sharing and attracting new users.

There are more things to pay attention to in the process, induction and details of this activity, and some of the processes and details may have some unscrupulous e-commerce style...

First, users will see the Flip It activity on the homepage. Click to enter and they will have two chances to flip the cards. After flipping the cards twice, you need to share them to continue unlocking the remaining cards.

Note that the copy on the page at this time is as follows: "After turning over all the cards above, you can participate in the ultimate welfare card below, which is a lifetime unlimited card", and it is attached with how many cards are left, and scrolling reminders to users, which users turned over the cards and got what rewards. These small stimulations will enhance users' desire to share.

Click on a card at random and you can see that the text reminds me: As long as a friend clicks on the link I shared, I can immediately unlock 4 black cards, and my willingness to share will be even greater at this time.

Later, after sharing is completed and all black cards are unlocked. The system continues to prompt that if you want to get a lifetime unlimited card, you need to share it with 4 friends - that is, if you participate in the Flip It Event, you need to share it at least 5 times every time you want to flip out all the cards.

Let’s take a look at how many people usually participate in this activity each time. According to official data, the number of participants in the 18th "Flip It Over" campaign alone exceeded 1 million.

We assume that the average number of participants in each period of the "Fold It" campaign is 1 million, of which 20% fully participate in the campaign and complete five shares. Each share can bring three user clicks, which is about 3 million net new active users per week, which is still very impressive.

"Flip" is a very creative way of playing, which is equivalent to adding a small activity with some game attributes on the basis of "Infinite Cards", but it significantly improves the interactivity and the effect is also very good.

From our observation, this idea of ​​"packaging a slightly innovative lottery-style gameplay on the original operating mechanism" that gives the original operating mechanism new vitality is worthy of reference and learning for most products.

4. The last way of playing seems to have stronger brand attributes, and its impact on user growth is relatively general - co-branded cards with big names.

The basic rules of the big-name co-branded cards are:

It is more like a special event, for example, the "Xu Zhiyuan Special Event" is 6 books recommended by Xu Zhiyuan. Users share the special event information with friends. After friends click on it, users can obtain unlimited card qualifications for the special event for 2 days.

The general process is as follows:

After the friend clicks the link to jump into the App, he will be guided again to invite more friends to like the app and get the co-branded card.

The core of this gameplay is "find a form and invite a bunch of big names to endorse their products", and everyone just needs to know the basic logic.

It seems that the "Infinite Card" gameplay aimed at user growth is slightly similar to the group buying mechanism of products such as Pinduoduo, which is also a gameplay with fission growth attributes. But the difference is that WeChat Reading completely uses a virtual "right" to stimulate everyone to complete the process of sharing and attracting new users. At the same time, because of the spiritual attributes of the behavior of "reading", the sharing of a large number of users will not make people feel disgusted. On the contrary, reading may be regarded by many users as a form of self-identity, thus lowering the threshold for sharing and participation for more users.

Therefore, the third point worth learning is that we may be able to significantly increase users' willingness to participate in and share a fission activity through the logic of "bringing users closer to their ideal selves."

4. Optimization suggestions and considerations

Finally, we would like to share some not-so-good aspects of this case, as well as some optimization suggestions and thoughts.

From our experience of the infinite card gameplay, there are many things worth learning from the overall infinite card gameplay, but there are also some minor problems.

The biggest problem is: we feel that WeChat Reading presents too much to users regarding their rights and incentive system, which may make users feel a little confused.

For example, if I am a user who uses WeChat Reading every day, I may be introduced to some concepts that were completely unfamiliar to me in one month: unlimited cards, flip through, team building, book coins, and co-branded cards with big names…

And, as mentioned above, the rules for each activity are different.

This means that for a new user who doesn’t even understand what an “unlimited card” is, the learning cost of playing with the unlimited card may be very huge.

This may be a violation of the taboo of "not overloading users with information" during event operations.

In addition, since the unlimited card can read all the books in the venue and has greater authority, the use value of the early function "book coins" has become lower and lower (book coins can be exchanged for books of equal value), and the incentive for users to "exchange book coins for reading time" has also gradually decreased, causing book coins to slowly become a bit useless, but this may be a transitional problem.

The above two points can also be used as reference for everyone.

Finally, to sum up, around WeChat's "Unlimited Card", we think that the most worth learning part is perhaps -

WeChat Reading has designed the rights and interests of a certain type of users into a product that requires payment, and has made this product obtainable through task rewards. Therefore, around the acquisition of such products, WeChat Reading has designed a variety of operating mechanisms and gameplays through micro-innovation and built a user incentive system, which ultimately points to all incentivized user behaviors as "attracting new users" and "incentives."

Driven by this mechanism, WeChat Reading has probably achieved the addition and increase in active users by millions without spending a single extra penny.

Such logic and ideas are particularly worthy of reference for many e-commerce products, content products and learning products.

Related reading:

1. Build offline event promotion skills from 0-1!

2. How to write a 99-point event promotion plan?

3. How to plan a hit promotion event that will go viral?

4. A complete online event promotion planning plan!

5. New media planning event promotion and operation tool library!

6. How to promote offline activities?

Author: Huang Youcan

Source: Three Lessons