Analysis of China Merchants Bank’s private domain operation case

When it comes to the banking industry, many people's first impression is that it is high-end, decent, easy, etc., as if there is no need to worry about traffic at all.

The private domain is a traffic operation model that has gradually been taken seriously by all walks of life as the traffic dividend has ended and the cost of acquiring customers has become increasingly high. Therefore, few people would link the private domain with banks.

But the reality is that competition among banks has long evolved into a game of existing traffic. For many banks, if they cannot retain traffic and operate effectively, but continue to use a wide-net approach to obtain traffic, it will be a huge cost burden.

Therefore, we can see that many banks have actually entered the private domain a long time ago, and due to factors such as the large number of employees, high professional quality of employees, and relatively concentrated product types, banks have innate advantages in private domain operations .

In the current banking industry, China Merchants Bank is definitely one of the banks that has done relatively well in private domain traffic operations.

Compared with the traditional four state-owned banks - Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and China Construction Bank, CMB has been more proactive in its attempts at digital transformation. In addition, according to relevant data, the MAU (monthly active users) of CMB's two major mobile apps, "CMB Bank" and "Life on Palm", reached 107 million. Among them, the transaction volume of the two life scenarios of "meal tickets" and "movie tickets" was nearly 10 billion, which is far higher than the four major banks.

The two mobile apps are the private traffic pools that China Merchants Bank first built. In order to carry out refined operations, China Merchants Bank also divides the users of the App into three layers according to stickiness:

Inner-ring users – users who have downloaded the app and bound their CMB debit cards. They are the core customers of CMB, numbering more than 100 million.

Central users – users who downloaded the app and bound their CMB credit cards or other banks’ credit cards or debit cards, more than 20 million;

Outer-ring users – users who downloaded the app but did not bind their bank account information – number close to 20 million.

By embedding a large number of financial and life service scenarios in the two apps, China Merchants Bank continuously promotes the conversion of customers in the outer and middle rings to the inner ring, on the one hand increasing customer stickiness, and on the other hand expanding its own user base.

The core of private domain traffic operation is actually based on real user relationships, and the most effective user connection paths are basically centered around the WeChat ecosystem. China Merchants Bank is obviously aware of this and has begun to deploy private domains based on corporate WeChat.

Next, let’s analyze in detail how China Merchants Bank conducts private domain operations based on WeChat for Business to enhance its various businesses.

Detailed explanation of the activity process

The first step is channel diversion

Compared with the private domain operation cases of other companies, China Merchants Bank does not have many online traffic paths, which can even be said to be very simple, but its traffic generation speed is very efficient. Just look at the several corporate WeChat communities I joined, and the groups with a passive code scanning limit of 200 people were filled up in a few hours.

So how does China Merchants Bank quickly build its own private traffic pool through traffic diversion?

• WeChat official account push

First of all, the most important traffic channel is still the official WeChat public account.

In the menu bar of the official public account, China Merchants Bank first guides users to click into the activity page by offering preferential benefits. Then users will see a very conspicuous activity banner that reads "Join the group and receive 3 consumption funds" to invite users to join the group.

Moreover, below the banner, you can also see event texts such as "Grab 50% off delicious food on Wednesdays in advance" and "Join the group to win an iPhone", which can further increase user enthusiasm for participation.

In addition to the menu bar of the official account, China Merchants Bank also uses a special function of its own official account - automatic reply to "transaction reminder" messages.

As long as users follow the official account and bind their CMB bank cards, they will automatically receive a reminder message about each consumption, and CMB has cleverly embedded the language of private domain traffic into it.

After doing this, not only is the traffic generation effect good and users can see it at any time, but the users generated are also very accurate, all of whom are users who hold CMB cards and have a certain level of spending power.

At the same time, in order to facilitate more refined private domain operations in the future, China Merchants Bank did not allow users to join a group at random, but obtained users' geographic information authorization in advance to assign suitable private domain communities to users.

Of course, users can also choose to join corresponding communities based on their actual needs and geographical location. The purpose is simple: the more accurate the users entering the community, the better the subsequent paid conversion effect will be.

