Event Promotion Plan | Key points on event design and traffic considerations!

To make a successful event, you often need three underlying elements. Based on my actual experience in event promotion, I would like to share with you the key points of event design and thoughts on traffic. Enjoy~

In my previous article, I divided the activity section into two parts:

• One part is product activities, which are a series of guidance and growth activities carried out in combination with products and users, such as new user registration, active incentives, paid marketing, etc.; they run through the product and user life cycle and look like a certain function of the product.
• The other part is marketing activities, such as our common short-term, long-term, holiday, anniversary and other activities. Today I would like to share with you some thoughts and understandings of marketing activities.

1. Three key points of activity design

In our gaming industry, there are three basic elements for organizing an event: simplicity, short duration, and wide coverage. Just like the Honor of Kings that everyone often plays, there are several activity pop-ups as soon as you enter the game. You only need to sign in, play a game or spend a few points to receive the activity rewards. Of course, the design of such activities is bound to be because the game is supported by consumable props, but I think the activity ideas involved are still very useful for other industries.

Of course, in addition to the underlying factors, I think there are three key points to consider for activities, namely time, resources and gameplay.

Let’s look at the first point: about time.

After doing more activities, we will find that the timing of launching an activity online is very important. Before doing an event, we will first check the calendar to see if there are any holidays or days that have special significance for the product.

If it is placed at such time points, it will actually be easier to evoke and connect with users' emotions. For example, if we want to organize an event that is more competitive, the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival would be very suitable.

Secondly, we have to consider that if the time of the event launch is fixed, what if this time is not a holiday, nor is it 618 or Double 11? We can create a festival. Common practices include product anniversary, membership day or product event anniversary. This incident is not fabricated out of thin air, but most users know about it or have a certain understanding of it. Otherwise, users will focus on their interests and there will be no emotional resonance.

The second point is: about resources.

When organizing an event, the resources we need to consider include development resources, human resources, market resources, etc. Comprehensive factors will determine whether the event can be held, or at what time.

For example, the first thing to consider is development resources. If your activity happens to coincide with a major product update, or your schedule conflicts with other technical priorities, and it is more important than you, then you basically don’t have to worry about whether you can go online.

The second thing is to consider our overall operations and market resources. No matter how others view it or how they prioritize it, it is the most important resource for you. Therefore, from the moment the event plan is confirmed, the schedule and resource issues should be finalized one or even two months in advance. Otherwise, internal resources cannot be effectively utilized, and there is no question of further expansion.

The third key point is: about the gameplay.

It sounds like a very simple concept. Everyone wants to do some H5 activities that will sweep the screen or APP activities that will expand the number of followers. However, after the screen-sweeping, the entire product has been exposed, but what about the new additions? Has it had any substantial impact on our activity?

Including what will happen after retention, we may not be able to respond to these questions.

Why is this happening? This is because most of us want too much when we do activities, for example: when we do a membership promotion activity, we want users to spend money, want users to share, want users to bring in other people…

The design of the gameplay must be very clear, and it should directly respond to what the KPI goal of your activity is? For example, if we want to conduct an activity to increase followers, the first measurement point should be whether our official account has gained followers and whether it has reached the order of magnitude we set.

Secondly, we try not to make any big or novel innovations in the design of our activity gameplay. It’s not that we don’t want to be innovative, but we want to avoid having any wild and fanciful ideas. To increase the complexity of activity logic and the cumbersomeness of processes, the best approach is to consider some proven gameplay and add some micro-innovations of your own product on top of it.

For example, there are many screen-filling activities that we see in the circle of friends, such as guess what kind of person you are, test who you resemble in appearance, etc. These topics are attractive to the public. His innovation lies in whether the entire gameplay design is attractive, whether the entire copy packaging is eye-catching, whether it is fresh, etc.

Just as I finished writing this article, NetEase’s H5 activity has been all over the news again. Let’s think back, have there been many similar test and guess games that have been all over NetEase before?

If your event can take these three key points into consideration clearly, then the entire event will have the possibility of success.

2. Review and sharing of Spring Festival membership activities

For example, if our product is ready to charge a fee seven months after it was launched, we know that when common membership functions are launched, operational activities are generally to give back to new and old users, and limited-time discounts and promotions are offered to liven up the atmosphere.

When we received such a task, it was close to the Spring Festival holiday. How could we carry out such an activity well? Looking at the calendar, the time points in front of us are very clear, January, February and March. Then there are the holidays to consider, mainly the Spring Festival holiday, as well as Valentine's Day and Lantern Festival after the holiday.

Let's work backwards based on the situation at the time. The product payment system is a big move. Developing and launching such a feature before the Spring Festival was, firstly, rather hasty, as technicians generally do not develop major features before the holidays; secondly, it was launched during a long holiday, which made holiday operation and maintenance support difficult. Again, festivals such as Valentine's Day and Lantern Festival are more likely to convey or tend to be entertainment-oriented, and are not suitable for promoting such product activities.

Many people may think that it is not excessive to hold the event after the holiday, but many things are not impossible to violate, and they can be done with a change of thinking. After team discussion, we decided to switch to the form of H5 activities, which will announce such news to users during the Spring Festival, and try to charge fees in the form of benefits. The entire payment system will be given priority for development after the festival. In this way, product development and R&D can have relatively ample time to prepare for the event.

The decision to launch such a paid promotional activity during the Spring Festival holiday is also to cater to the promotional, emotional summary, festive and lively atmosphere of the entire network. Another purpose of this event is to take precautionary measures and test users' willingness to pay, so as to provide a data basis for the launch of the membership system after the holiday.

After finalizing the time point, the next step is to consider how the activity should be played? At that time, I was the only one in the team responsible for product operations, so the responsibility naturally fell on me. I collected 3 to 5 ways of playing around such a holiday and schedule.

