How to build a p2p product operation strategy from 0 to 1?

Having been in the Internet finance industry for 5 years, he has participated in the 0-1 construction services of multiple Internet finance platforms. I have recently been reading Huang Tianwen’s book “Exploding User Growth ” and I have a lot of feelings about it.

The industry environment of Internet finance P2P platforms is changing rapidly nowadays, especially for small and medium-sized Internet finance platforms. The author felt deeply the pain during the process of participating in the 0-1 construction of the P2P platform. In addition to the abnormally high cost of building the platform infrastructure, the cost of acquiring users is also rising. Therefore, it is crucial to systematically design the user's growth path.

Here, based on the practical experience and data of these years, as well as reference to many excellent competing products, I would like to record and share what I think are the effective product operation strategies for building an Internet finance platform, for reference and discussion by my peers.

User Lifecycle

The picture and text are referenced from Huang Tianwen's "Exploding User Growth"

Internet users generally go through the stages shown in the figure above from the time they come into contact with an app to the time they eventually leave. This article mainly describes the product operation -level strategies starting from when users activate the app, and does not describe the traffic- level strategies.

Target user profile of mutual finance P2P

Combined with the research data of third-party new media , the platform data that the author has participated in, and the user research data of some competing products. The author believes that the profile of the target users of P2P mutual finance is roughly as follows: aged 25 or above, with a junior high school education or above, a white-collar employee, a private shop owner or a freelancer, with a balance of more than 50,000 yuan in their accounts available for financial management, a proactive and stable financial management preference, and a focus on shopping, travel, music, sports and health, cars , real estate, and the military.

Understanding user portraits, on the one hand, helps the channel department find promotion scenarios and delivery tags for target users; on the other hand, it also provides a certain reference value for the setting of material rewards during the product operation process.

Newbie transition period

1. Definition of novice users

According to the RFM model , the platform should define "newbies" through dimensions such as purchase amount, purchase time interval, and purchase frequency.

According to the author's data, those who meet one of the following conditions will be defined as [Newbies]:

1. No investment has been made since the registration date, or only trial gold products have been purchased;
2. Have never invested in ordinary targets, or the actual number of investments does not exceed 2 times (including novice privilege targets);
3. The cumulative investment amount is less than RMB 1,000.

2. Core goal: transaction conversion

When new users come into contact with a new platform, they generally need to perform a series of actions to understand the platform’s services and business processes. For new users to grow into old users, they often have to go through a learning phase, rather than just a certain node behavior .

When I was building a mutual finance P2P platform, I observed the behavioral trajectories of new users’ first transactions and found that more than 30% of new users had the following behavioral trajectories during their first transaction (data from Q1 2018, with historical platform data accounting for a larger proportion):

The user completes the trial fund investment > waits for the trial fund income to be paid back > applies for withdrawal, and the finance department completes the payment > generates the first real transaction

This shows that when users come into contact with a new Internet finance platform, they often have investment concerns, resulting in direct loss or small-amount trial investments. Therefore, it is impossible to define a user as a "non-novice" simply by completing a real investment. The specific reasons are described in detail below.

The core goal for new users at this stage is to enable them to quickly become familiar with the product business and achieve transaction conversion.

3. Main factors affecting the investment/churn of new users

1. Product yield (not meeting expectations);
2. Platform security (low visibility and low trust);
3. Product safety (not confident about the flow of investment funds and not understanding product risk control measures);
4. The users attracted by the channel are not highly matched with the target users (for example, moonlighters, college students, etc.);
5. Product experience (bugs, slow loading, inability to operate, complicated activity rules, etc.).

4. Operational strategies during the transition period for newbies

(1) Use innovative marketing tools such as [financial management experience bonus] to lower users’ psychological threshold for investment

Note: Giving away trial money may lead to the platform being "fleeced" to a certain extent, but the author believes that for small and medium-sized platforms, it is worthwhile to obtain real-name users through experience money investment in terms of increasing the user base of small and medium-sized platforms and the cost value of converting real-name authenticated users.

Because users at this stage can follow up and convert through customer service and push marketing tools, and when data is abnormal, the platform can also achieve cost control by setting thresholds for withdrawing experience money.

