Case analysis: The operating model of "Lian Coffee"!

The user social growth system of "Growth Coffee + Coffee Library" and the three fission gameplays of crowd-merchant fission, group buying fission and red envelope fission. With this complete operating system, Lian Coffee has become one of the major leading players in the new retail of coffee.

As the Spring Festival approaches, Lian Coffee has made major revisions to its mini program: "Pocket Coffee Shop" has become an independent mini program; "Order Coffee Together" with a group ordering function has been added; and "Limited Time Welfare Club" has become the main function entrance.

Among this change, I pay more attention to "Pocket Cafe" because it is the marketing case that impressed me most in 2018.

On August 1, 2018, Lian Coffee's "Pocket Café" was launched. In one day, the mini program received 4.2 million visits, and a total of 520,000 online cafés were opened.

Such a growth rate is absolutely amazing. At that time, I wondered why Lian Coffee could achieve such a fission effect?

The answer is the "social gene" that Lian Coffee possesses. This article will analyze Lian Coffee's past fission techniques and summarize a fission guide suitable for operators.

Business fission: Pocket Cafe

"Pocket Cafe" is not the first fission method used by Lian Coffee, but it best reflects Lian Coffee's "social gene". Regarding this point, we can get a glimpse of it by analyzing the characteristics of "Pocket Cafe".

Pocket Cafe has the following main features:

• Low operating cost: Previously, you could open a store with one click through the "Coffee Shop" entrance based on the Lian Coffee mini program, but now you can directly enter the "Pocket Coffee Shop" mini program.
• Creativity and personalization: This is one of its three core features. Opening an online store satisfies the curiosity of users, and decorating the store meets personalized needs.
• Active sharing: A store that is carefully decorated by individuals can easily satisfy users’ desire to show off and more easily encourage users to share and spread the information.
• Gamification: This is one of its three core features. There are tasks such as sharing, collecting likes, and signing in to earn gold beans, as well as redemption mechanisms such as opening treasure chests and gold bean malls, which greatly increase entertainment and make it easier to activate users.
• Socialization: Various rankings based on the Internet celebrity index, as well as today's recommendations, nearby restaurants, etc., allow users to get in touch with other people and meet their social needs.
• Profit-sharing incentive : This is one of its three core features. The coffee in the cafe can be sold, and each cup sold can get an accumulative fund reward. The fund reward can be used for consumption in friends' cafes. This distribution mechanism further promotes users' enthusiasm for sharing.
• Celebrities move in: In the early days of the Pocket Café activity, many celebrities opened shops there (such as Wang Ju), which attracted a large number of users to participate and accumulated very high potential energy.

It can be seen that "Pocket Cafe" is a typical example of social fission. Among them, gamification, personalization, and social settings are the main driving force for users to actively share and continue to spread, while profit-sharing incentives also stimulate users' desire to invite and sell.

The "Pocket Coffee House" initiated by Lian Coffee has hit the social pain point of users' "opening a coffee house" very well. This insight into users is the fundamental reason why Lian Coffee has a "social gene".

However, "Pocket Café" is not simply social fission, but "crowd-merchant fission". It is not like distribution that only provides one product for users to make money, nor is it like WeChat business with strong organization. It is a collaborative relationship that satisfies the common interests of users and merchants. This is the essence of Pocket Café.

Group buying fission: old customers bringing new customers + two-person group buying

Of course, in addition to the "Pocket Café", Lian Coffee also has other fission promotion methods, such as group buying.

The basic logic of group buying fission is that the group leader initiates group buying of goods based on the price anchor point, and then invites a certain number of group members to join the group based on the psychology of reciprocity.

Lian Coffee has two types of group buying. One is a 1-yuan group buying in the form of "old users bringing new users", that is, old users start a group and invite new users to join. The reason for this design is that most old users have a certain degree of stickiness and are more willing to spread word of mouth. The benefit it brings is user accuracy and high retention.

Of course, in order to truly achieve the goal of bringing in real new users to purchase products through recommendations from old users, some conditions must be designed so that it meets the definition of old users bringing in new users. For example, Lian Coffee stipulates that old users can only start groups, and new users can join or start groups, but new users are not eligible to participate in other new user welfare activities.

