Detailed explanation of "old customers bring new customers to share": a breakthrough in user growth

Before talking about the method of “old employees bringing in new employees” , let me first share with you a short story that happened to me.

I have a friend who is a product manager . He is a real fitness fanatic. With his love and research on fitness, he has gradually become a small KOL in the fitness circle.

Once, he accidentally learned from his communication with a fitness coach that: now that more people are doing fitness, more and more people are looking for private lessons; every fitness coach has many "students", and the identities of the students are mainly white-collar workers, office workers, middle-level and senior managers of companies, etc.

Because these "students" are usually busy with work, they often encounter unexpected situations such as asking for leave, being late, or requesting to reschedule classes even if they have made an appointment with their private tutors. Since many private tutors only use paper and pen to record their class schedules, they are often confused by their sudden requests for leave and class changes.

My friend was very keen to discover this need, and after returning home, he spent about two weeks developing a very simple "Fitness Coach Course Management" APP, which allows them to quickly schedule and adjust classes for students using their mobile phones, and clearly view courses at the same time.

A friend gave this APP to coaches and it was very popular - after all, it is a product developed based on user needs.

After finding that the feedback was good, he put the APP on the application market , and some natural traffic began to pour in.

Since my friend had to go to work, he put the promotion of this APP after work. In addition, he did not intend to invest too many resources, so he adopted a stupid but effective method for promotion:

Every night when he gets home, he will export the mobile phone numbers of users who downloaded and registered the APP two weeks ago and remain active (usually less than a few hundred people); then he will add these mobile phone numbers to WeChat , and the conversion rate is generally around dozens to hundreds of people.

Then in the following days, he will communicate with these users one by one to understand the product experience and some BUG feedback; at the same time, he will plead with the users, asking if he can post a poster with the APP download QR code on his Moments , and attach a positive comment?

Since my friend had a pleasant chat with these users, and this product really solved one of their small pain points, most users readily agreed; they posted the APP download poster on their Moments and also kindly gave many reasons for the recommendation.

My friend kept repeating the above steps - working during the day, cleaning the user list at night, adding WeChat, chatting with users, and asking for user recommendations; continuing to clean the list, over and over again.

Since the circle of fitness coaches is relatively concentrated, they must have many colleagues on WeChat. In this way, my friend quickly accumulated 5,000 high-quality seed users .

Although the last project did not generate much buzz because it was not easy to find a business model , the story I told actually contains a very simple means of user growth :

Through various means, drive old users to continuously share and spread the product, and continue to bring in new users.

01

In order to ensure a better user experience , I think this method of "driving old users to bring new users to share" should be proactive and natural enough. Otherwise, when I open an app, a pop-up window pops up telling me:

Great news! Share the product and get 5 yuan for every new user you invite!

Well, it is indeed proactive; but this driving method is very rigid and may easily cause disgust among old users.

It would be best to integrate "driving old customers to bring new customers to share" into the product's usage scenarios and actively trigger it.

There are many usage scenarios for this:

For example, before purchase, after purchase, before using a function, after using a function, etc., these are all product usage scenarios, and they can all be embedded with the "drive old customers to bring in new customers to share."

For example, a certain social e-commerce app will add a share and bargaining button to the page where users purchase products, and it will have a continuous shaking effect, prompting users that they can share the page before purchasing the product to get a higher discount.

For example, many e-commerce platforms now like to let users pay for the order and then remind them that they can get cash back by sharing the coupon package to their friends circle.

In addition to e-commerce products, this “driving old customers to bring in new customers” sharing is also applicable to many high-frequency products:

For example, in a certain accounting APP, every time I click on the accounting function, it will pop up a prompt box, prompting me to click the share button and share the APP, so that I can get a red envelope or gift package for the lottery.

Another example is a certain P2P financial management platform , where users can apply to transfer the daily investment income generated by this platform to their own accounts. It is conceivable that every day a large number of users will apply to transfer profits of several yuan or tens of yuan to their own accounts.

After submitting the transfer application, the platform will give a prompt box to remind the user that the sharing action must be completed before the transfer can be successful.

There are many more examples like this.

Let’s not talk about the effectiveness of these drives in driving old users to share, but this approach of placing “drive sharing” in every aspect of product usage scenarios is still very worth learning.

First of all, it’s natural enough:

After I purchased the product, I was prompted to share it on WeChat Moments to get cash back. The whole process was smooth and did not make me feel disgusted. It was deeply integrated with the usage scenario.