(2) Set up new user privilege products, that is, common new user privilege labels, to stimulate user conversion

Note: For products with novice privileges, the author recommends that the platform set up at least two types of products with different maturities, and set up one trading permission for each term to meet the investment needs of users in different situations.

Because novice users generally fall into two categories: those with P2P investment experience and those without P2P investment experience. The former values ​​high returns more than short-term terms. As for the latter, when the platform only has a one-term novice privilege product, there is often a tendency to make tentative investments and miss out on the high-yield privileges granted by the platform to new users, resulting in a bad investment experience.

(3) Set up product page information that can be flexibly configured (at least the first-level page)

Note: Displaying different page information to users at different stages helps guide the user process. Based on the causes of user loss during the novice period, the product page information display mainly displays two core information, [Benefits] and [ Brand ], to new users to reduce the interference of other information.

At the same time, the first-level page must have visual [strong action points] to further stimulate users to click, such as the registration button and pop-up button shown below.

Note: The background and team situations of different platforms are different, so no examples of platform background packaging are given here.

(4) Set up novice tasks, combine task incentives and interface guidance to improve user operation efficiency and shorten user investment intervals

Note: Task-based design is a gamification -like operation approach. For any [task] involving core nodes, the [task incentive] needs to be notified on the page before and after the task, and the [strong action points] on the page need to be used for operational guidance.

Take the following figure as an example:

Note: The example in the above picture uses [Experience Gold] as the core incentive. This method can increase the user's purchase frequency during the novice period. As the frequency increases, the user's retention rate and conversion rate will also increase. The rewards during the novice period are distributed passively .

(5) When describing the underlying assets of a financial product, the core content of the product should be disclosed as detailed as possible.

Note: For start-ups and small and medium-sized Internet finance platforms, in the absence of strong background, large user base, long operation time and other information endorsements, they can strengthen the security information description of their products on the product side to enhance investment confidence. For example, they can disclose the capital flow, risk control measures and loan information (desensitized) of the underlying assets as much as possible to emphasize the risk control capabilities of their platforms.

Take the following figure as an example:

(6) Prevent and promptly recover lost users

According to the completion nodes of users' novice tasks, we use the customer service team and push marketing tools to build a follow-up conversion mechanism for novice users to prevent and promptly recover lost users.

For example, the following figure:

Illustration Description:

1. The push time period is based on the platform's specific user active time period data. According to the data I have, it is generally between 9am and 10pm.
2. The push priority is 1>2>3>4>5>6. When pushing, the mobile phone number is "de-duplicated". If the number has been pushed on the same day, it will not be sent again;
3. If the platform supports WeChat template messages, the push logic is the same as PUSH, and the newbie task setting of following the service account is also based on this purpose;
4. Android 5.0 and above systems need to purchase a third-party VIP push service to complete offline push. The tool I often use is Jiguang Push, which currently only supports offline message push from some mainstream mobile phone manufacturers (Xiaomi, Huawei, Meizu);
5. The platform needs to independently develop the specific push copy and language, and the guiding behavior should be described in a targeted manner according to the stage of task completion for novices. For customers with potential conversion intentions, it is necessary to continue to follow up within a period of time!
6. The push notifications at this stage also include [product push messages], which are described in detail in the [mature stage] user push strategy.

User growth period

1. Definition of Growth-stage Users

Based on the definition of a novice, a user who meets one of the following conditions is a growth-stage user:

1. The actual investment is more than 2 times and less than 6 times;
2. The cumulative purchase amount is greater than 1,000 yuan.

Core goal: Increase transaction frequency

Huang Tianwen mentioned in his book "Exploding User Growth" that there are two magic numbers for user retention :

1. The user's reinvestment rate increases by more than 30%;
2. Once a user completes five investments, he or she will become "loyal" and the retention rate will increase to over 60%.

The data from different industries may differ, but for users entering the growth stage, the platform’s core goal is still to increase the frequency of users’ purchases. The common practice is to cross-recommend products, give coupons after purchase, etc., first increase the consumption frequency of a single category, and then direct traffic to other categories.

In the P2P Internet finance industry, due to license restrictions, it is a common phenomenon that the financial products of most platforms are single. During the user's growth stage, the author's main approach is to focus on guiding users to complete the purchase conversion of ordinary targets as quickly as possible.

