P2P activity operation process and skills!

I started working at this financial company in the second half of 2016, and now I have been working in event operations for three years.

In three years, it has grown from a grassroots platform to a U.S.-listed company, with its average daily turnover rising from less than 2 million yuan at the beginning to 30 million yuan. Looking back, I am amazed at the rapid changes in the business, as a personal witness and participant. Personally, I feel it is necessary to review and summarize this experience. It is not only a form of self-reflection and learning, but also I hope to provide some superficial reference for colleagues who are also engaged in the financial industry.

The financial company I am currently working for is an online lending information intermediary service platform (P2P for short). P2P first started in China in 2007. 2013 was the period of the P2P industry boom, and it was during this period that the company started the platform online operation.

According to industry data, the total number of P2P online lending platforms is as high as over 6,000, and more than 5,000 platforms have ceased operations or have problems. As of now, no P2P has completed filing and registration. The users who unfortunately step on the landmines are in great pain and sorrow.

It is estimated that users who have experienced P2P bankruptcy may hate P2P operators. Fortunately, the registration work of the P2P industry is proceeding in full swing. I just hope that they will not be cut off across the board and all of them will be killed with one blow. At least the one I am in has not caused economic losses to the platform users. I believe that there will still be benign P2P platforms. As for what the future of the P2P industry will be like, it still requires wise decisions from the country.

This time, I will only review some of my thoughts and practices on P2P activity operations in the role of a P2P operator.

What is event operation?

People who work in event operations have more or less been asked: What is event operations?

To answer this question, we must first understand what operations are? Because event operation is just one of the methods of operation. For example, the operations of the company I work for include: event operations, user operations, platform operations, data operations, financial operations, telemarketing operations, customer service operations, etc., and this is also the main way the company divides different operations departments.

The general term for operations is: use all methods to promote brands, services, and products to target and potential users, allowing users to stay and recognize them, and then complete the conversion to purchase.

Let’s go back to what is the activity operation of a P2P company. Currently, mainstream P2P platforms generally need to have financial qualifications such as bank deposit, level 3 security standards, CFCA, contract preservation, ICP approval, and bank deposit. This is a basic requirement for compliance and security, and is also a hard condition stipulated by financial regulatory authorities.

In addition, different platforms will use brand alliances, insurance companies, guarantee companies, overseas listings and other methods to increase the platform's security credit endorsement based on their own strengths, allowing users to feel safer and more reliable, and feel more confident and bold in their financial investments.

Why do we need to emphasize the issue of credit security?

Because returns are directly proportional to risks, the greater the returns, the higher the risks will be. When it comes to bank financial products and personal loans with the same 3% return, I believe everyone would prefer to lend to a "safe" bank rather than to "seemingly less safe" individuals or other institutional organizations.

If the relative safety factor is excluded, P2P's competitors are not just P2P companies, but also include bank current accounts, fixed deposits, funds, securities, stocks, trusts, and other non-P2P financial institutions. In fact, the only overlap between non-P2P companies and P2P companies is their user attributes, but this does not create a fierce competitive relationship.

In addition, P2P itself requires a relatively safe factor as a guarantee, which is not only a necessary condition for the sustainable development of the platform, but also a necessary condition for the platform to carry out any operations.

If users lose confidence in their investment in the P2P platform or industry, all P2P activities will have little effect.

Just as: in June 2018, due to the collapse of several well-known platforms, the entire P2P industry faced liquidity risks, and even the top platforms experienced bank runs, and the industry's overall average daily investment amount was almost halved. Later in March 2019, a major platform called Mohuo.com was investigated, which caused another earthquake in the industry and users' enthusiasm for investment dropped to freezing point again. Therefore, during the period from July 2018 to June 2019, you will find that the impact of whether or not the platform has activities operating on the company's performance may be zero or negative.

Therefore, the operation of P2P activities is to maximize the returns of financial products at the optimal (not the lowest) activity cost under the same safety factor, utilize carefully planned activities, attract a large number of users to invest, and meet the borrowing needs of borrowers.

To do any job well requires a positive work attitude and good working methods, and the working methods of event operations can be summarized into six steps, namely event goals, event analysis, event plans, event promotion, event execution, and event review. Only when you have a deep knowledge and understanding of each process step of event operation, you will achieve twice the result with half the effort when operating the event. Although these six steps seem so old-fashioned, they can really make things clear and are very effective.

1. Activity Objectives

Any operational behavior will have corresponding operational goals, especially event operations. Before launching an event operation, it is necessary to analyze and establish a reasonable expected event goal. What results do you expect to achieve in the short term through event operations?

Taking the P2P financial industry into consideration, the activity goal of P2P financial activity operations is first to promote the cumulative transaction volume during the activity. But the "inventory" issue needs to be considered more. The essence of P2P is a balancing game of borrowing and repaying. If the platform does not consider whether it can match the needs of the same number of borrowers in a timely manner, then there will inevitably be moral risks (issuing false bids, illegal fund-raising or self-financing).