Secondly, high frequency:

For us, we are happy to see users share products on WeChat or other platforms frequently enough. The way to make them share frequently without being annoying enough is to arrange sharing in their usage scenarios.

Finally, it is cost-effective enough:

For example, after a user has recorded his or her account using an accounting app, he or she will most likely want to leave. At this time, through a pop-up window, an advertisement reminds him or her to make a small profit-driven share, which will not affect his or her user experience and will also increase the probability of him or her spreading the message.

Therefore, you can think carefully about the products you operate and whether you can embed the means of "driving old users to share" into some user scenarios, which will not harm the user experience too much while also gaining new growth points.

02

But not all product usage scenarios are suitable for this approach. For example, some short videos , news, content apps, etc., users will have a long immersive experience when using these products. At this time, if you add a point of "driving old users to share with new users" in the usage scenario, it will definitely make users feel unhappy.

For example, when a user is browsing the news, if you give him a pop-up window prompting him to share, it will give the user experience a very bad experience.

At this time, another method is needed to encourage old employees to bring in new ones.

That is to create a sharing pool.

This method has been applied to many products, and the presentation forms are also different. For example, daily sign-in and sharing to receive red envelopes, grabbing red envelopes at the hour, everyone answering questions, grabbing lucky bags every day, etc. These are all classic examples of creating a sharing pool and driving old employees to bring in new employees.

For example, a certain social e-commerce APP will give out red envelopes for signing in every day (actually only a few cents or even a few cents). After the user signs in, a big red envelope will pop up, prompting the user to share it to their circle of friends to get money.

It is said that the number of people signing in to the app every day is around hundreds of thousands, and the number of people sharing it is conservatively estimated to be over 100,000.

This is definitely a new user growth point for the APP.

For example, a certain XX headline APP has an activity to grab red envelopes at 7 o'clock every night, with a prize pool of 1 million RMB (it is estimated that the prize amount is exaggerated by 10 times or even dozens of times); as long as you enter after 8 o'clock, you can directly share the red envelopes in the prize pool.

There are two sharing drive modes:

The first one is to remind you to share the link to your friends circle. For every person you invite, the prize pool will increase by 1 yuan;

The second type of sharing drive is that every time you share, you can increase the probability of successfully sharing the red envelope.

Daily red envelopes from a certain headline, a sharing pool

The red envelopes at this hour are very popular, with a daily peak of nearly one million UVs, and the sharing and dissemination brought about by it is also a very good growth point. If you are very disgusted with the behavior of using red envelopes to attract new users , then knowledge quizzes are also a very good way to create a sharing pool .

A certain news APP uses the question-and-answer method to drive old users to bring in new users to share. Every day, if users answer 10 questions correctly in a row within the specified time, they can share a high bonus. Due to the good quality of users of this news APP, hundreds of thousands of people participate in this activity every day.

The way to drive sharing and dissemination is: once a user answers a question incorrectly, a prompt box will pop up quickly, prompting the user to share the answer to Moments or WeChat groups so that there will be a chance to revive the answer.

Through this profit-seeking + content-based "sharing pool creation" method, the APP has also found a stable user growth point.

So you see: if for the sake of user experience, you cannot arrange "driving old users to share with new users" in the product usage scenario, then creating a sharing pool is also a very good way - it will not interfere with the product experience and also give users more playability and fun. It can not only solve the problem of attracting new users, but also the problem of daily active users.

03

So you see, “driving old customers to bring new customers to share” is nothing more than these two methods:

1. Integrate into product usage scenarios
2. Create a sharing pool

Next, let’s talk about what details should be paid attention to when “driving old customers to share with new customers”:

Many people who are engaged in event operations , user growth, or operations managers will find that even if you completely copy other people’s growth methods, you cannot achieve the same growth effect.

The main reason is that many details were not done well.

In particular, many key details will greatly affect the final effect of driving and attracting new customers.

The first key detail is that the driving interest must be sufficient.

Whether you can keep users sharing and spreading the content depends on whether you can provide users with attractive and targeted driving benefits.

Including red envelopes, rights, points, identity, resources, etc.

The reason why everyone likes to use red envelopes to drive sharing now is because red envelopes are very real and can hit the interests of most users.

Just move your fingers and share it, and a red envelope of a few cents will be credited to your account, visible and tangible.

If the product does not have sufficient funds, it can also be packaged into some cost-effective driving benefits through some resource replacement methods.