3. Main factors affecting user investment/churn in the growth stage

1. Product yield (yield is lower than competitors, has better investment direction (in bull market), lacks corresponding incentives due to anchor psychology in the novice period);
2. The users attracted by the channel are not highly matched with the target users (e.g. wool customers);
3. The APP does not trigger users frequently enough, and users do not develop financial management habits;
4. Product experience (bugs, slow loading, inability to operate, complicated activity rules, etc.).

4. Growth stage operation strategy

(1) Set a reward level between beginner activities and regular activities

The commonly used methods are as follows:

Coupons after purchase: In the novice task system shown in the above picture, the task of "investing 5 times" actually means that after the user completes 2 novice standard investments and uses the experience money, he or she can receive cash discount coupons for ordinary products.

Additional notes:

1. On the one hand, such a setting allows users to connect to the reinvestment reward plan after they have passed the novice period; on the other hand, the operator can set the threshold and face value for receiving discount coupons based on the user's cumulative investment amount range during the novice period to ensure the applicability of the coupon face value threshold to users.
2. The rewards during the growth stage are cash coupons, which require users to actively invest before they can be "cashed in". Therefore, users' willingness to use will be much lower than trial coupons. In this case, the method of issuing cash coupons needs to be different from the method of issuing rewards during the novice period, and the method of [user active collection] should be adopted. This method can enhance users' judgment on the value of cash coupons and increase the utilization rate of cash coupons. There are many ways to take the initiative.

The following figure is based on the previous flipping methods:

Establish a separate reinvestment-exclusive activity: By setting up a separate interest rate increase activity for reinvestment of repayments, or sending coupons to users who have completed the investment in novice products, you can stimulate them to further reinvest.

(2) Reversely optimize channel traffic to avoid freeloaders

Note: By collaborating with the traffic department, based on the reinvestment data of users after the novice period, reversely guide the channel traffic department's delivery strategy and introduce accurate users with a better matching user profile.

(3) Use customer service teams and push marketing tools to continuously trigger users

For example, the following figure:

Note: The push notifications at this stage also include [Product Push Messages], which are described in the [Mature Stage] User Push Strategy.

User maturity

1. Definition of mature users

A user who meets any of the following conditions is considered a mature user:

1. The number of real product investments exceeds 5 times;
2. The cumulative purchase amount is greater than 5,000 yuan.

Core goal: Improve APRU value

When a user enters the mature stage, his or her actual investment times are at least more than 5 times, which means that he or she has established trust in the platform.

For users at this stage, the core goal is to increase the APRU value, mainly in the following aspects:

1. Increase user transaction frequency;
2. Increase the average customer price per investment;
3. Leverage users’ social connections to attract new customers .

3. Main factors affecting investment/churn of mature users

1. Product yield (yield is lower than competing products, there are better investment products (in bullish stock market), etc.);
2. Platform security (downward risks in the industry environment, negative news about the platform, etc.);
3. The APP does not trigger users frequently enough, and users do not develop financial management habits;
4. Product experience (bugs, slow loading, inability to operate, complicated activity rules, etc.).

4. Mature stage operation strategy

For mature users, in my opinion, unless the industry environment is downward, operations in the mature stage are more about solving not the trust problem, but the [usage habit] problem, that is, establishing the user's financial management habits. The best way to build habits is repetition, and the process of repetition is also the process of building a brand in the hearts of users.

Therefore, for mature users, if the platform wants to help them establish habits, it needs to give users more reasons to open the app.

Through the author's research, small and medium-sized platforms can build operational strategies for [mature users] through the following dimensions (the author has not had time to verify some of the following methods online, so they are only provided for reference):

(1) Build the platform's [regular activity system] (activity system other than novice period activities)

The benefits of building a regular activity system:

• On the one hand, it can effectively reduce the education cost of each user's participation in an activity and the R&D cost of the platform;
• On the other hand, activities cooperate with each other. Under the premise that the overall rate is controllable, users can drive the growth of different indicators by participating in different types of activities.

The author describes them according to the type of activities:

Active activities: The purpose of this type of activity is to encourage mature users to continue opening the app by giving away cash equivalents. The financial industry is not like O2O or e-commerce . The consumption frequency is relatively low. Usually, in the absence of promotional functions or activities, user activity retention is generally within 3 days (more than 90%) . [Sign in] is a widely used method, and nowadays the forms of sign in have evolved into various forms.