For such a platform with no bottom line, both practitioners and users should stay as far away from it as possible. Just as when operating e-commerce events, we hope to sell more products and services through event stimulation, but we also have to consider the issue of limited product inventory supply. Of course, this kind of "wonderful" situation generally occurs rarely, but you must understand that it is a consideration that cannot be ignored.

How to set P2P activity operation goals?

The core of this issue is why the platform has to organize events and operations. If you have any experience in P2P financial management, you will find that P2P platforms rarely hold events around March and April after the beginning of each year, while the end of each month is a period of intensive activities on various platforms. In fact, this is because there are fewer borrowers at the beginning of the year and more borrowers at the end of the year. If there is no activity stimulation, investors will be in a relatively average state every month and will not be able to meet the fluctuating needs of borrowers. Therefore, meeting the funding needs of new borrowers every month is an inherent goal of the activity operation.

In addition, the mainstream P2P financial products in China are not a model in which one borrower raises funds from multiple lenders (investors). Instead, the claims of multiple borrowers are packaged into 36-month underlying assets to raise funds from multiple lenders. The borrower's repayment method is equal monthly installments of principal and interest, while the lender's income method is a one-time repayment of principal and interest upon maturity. The money from the monthly repayments will not be returned to the lender every month, but will continue to be lent to new borrowers until the last installment, when the principal and interest will be paid in one lump sum.

Doing so will not only help to disperse the financial risks of lenders, but also create more profit margins for the platform. This win-win approach has almost no liquidity risk when the industry is stable or the business is growing. However, when the industry is cold or the business is declining, a run may occur, which may easily lead to liquidity risks. This is because major platforms will set a lock-up period for such packaged wealth management products, that is, after the lock-up period but before 36 months (generally the underlying asset contract is 36 months), you can initiate a debt transfer and exit early.

The essence of P2P early exit is the transfer of debt rights. If there is no new investor to take over the debt rights in your hands, you will not be able to recover the money and exit. Therefore, meeting daily withdrawal repayments is also the second major goal of event operations.

Simply put, the activity objectives of P2P activity operations mainly consider: new business loan amount + old business exit amount.

For example: From July 1 to July 10, 2019, the amount of loans to be disbursed within 10 days is expected to be 150 million yuan, and the amount of old business exit is 50 million yuan, so the activity target for these 10 days is 200 million yuan.

If too little is raised, new business will grow slowly and profits will decline; if too much is raised, the funds will remain idle and not loaned out, generating no income, but instead incurring a daily "investor's interest" loss. Therefore, setting reasonable activity goals becomes the first issue that must be considered in P2P activity operations.

2. Activity Analysis

After establishing the activity goal, further research and analysis will be conducted on how to achieve this goal, whether through online or offline activities.

Based on my personal experience, there are two main types of P2P offline activities: one is the exhibition promotion type, which focuses on attracting new customers and increasing brand awareness; the other is the meet-and-greet promotion type, which focuses on giving back to old users and improving their loyalty.

Generally, the effects of offline activities are delayed and cannot increase business volume as quickly as online activities in a short period of time. Here, we focus on online activities. Before the online activity plan is issued, you can conduct a comprehensive analysis and in-depth thinking on the activity from four dimensions, namely: macro analysis, user analysis, competitor analysis, and self-analysis.

1. Macro Analysis

Macro analysis is: an overall analysis of the industry's economic situation and relevant national policies - is the current P2P market economy on an upward or downward trend?

If the market is strong, consider using a lower activity budget to achieve the best results; if the market is weak, you may need to increase investment appropriately to achieve the best results.

P2P is greatly influenced by national policies. Relatively transparent security compliance and considerable returns are the primary factors for current users to participate in activities. National guiding documents must be complied with and implemented as soon as possible, but they can be implicitly mentioned in event promotion to allow users to recognize the platform, which will help improve investment conversion rates.

The macro-analysis link is only to provide guidance and help for the general direction of our event operations from a macro perspective, so as to avoid going astray or making policy mistakes during event operations. This requires daily accumulation and careful observation. You can usually browse financial websites such as the China Banking Regulatory Commission, China Internet Finance Association, Wangdaizhijia, and Wangdaitianyan to learn about the latest policies and industry news.

2. User analysis

User analysis is not simply collecting users' age ranges, regional characteristics, gender ratios, and interests and hobbies, because you will find that the user portraits of almost all P2P platforms are mainly 18-60 years old, mostly from economically developed cities, half of them are men and half are women, and they like financial management, which is a crude painting with no sense of layering.

Research on users should start from their psychological characteristics and behavioral manifestations. Why are some users willing to abandon bank fixed-term financial products and invest in P2P products with higher risks?

The world is bustling with people, all for the sake of profit; the world is in turmoil, all for the sake of profit. The common psychological characteristics of P2P users are: profit-seeking, following the crowd, comparison, and truth-seeking.

Users who are more profit-seeking and adventurous may even challenge the bottom line of their own wallets and borrow money from low-interest channels (such as banks, relatives and friends) in pursuit of high interest rates on P2P. By grasping the profit-seeking mentality of users, we can magnify the profit points of the activity, make the benefits of the activity more eye-catching, and more easily attract such users.

For example, the tried and tested forms of activities: substantial interest rate increases, cash back, gifts for purchases over a certain amount, etc.