For example, a large e-commerce APP has reached an agreement with a video website through commercial cooperation. As long as the user completes the forwarding task of the e-commerce APP, he or she will receive a seven-day free trial coupon for the video APP. This not only allows for dissemination and sharing, attracting new users to the e-commerce APP, but also directs traffic to the video website. Both parties get what they need and maximize their benefits.

There is also an APP that makes money through a points wall . Since most users of their products are greedy for small favors, the APP has launched an activity for daily sign-in to receive traffic: after signing in and sharing it to your circle of friends, you can get several MB of traffic.

Due to the large number of users signing in, traffic can be purchased in bulk, which provides great discounts from operators.

After amortizing the cost, we found that the cost is much lower than directly sending red envelopes to users, and users are also very fond of rewards such as traffic.

Another example is an American drama APP that adopts a model of sharing to unlock free dramas - as long as users share, they can unlock newly released high-definition dramas for free.

The second key point is to increase the frequency of users’ sharing as much as possible.

Don’t worry about whether the user’s frequent sharing will flood his circle of friends. This is not an issue we need to consider; our goal is to create opportunities for users to share frequently .

For example, the check-in sharing and hourly red envelope sharing mentioned above are all aimed at increasing the frequency of users' sharing.

Let users go from sharing occasionally after using the product to being motivated by benefits to sharing on a daily basis.

From an average of once a month, it has increased to once a week, and even once a day.

I believe that everyone’s circle of friends is often flooded with sharing of English original reading check-in activities held by XX reading APP, English vocabulary check-in activities held by a certain Liulishuo APP, and similar check-in activities such as reading check-in and fitness check-in; cultivation activities such as watering forests and trees, and raising goldfish can also urge old users to share frequently.

The third key point is to improve the pertinence of user sharing channels

Due to the huge number of users of WeChat and QQ, the essence of "driving old users to share" at this stage is to grab Tencent's traffic. Therefore, there are multiple scenarios for users to choose from:

Moments, WeChat groups, WeChat friends, QQ friends, QQ space...

This brings up a problem: when many products are driving old users to forward messages, they will provide users with multiple forwarding channels, with WeChat friends, Moments, QQ friends, and QQ Space listed in a row, allowing users to choose which one to forward.

Facts have proved that providing users with enough communication channels often proves to be very inefficient.

For example, a certain light novel APP found through continuous testing that if users are encouraged to forward to their friends circle or WeChat groups, both the traffic of forwarded links and the number of new users are very low - because their users are mainly teenagers, and these teenagers are mainly active on QQ and QQ space, and rarely use WeChat.

So this results in a waste of communication.

After optimization, they closed the channel for sharing to WeChat and directly drove users to spread to QQ groups or QQ spaces, achieving very good results.

So it can be seen that sometimes, giving users enough choices is not the best option.

In this regard, X social e-commerce products have done a very good job. They not only guide users to share and spread information in a targeted manner, but also allow users to share in multiple scenarios as much as possible to improve conversion.

I will also explain in detail in the last case of this article how this social e-commerce product improves the targeted nature of user sharing scenarios step by step through operations and product means.

The fourth key point is to polish the "hook" of sharing

We have talked so much about how to drive old users to share content, and we just hope to promote sharing and bring in more users.

It is particularly important whether the shared content can be a good "hook" to attract more new users.

The hook may be interest.

For example, the copywriting of the sharing poster of X Toutiao is very clear:

Congratulations (new user) for getting 18 yuan, you can get it by downloading

Since X Toutiao's users are mainly concentrated in third- and fourth-tier cities, such a reward is undoubtedly a sharp "hook" that is enough to hook a large number of users.

Earn cash every day. This hook is very attractive to third- and fourth-tier users.

The hook could also be anxiety. For example, a certain reading app shared the following text:

I read 32 books here for free and completed my annual reading goal ahead of schedule. How about you?

Does it make you feel a sense of crisis?

So this “hook” could be any point, but it must be targeted enough for your users.

I’m afraid that the “hook” shared is very ordinary. For example, the link copy shared by a financial management APP only has a short line of text:

If you want to manage your finances , go to XXXX!

Such a "hook" will definitely not have any appeal; even if it is shared frequently enough, it will not attract a large number of users.

04

Many readers may question this user growth method of "driving old users to bring in new users to share". For example, since many of these methods of attracting new customers are profit-driven, will they incur very high costs? And how to control costs?

