Case Study: 12 Gamification Strategies for User Growth

This article uses a case study to introduce how to achieve user growth through gamification design. The detailed growth strategy explains in detail the methods of daily active growth, new user growth, retention growth, and monetization growth.

When talking about user growth, we have to talk about a company called "Pinduoduo". What kind of growth strategy has allowed this company to reach 300 million active users in just three years, and in the near-monopoly industry of " e-commerce "?

If Apple's logic in making mobile phones is "adding a phone function to a computer", then Pinduoduo's logic in doing e-commerce is "adding a shopping scene to the game". Group buying, flash sales, bargaining, support, and lucky draws for users are all a game.

What users get is the money-saving experience brought by group buying, the social experience brought by invitations, the entertainment experience brought by assistance, and the surprise experience brought by lucky draws.

Therefore, Pinduoduo’s growth is most likely the result of “games vs. e-commerce”.

The only way to disrupt a giant in a stable industry is to introduce new species.

In addition to marketing functions, behind user growth is the complete operational results of attracting new users, retention, activity, and recall. Operation management among new users, active users and churned users.

Today, I will use a case study to illustrate how a business can be gamified.

Case: The company’s core business is K12 online education products. Live classes are its current core product, and its service model is to connect European and American English teachers with Chinese K2 students.

Goal: 30% user growth.

Strategy: The company is a newcomer in the field of education. Industry giants have more than 20 years of experience in English education. Therefore, if we start from optimizing the teaching staff, course content, and teaching experience, we are obviously challenging the strongest parts of the giants. Internet customer acquisition and user operations are obviously relatively weak parts of the giants. The strategy level considers starting with user operations.

Positioning: There are two ways to acquire customers: advertising and content. The essence of advertising is to spend money to buy users. This is also an uncompetitive strategy among giants, so the positioning is "content acquisition".

No student will take the initiative to sign up for cram school. Learning is anti-human, so where does "content acquisition" start? What kind of content do students like? Will you take the initiative to participate?

1. Thinking Logic

1. The users of live classes are K12 students, and the core users are children between 6 and 15 years old. Will children of this age group take the initiative to sign up for tutoring courses for themselves? This is the core reason why the cost of acquiring courses in online education is high, because users’ natural aversion leads to high conversion costs.

2. If students want to sign up actively, they will be in those scenarios. The answer is games. Therefore, the core of the problem lies in how to combine games and courses, stimulate students' enthusiasm for playing games and embed the content of purchasing live courses.

2. Game Strategy

If we look at the top 10 children's games at present, and refer to "Rock Kingdom", "Seer", "Legend of Ochi", etc., we can design a game with the theme of " Crazy Zoo ". Children can build their own zoo by rescuing small animals, such as dinosaurs, tigers, lions, dolphins, penguins, peacocks, etc.

Then classmates come to visit their own zoo to get rewards and a sense of honor. Grabbing treasure chests, unexpected rewards, and saving animals in the game interaction all bring children controlled entertainment and unexpected surprises.

The game embeds classroom tasks through the role of the teacher. For example, you have to take a live class with the teacher to get the "smart key", and you can use the "smart key" to unlock the door and rescue the animals.

3. Growth Strategy

1. How to increase daily active users?

Strategy 1: Anchoring the core currency strategy; we embed a virtual currency "magic liquid" in this game. "Magic liquid" is needed to rescue each small animal. For example, it takes 30 magic liquids to rescue a giraffe, 300 magic liquids to rescue a tiger, and 400 magic liquids to rescue a crocodile.

Strategy 2: Sign-in strategy; you can get a certain amount of magic liquid by signing in every day, such as 5 magic liquids.

Strategy three: Loss strategy; if you don’t sign in today, your 5 magic liquids will be “picked up” by others. Of course, you can also go to other people’s zoo gates every day to pick up unclaimed “magic liquids”.

Strategy 4: Lottery strategy; there will be a chance to draw a lottery every day, which may be magic liquid, wisdom key, class card, red envelope, etc.

Summary : The purpose of daily active users is to allow users to complete tasks every day, to develop a strong awareness and preference for our products, content, and brand , and to become active users and paying users after a certain period of time. In terms of game psychology, we use a stable sense of gain, a sense of random surprise, and a fear of loss to stimulate users to participate every day.

2. How to attract new customers?

Strategy 5: Invitation strategy; invite a new user to visit your zoo, and you can get 50 magic liquids; invite a new user to attend a live class, and you can get 300 magic liquids.

Strategy six: Group strategy; form a team to rescue the tiger, each tiger only consumes 250 magic liquid.

Strategy seven: Bargaining strategy; for students who sign up for live classes, for example: 500 yuan can be shared on WeChat Moments to let more friends help bargain, and finally they can sign up for 400 yuan.

Strategy 8: Assistance strategy; the more people the special animals assist, the faster the rescue will be. For example, it would take 3 days to rescue a Tyrannosaurus Rex by one person, but it would only take 10 minutes if 10 children were invited to help.

Summary : Acquiring new users through old users and task settings is the core strategy for attracting new users, and this is the key to reducing customer acquisition costs. In the game design, we increased the weight of new users, so that new users can give more help to old users, such as: rewarding more magic liquid.

3. How to achieve retention growth?

Strategy 9: Competitive strategy; every day, the zoo that rescues the most small animals will be rewarded with 100 magic liquids; the zoo that receives the most visitors will be rewarded with 200 magic liquids; so more students will invite users to visit their zoos and rescue small animals.

Strategy 10: Ranking strategy; for example: make a ranking of which zoo has the most tigers, the most crocodiles, and the most peacocks; psychologically stimulate students to compare and complete tasks.

Strategy 11: Random treasure chest strategy; on the way to rescue the animals, treasure chests will be found randomly. This strategy can bring surprises and satisfaction to students at any time.

Strategy 12: Star strategy; everyone can give "stars" to their favorite zoos, similar to likes; the more stars accumulated, the higher the level of the zoo, the more complete the facilities. For example, visitors to high-level zoos can take trains and boats to visit, etc. Let your children have a sense of pride.

Summary : In terms of game psychology, retention is influenced by many things in society, such as comparisons among classmates, pride in having something that others don't, satisfaction from being liked by everyone, and showing off one's high level. Competition, rankings, celebrities and other strategies can satisfy these psychological needs of students very well.

4. How to achieve monetization growth?

Strategy Thirteen: Course Monetization; for example, to rescue a tiger, you need a key to open the cage. This key can only be given to students by the teacher during the live class, so every rescue by the students is actually a monetization of the live class.

Strategy 14: Marketing monetization; "class cards, coupons, discount coupons" etc. will be embedded in the treasure chest of the game, and students can directly deduct or reduce the fees when they sign up for classes, thereby improving the monetization conversion rate .

Strategy 15: Cash in on items; In addition to obtaining magic liquid by completing tasks, magic liquid can also be purchased with physical currency; for example, 100 magic liquids cost 1 yuan.

Summary : The key to improving monetization conversion rate is "logical and relevant", which is the greatest value of gamification design. Without a gamification scenario, the entire conversion model can only be advertising ( traffic ) - conversion (sales), and the consequence is high traffic costs and inefficient conversion rates.

Gamification is the core competitive advantage of this online education institution. Its teachers, courses, and experience have no advantages over those of established education institutions, and the switching cost for users is very low.

However, the roles, data, achievements, and social relationships established in the gamification scenario are difficult to migrate, and it is easy to expand the educational category through the main line of the game.

For example: in addition to English classes, Chinese classes, math classes, science classes, painting classes, etc. can all become part of gamification, which is very valuable in increasing single-user revenue.

Source: Mr Tang