Almost all users have a herd mentality. By utilizing this psychological phenomenon, you can try to create an atmosphere of "empty streets" for the event.

For example: in a lottery event, display each user's winning information in the form of a marquee or carousel; set up a user message area to create a harmonious atmosphere for the event; design an interactive display of variable parameters such as XXX people in a prominent position on the topic page.

For the wealthy who love to compare with others, an "investment ranking" type of activity can be set up. The TOP10 wealthy people will receive rewards of varying values ​​in turn. According to the 80/20 rule, 20% of the wealthy people account for 80% of the overall transaction volume, so it is beneficial to let the wealthy people increase their positions and compete for the TOP10. Position often surpasses the cumulative transaction amount of countless novice users.

As for pragmatic users, they are not easily impressed by routines and require a more rigorous and good user experience. Pragmatic users will consider the company's security and compliance, brand image, product transparency, and event-friendly experience in multiple dimensions. Therefore, every link and every detail needs to be polished when operating an event.

Of course, the psychological characteristics of each user are not single. Generally, the same user will have the above four or even more complex psychological activities at the same time.

After talking about psychological characteristics, let’s look at behavioral performance:

If you dig deeper into the investment time period, you will find that: on the same day, 10 a.m., 3 p.m., and 8 p.m. are all peak investment hours; in the same week, Monday to Friday generally have better results than weekends.

Therefore, when operating and promoting an event, it is advisable to consider concentrated exposure during peak hours, and try to schedule the event on weekdays rather than on weekends or holidays.

If we dig deeper into the investment amount, we will find that: the number of people investing less than 10,000 yuan is the largest, but the overall amount is low; the number of people investing more than 50,000 yuan is relatively large, and accounts for about 50% of the total amount; the number of people investing more than 100,000 yuan is relatively small, but accounts for about 25% of the total amount.

Therefore, when setting the investment amount threshold, we often select amounts such as 10,000 yuan, 50,000 yuan, 100,000 yuan, and 500,000 yuan as the reward threshold to maximize the number of lenders and investment amounts in the corresponding range.

3. Competitive product analysis

The best way to research P2P competitors is to download the competitor app and turn on all notifications and status bars in your phone settings. You can even personally experience the entire closed-loop process from registration to investment, understand the basic product information of each competitor, and always pay attention to the latest developments in platform activities.

When researching your competitors, ask more questions like a curious child:

• Why is this activity time chosen during these days instead of other time periods?
• Why take this form of activity?
• Why should the event be promoted in conjunction with this theme?
• What is the approximate intensity and cost budget of this event?
• What was the final effect of the activity?

To sum up, we should focus on studying dimensions such as activity time, activity form, activity background, activity budget, and activity effect.

The three items of information about event time, event format, and event background can all be obtained by browsing the event special page of competitors. Here we will focus on: how to estimate the cost budget of competitors' activities, and where to check the effect of activities?

In the P2P industry, there is a term closely related to cost called annualized amount. The calculation formula for the annualized amount is loan amount * loan period / 360 days.

For example: If someone lends 100,000 yuan to a financial product with a service period of 180 days, the annualized amount is 50,000 yuan (100,000 yuan*180 days/360 days).

For example, in order to attract user investment, a platform rewards users with an annualized investment amount of 50,000 yuan or more with 500 yuan. The cost ratio of this activity is 1% (500 yuan/50,000 yuan). The cost of the activity can be roughly estimated through the cumulative transaction volume disclosed by the platform. However, sometimes we don’t need to know the specific cost of an activity, we just need to estimate the cost ratio, because the cost ratio of the same activity is stable, and the specific activity cost will change with the change of transaction volume.

You can check the information disclosure and transaction information of competing platforms (all P2P platforms will have this menu bar), as well as use the data channels of Wangdaizhijia and Wangdaitianyan to query relevant data of competing platforms.

On August 25, 2017, the official website of the China Banking Regulatory Commission released the "Guidelines for Information Disclosure of Business Activities of Online Lending Information Intermediaries", which clearly stated that platforms must disclose matching transaction information to the public on a regular basis, which also provides convenience for inquiring about activity data of competing platforms.

In addition to learning information directly related to event operations, you can also check platform announcements and carousel content to learn about surrounding news on the platform.

For example: launching new products, optimizing new functions, bank deposits, platform anniversary celebrations, cooperation with XX institutions, financing, etc., focus on observing how the platform packages, promotes and publicizes new things, and how it applies these events to specific activity operations.

4. Self-analysis

There is an oracle engraved on the lintel of the ancient Greek Temple of Delphi: "Man! Know yourself." This is also Socrates' favorite saying.

"The Art of War" says: "Know thy enemy and know thyself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of danger." As an event operator, how can you build your own event operation system if you don’t have a deep understanding of the history of your platform, your users, and your products?

1) Understand the historical activities of the platform

If it is not a startup platform, event operators should sort out and reflect on the platform's existing activities.

Just like the platform I am on was founded in 2013, and I joined it in 2016. At that time, I would go through every event between 2013 and 2016, and then combine the data results of the events at that time to study: Which events are effective? Which activities have poor results? What do high- and low-performing campaigns have in common?