In addition, since users brought in through interests are all profit-seeking, will the quality be poor?

And will you be fleeced by the wool-grabbing party ?

I think the above concerns are all reasonable. This is essentially a discussion of two different promotion ideas and concepts.

The first promotion idea: Use practical copywriting for the product, use a relatively expensive price (a few yuan or even dozens of yuan), place it in formal channels , and gain a high-quality target user ; such a target user is not profit-seeking, he will definitely have a transaction, a purchase, or subsequent investment, etc. Although such users are expensive, they must be high-quality users.

The second promotion idea is : through dissemination and sharing, driven by small favors and interests, a large number of profit-seeking users are brought in. The quality of these users is definitely not as good as the first one, but the single cost of the user is low enough, cheap enough, and the base is large enough; as long as there are some conversions among them, then the final comprehensive estimate of the cost will not necessarily result in a loss.

Both promotion ideas have their own reasons:

The disadvantage of the first one is that many times, even if you pay a high enough price, you still won’t find many high-quality users.

The second type of users seem to be profit-seeking, and their quality may be very poor, but through the method of "old users bringing in new ones", the lack of user quality can be slightly compensated.

Because users are distributed in circles, a car owner’s circle of friends must have many car owners, a mother’s circle of friends must have many mothers, a parent’s circle of friends must have many parents, and a doctor’s circle of friends must have many doctors.

If you can "hook" users out of the old user circle through appropriate benefits, red envelopes, money, coupons, and prizes, then why not use benefits to drive them?

Therefore, when increasing user growth, you must not reject profit-driven approaches.

Many times, simple and crude methods are more effective.

05

Of course, the problem still needs to be solved. For example, how to monitor user quality and how to control costs. First, we need to monitor the quality of new users brought in by sharing with old users.

This includes monitoring the user's next-day retention , 3-day retention, 7-day retention, user IP, user operation behavior, number of users attracted, etc., to continuously judge the quality of the user's source, whether they are a wool party, or whether they are fake.

For example, most old users are already very powerful if they can bring in 1 to 5 users through sharing, but some users have invited hundreds or even thousands of people - if this is not a freeloader, what is it? The account can be banned.

Some users, after inviting more than a dozen people, found that the invited users did not take any follow-up actions after downloading the APP, or only logged in once and then disappeared. This can also be judged as spam users - stop their sharing rewards.

The second is to set up withdrawal thresholds, control budgets, and continuously remove users.

In the operation of sharing benefits, a very important point is to set a withdrawal threshold for users.

For example, a certain Toutiao APP has multiple tasks and activities that encourage users to share to earn cash, but the withdrawal threshold is as high as 20 yuan. The reward that most users may receive is only around 5 to 10 yuan, so they basically cannot afford this expense to a large extent, and this part of the cost will not be included in the promotion expenses.

Therefore, setting a withdrawal threshold is a very good way to control the cost of rewards.

Although a lot of sign-ins and red envelope grabbing at the hour seem to consume a lot of money every day, in fact, the expenses of most users cannot reach the withdrawal threshold, so this expense will basically never occur.

The withdrawal threshold of a certain product is that you need to be active for 24 consecutive days to withdraw 10 yuan

In addition, there are many sign-in red envelope grabbing activities, and when designing the reward mechanism, there will be a mechanism to "wash" users continuously. For example, if this user signed in and shared three times in a row, he received a reward of 1.5 yuan, but he did not attract any new users. Then the money the user gets from subsequent sharing will be greatly reduced, and he may get a few points or even a coupon.

This kind of early rewards can be used to stimulate users to spread the word. If users fail to bring in new users, the rewards will be greatly reduced. I call this the "user washing" method. Combined with the withdrawal threshold, costs can be effectively controlled instead of wasting money on many invalid users.

05

I think a certain social e-commerce APP's method of "driving old users to bring new users to share" has reached the top of the industry in terms of communication ideas and details. Below I will use a homepage activity of this social e-commerce APP to fully review their driving process for everyone. Through this process, you can see many very "ghostly" and cunning details.

First of all, the activity is called "Get Cash Every Day". When you open the page, you will be prompted that you have cash to get.

The page interaction is ugly and vulgar, but simple enough, not fancy, simplicity is the best:

On this page, the entire content and page style are simplified as much as possible. There is no prompt for you to share or any redundant content. There is only a constantly shaking [Receive] button, prompting you to click it as soon as possible to receive the red envelope. I would like to say something special about this:

When many of our operators are making activity pages, they like to pile up copywriting, processes, and elements on the pages, making the page content very complicated. These are taboos for user growth.