• Official APP

The second traffic channel is the circle of friends of official operators of China Merchants Bank.

Many users may have previously added the corporate WeChat account of China Merchants Bank’s official operators through other means, but one-on-one private chat conversions are too labor-intensive and not suitable for welfare conversions in life scenarios.

Therefore, China Merchants Bank needs to activate these "old users" and introduce them to exclusive welfare communities to make further operational transformations. Judging from the event posters alone, copywriting such as "50% off early purchase on Wednesdays" and "Weekly free meals" are still very attractive.

• Invite friends to increase traffic

Another way to attract traffic is to have old users invite new users.

In fact, whether it is 50% off food, 0 yuan meals, or discounted movie tickets, one of the main goals of China Merchants Bank is to hope that more users can apply for their own bank cards. Once they have the card, consumption will naturally follow.

Therefore, we can see that the discount for users recommending friends to apply for a card is the greatest, and as the number of referrals increases, the benefits are also added in a stepped manner, increasing the user's motivation to invite friends.

The second step is to accept traffic

When it comes to traffic acceptance, China Merchants Bank's approach is different from that of other companies. In previous private domain operation cases, companies first added users to personal corporate WeChat accounts, and then guided them to the group for operational conversion.

However, China Merchants Bank skipped the step of adding personal corporate WeChat friends and directly pulled users into the corporate WeChat community. During the operation of the community, when users have further needs, they will be allowed to add the corporate WeChat account of China Merchants Bank's exclusive operators. The advantage is that users are screened again, which is more accurate.

After users join the group, they will immediately receive a welcome message automatically pushed to them, including a detailed list of community-exclusive benefits. For example, users can see at a glance what benefits will be available at what time on what day of the week.

The benefits are not only abundant, but also clearly arranged, so the customer retention rate is naturally high. Since I joined the group, the number of group members has basically maintained at the critical point of 200 people, indicating that the initial retention of the community is still very successful.

Some groups were even blocked by Tencent because they were too popular.

In addition to the abundant shopping benefits, group announcements are also necessary to better maintain the activity of group users. For example, group announcements should specify what users cannot do, remind users to pay attention to their personal privacy, and remind users to send private messages to their exclusive account managers when there are credit card problems, etc., so as not to delay group maintenance and conversion promotion.

The third step is operational transformation

After building the private traffic pool of WeChat, most of the operational conversion actions of China Merchants Bank were basically done in the community:

• Community Exclusive Coupons

The first major feature of the CMB community is the large number of consumer coupons, which cover almost every aspect of food, clothing, housing and transportation, and can always meet the needs of users in some aspect.

• Lifestyle benefits

During breakfast, lunch and dinner times, CMB will promptly push some nearby food promotions to users in the group, which is very considerate. If the restaurants happen to be where users usually eat, user stickiness will be greatly enhanced.

• Cinema movie benefits are released

Pushing special offers for cinema films in the group is also an important means for China Merchants Bank to attract users, and most of them are blockbuster films that are currently in theaters. This kind of "community-exclusive movie ticket benefits" is definitely an irresistible temptation for movie lovers.

• Video number shopping and eating benefits

In addition, China Merchants Bank also has its own lifestyle video account. By having anchors post check-in videos of various food stores, it connects with community users. This can not only promote mutual traffic between the community and the video account, but also play a positive role in promoting user consumption.

• Joint Welfare Lottery

China Merchants Bank has also cooperated with major video platforms such as Tencent, iQiyi, and Youku to attract user participation through community-exclusive lottery activities. Of course, the main purpose is to increase the conversion of coupons.

• Holiday Fun Benefits

China Merchants Bank is also very good at participating in various festivals. For example, for the "520" event, it specially designed a fun activity called "Quality Boyfriend/Girlfriend Level Test" to cater to young people, and then used the "big prize draw" to attract more people to participate and forward the event.