2) Break down and segment platform users

Segmenting platform users from different dimensions will lead to completely different disassembly solutions:

• Divided by time status: new users and old users;
• Divided by registration source: users invited by friends, marketing users, natural users, channel users, etc.;
• According to the membership level, it can be divided into: bronze member, silver member, gold member, diamond member and supreme member.

The operation strategy should be adjusted accordingly according to the different attributes of users, rather than applying the same activity plan to everyone.

For example, the strategies for new and old users are completely different. For new users, appropriate content such as product promotion and credit endorsement, as well as clearer activity task guidance will be added to complete the first conversion and guide the secondary investment; while for old users, the main consideration is stimulation and induction, with completing the promotion amount as the main task goal.

3) Comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the product

Event operation is the bridge connecting products and users. If you are not familiar with the product and users do not understand it, how can you accurately and risk-free embed product information into events and push it to users?

As an event operator, you should understand the product more deeply than the product manager and more comprehensively than the customer service manager.

For example: early withdrawal from a product will charge a fee of 2% of the principal. If the cashback ratio of an activity exceeds 2%, this will provide an opportunity for the wool party to take advantage of it, and there will inevitably be a risk of being wooled. If you don’t understand the product details, the event is likely to become a piece of chopping block in the eyes of the wool party.

4) Build your own activity database

In this company, I have a work habit that I am proud of. For three years, I have been using EXCEL to record yesterday’s relevant operational data every day, as shown in the figure below. (Fields include: loan amount, number of lenders, recharge amount, number of rechargers, etc.)

In fact, the company has a special data department that records all company data, and I also receive various activity data briefings every day, but there is a sense of honor and belonging in building my own form data - I can decide the fields myself, and I can also correspond each activity content, activity cost, etc. to specific dates, so that the effect of each activity is clearly visible. It can be said that with a form in hand, I have the platform.

A personalized activity operation database, maintained for 3 years, will not only provide a direct data reference for your future activities, but also exercise your sensitivity to activity data, and give you a comprehensive sense of control over the platform's activity operations.

On this basis, think about: Which days should the activity be held? What is the budget for the event? What is the background of the event? What is the gameplay of the activity? How to promote? How to implement it?

3. Activity Plan

When I first entered the industry, I always thought: How great it would be if one day I could plan a huge event that would sweep the entire country.

When I saw that the platform's cumulative transaction volume was 1.7 billion yuan in 2014, 2.7 billion yuan in 2015, 3.7 billion yuan in 2016, and 8 billion yuan in 2017, and that the platform's cumulative transaction volume in 2017 was approximately equal to the sum of the cumulative transaction volumes of the previous three years, and a total of 38 events were held in 2017, an average of 3 events per month, I gradually realized that "how to plan an event with good results" is the most real thing.

After all, perfect events that are both well-received and popular are rare. They are the compound product of capital, platform, creativity and opportunity. We must learn the spirit of sharp-scented grass and constantly work hard to fill ourselves with solid stones before we realize our dreams of building skyscrapers.

An activity always consists of the following components:

1. Event time

As mentioned above: the purpose of P2P activities is to achieve a balance in lending and borrowing cash flow; when there are few assets and much capital, fewer or no activities should be conducted to reduce costs; when there are many assets and little capital, an appropriate increase in activities should be made to stimulate and attract investment.

It is best if the activity time covers a period of time when there are more assets and less funds. It would be better if the activity can be started in advance. In case the activity effect is poor, there is still time to save it. If the activity effect is good, you can limit the number of bids issued to control the inflow of funds.

In addition, there is usually a time interval between the next activity and the previous activity to prevent users from feeling fatigued by continuous activities.

2. Activity budget

The P2P industry earns the net interest margin from lending services, and the activity budget generally does not exceed this ratio.

Here is an inappropriate example:

A platform completes borrowing and lending of 100 yuan, deducts various operating costs, and assumes there is a net profit of 5 yuan after one year.

Therefore, as long as the activity cost does not exceed 5%, there will be no compensation. It should be noted that the activity cost ratio of the top first-line platforms in the overall P2P industry is generally in the range of 0~0.5%, and rarely in the range of 0~2%. If the promotion intensity of a certain platform can reach about 3%, you will definitely hear users smacking their lips and saying, "Oh my god, this platform's promotion intensity is really great!"

Generally speaking, the greater the intensity of the activity, the more obvious the effect will be, except when the industry is in the midst of an economic downturn.

When setting an activity budget, you should take into account the industry position of your platform, the activity cost ratio of competing products, the current asset balance, the historical average gross profit margin, etc. In the end, all I said may not be as good as one sentence from the boss: "Xiao Ming, this time I want a 3% one."

3. Activity theme

The theme of the activity is the platform's excuse to actively communicate with users. Clever use of event themes can make it easier for users to stay, thereby impressing them and stimulating conversions. The theme is an important background or gimmick of the event, which is conducive to highlighting the interests and creating the atmosphere of the event. An event without a theme is like a classic Hunan dish without salt, which tastes bland.

