How do Internet finance platforms retain users?

Although new media operations cannot effectively bring incremental growth in the process of user growth on Internet finance platforms, they can effectively narrow the psychological distance between the platform and old users through their content and user interaction based on brand communication, enhance old users' trust in the platform, and meet users' "sense of security demands" in investment and financial management decisions.

If we use one word to describe the embarrassing situation of new media operation positions in the Internet finance industry (financial management side), then the word "chicken ribs" would be the most appropriate. As a standard position on Internet finance platforms, its position in platform operations is quite delicate.

As a new media operation that mainly deals with text and WeChat, although it is an important part of social operations, it always looks so inconspicuous compared to the platform's marketing staff who spend a lot of money and the creative planning of Tianma Xingkong. After all, in the Internet finance operation team that advocates user growth, the pitiful reading and forwarding volume of the official account really does not show how much contribution it has made to user growth.

Over time, I became a junior editor in the eyes of my operations colleagues, not to mention the investment of various human, financial and other resources. However, is this the only value of new media operations positions in the Internet finance industry? The answer is no! New media operations are not only important, but also shoulder the most important part of user operations - user retention/activity.

How do Internet finance platforms retain users?

In the Internet finance industry where customer acquisition costs are rising, if investment customers cannot be effectively retained, there will be no talk of user growth for Internet finance products. If the retention rate in the gaming industry is based on the user's login behavior on the next day, and the retention rate in the e-commerce industry is based on the user's repurchase rate, then in the Internet finance industry, the reinvestment behavior of investment users becomes the most core indicator for measuring user retention/activity.

However, analogous to the e-commerce and gaming industries, investment and financial management cannot be a high-frequency behavior of users, so the platform needs to provide reasonable user scenarios to stimulate the activeness of investment users.

As we all know, when deciding whether the user group of mutual financial investment will be able to continue rolling investment in the future, TA mainly considers and balances two dimensions - the security and profitability of funds. Among them, the user's demand for the security of funds is the basis of user decision-making. If the security of funds cannot be guaranteed, it will be futile to provide higher profitability. Therefore, the key to encouraging users to reinvest lies in whether the platform can maximize user returns while meeting the security needs of users' funds!

Usually, customers who have just completed platform registration/first investment are mostly in the early growth stage of the user life cycle, although they have invested in the platform and have certain product experience. However, they are not yet fully familiar with the platform and their investment intentions are not yet firm, making them at a stage where they are more likely to lose investors. In order to further meet the needs of these old users for fund security and profitability, the platform usually proceeds from the following dimensions:

First of all, in order to meet users' demand for capital profitability, Internet finance platforms will start from the perspectives of product operation, event operation and user operation, and use a combination of strategies such as developing new investment tools, holding event benefits or creating a member growth system to attract old users to reinvest. All these measures are more in line with the scenario of investment user retention/activity, and are also the easiest for users to perceive. Therefore, it is currently the most common and convenient method of user activation/retention adopted by most Internet finance platforms.

However, it is not easy to meet the investment users' demand for fund security (which is also the most core demand point for investment users to reinvest). As can be seen from the above figure, in order to solve security pain points, the platform needs to start from the brand perspective and make efforts in two dimensions: brand endorsement and brand promotion.

However, for the platform, neither brand endorsement nor brand promotion can be achieved overnight. It is a long-term and subtle brand building process that requires continuous brand output. However, in order to spread information to old users, the Internet finance platform has many brand promotion platforms such as PC official website, Internet finance APP, H5, WeChat public account, etc. However, due to the limitation of manpower and resources, an omni-channel assault is almost an impossible task.

Therefore, the key to solving the need for fund security is to find the best and most effective channels for communication with old users to maximize brand promotion among all channels that can reach old users.

Who is the best and most effective brand communication channel for old users?

From the above figure, we can see that the types of online channels through which Internet finance platforms can reach old users are mainly divided into six categories, namely PC official website, APP, WeChat public account, H5, marketing SMS and telemarketing channels. Now, in order to find the best brand communication channel, we will analyze them one by one based on the characteristics of each channel.

Obviously, marketing SMS channels with single content and telemarketing channels with expensive manpower costs are obviously not suitable for high-frequency brand communication, so they are excluded first.

Although PC official websites and H5 are rich and diverse carriers for brand communication and have relatively good display effects, due to the general trend of mainstream users shifting to mobile terminals, their narrow user reach will inevitably greatly reduce the breadth of brand communication. Therefore, PC official websites and H5 are also excluded from the best brand communication channels one after another.

As of now, there are only two channels left: Internet finance APP and WeChat public accounts. So who will win? Then we have to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of these two channels in the dimension of brand communication:

From the above comparison, we can clearly see that WeChat official accounts are similar to Internet finance APPs. Both have their own advantages in the content and form of brand material dissemination. However, Internet finance APPs are one-way outputs in information dissemination, while WeChat official accounts, based on the social communication characteristics endowed by the WeChat ecosystem, can maintain interaction and communication with investment users through funny and humorous text language and interactive activities, enhance the stickiness of investment users and the platform, and thus accelerate the progress of users from habit to recognition to liking to loyalty.

Of course, to understand and digest this concept, we must start by analyzing the content structure of new media operations:

As shown in the figure, the operation of the Internet finance WeChat public account usually includes three major content sections: brand promotion, investment entry, and customer service, among which brand promotion content is the focus of operation. These mainly cover four parts of content: company news, product updates, user interactive activities, and other reprints. It is through the output of these four parts that WeChat official accounts have become the main battlefield for social brand marketing: attracting fans, interacting, and converting.

For example, the company's series of favorable news and compliance-related progress news push can make old users feel the platform's vigorous and compliant development trend; the platform's product dynamics changes can continue to create a sense of freshness for old users; the platform's series of sign-ins, lucky draws, likes, user investment story collections, etc., all invisibly strengthen the communication and interaction between the platform and users, which is conducive to strengthening the emotional connection of old users to the platform...

It can be seen that compared with the channels that can be used to contact old users through platforms such as PC official websites, H5 pages, service hotlines, marketing text messages, and mutual finance apps, WeChat public accounts have obvious advantages in brand association and brand communication with old users in terms of content format (soft articles, activities, pictures, videos, and other interactive forms) and communication characteristics (based on the WeChat social ecosystem).

To sum up, although new media operations cannot effectively bring incremental growth in the process of user growth on Internet finance platforms, they can effectively narrow the psychological distance between the platform and old users through their content and user interaction based on brand communication, enhance old users' trust in the platform, and meet users' "sense of security demands" in investment and financial management decisions. Assisted by products, marketing activities and other means, it can effectively maintain the activity of old users, promote their continued reinvestment and prevent their rapid loss.

Nowadays, with the rising customer acquisition costs of Internet finance platforms and the high regulatory pressure on the online lending industry, it has become particularly difficult for Internet finance platforms to acquire large quantities of incremental new users. User acquisition is the beginning of the Internet finance user growth funnel model. The smaller the entrance to the funnel, the fewer valuable customers will remain after user activation and user retention conversion.

As we all know, in the process of user operation, the cost of activating old users is much lower than the cost of acquiring new users. Therefore, facing the current situation, instead of spending a lot of effort on attracting new users, it is better to free up some resources and manpower to focus on the activation and retention of registered/invested users.

Of course, to achieve this, we must first start by changing our understanding of the value of Internet finance new media operations positions! Only by careful thinking and hard work can we maximize the retention and conversion of old users through new media channels and promote user growth.

Source: Monk