• Direct traffic to APP conversion

CMB also uses welfare activities to link the community and its own APP. Users can scan the QR code of the community activity, enter the CMB official APP to complete the "Collect Meow Meow" task, and obtain various welfare coupons, which not only enlivens the community atmosphere, but also increases user stickiness on the APP.

• Timely answer questions

Of course, if users encounter any problems while participating in the activities, the community operators will respond immediately, and will even take the trouble to record videos to answer users' questions, thereby improving the service experience of every user in the community.

In fact, in addition to those mentioned above, there are various welfare activities in the community of China Merchants Bank to promote user conversion, such as "Spring Welfare Schedule" and "Summer Welfare Schedule", etc., which are too numerous to keep up.

It can be seen that the purpose of China Merchants Bank in creating a large number of private WeChat corporate communities is very clear, which is to guide new and old users into different groups according to their geographical locations, carry out refined operations through various preferential activities, and ultimately achieve card application and consumption conversion.

Step 4: Fission Growth

Finally, as for the growth of new users, China Merchants Bank’s approach is relatively simple and crude, which is to use benefits that are enough to impress old users to guide them to invite their friends to apply for cards.

The benefits of inviting friends to apply for a card will increase according to the number of people. The more friends you invite, the greater the benefits you will get, which can greatly increase the user's enthusiasm for participation.

Event Highlights

So after the entire activity process, what are the highlights of China Merchants Bank in private domain operations? Let’s do some analysis as well.

First, collect community operation feedback and adjust operation strategies in a timely manner.

In the private domain cases that have been analyzed before, it is almost impossible to see any company conducting user research on specific operations, but China Merchants Bank did it.

There are not many questions and users can fill them out in a few minutes, but basically all the information that should be collected is collected, such as "What channel did you join through?", "How long have you been a member?", "What activities do you like most?", "What activities would you like to see added?", etc.

By collecting and organizing these questions, China Merchants Bank can clearly understand the current status of its private domain community operations, what users like and expect, and then adjust its private domain operation strategy on this basis to provide users with better and more suitable services and discounts.

Second, grouping by region makes operational conversion more efficient.

Before users join the group, China Merchants Bank will first obtain the user's geographic information, and then allow users to enter different corporate WeChat communities based on their region.

Doing so is necessary and useful, because the welfare community of China Merchants Bank focuses on the conversion of daily consumption. Most of the coupons received by users in the group must be consumed in offline stores. Therefore, only with matching geographical locations can the conversion rate of coupons be maximized.

Suggestions for optimization

As for the shortcomings of China Merchants Bank in its private domain operations, one point would like to mention here: the lack of refined one-to-one operational actions.

Some people may say, isn’t it just giving out coupons? Why should we spend time on one-on-one operations? In fact, the reason is very simple, that is, the regional community operation is not accurate enough.

From my personal experience, there are indeed a lot of promotional activities in the group, which makes people overwhelmed, but I may not be interested in most of the activities. I may only be interested in discounts on movies and beauty products. But if I have to read the messages one by one, I will definitely find it troublesome, and in the end I may just leave this group there and never open it again.

However, if users are added as corporate WeChat friends and categorized by labels, and China Merchants Bank has also conducted user research, they can be labeled according to their preferences, such as movies, food, digital, beauty, etc.

Then, you can make targeted private chat pushes or circle of friends pushes based on these tags. Because it is more accurate, the user's activity participation rate will be higher, and there is no need to go through the historical records in the group.

Conclusion

It is an indisputable fact that the Internet traffic dividend has reached its peak in all walks of life, and the banking industry is no exception. It is a general trend for more and more banks to choose to tap into the private domain, but how to truly implement it is also an issue that needs serious consideration.

China Merchants Bank builds its own private traffic pool around life consumption scenarios, which is just one of the many options for the bank. Only by combining its own products and businesses can the private domain play its true role.

Whether in the public domain or the private domain, traffic itself is value. For banks, if they do not make conversions, build scenarios on the platform, and embed financial services into various scenarios, then no matter how much traffic there is, it is just a string of useless numbers and cannot generate actual benefits.