The themes of P2P industry activities can be roughly summarized into three categories: credit highlights, industry hotspots, and social focus.

Credit reporting events generally have their own traffic magnetic field, and are the raw materials for activity themes that can be encountered but not sought after. The new credit reporting system means that the platform becomes more compliant and safer. When a major credit reporting event occurs, such as the launch of bank deposit and custody services, it will be accompanied by an interest rate cut, because the lower the risk, the lower the return. Things like connecting with bank deposits, cooperating with insurance companies, cooperating with guarantee companies, XX round of financing, acquiring a Southeast Asian company, listing on the US stock market, etc. are all credit reporting events. If you carry out activities around these events, you will definitely get twice the result with half the effort.

Hot holiday themes are second only to credit reporting events in terms of traffic generation. Regular holidays (Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, March 8 Queen's Day, Arbor Day, April Fool's Day, Labor Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Chinese Valentine's Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.) and industry-created festivals (518 Financial Management Festival, 618 Mid-Year Sale, Platform Anniversary, Double 12 Carnival, Year-end Celebration, etc.) are all the best choices for event themes.

Proper use of social focus will also be an ideal choice for event themes, such as: the start of the school season, spring outings, college entrance examinations, a cool summer, high temperature subsidies, New Year's Goods Festival, the World Cup, etc.

4. Activity form

In short, the form of the activity is to use activity rewards as bait, occasionally use marketing tools as a media carrier, and empower the activity with creative gameplay.

The form of an activity can be simply understood as a connection problem involving activity rewards, marketing tools, and creative gameplay. Multi-dimensional elements are combined to form the form of an activity. How to string this line together requires comprehensive evaluation and thinking.

The rewards for P2P activities vary greatly, but can all be summarized into three types: cash, virtual items, and physical items.

P2P's marketing tools have a wide range of scalability, such as interest rate increase labels, vouchers, interest rate increase coupons, experience money, points, gold coins, etc.

The gameplay of P2P activities is endlessly varied, and the general framework of gameplay includes: task sign-in, random draw, group formation, H5 interaction, community interaction, limited-time flash sales, cash subsidies, free gifts, card collection and gift giving, etc.

In addition, different creative packaging of each framework can form new activity plans.

The following are the ten most common forms of P2P activities, and you can find corresponding activity rewards, marketing tools, and activity gameplay:

1) Full interest rate hike

It can be seen everywhere on major platforms and is the most widely used and effective form of activity.

2) Cash back when the amount is reached

This form of activity is popular with both the freeloaders and users, and its lethality is extremely high. Sometimes marketing tools are not indispensable, and different packaging of free gifts can be used to divide the activities into various forms.

As shown in the figure below, one is to return a fixed amount of cash according to the gradient, and the other is to return a corresponding proportion of cash according to the gradient:

3) Get coupons on the platform

The coupons invented by the famous advertiser Claude Hopkins were like an atomic bomb dropped on a calm sea, setting off a new wave of activity forms. Now, the endless stream of coupons have become an essential marketing tool for business activities.

4) Gifts for purchases above a certain amount

When the investment amount reaches the corresponding threshold, a physical reward corresponding to the threshold will be given.

5) Daily lucky draw

This is a form of activity that combines multiple dimensional elements. The rewards can be a combination of cash, virtual items, and physical items. Marketing tools also include interest rate coupons, vouchers, points, experience money, gold coins, etc. However, the gameplay of the activity can be simply summarized as a random lottery.

The random lottery gameplay can be divided into many types through different packaging, such as: nine-square grid, big turntable, catching gold coins, gashapon machine, flipping cards, smashing golden eggs, opening lucky bags, knocking ice cubes, etc. The interactive random reward tool, which allows users to obtain rewards by completing operations with just a few simple clicks, can increase the fun of the event and user participation.

6) Gold Coin Exchange

Users complete tasks such as logging in, recharging, inviting, and lending, and earn certain points, which can then be redeemed for rewards such as cash, virtual items, and physical items.

7) Rewards for being on the list

During a certain period of time, the top users with the highest investment amount can receive corresponding activity rewards for free.

This form of activity can easily create an atmosphere of competition among users; while giving back to high-net-worth users, this type of activity takes advantage of the psychology of comparison and competitiveness to guide users to invest more.

8) Share the Hot Pot Award

Stimulate investment from all citizens. When everyone's investment amount reaches the corresponding threshold, they can share the corresponding gradient activity rewards.

9) Collect cards to open treasure chests

Similar to the Alipay Five Blessings game, by completing tasks and collecting cards, you can get the key to unlock rewards.

10) Question guessing game

Start a topic, encourage users to spread and share, and use the objectivity of the answers to select the winning users. The quiz competition combines tasks and interactive gameplay, and is a complex and multi-dimensional form of activity.

Through the above ten common forms of activities, we can find that the form of activity is actually a combination of different activity rewards, different marketing tools, and different activity gameplay.

These three elements can be connected freely, and each element can be infinitely subdivided, which also creates a colorful and diverse form of activities. Different activity forms are combined with different activity themes to finally present a variety of colorful activity plans.