After the author's research, three methods are recommended for mutual financial platforms:

1. Early-morning check-in challenge - Example ( JD Finance ): Users open the app at a specified time every day to get a check-in reward;
2. Exercise step challenge - Example (ZhongAn Insurance): Users can get a check-in reward by completing a specified number of steps;
3. Cumulative sign-in in a week - Example (PPMONEY): The user accumulates the number of days they open the APP in a week and obtains the corresponding check-in reward.

The first two sign-in methods combine "financial management" with an "active and healthy" lifestyle . On the one hand, they establish a mechanism for clocking in in the morning and evening (early clocking in means that users have to open the APP in the morning, while step clocking in means that users have to open the APP in the evening); on the other hand, they fit the user portrait. "Pursuing beauty and avoiding pain" is human instinct, which can more effectively drive user participation.

The last method, by setting up periodic rewards at shorter time intervals, can also effectively stimulate users to keep signing in. As for the form of rewards, it can be flexibly set according to the platform's cost budget, such as issuing different types of coupons (experience money, interest rate coupons, discount coupons).

Transaction activities: The purpose of this type of activity is to find the time when users have money or expect to consume (for example, capital recovery during the Chinese New Year, salary payments at the beginning and middle of each month, holidays that can generate consumption behavior, etc.), and achieve the effect of investment conversion by providing material incentives to users. When designing such activities, [scope of users to whom the rules apply], [incentive measures] and [sense of participation] are the most important factors.

The author recommends the following methods for mutual financial platforms:

• Salary financial management plan - Example ( Tencent Wealth Management ): Users set up a fixed investment plan, and at a fixed time every month, a corresponding amount is deducted from the account to invest in online products. The longer the user's fixed investment period, the higher the additional income they will enjoy;
• Double 11 investment bonus - Example (Yingying Financial Management): rewards different physical products (3C products, home textiles, cash and other categories with high user acceptance) based on the user's cumulative investment amount during the event period;

Additional note: The product term of small and medium-sized platforms is relatively short. If you want to obtain physical prizes, the investment amount required is relatively high. Through historical data observation, the direct activity interest rate increase method can also achieve good results.

• Monthly payday - Example (Renren Aijia): that is, according to the user's purchase ranking of a single product, set the corresponding reward amount, generally for the TOP3 and last purchasing users, to enhance the user's sense of participation in the investment process and increase the average investment order value.

Activities to attract new users: The purpose of this type of activities is to attract new users through users’ social relationships. For mature users, their trust in the platform has been initially established, and they are more willing to recommend or expose the platform to other users.

When designing such an event, [reward amount] and [reward sustainability] are important factors:

• MiZhuang Partners - Example (MiZhuang Financial Management): Users can get a cash reward and continuous rebates on their friends' investment income by inviting them.
• Friends help raise interest rates - Example (Yingying Financial Management/Youxuan Financial Management): that is, users can send support links to WeChat friends every day, and increase the face value of interest rate coupons with the help of friends, so as to achieve the purpose of social communication exposure for the platform.

(2) Explore more diverse financial transaction scenarios

For example: PPMONEY and Lazy Investment's [0 Yuan Purchase] combines users' financial management scenarios and consumption scenarios, weakens financial concepts such as financial management yield, and uses the display logic of product purchases to allow users to complete impulsive investments in the form of [deposit money to get products, and get extra interest when due] (according to competitor data, female users are more enthusiastic about this). This model can often drive sales of the platform's long-term flagship products.

Note: When it comes to productization, similar to the [Fixed Investment Function] mentioned above, it can be achieved through the core logic of [Appointment Investment] (withholding bank card funds - freezing user balance - matching assets - investing balance).

(3) Continuously create platform [positive topics]

In his book Addicted, Nir Eyal mentioned the concept of "feedback triggering", which is to put the product in the spotlight and bring in user influx through positive media exposure. But please note: this form of trigger must be [continuous].

For small and medium-sized Internet finance platforms, in the absence of a strong background, new media operators can continuously create platform information and user interaction topics, such as: actively participating in industry conferences, regularly disclosing employee dynamics, shaping user stories and topics, holding offline salons and meet-ups, etc. Especially when the industry environment is downward, positive information exposure can enhance investment confidence and thus reduce user churn.