After clicking to receive, the page is still simple and direct:

After clicking, it will prominently tell you that you have received a reward of 5.88 yuan. But this 5.88 yuan has not been transferred to your APP account. Please pay attention to the button copy:

You can unpack it after sharing

The mentality of most users at this time is: since they have already received the money and can open it after sharing, then just share it!

Successfully tricked a group of people.

Reduce sharing channels and do not give users hesitation in choosing:

A sharing box pops up. Please note: it does not provide you with many sharing channels at once, and does not list WeChat friends, Moments, QQ friends, and QQ space for you to share. Instead, it only gives you a sharing channel for WeChat friends.

What is the purpose of doing this?

To reduce your sharing choices and hesitation, share quickly.

As previously calculated, sharing with WeChat friends is more likely to maximize new customer acquisition than sharing through other channels.

The word "拆" is used very well:

After sharing, I found out that the 5.88 yuan could not be fully split after sharing. Only part of it was split. If you want to get the full money, you have to continue sharing. Some people may give up, but the copy tempts you that you are just one step away from cashing out, so you decide to continue sharing.

It is still a single-channel sharing, but the sharing channel is changed to "WeChat group chat":

Please note that this time the sharing channel has become [WeChat Group Chat]. In other words: this activity is tempting you to gradually expand the sharing scenarios to include WeChat friends, WeChat group chats, and Moments.

In fact, what is even more cunning is that the product cannot determine whether the user has actually shared the WeChat group. Even if you share it with WeChat friends, it will be judged that your sharing is successful.

But the bet is that most users will share it in WeChat groups.

It is conceivable that you will not get the 5.88 yuan the next time you open the red envelopes - because the amount of the red envelopes you open later is getting lower and lower.

Most people lost interest after sharing 3 to 4 times in a row, and the 5.88 yuan fee was not incurred.

A very exciting, yet very cunning way to “drive old users to share.”

06

From the perspective of business ethics, this does involve deceiving users, but from the perspective of user growth, there are many ideas worth learning. First, you can quickly get a "superficial" red envelope of 5.88 yuan, which gives you the pleasure of getting the money, lets down your guard, and then drives you to share.

When driving you to share, you are only given one sharing channel, allowing you to reduce your choices and quickly share and open the red envelope.

When you open it, you find that it is not the full 5.88 yuan, but only part of the money. At this time, you will be reminded that you are close to getting the full 5.88 yuan, and you may get it all if you continue to share.

Although they may feel a little tricked, most users will continue to choose to share.

This time we have changed your sharing channel, and we hope you will share it in the WeChat group chat.

Then they will keep tricking you into sharing for the third or even fourth time, covering as many WeChat friends, WeChat group chats, and WeChat Moments as possible.

The sharing value of users has been squeezed out, and if users want to receive the full 5.88 yuan, there is still a certain distance.

In this way, old users were driven to complete a low-cost communication and promotion.

Of course, you don’t have to be so cunning as this method, after all, it’s a bit too routine. You still need to learn from this idea and the details based on the actual situation of your products and users, and increase your users through more sincere driving methods.

Well, since there is a lot of content today, I will summarize it for you at the end:

First of all, the user growth team must be aware of encouraging old users to bring in new users, because this is the easiest breakthrough point for user growth.

The second is to drive old users, either by implanting the driving method into the product's usage links and scenarios to make it more natural, or by creating a sharing pool to get old users to play and have fun, and ultimately complete the sharing action.

In the driving process, the driving benefits given to old users must be sufficient and targeted; the sharing frequency of old users, the targeting of sharing scenarios, and the hooks for old users to share should be increased as much as possible.

The "hook" must be sharp enough. In order to hook a large number of users.

It is necessary to monitor the quality of old users who bring in new users, set withdrawal thresholds, control budgets, and prevent freeloaders.

In addition, all of this requires some care and attention to details to maximize the effect.

Finally, when it comes to user growth, we still have to be able to accept the idea of ​​using profits to drive user dissemination and attract new users. It doesn’t mean that users attracted by interests are bad. Many times, we need to use interests as a means to penetrate the circle of users.

Okay, that’s all I have to say today about “driving old customers to bring in new customers to share”. In the future, I will also bring you more practical user growth case studies.

Author: Liu Weidong, authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: Liu Weidong's Operation Notes