4. Activity Promotion

After the activity plan comes out, the activity should be promoted. An activity without traffic is tantamount to empty talk. Event promotion includes three dimensions: promotion channels, promotion timing and promotion content.

Communication channels are divided into two categories: on-site promotion and off-site promotion.

The in-site promotion channels include: PC/APP/light application home screen carousel, top advertising space, LOGO dynamic images, APP startup page, PC login page, platform announcements, text messages, platform in-site messages, PUSH push, QQ group promotion, EDM push, event special page, WeChat Weibo, etc.

The resources within the site are equivalent to private domain traffic, and their marginal cost is low when promoting them. They can be integrated and promoted based on the site’s own resources.

Off-site promotion channels include: vertical hard advertising resources such as Wangdai Home and Wangdai Tianyan, Baidu product promotion and 360 product promotion, external new media cooperation promotion, forum SNS promotion, third-party video live broadcast, financial APP mobile promotion, public relations news special publicity, business cooperation resource placement, TV drama advertising implantation, celebrity spokespersons, etc.

Everyone knows that there is usually a warm-up session before an event officially starts, but P2P activities do not require much warm-up, or the warm-up time is very short. In particular, daily activities will skip the warm-up period and directly enter the formal activity period.

Because if a P2P activity is preheated and exposed, it will affect the investment situation during the preheating period. Users may wait for funds to be invested after the activity starts, which can easily interfere with the balance of lending cash flow. Except for some large-scale events, the transaction volume during the warm-up period may be sacrificed, the cash flow balance may be temporarily disrupted, and sufficient exposure may be achieved to ensure the maximum effect of the event.

Different channels have peak and off-peak periods for communication, and promotion during peak periods is often more effective.

For example, the push notification time is usually between 9am and 10am, between 2pm and 3pm, and around 8pm. General channels can refer to three time periods when choosing the timing of promotion. If you insist on sending a push notification at 3 a.m., not only will there be no response, but you may also be cursed by users.

In addition to grasping the specific promotion period, the promotion timing also needs to control the promotion frequency.

Still taking PUSH as an example: in the early stage of the activity, it is urgent to push the activity to users. At this time, you can consider 1-2 push messages per day; in the middle stage of the activity, depending on the duration and effect of the activity, you can push one message per day, or one message every other day; in the later stage of the activity, if the effect of the activity has reached the expectation, you can reduce or no longer push messages. If the effect of the activity is not good, you can increase the promotion frequency.

There are relatively objective principles to follow for promotion channels and promotion timing, while promotion content is more subjective and flexible. There is no single standard answer, but there is also an important reference criterion: the promotion content produced must be something you are willing to watch yourself.

If you yourself cannot bear to read the promotional content a second time, then the content of the copy still needs to be polished. Reasonable packaging of promotional content and then pushing it to users will bring about a good chain sharing and diffusion effect, allowing the event content to be spread more widely.

For P2P activity promotion, the following methods can be used to package the promotional content:

1. Purely informative

No fancy moves, no scheming required. Sometimes, we can reap great rewards by simply and clearly informing users of the benefits of an activity.

This method can easily be understood as simple and crude. In fact, most of the activities we encounter use this promotion method. For example: if the mid-year sale has a 3% interest rate increase across the board, then just convey this to users directly. There is no need to make a fuss about the 3% interest rate increase, which will only end up being superfluous.

2. Bundled credit reporting

Before completing the filing process, users should first pay attention to P2P security issues.

Therefore, in the content of promotional activities, try to bundle the latest credit events, such as: bundling promotion with activities as soon as possible when events such as level 3 security protection, AAA credit enterprises, CFCA, state-owned capital holding and participation, venture capital financing, bank custody, main body listing, connection with credit reporting agencies, insurance cooperation, guarantee cooperation, submission of self-inspection reports, celebrity endorsements, and actual payment of 1 billion occur, which will surely achieve unexpectedly good results.

3. Provide knowledge

P2P belongs to the category of finance and economics. If the activities are integrated with financial and economic knowledge and promoted, users can benefit more from being educated. Financial economics can be easily divided into majors such as international economics and trade, economics, insurance, finance, and resource and environmental economics.

It can be seen from this that financial economics has never lacked knowledge, but only lacked suitable knowledge points. As long as we find the connection between a certain knowledge point and the activity, the activity will surely shine brightly.

He who aims high will achieve high results. If you want to influence 50,000 users, you must promote with the attitude of influencing 500,000 target users. Therefore, you must have the lofty ambition to create a trend.

The Tipping Point, a book by British writer Malcolm Gladwell, mainly explains the three laws that lead to popularity: the law of individual characters, the law of adhesion, and the law of environmental power.

The Law of Individual Characters is close to the concept of KOL, which is to find the right characters to promote our activities; the Law of Adhesion tells us to add connotation and pay attention to shaping the details of the activities; the Law of Environmental Power guides us to pay attention to changes in the surrounding external environment at all times and make rational use of the environment to help promote the activities. Sometimes it’s fun to try to promote an event with the idea of ​​driving a micro-trend.

