Operational analysis: Lian Coffee’s “online takeaway + social fission”!

Unless you have a huge end-line supply chain or are committed to serving consumers in third- and fourth-tier cities, do not regard conversion fission as the basic traffic model for your product, and don’t even think about getting rich overnight through fission.

The reason for this is that Pinduoduo-style conversion fission always faces the pervasive wool party :

• First, when the gathering of wool parties continues to hit the cost bottom line, the platform cannot provide enough subsidies to maintain the attractiveness of fission;
• Second, it is impossible to screen out enough qualified traffic from the freeloaders.

Products that have risen through fission, such as Pinduoduo, Qutoutiao , MiYa Pintuan ( mini program ), Mogujie (mini program), etc., without exception, are not clearly distinguished between their users and freeloaders, and their supply chains can also provide enough cheap and affordable goods or services to take over and digest these freeloaders.

What this means is that mid- to high-end brands , or products whose target group is not the bargain hunters, should stop dreaming of "fission."

The slap in the face came so quickly. Recently, due to work needs, I conducted detailed research on the new coffee retail giant "Lian Coffee", and suddenly I felt a black screen in front of my eyes.

There are no low-end brands in the coffee retail industry. Currently, the three major players are "Lian Coffee", "Luckin Coffee" and " Starbucks ". The core model of "Lian Coffee" is "online food delivery + social fission ", and "fission" is its main source of traffic.

In the mid-to-high-end and first-tier cities, there is no so-called last-line supply chain, but they have made great success in fission and have become the leading players in new retail in a short period of time .

I put aside my almost destroyed preconceived views and rethought this social monster.

Lian Coffee’s social gameplay

Let’s take a quick look at how Lian Coffee plays fission:

1. Pocket Cafe: Gamified Distribution

"Pocket Cafe" is an activity launched on the mini program. Through this activity, everyone can open their own online cafe and decide the decoration, design and merchandise of the cafe.

If this is just a small dress-up game, it can already achieve good fission propagation by leveraging users' self-display. However, this activity also has the function of converting sales.

After designing the store, you can choose the products to put on the shelves for sale. The products on the shelves can be sold for real, and the price is 10 yuan lower than the official price. Initially, only some flagship products can be put on the shelves. After selling a few cups, some new SKUs will be gradually unlocked. Now the version has been revised, this advanced gameplay has been cancelled, and all SKUs are directly open.

For every cup of coffee sold, you can get 10 points of Internet celebrity index (honor ranking) and 2 yuan fund (cash discount for purchase). In the past, 0.1 cup of growth coffee would be given away, but now it seems to have been cancelled.

In addition, there are many additional ways to play, such as: various business rankings such as the Internet celebrity index, "Celebrity Hall" where a group of celebrities have opened stores to help spread the word, and "Nearby Halls" which are recommended based on geographic location, which has a bit of the flavor of stranger social interaction.

On the first day of the campaign, the number of clicks reached 4.2 million, and a total of 520,000 coffee shops were opened, of which more than 10% achieved real sales. The most ordinary users sold in a single day was more than 200 cups of coffee, which was an amazing conversion rate.

2. Lucky Bag: Alternative Red Packet Sharing

Every time a user places an order, he or she can share a lucky bag to his or her circle of friends . Each lucky bag contains dozens of different types of coupons, universal coffee, growth coffee and other rewards. If the number of people who draw the lucky bag reaches a certain number, the initiator will also receive an extra 0.1 cup of Growth Coffee.

The basic logic is similar to sharing red envelopes after placing an order on Ele.me , Didi , etc., but it is more advanced and has added new features such as universal coffee and growth coffee. Compared with coupons that are not very suitable for attracting new customers, it is more universal.

In addition, users can draw a lucky bag once a week, which is equivalent to adding a check-in function for active users.

3. Group buying: Attract new customers with a price of 1 yuan, which is not low at all

The way to play group buying is very conventional. One is the "1 yuan old and new customer acquisition group". Because the cost of coffee is low and the gross profit is high, compared with the 1 yuan new customer acquisition games played by general e-commerce companies , the new customer acquisition of Lian Coffee is more impressive and seems more affordable.

The other is the regular group purchase, where you can buy 5 cups directly at a preferential price, store them in the coffee library and have them delivered whenever you want.

4. Coffee Library: Monetized Social

Coffee Library and Growth Coffee connect all social gameplays together through the monetization of rewards, which can be stored, given away, and traded, forming a membership growth system born for social interaction.

Lian Coffee, the word "Lian" really lives up to its reputation.

Lian Coffee’s Fission Logic

01

Previously, my conclusion was:

Without the wool-collecting party, the fission will not be a big deal, and with the wool-collecting party, no one can bear the fission. Unless you are like Pinduoduo, and treat the "wool party" as your users, and the "wool party" not only takes advantage of you but also likes to buy your things, you can still make money.

Are there any freeloaders participating in the split of Lian Coffee?

Let’s first take a look at what kind of people the wool party is. I have a relative who lives in a second-tier city. She is a housewife, unemployed and stays at home taking care of her second child. He lived an extremely frugal life, and the clothes he wore basically did not cost more than 100 yuan. He was keen on bargaining on Pinduoduo and participating in the "Try the APP and Get Red Packets" activity on Xiaomi Mall. He downloaded the APP every day to get a red packet of a few cents and then uninstalled it. He did this again the next day, and did this every day. Little by little, he actually earned more than 100 yuan. When buying things online, most people go to Pinduoduo.

