Taobao’s Double Eleven operation routines, why are users willing to share?

In 2018, Double Eleven is about to celebrate its 10th birthday. Double Eleven is here again. Are you single again this year?

No one cares about this anymore. Double Eleven is like a national disco . Everyone is rushing to participate in the Double Eleven energy-gathering red envelope grabbing event . In the past few days, the Moments and WeChat have been flooded with messages asking for likes.

However, the gameplay of this Double Eleven seemed a bit complicated. I asked a few friends, but none of them could answer it right away. This aroused my curiosity even more, and I decided to take a look at its game mechanics.

1. Energy Collection Gameplay

The main themes this time are:

Tmall’s Double Eleven event will share 1 billion!

Double 11 partners, team up to compete for popularity!

Phase 1: Gaining Energy (October 20-November 9)

Phase 2: Energy Exchange Red Packet (November 10-November 11)

100 energy can be exchanged for a 1 yuan red envelope. The more energy you have, the bigger the red envelope you can get. So how do you get energy? Let us give a brief introduction.

1. Check-in: Users can obtain energy through activities on Taobao Mobile , Tmall Mobile, and Alibaba Digital Economy channels (Youku, Fliggy, Ele.me , AutoNavi Maps, etc.), with a maximum energy limit of 100 per day;

2. Sign in - open the partner status, sign in to get energy, the essence is to attract customers to visit the store, the energy limit is 50/day;

3. PK - 5-person team PK popularity, the system randomly assigns, and a certain amount of energy is required as an entry ticket. Ask friends to like to help win energy.

What is the purpose of all the hard work? As of 23:00:00 on October 31, 2018, the current team members of the 11 teams with the highest team energy will have the opportunity to win the Empty Shopping Cart Grand Prize (face value of 49,999 yuan). Wow, that's great.

2. Gamification of Activities

Why has this model become something that people are willing to talk about and share? The essence is similar to the gamification of activities.

First of all, it is clear that the definition of games is very broad, and it not only refers to computer and mobile phone games , etc. Just like some people think that playing e-sports is a game, some people think that cooking is a game, and even reading and writing are a kind of game. In other words, games are simply things that arouse human interest.

Having clarified this point, we can look at the game from a broad sense. This PK popularity and energy gaining is also a kind of game.

Users can get likes from their friends by sharing links, and then compete with other teams. In this seemingly simple game process, we can analyze and understand the user's psychological motivations from two perspectives.

One is the initiator, who shares the link to seek help, which is nothing more than to swipe the personal account with a clear purpose, which is to obtain the game rewards.

The other is the recipient. By liking a post for a friend, I can help my friend with just a little effort. Moreover, I can also ask the other party to like my post in return. This model is similar to the "Mutual Aid Group for Moms to Like Posts for Their Babies".

3. Why do we love games?

There are two important reasons why games are fun:

1. Clear rules

There are gray areas in reality, but the rules of the game are extremely clear. For example, when playing rock-paper-scissors, you play scissors and the other person plays paper, and if you win you get a reward. But this is not the case in reality. At work, you need to guess and assume, which consumes a lot of energy. The game mechanism brings us more certainty and even a sense of conquest.

2. Instant Feedback

Games are about instant feedback, reality is about delayed feedback. In the game, as long as you kill monsters, you can get gold coins and experience, and then you can buy equipment to upgrade. In reality, you have to wait a month to get your performance bonus. We often encourage ourselves to set a small goal for ourselves first. In fact, this is to get immediate feedback on our efforts during this period. Psychologically, immediate feedback means the end of the previous process and the beginning of the next stage. Dividing time into segments will make our psychological burden less heavy. This is how we understand the importance of stage exams.

4. Low-threshold participation mechanism

Low threshold and simple operation are the necessary qualities to become a popular product. The best product managers strive for this all the time. Although Tmall’s PK popularity and likes activity looks complicated, the mechanism for user participation is very simple. You just need to share the link, and even a large number of WeChat groups dedicated to mutual likes have been spawned.