5. Activity Execution

The implementation of any activity is like a long spiritual journey. You need to constantly fight with yourself, start over again and again, adjust and optimize again and again, and go through the three stages of plan implementation, demand follow-up, and promotion and execution before you can reach the other side of reincarnation.

A qualified activity plan has two attributes: relevance and feasibility.

When writing an activity plan, always pay attention to the correlation between the activity theme and the activity form.

For example: for a Dragon Boat Festival themed event, we plan to hold an event to give out free vouchers and an interest rate increase event. The vouchers, interest rate increase and the Dragon Boat Festival themselves have nothing to do with each other, but we can use text and design elements to associate them with them. The vouchers can be designed as a graphic pattern of palms, and the interest rate hike can be linked with text similar to "Zongfeng Dragon Boat Festival hike full interest rate hike", so that the activity area that receives the vouchers and the activity area that raises the interest rate can be in line with the theme of the Dragon Boat Festival, so that the event can form a whole and create a marketing atmosphere for the Dragon Boat Festival.

When planning an activity plan, your thinking can jump and spread, but the final activity plan must be implemented. Activities that cannot be executed are always just a spare tire. At the same time, people who do not have strong execution ability will never be easy to operate.

Take the Dragon Boat Festival as an example, for example: You want to reward each of the 20,000 users who invested XX yuan. This kind of solution to dig a hole for yourself is very difficult to implement. The reward is large in size, and the cost of a zongzi may not be as good as the express delivery fee. It not only wastes the cost of the activity, but also consumes the energy of the corresponding personnel.

After solving the relevance and execution problems, a Gantt chart of the activity framework is first formulated, and the general activity content of the time nodes and each node is sorted out. Then, the prototype software Axure is opened to draw and output the prototype diagram of the specific activity plan to form a requirement.

Submit the drawn DEMO requirements to products, design, R&D, front-end, testing, operation and maintenance 1-2 weeks in advance, and hold a demand review meeting together, so that each department can estimate the execution time and set the activity schedule.

Then, control your emotions and be a person who is resistant to tear. Because there are people who are embarrassed about you in all aspects, the product will tell you that the product experience here is not good and needs to be optimized. The design will ask you what color style requirements are there on the topic page; the R&D will ask you for an annualized amount calculation formula; the front end will ask you for a jump link for a button; the test will tell you if this is a typo; the operation and maintenance will confirm the specific time of launch and other trivial problems such as various details and trivial problems; people with poor heart may be prone to intensive care units.

There are three main things to do in the demand follow-up process:

1. Try to submit your requirements in advance;
2. Timely communicate and deal with problems encountered;
3. Keep a close eye on the daily progress.

Promotion and execution are the process of mining, integrating, allocating and using resources.

In order to ensure the effectiveness of the event, we need to explore better promotion resources at the lowest cost, whether it is the site resources or the site resources, and then layout better resources in the main promotion event period based on the event time and intensity.

Finally, write copywriting and design promotional maps as soon as possible based on the allocated resources, so as to be called at any time. The best way to work in this process is to use EXCEL tools to process resources by type and date, and to assign responsibilities to people.

As shown below:

6. Activity review

Marriage cannot stop at registration and getting a certificate. It also requires a ritual wedding to be considered complete; the event cannot stop at completion and it needs an effective review to be considered final.

The event review is not simply treating the event process as re-watching the movie, but as the film producer, watching how many people left the movie halfway, how many times the audience laughed, and how many people were still waiting for the Easter egg at the end.

Generally speaking, the activity review can transform each operation experience of the activity into new activity operation capabilities in an easy-to-understand manner from three aspects: activity review, effect analysis, and experience summary.

When reviewing the activity, treat yourself as the person next to you, and review each detail of the activity goals, activity analysis, activity plan, activity promotion, and activity execution, and ask a few more reasons:

• Are the activity target settings reasonable?
• What are the shortcomings of your own activities compared to competitors?
• Are users willing to participate in such activities?
• What are some areas that have not been promoted in place?
• What difficult problems have you encountered during the execution of the event?

With the above questions in mind, check the actual effects of various dimensions such as lending situation, new and old customers, bid issuance, full bid speed, recharge, cash withdrawal, stand-alone fund data, login situation, repayment and renewal situation, lending gradient comparison, use of voucher interest rate hikes, invitation of friends, event cost, etc., compare the data fluctuations between the activity period and the inactive period, find out the correlation dimensions between the data and the activity, and then analyze how to improve the corresponding activity effect by improving the activity.

This process may seem simple, but in fact, the way of thinking and thinking process analyzed often vary from person to person, and the results vary greatly; just as many physics experts analyzed the correlation between space and gravity in the early 20th century, in the end, only Einstein's theory of relativity was widely recognized by the industry.

When the correlation is confirmed by multiple activities, the activity pattern can be formed, thereby subliminating the experience into operational capabilities. Then update some old ideas about the previous event in your mind and apply them to the operation of the next event.

For example: I once held an anniversary event, the cumulative transaction volume in three days reached a total of 491 million yuan (if it was not for insufficient debt rights, the effect might be better), of which 332 million yuan was completed on the first day.