Would such a user buy a cup of coffee for 27 yuan?

Freeloaders: I won’t drink it. I won’t drink it in my entire life. Let alone 27 per cup. I won’t drink it even at 17. I won’t drink it even at 7. Is it free? Give me a few more drinks.

Therefore, for something like coffee, 1 yuan plus 5 yuan for shipping will not attract people to buy it on the cheap, because they don’t have such demand.

Of course there will be people who come to take advantage of the situation, but those who come to take advantage of the situation do not necessarily represent the wool party.

• Wool Party: I am here to take advantage of you. If there is no advantage, I will not come.
• Those who are looking for free stuff but not those who are into free stuff: I have the demand and spending power, but I am still happy to take advantage of you.

02

The reason why it is said that "fission will not be successful without the wool party" is because fission requires dissemination, and the wool party is a group with extremely strong dissemination ability. No matter which product traditional e-commerce chooses to tempt customers, its demand density is always limited, and it must rely on the wool party to maintain sufficient dissemination density.

In first-tier cities, although coffee is not a necessity, everyone enjoys it and it is highly common. “1+6 yuan shipping fee” for a cup of coffee, just move your finger and forward it. You can get a bargain, declare your consumption taste, and bring discounts to your friends. Why not?

03

Fission requires subsidies and the supply chain needs to keep up.

A water cup is clearly marked with a price of 30 yuan, but you charge 1 yuan to attract new customers. The cost is high and you will lose money. The coffee is clearly marked with a price of 30 yuan, but I make 1 yuan to attract new customers, all with a smile. Therefore, when e-commerce companies are doing fission, product selection is very important. They must look cheap, have no brand, and the price cannot be searched.

I believe everyone knows how low the cost of coffee is. Therefore, a product with a strong brand premium, such as coffee, can fully support fission subsidies, thereby firmly controlling its attractiveness.

04

The above three points all talk about why coffee retail is suitable for fission. But the wonderful “lian” of Lian Coffee is more due to the design of its fission itself.

Classic cases of fission often occur in terminal markets such as Pinduoduo, because conversion fission is mostly driven by "profit", and those who can be driven by small profits are naturally mostly end users. Mid- to high-end users don’t play the game, firstly because they can’t save face, and secondly because they don’t have the time.

However, although Lian Coffee's series of gameplay uses a similar fission logic, it has packaged a decent social driving force at the root of "profit".

Take the "Pocket Cafe" activity for example. Although it is distribution, it does not have a trace of "money smell". Most users who open coffee shops want to show themselves through personalized decoration, post to Moments, and ask friends to scan the QR code and visit. If they don’t need it, they can click “like”. If they have a subtle feeling, they can support the place and buy a cup. It’s not expensive anyway and there are discounts. It’s great to keep in touch.

Visit the goddess's cafe every day and spend some money there, maybe some stories will happen.

The business rankings and internet celebrity index utilize the social driving force of "showing off and comparing". When you sell several times more coffee without realizing it and see yourself on the rankings, you can't help but become interested. It is better to run the business seriously. It is always face-saving to compete for a ranking.

"Nearby Bar" is more like a social gathering with strangers. You can buy a few drinks from a girl you don't know. If there is a chat function, maybe some stories will happen.

Growth Coffee and Coffee Fund are more in line with the essence of distribution, replacing "money" with "vouchers". For new customers who do not have urgent needs, it is icing on the cake, and it is also harmless to old customers who care about their reputation.

In short, although it is the logic of distribution, what runs through the entire closed loop is not money, but social drivers such as personality, comparison, mutual benefit, and demand.

Although the gameplay of "grabbing lucky bags" shares the same logic as red envelope sharing on Ele.me, Didi, etc., the driving force behind its fission is much more diverse and exciting. Ele.me’s red envelopes are profit-oriented, and coupons are more effective in attracting new customers than in attracting new customers.

The prize setting for "grabbing the lucky bag" is very interesting: different types of coffee prizes represent different tastes, full of topics and drama; different types of prize gameplay (growth coffee, universal coffee, coffee fund) are full of fun games, diluting the embarrassment of being profit-driven; and the brand's own tone and taste, benchmarked against Starbucks's style, itself gives a certain show-off value to fission sharing.

The gameplay of "Coffee Library" sublimates the "art" of fission fragments into a system. All fission rewards become "coffee currency" that can be accumulated, traded and given away.

• On the one hand, you will not be unable to participate in the fission activity just because you do not need coffee temporarily. You can save the coffee and order it whenever you want.
• On the other hand, when your friend wants to drink coffee but finds that he is only 0.1 cup short of a free cup in his coffee library, he can call on the group and you can generously donate it to him. This is a win-win for both of you. I believe that the friendship will become more and more stable.

This kind of monetization gameplay is no longer a fission gameplay with clear rules, but has become a weak operation underlying mechanism that will spawn many exciting and unpredictable fission scenarios.

The "Lian" in Lian Coffee is everywhere, so the development and naming of new products are full of social sense. Interesting names such as "Universal Coffee", "Bulletproof Coffee", "Angry Pink Coconut Water", and "Angry Cold Brew" are believed to be able to become a fun landscape in the circle of friends.

Mind Map

In a brand like "Lian Coffee" that has the right time, place and people, there is no need to distinguish between the "dissemination" and "conversion" of fission. The social driving force is almost all-encompassing, and it can be regarded as an industry benchmark.

Source: Operation Dog Oliver