But if you think about it carefully, hey, isn’t this just the activity of collecting likes and winning coupons from a few years ago? Get XX likes and you can redeem a cup of milk tea. It’s just that this time the content is richer, and there are more ways to play and more brands .

The biggest core advantage of Internet products over offline ones is that they can be participated in anytime and anywhere, taking advantage of fragmented time.

We always seem to be busy every day, but in fact we are not too busy. Taking five to ten minutes to go to the toilet, or taking a break to smoke a cigarette on the balcony, these fragmented times are exactly where these small games and videos come in handy. I used to call them "light entertainment."

Unlike immersive entertainment, which requires a lot of continuous time to give you a satisfying experience , light entertainment just hopes that you can take a break from your busy schedule to see me every day. The former is like the principal wife, while the latter is more like a mistress. However, being a principal wife sometimes makes people feel exhausted because you have to give and be responsible for too much, while this sensible mistress fully understands the unspoken rules of adults and does not cling to her, but instead makes people addicted.

5. Social Currency

The above are just casual remarks, the following one is more interesting.

Think back, have you ever had this experience: an old friend whom you haven’t seen for many years sent you a message asking for likes, and you didn’t reject it, and were even happy to accept it. The last time a similar situation occurred was during Ele.me’s lucky-win takeaway red envelope event. Before that, it was probably during the summer when Pinxixi was popular, when it was still called Pinduoduo.

The sharing mechanism of the event has become a currency to strengthen communication between people, which is an expected and unexpected gain from this Tmall event. When this game model is widely accepted by the public and becomes a currency in interpersonal communication, its influence will naturally begin to expand infinitely.

Most of us have no regular experience to learn from in this regard. After all, this is a brand effect that has been generated from the brand assets accumulated over a long period of time. If we try to imitate it forcibly, we can only do so behind closed doors. In the end, we have to say helplessly that it is because it is Alibaba .

Summary: From the perspective of phenomenon

1. Try to keep the threshold for participation low

For Internet products, if you want to build a platform rather than a service, try to make the participation threshold low and not require the user group to spend too much time and energy to participate, just like Didi Taxi , Meituan Takeout , etc. They also have a common feature, which is the uncertainty of the user group, which also makes them destined to build a platform rather than a service.

2. Let your users help you find your user base

This model is like a manufacturer looking for distributors. You cannot find a large number of users directly, but you can easily find agent distributors who do not require any responsibility or cost investment, and let them help you sell your products. In fact, most of the seemingly novel ways of playing have an underlying methodology, which is nothing more than a turtle in disguise. What really impresses users is the quality and nutrition of the turtle's meat, not whether it is a domestic green shell or a wild gray shell.

3. Help users hide facts they don’t want to admit

I believe everyone has heard the positioning story of Nestlé. Drinking instant coffee is not because of laziness but to spend more time doing other more meaningful things. In fact, human nature is lazy, but no one really doesn’t care if others think he is lazy. The same is true for being cheap.

Phenomena are not seen as clues to the truth, but we seem to have no other clues. ——Compton

at last

There are many ways to teach you how to do marketing , and there are many ways to mobilize user emotions, but they are all methods that exist in textbooks. A point of view that I always believe in is to analyze specific issues specifically. There are many reasons for the success of Tmall’s marketing strategy this time. The reasons above the water are just the tip of the iceberg. We must admit that even if this is a social activity planned and participated in by humans, there will be reasons that humans cannot predict or even do not know at all. In other words, we must believe in chance, rather than blindly believe in authority. All we can do is get as close to the truth as possible, do our best and leave the rest to fate.

On November 1st, Tmall will start a new round of games. Double 11 partners can start preparing to form teams to challenge miracles. Xiaohei groups will also launch coupons for friends to group buy. What will be the routine this time?

Source: Mutu and Mumu (ID: mutuyumumu)