The following is a brief summary of this event for reference only:

Possible reasons for the success of the 4th anniversary event

The most fundamental reason for the success of this event may be: the brand accumulation over the past four years and the continued operation of the platform's safety and compliance. Under the same security factor, the platform took advantage of the 4th anniversary event opportunity to provide annualized returns that exceeded users' expectations in the short term.

Other details to follow:

1) Last year's 818th anniversary celebration was a 3% interest rate hike. This event refers to the strongest Tmall idea for creating a festival, strengthening, strengthening, and re-strengthing the same thing, and finally becoming its own exclusive festival. On the fourth anniversary, we will continue to adopt the 3% interest rate hike, and strengthen and consolidate the unchanging purpose of the platform's anniversary celebration of 3% interest rate hike. It also caters to the psychological predictions of old users about the 818 activity.

2) The promotion of on-site and off-site activities is accurate and sufficient. For example, in-site, in addition to the display of each advertising space, before the event begins, it was successfully sent to nearly 100,000 target users as an extremely important text message; outside the site, there are online loan home, online loan Tianyan vertical advertising space delivery, new media mobile APP marketing channel delivery, etc., and the Baidu Index of Credit hits a new peak during the 816-818 period. The 4th anniversary event completed another good promotion combination in the promotion on the site and outside the site.

3) The 4th anniversary event starts on July 31 and ends on August 20, with a period of 21 days. The activity rhythm is divided into three stages. The activity form will increase one by one each time the activity enters the next stage. On the premise that the daily loan amount will continue to reach about 20 million yuan in the early stage of the large-scale event, users will continue to pay attention to the 4th anniversary event. In addition, the 3% interest rate hike activity was exposed two days in advance, taking retreat as advance, sacrificing the transaction volume two days before, maximizing the preheating effect, and giving users sufficient recharge preparation time. More than 130 million yuan of funds were already on duty before the event started.

4) Recently, an activity financial management package has been developed, which can directly display the word +3% reward on the interest rate. The wallet +3% reward prompt is obvious, which makes users easily perceive.

5) The activity is extremely strong and the activities are diverse (hard activities: interest rate hike cashback, turntable lottery, point redemption, direct reward and stimulation; soft activities: review of the fourth anniversary event, message wall, my diary, to exaggerate the atmosphere and enhance the sense of participation). While enjoying the 3% interest rate hike, users can still enjoy the discount on voucher discounts, channel cashback discounts, physical gifts, cash acquisition, friend rewards and other activity benefits obtained through various methods.

The shortcomings of the 4th anniversary celebration

1) Because the activity is so good that it is doubtful about life, the early estimate of the debt amount is seriously insufficient, and the activity is set up for three days, resulting in the failure to distribute the existing debt amount in a timely manner and issue bids. Especially August 18th is the day of the event, but the debt amount is only less than 40 million, while the funds on duty are as high as more than 100 million, which seriously hurts the investment enthusiasm of all users who cannot successfully bid for the event.

2) The 3% interest rate hike activity is extremely strong, with the activity cost as high as X million yuan. This may be the pre-tax profit of ordinary companies in one year, and this activity will be spent in 3 days.

The way to sacrifice gross profit for transaction volume is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the large-scale activity stimulation can have a short, flat and fast unexpected effect; on the other hand, it requires huge costs. But considering that the backlog of debts exceeds X billion at that time, it was a helpless but very necessary thunder method.

3) The number of users participating in the 3% interest rate hike event is only X million. Compared with the number of users who have had a history of being collected, compared with the number of nearly X million users who have opened custody, and the number of people who have registered on the platform is X million.

How low will the participation rate of large-scale events with only one 4th anniversary celebration in a year? There is still a long way to go to improve the base of effective active users in the future.

4) Although the rate of full price of purse and scattered bids is relatively different, especially in the early stages of the 3% interest rate hike, the popularity of scattered bids is far lower than expected. The possible reason is that the 3% interest rate hike is not obvious, and there is no prompt with +3% reward than the purse. In the future, the interest rate hike reward function for "monthly return to purse" and "scattered purse" will be developed!

5) After the 4th anniversary event, due to the overdraft of the debt, although there was no sluggish user lending within a few days after the event, nearly X million transaction volume was still required for the remaining four months of this year to complete the task of XX million this year's annual annual payment. However, the industry's asset-side peak season and capital-side off-season at the end of the year are still a big challenge under the macro situation such as the end of the year.

Finally, save every activity I run. For example, I upload screenshots and save them on Huabai.com for all my activities during the 3-year period. Over time, a personal library of activity works will surely be formed. When encountering similar activity nodes and activity themes in the future, how to break through the form of activity will be a transcendence and learning of oneself.

Related reading:

1. Activity operation: an inventory of mainstream gameplay such as group buying, bargaining, and distribution!

2. Three key points of event operation: How to increase users’ willingness to participate in activities?

3. Event operation: How to do a live broadcast sharing that can attract 10,000+ users?

4. What you need to know about event operation | The basic process of operating online events

5. Event Operation: If these 4 points are met, there is no event that cannot be done well

6. Event operation: How to run a good event? Share 4 points!

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15. A complete event operation plan!

Author: Shanks

Source: Shanks