Product operation strategy: How to carry out user stratification operations?

Pyramid stratification is a method of stratifying users based on their identity value or influence. This article takes Someet Youth Community as an example. By analyzing the user needs, user behaviors and business logic of the product, it builds a pyramid model of the product and conducts cross-identity segmentation and stratification, and formulates overall and specific strategies for each level and the groups within the level.

1. Product Overview

1. Product Introduction

Someet is a tool that is convenient for individual users and small groups to publish events. It is also an offline event platform that brings together high-quality events on various interest themes. Everything Someet does is centered around how to enable young people to gather more efficiently and freely in real life.

2. Basic data

1. The number of active fans is about 30,000, and the number of product users is estimated to be around 100,000.
2. The main users are working people in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
3. The user age range is 22-33 years old.
4. The main features of the product are "youth spontaneity" and "interest-driven".
5. As of June 2016, more than 3,000 events have been held in Beijing, with a total number of registrations exceeding 30,000 and nearly 1,000 high-quality and active event initiators.

3. User needs

• Meet like-minded people.
• Participate in activities and enrich your life.
• Organize activities to improve capabilities.

4. User Profile

The average age is 25 years old, with a high level of education, good income, and a pursuit of self-improvement and consumption quality. This is a group of people who have already solved the problem of food and clothing and are exploring their social and self-esteem needs. They are young enough, willing to try new things, and know how to play and love to play.

2. Business Logic

By analyzing the main behaviors of Someet users, a business logic diagram of the product is developed. Someet users are divided into: consumer users (activity participants) and producer users (activity initiators)

1. Analysis of main user behaviors

Participants:

1. Browse activities: Enter the product, view this week's activities, view past activity reports, and subscribe to your favorite activity channels.
2. Sign up for an event: discover an event you like, understand the relevant platform credit rules, fill out the registration form, and wait for review.
3. Participate in activities: After passing the activity screening, enter the WeChat group, participate in offline activities, and sign in and evaluate online activities.

Event sponsor:

1. Publish activities: plan activity content and publish it on the platform.
2. Screening and managing event participants: The initiator can screen each registered user to ensure that the event participants match the event, and manage the event participants through WeChat groups, etc.

At the same time, in terms of users' social relationships, both event initiators and participants can improve their information, add their own business card tags, discover like-minded friends, view friends' basic interests and hobbies and other information, interact with friends, etc.

2. Business logic diagram

Combined with user behavior, the business logic diagram of the product can be divided into event initiators, event participants, product platform, platform operators and platform PMA (event management volunteers), as follows:

3. User Pyramid Model Construction

1. Pyramid layering premise

Whether a product can be stratified using the pyramid model needs to be determined through the following two aspects?

1. Are there connections between users?
2. Is user stratification caused by differences in contribution and activity, or is it a natural progression of roles?

(1) Is there any connection between users?

Combined with user behavior, in Someet, users can establish connections through "discovery", and there is a mutual screening relationship between event participants and event initiators. So there are connections between users.

(2) Is user stratification caused by differences in contribution and activity, or is it a natural progression of roles?

Combined with user behavior, in Someet, consumer users have different numbers of times they participate in activities, visit products, and subscribe to channels, while activity initiators create differences through the number of times they organize activities and their contributions to products. At the same time, some event participants may become event initiators.

In summary, the user pyramid model can be used in Someet, and users are mainly divided into: activity participants and activity initiators.

Activity participants can be initially divided according to number of participations, views, subscriptions, etc., while activity initiators can be stratified according to the number of times they initiate activities. The event initiator is at a higher level, located at the top of the pyramid, and the event participants are at the bottom. Differentiated operations for users at different levels.

2. Data label selection

The user stratification model mainly uses the following two indicators for stratification screening:

1. Basic data indicators
2. Key behavioral tags

(1) Basic data indicators

From the perspective of basic data indicators, we need to pay attention to the user's browsing times, subscribed channels, and personal business cards (the more personal business card tags you have, the better others can understand you).