Additional note: When the author was writing this article, the P2P industry was experiencing the largest thunderstorm in history. The net outflow of funds in the industry was increasing day by day, and the top-ranked companies were all using this method to recover lost users. For example: the recent [ 51 Credit Card successfully listed], [PPMONEY Internet Finance Association re-election], [Yingying Financial Investor Meeting], [Weidian.com founder live Q&A], etc.

(4) Build a complete push mechanism

The push notifications for mature users are mainly for the core business links of the APP. The purpose is to timely promote the news related to the users' vital interests and to a certain extent cultivate the users' habit of opening the APP every day.

For mutual financial platforms, there are mainly the following push scenarios:

Remark:

1. Manual push planning for daily activities is not considered here;
2. When setting up push notifications, flexibly utilizing the unread message display labels on the APP can effectively improve the efficiency of opening PUSH. For example: When Autohome sends a PUSH message on May 20, the unread message indicator of the APP will change to "520".

In addition, building a membership level system for users is often an operation method provided by the platform to mature users. However, the author does not recommend that small and medium-sized platforms try this method when building product operation strategies from 0 to 1. The main considerations are as follows:

1. Membership systems often require operators to figure out the actual definition criteria for each level, but startups, developing platforms, and mature platforms have different definitions of user value, so the levels will also be different. Once membership levels are established, they should not be easily changed.
2. Consider carefully what kind of [effective services] the platform can provide for users of different levels, because the essence of shaping a hierarchical system is to give users psychological elements such as [a sense of honor] and [identity recognition] through a series of [identifications], [services] and [privileges], thereby stimulating users to grow to a higher level. However, the prerequisite for achieving this is to first fully understand the core demands of users of different levels on the platform, and at the same time combine the actual service capabilities of competitors and the platform, abstract privileges and service elements, and consider exposure scenarios for level identities. If effective services cannot be provided, the rating system is mostly just the platform's self-entertainment.

User decline period

1. Definition of churn warning users

There are two types of lost users: one is the loss of new users (including the [Novice Period] and [Growth Period] mentioned above); the other is the loss of old users.

Combined with the user churn factors mentioned above, I generally focus on users who have the following situations:

1. No transactions have occurred within 3 days from the date of registration;
2. After the payment is received, the account balance is 0 and no investment is made within 3 days;
3. The current holdings have dropped by more than 50% from their historical maximum

2. Core goals: early warning and recovery

During the user decline period, the core issue to be solved is how to promptly detect and recover lost users. The causes and solutions for user loss are also listed in the [Novice Period], [Growth Period] and [Mature Period] mentioned above.

The financial industry is an industry where the 80/20 rule is very obvious, that is, users who contribute core value to the platform's profits are often a minority of 20%. This section mainly describes how to identify lost users and prioritize their recovery.

3. Strategy for recovering lost users

1. Based on the cost of acquiring user investment, the cost and difficulty of retaining old users are much lower than those of new users. Therefore, in terms of retention priority, old users > new users. At the same time, under the premise of limited resources, the assets to be collected are recovered from the user's historical highest amount from high to low.
2. The detailed recall strategy will not be elaborated here. There are many ways to do this online, and the most important method is still telephone recall, combined with the push mentioned above.

Additional note: During a recall, the key to solving the churn problem is to discover the causes of the churn. You can refer to the description above for targeted solutions.

Final Thoughts

This article aims to help platforms that have not yet formed systematic operations and provide reference for their product and operation colleagues. The above methods and approaches were partially proven to be effective in the process of building the platform, and partially proven to be effective when researching competitor data. The prototype demos used in this article are partly historical projects and partly projects that are planned to be launched.

In addition, the author has personally experienced the P2P industry of Internet finance from its inception to its rapid explosion, and then from its explosion to the current industry reshuffle. It is true that most of the exposed platforms are problematic platforms, but there are also a few conscientious platforms that were forced to liquidate due to industry turmoil and liquidity problems.

In fact, any financial instrument has risks. We hope that the relevant media can look at this industry crisis and the financial nature of P2P rationally, and not deliberately create and spread panic.