Let me tell you the result directly here. In the end, we chose the lottery method, and based on our own product characteristics, we decided on the theme of "2 yuan for a shake, 100% chance of winning". Why did we choose this method?

The first reason is that the Koi lottery on Weibo has been very popular in the past year. Combining this with the new membership function of our product, holding membership and Koi draws will be more likely to arouse users' interest and make a splash.

The second point is that the concept of New Year’s Eve summary is more likely to impact users’ emotions. All competing products in the industry are membership-based, but we insist on providing free use for half a year. While reviewing the past companionship and support, it was announced that the membership model would officially begin after the new year. Prior to this, we would like to thank new and old users by holding a special lottery to give away memberships. Playing the emotional card is the most appropriate at the year-end summary meeting. Secondly, it can evoke emotional connections among users, and will not be as offensive or mocked by users as the usual practice of charging online.

Based on these considerations, when we set the activity goals, we actually considered that after the entire activity was over, the total revenue would be able to reach 50,000, and the paid conversion rate of new user activities would be no less than 20%. The second goal is to reach a total number of users sharing, no less than 10,000 times. It is determined based on the 7-day holiday period, DAU, and the membership time distribution of existing users.

Next, let’s take a look at how the basic process of this activity unfolds.

First, through the pop-up window on the site (we are on the PC side) - the user enters the official website activity page - scan the code to go to the H5 activity - log in to the account - click on the lottery - pay two yuan - the winning pop-up window - try again (need to share once) - the winning pop-up window - come again tomorrow. If the payment is successful and the sharing is successful, a lottery will be automatically drawn.

The first time a user shakes their phone every day, they can get a random membership reward (day/week/month/season/, where Koi is an annual card and the mascot is a Super Koi, including all packages. Then we will guide the user to come again, and they only need to share once to continue to get membership, which is limited to twice a day.

During the pop-up window for winning prizes, we also set up UI and text for saving pictures and sharing immediately, so users can share to other social channels at any time.

3. Thoughts on activity packaging, starting traffic, and continuous traffic

This activity actually looks very simple, but why is the effect so good? The real situation is that we have conducted a relatively in-depth analysis of the interactive gameplay before the Spring Festival, and there are probably three considerations.

• First of all, the core of such a promotional activity must be to give profits, so the copywriting of the activity and the pop-up design are very important. The text includes the rules of the event, and the probability of winning is also fully disclosed.
• The second point is about the starting flow of the overall activity. If your product is a national product like Alipay or Cloud Music, you don’t actually need to worry about the issue of starting traffic. Dad Ma Yun said that the product has no traffic? Why not consider buying a window on WeChat/QQ. But if your product is still in the development stage, or its current scale is not particularly large, then I suggest that you consider this carefully, because the first step to the success of an event is traffic/exposure.
• The third element is to consider how to keep users participating in the activity over a period of time after they have joined. How to keep users participating continuously is a very important part of the product design process.

When the team told me, since you can get a membership for 2 yuan, why not increase the number of times you can get such a good benefit? It would be so nice to keep getting members. Because your campaign is not just for one day, you need to consider the traffic distribution in the following days. Secondly, don't try to drain all the users at once.

The gamification invitation activity design I shared before also expressed a similar point of view. Don’t always try to bring all of the user’s relevant friends to the product at once. This is not good for the user or the product. This task should be completed in stages and at different times.

Of course, there are also membership issuance cost considerations, and I won’t go into all of the comprehensive factors one by one.

Okay, now let’s take a look at how these three elements are finally implemented?

• The first benefit is consistent with the atmosphere of the Spring Festival, and the copywriting packaging should be able to arouse users' emotions first. Because I am editing this article at home, there are no pictures to share. This is also easy to understand. Start with slogans, colors, and element combinations.
• The second point is to start the flow. Our scale was not very large at this stage, so we mobilized the entire site. Strong pop-ups were used for active users, and public accounts, Weibo, and user groups were preheated a few days in advance. SMS messages were triggered at different levels for the past week, two weeks, four weeks, and more than four weeks, etc.
• The third point is continuous flow. The activity rules stipulate that each user can only participate twice a day. This design can ensure the continuous participation of users on the one hand, and through our probabilistic design of the gameplay on the other hand, there will be different blessings for different membership packages. The attractiveness of the copy can increase the user's desire to share, and coupled with a strong sharing again, it can attract new users outside the site such as the circle of friends.

Finally, let me respond to the goals we set in the early stages. After the event ended, our total revenue reached around 70,000 yuan, and the average APRU value per person was 4.71, which is about three times per person. The payment rate of new users is 25.7%, the payment rate of old users is 43%, and the total number of shares is close to 30,000 times. Judging from the results, we are in a better position.

Specific activities have no reference value for everyone. I hope that everyone can absorb some of the points I shared, and combine them with their own actual situation to see how to bring such thoughts into the process of designing activities. If it can have a little touch, my sharing will be valuable.

Related reading:

1. APP planning and promotion: the birth of the event operation planning program!

2. New media planning and event operation tool library!

3. APP promotion and operation: How to maximize the effectiveness of your activities?

4. Event promotion and operation: 8 hot-selling creative forms of H5!

5. APP promotion activities: How to plan a screen-sweeping event?

6. How to make a good APP online activity promotion plan?

7. Summary of promotion and operation of more than 100 events!

8. Event promotion and operation: After I have done more than 100 fission events...

9. A complete and effective event planning plan!

10. Event Promotion Planning: How to organize a complete and efficient event?

11. Event promotion and operation: How to conduct a complete event review?

12. The event promotion planning process is not clear? Come in quickly!

Author: Mao Li

Source: Operational Growth