(2) Key behavioral tags

The core of Someet is that users initiate activities and other users participate in the interaction. It is a process of mutual screening between activity initiators and activity participants.

In order to make more accurate stratification judgments, this article makes judgments from two aspects: scale and quality.

For event initiators, the action tags are as follows:

• Key indicators of scale: Number of activities initiated
• Key quality indicator: average evaluation score of the activity (assuming a 5-point scale)

For event participants, the behavior tags are as follows:

• Key indicators of scale: Number of activity participations
• Key quality indicators: Number of yellow cards for users (users who are late or fail to show up will receive yellow cards, credit mechanism)

3. Specific stratification of users

(1) Pyramid model construction

In Someet, users' key behaviors are mainly participating in and initiating activities. Combined with basic data indicators, the differences in users' contributions to the product can be divided into: activity viewers, ordinary participants, active participants, ordinary initiators, active initiators, and core users.

The specific stratification model and stratification basis are shown in the figure:

• Activity browser: The user only browses activities within the product. If the user browses > 0 times, he/she has not participated in the activities.
• Ordinary participants: Users participate in 1-2 activities and feel the core value of the product.
• Active Participant: The user has participated in more than 3 activities, the number of yellow cards does not exceed 2, the user recognizes the product, actively participates in the activities and has a complete personal business card and subscribes to the channel
• Ordinary initiator: The user attempts to organize an event and initiates the event 1-2 times
• Event initiator: The user is familiar with the organization of the event, the event has been initiated 3-4 times, the average evaluation score of the event is greater than 3.5, the event evaluation is good, and the user has made a greater contribution to the product event.
• Core users: core activity initiators of the product, who have initiated activities >= 5 times and whose average activity evaluation score is greater than 4, creating great value for the product.

(2) Cross-identity segmentation and stratification

After the pyramid model is built, when the product continues to develop until the user base reaches a certain level and the user-related data reaches a certain complexity, and when the behavioral characteristics or demands of users at each level become differentiated, further subdivision and stratification can be carried out.

Here, for active participants and initiators with greater user value, users can be grouped horizontally according to the classification of activities.

4. Formulation of tiered strategies

After the user pyramid model is layered, operational strategies are formulated for different levels:

4.1 Overall Operation Strategy

From an operational perspective, we generally consider the following two aspects of our strategy:

• We hope that users can ensure the stability of operational data indicators and the normal achievement of various product indicators.
• We also want users to be able to complete certain important behaviors and convert into higher value users.

Therefore, the following two points can be considered when formulating operational strategies:

1. We hope that users can perform stable and periodic operations.
2. Guide users through focused paths that advance their tiers.

In view of the above, we analyze the relevant behaviors and strategies of different users in Someet, as shown in the following table:

4.2 Specific strategies for users at each level

For specific operational strategies, in addition to the commonly used operational methods, we can also enhance operational effectiveness by combining AARRR and octagonal model analysis to highlight the corresponding factors in the active and retention stages.

(Image source: "AARRR Model Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method - Playing Gamified User Growth Strategy (Part 1)")

This article mainly targets users in the activation and retention stages, so it can combine the four factors of ownership, escape, authorization, and unknown.

• Possession: drives users to own something, which can be reflected in various rewards.
• Escape: The user's mentality of avoiding loss, or it can also be the user's desire to avoid certain kinds of payment.
• Empowerment: Users create some value through the product and feel deep meaning.
• Unknown: unknown things, using user curiosity to attract users' attention.

Based on the above, strategies are formulated at various levels for activity viewers, ordinary participants, active participants, ordinary initiators, active initiators, and core users.

(1) Event viewers

• Achievement: Regularly push activity experience reports to users through the service account to help users have more knowledge about the product, reduce their cognitive costs, let them understand the sense of achievement they can get from the product, and trigger their participation in activities.
• Possession: Reduce the material needs of users to participate in activities. The official selectively holds some low-consumption or even free experience activities, and participants are randomly selected from the number of registrants.

