How to formulate operation strategies based on user life cycle?

I believe that many of my friends have read a lot of articles and books about the user life cycle, but as the saying goes, knowledge gained from books is shallow, and if you don’t use it, it is not yours. Based on my own work content, I will talk about how I systematically formulate operational strategies based on the user life cycle.

This article will also focus on the following three frameworks:

• 1. What is the user life cycle?
• 2. What is the significance of user life cycle?
• 3. What are the operational strategies for different stages of the user life cycle?

1. What is the user life cycle?

The predecessor of the user life cycle comes from the concept of customer life cycle in traditional marketing.

It mainly refers to the five cycles that users go through after using the company's products: acquisition, growth, maturity, decline, and loss.

2. What is the significance of dividing users according to their life cycle?

As the growth of mobile Internet users approaches saturation, the cost of acquiring customers is getting higher and higher. The cost of retaining an old user is much lower than the cost of acquiring a new user, which makes user retention crucial.

Dividing users according to their life cycle can help us understand the needs of users in different life cycles, develop operational strategies, and thus reduce user churn.

2. What are the operational strategies for different stages of the user life cycle?

The following life cycle takes the P2P mutual finance platform (non-advertising) where the author works as an example to explain in detail:

1. Introduction period

I divide the two links of "registering and downloading" and "real-name card binding" into the user behaviors of the introduction period, and the operation strategy of this stage is mainly centered on improving the download conversion rate of these two links:

• Find accurate customer acquisition channels for platform target users

The more precise the channel, the higher the customer acquisition cost and conversion rate will be.

Since P2P financial management is a high-decision product, the platform itself needs to have a solid background and strength and give users strong trust in order to influence users' decision-making behavior.

Small platforms without endorsement and strength can only influence users' decisions through high returns.

The author works on a small platform, and the cost of obtaining funds is relatively high. If you want to spend your money wisely, the most cost-effective option is cooperation with CPS.

It is actually not difficult to find accurate CPS cooperation. You can directly post your channel needs on bdwoke. Many second parties will come to you automatically. Then you can look at which platforms on the second party platform are currently cooperating with you and have similar strength to your own platform. Rely on your own connections to find the person in charge of the platform and ask about the retention of this channel.

If you can’t find the person in charge of the platform, you have no choice but to try and make mistakes on your own.

Personally, I don’t like platform-based CPS cooperation very much, because in addition to giving cash back to users, the platform also needs to take a commission.

I directly contact what are commonly known as "wool heads" in the industry. If we cooperate with them for a long time, the price will be low and they will help with promotion.

How to find the real "wool-head" and not be cheated also requires introductions from your own connections in the industry.

However, for the healthy development of the platform in the future, some natural channel cooperation is also needed. Based on my own operating experience, the most cost-effective natural cooperation for a small platform is the CPT cooperation for a single picture or text on a public account.

Currently, there are a lot of mixed channels on the market, and there are too many people swiping through the channels. I judge whether a channel is good or not by looking at:

Are there any peers with the same background and size? Ignore the endorsed platform? Is there repeated delivery in this channel?

If there is repeated delivery, it means that the quality of this channel is still good and it is also suitable for delivery on one's own small platform.

• Simplify the registration process on the landing page and give users a reason to bind their real names to their cards

When I first came to the current platform, the registration process for a single landing page required jumping to three pages. The more pages that jump, the greater the chance of loss.

After that, I cut out all other pages and completed all the registration processes on one interface. The registration conversion rate immediately increased by 40%.

In addition to the landing page, the real-name registration and bank card binding process is also the most sensitive link for users and has the highest churn rate.

If a small platform wants to increase conversion rate, the most direct way is to give money.

For example: After completing the real-name card binding, you can get a 200 yuan voucher.

Driven by interests, users are the most active.

2. Growth stage

I regard the time when users complete their first investment on the platform as the growth stage.

Compared with a user who has not invested, the retention rate of a user who has completed the investment is definitely higher. The operation strategy at this stage is to increase the user's first investment and repeat investment.

The specific plan is shown in the picture above. This is an activity I did to guide new users to make their first recharge. As long as they complete the first recharge, they can manually receive 5,000 experience gold for 3 consecutive days.

This improves the conversion rate of the first investment, and also avoids quick withdrawals after recharging.

3. Maturity

I judge whether a user has entered the mature stage mainly based on whether the user has invested in all categories of products on the platform (current + regular), and the duration of regular investment has shifted from short-term to long-term, and also invited friends around him to invest.

The basis for this mainly comes from my analysis of the behavior of retained users on the platform, and I found that they all have some common characteristics.

That is to say, as mentioned above, we invested in all categories of products on the platform, and the investment duration shifted from short-term to long-term.

Therefore, the operational strategy at this stage is to "guide users to invest in all product categories", transfer from short-term products to long-term products, and at the same time guide them to invite their friends.

Because the platform I am on also has current products, it is perfect for new users to get familiar with and experience the platform, so I have set up a series of novice growth tasks for novices.

If a user completes all the novice tasks, it proves that he has passed the novice stage and entered the mature stage.

In order to transfer users' funds from short-term to regular payments, I use vouchers to guide users to transfer funds from short-term to long-term.

The investment process is also a process for users to become familiar with the platform. The longer the user chooses to invest, the stronger his trust in the platform will be.

Because Internet finance products are products that urgently require trust, it takes a long process for users to go from unfamiliarity to familiarity to trust.

Once a user begins to trust a platform, his switching cost is very high because he has to spend time getting familiar with other platforms.

When users have a strong sense of trust in the platform, it is necessary to guide them to invite their friends to invest. The best and most cost-effective way is to spread the word.

The above is a series of reward activities I have done for inviting friends, which gives users a stronger desire to invite friends.

4. Silent period

I determine whether a user is in a silent period mainly if after all the regular payments have been made, the user chooses to withdraw funds and does not reinvest within 7 days. In this case, I determine that the user has entered a silent period.

Why 7 days?

This number is mainly obtained by analyzing the time difference between re-engaged users and churned users.

Therefore, the operational strategy at this stage is to promote activation.

First, I compiled a list of these people and arranged for customer service to revisit these users to understand their reasons for not reinvesting and their real needs.

Because there must be a reason for an investment user to go from investing to not investing. If the reason is not found, it means that the problem has not been truly solved, and the user cannot be retained simply by giving out coupons.

If users simply say that the benefits are not strong enough, then these users are here just for the money, and there is no need to retain them.

If it is a security issue, the customer service can answer the user's questions one by one, and I will also give these users certain vouchers for return.

5. Churn period

Due to product form reasons, determining whether a user is in the churn period mainly depends on whether the user still has money in his or her personal account on the platform.

If the user does not reinvest within 7 days after the advance payment. The operating strategy at this time is to recall old users and save money.

User recall is actually a thankless task. Anyone who has done recall work knows that it is not easy to recall users, and there is no need to spend too much cost on these users. It is better to save costs and give back to current old users.

What we should really do is to find out the reasons for user loss and issue early warnings to prevent more users from being lost in the future.

Related reading:

1.Keep operation strategy and gain 170 million users in 4 years!

2. Analysis of Tieba user operation strategy examples!

3. Zhihu’s operational strategy: What are the chances of fighting against content “entropy increase”?

4. APP offline promotion and operation strategy!

5. APP offline promotion and operation strategy!

6.6 indicators to teach you how to formulate financial supermarket operation strategies!

Author: Zhong Yewei

Source: Operation Publicity Xiao Leilei