The other is the "two-person group purchase", which does not restrict new and old users. The group purchase price is 30% cheaper than the original price. The products sold are 5-cup packages of gold medal coffee, which focuses on high quality.

In addition to these two conventional group purchases, other forms of group purchases have also been initiated, such as teaming up to draw coffee.

This model is very simple. The team leader invites friends to form a team. Each person invited can increase a certain amount of luck. When there are eight people or more, they can participate in the lottery, and the prizes are different cups of coffee.

Through group buying and fission, Lian Coffee can distinguish between new and old users as well as light and heavy coffee consumers. It can not only fission to accurately identify users, but also appropriately increase the repurchase rate, killing two birds with one stone.

Red Envelope Fission: Coffee Lucky Bag + Coffee Red Envelope

Red envelope fission is the third type of fission gameplay commonly used by Lian Coffee, and it was first implemented in the form of "coffee lucky bags".

After placing an order, users will receive an exclusive lucky bag from Lian Coffee, which can be shared with friends. When friends click on it, they will see a red envelope design that contains coffee coupons, randomly ordered coffee, free coffee, etc. The basic logic is similar to the red envelopes from Ele.me, that is, a fission red envelope that will only appear after an order is placed.

In addition to the lucky bag format, Lian Coffee has also launched a pure red envelope opening activity, namely the "Coffee Red Envelope".

The specific gameplay is that users need to open the red envelopes four times. They can open it once by themselves, and the other three times need to invite three friends to complete. After opening all of them, they can get virtual items that can be exchanged for coffee, such as growth coffee, coupons, personality cards, etc. This gameplay is very similar to bargaining, driven by interests and using the sense of identity among friends to attract new users.

Through the red envelope fission model, Lian Coffee can further improve the fission efficiency and effect. In addition, both lucky bags and red envelopes have frequency limits, which can improve user activity and increase retention to a certain extent.

Social fission: Growth Coffee + Coffee Library

A word has been mentioned many times before, growth coffee. Its form is very simple, which is "0.0N cup" of coffee. This is actually the core function of Lian Coffee. It can be exchanged for coffee. This is similar to the gold coins in Qutoutiao, except that the former can only be exchanged for coffee, while the latter can be exchanged for money.

Of course, if you want to use Growth Coffee to exchange for more coffee, you need to accumulate it continuously. Therefore, Lian Coffee uses it as bait for fission. For example, the early invitation rebate is to get a certain number of points of Growth Coffee by inviting friends to register and consume.

Of course, growing coffee has now become the bait for all fission and marketing activities.

By participating in these fission marketing activities, users can accumulate growth coffee points and use them to redeem coffee. This process feels very nurturing, but Lian Coffee still finds it difficult to achieve long-term user activity and retention through this form alone.

Coffee Vault can help with this.

It can store coffee exchanged for Growth Coffee, as well as coffee obtained from other activities. For example, the "Limited Time Welfare Club" stipulates that users who consume for three days a week will be rewarded with a cup of coffee. This coffee can be entered into the coffee library, and users only need to consume and use it within the validity period, or they can give it to friends like sending red envelopes.

At this point, Lian Coffee has become a social currency by allowing Growth Coffee to connect users in a fission manner and circulate in the form of redemption of coffee, and has combined with Coffee Library to create a complete user social growth system.

Conclusion

Lian Coffee has successfully established a complete traffic operation system through the user social growth system built by Growth Coffee + Coffee Library, plus the three fission gameplays mentioned above. It is precisely with this system that Lian Coffee has become one of the major leading players in the new retail of coffee.

Therefore, by summarizing Lian Coffee's fission gameplay, I believe it can give operators some inspiration, that is, not only should you know how to play fission, but you should also know how to build your own traffic operation system. This will make fission more efficient and easier to create barriers, because the gameplay can be copied, but the systematic traffic operation idea is difficult to copy.

As long as you have a clear and practical traffic operation system, growth will no longer be a problem, making money will become easy, and the future will be more promising.

Source: Dugushang