(2) Ordinary participants

• Possession: Improve the membership system of the product to give users a sense of identity, or provide users with some physical souvenirs, such as badges.
• Unknown: In each activity, add some unknown rewards to stimulate user curiosity.
• Regularly push activity experience reports and recent activity details to users through the service account to maintain user activity.
• Guide users to complete their personal business cards and subscribe to channels. At the same time, you can add a function to display the number of people with similar interests as the user in each activity, assist users in finding more like-minded friends, allow users to discover more value in the product, and promote users to upgrade their levels.

(3) Active participants

• Possession: Improve the membership system of the product to give users a sense of identity, or provide users with some physical souvenirs, such as badges.
• Unknown: In each activity, add some unknown rewards to stimulate user curiosity.
• Precise reach: Regularly push activity information of channels subscribed by users to attract users to click and browse, thereby maintaining their activity.
• Conduct questionnaire surveys on actively participating users, and connect with users who are interested in organizing activities individually.

(4) Ordinary initiators and active initiators

• Authorization: The product adds the "Event Commemorative Album" function, which allows event organizers or official PMAs to upload event pictures and event information after the event and push them to each participant. Increase the initiator's creative perception.
• Possession: Improve the membership system of the product and give users a sense of identity.
• Lower the threshold: Provide one-on-one guidance to first-time users to lower the usage threshold.
• Organize a community of event initiators, regularly share event skills, and improve overall event capabilities.
• By combining activity evaluation and activity frequency, we can provide focused guidance to top users and support the exposure and promotion of their activities.

(5) Core users

• Establish a community and maintain contact between officials and users.
• Distribute souvenirs regularly to maintain product exposure among users.
• Organize offline meetups, listen to suggestions from core users, and maintain emotional connections.

In addition, two groups require separate attention:

1. For user groups who have participated in activities more than three times but have received a large number of yellow cards, from the operational side, we can add rules to guide users to actively participate in and evaluate activities, eliminate bad credit, and further guide users to develop into active participants.
2. If an activity initiator has initiated activities more than twice, but the average evaluation of the activities does not meet the requirements and he cannot be promoted to an active initiator or even a core user, the operation side needs to assist the activity initiator in discovering the shortcomings of the activities.

4.3 Specific operational strategies for segmented groups

The above has already formulated strategies for each user level. Next, we will formulate operational strategies for active participants and active initiators, and for people in different activity categories.

The specific activity types for activity initiators and activity participants are as follows:

For active participants and active initiators, in addition to the overall operation strategy mentioned above, differentiated operation strategies can be added.

Active Participants:

• In terms of activities reaching users: differentiated push notifications of different types of activities, differentiated push summaries of different types of activities.
• In terms of improving the value of activities: for participants in activities with a small proportion but high scores and good quality, some discounts and gifts can be provided separately to stimulate users to actively participate.
• In terms of improving product perception: try to recommend some users to participate in other types of activities to enrich users' perception of the product.

Active sponsors:

• In terms of enhancing the value of activities: For Someet, different activities have different levels of participation. In order to prevent the Matthew effect , we provide some resource support, PMA docking support, and on-site activity exposure support to the initiators of activities with a small proportion but high scores and good quality.
• In terms of improving product perception: try to let some initiators explore launching activities in other fields.

IV. Conclusion

This article has completed the pyramid modeling of a product in a relatively systematic manner. Due to the lack of actual data, the specific behavioral data numbers in the model are simulated values. The specific values ​​need to be determined through actual data distribution, combined with actual product needs and the 80/20 rule.

In the formulation of product operation strategies, by combining the Octagonal Behavior Analysis method, we can look at the formulation of operation strategies from a higher level and avoid the narrowness and limitations of the strategy. This is also of reference significance for the formulation of operation strategies for other products.

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Author: Xie Zexian

Source: Xie Zexian (xiezexian1995)