In-depth | Talk about the operational strategy of AARRR model in e-commerce marketing activities

The " AARRR Model " is a concept mentioned by Fan Bing in " Growth Hacker ". It can reflect the depth and type of user participation behavior in different stages and is a typical funnel structure. After users are introduced into the first layer, they will be lost layer by layer in the following steps and finally achieve conversion .

Therefore, optimizing products and operational strategies based on this model and establishing corresponding data analysis indicators will greatly help improve product conversion efficiency and expand the quantity and quality of user groups.

In fact, the AARRR model can not only describe the different stages of a product life cycle , but also guide the planning of marketing activities . Especially for new operators, before planning a large-scale online marketing campaign, they can refer to the user participation path described by the AARRR model to formulate and optimize each step of the operation strategy.

In this article, I will take a large-scale e-commerce promotion as an example to share with you the operational strategy of this model in marketing activities.

Acquisition

For e-commerce marketing activities, acquiring users means expanding page traffic . A large-scale e-commerce marketing campaign can acquire users (traffic) from at least the following three aspects:

1. Lock the resources on the site

For every large-scale marketing campaign, the platform will lock in a large amount of marketing resources to assist in the exposure of the campaign, and strengthen the marketing concept through the transformation of visuals and on-site atmosphere to create momentum and traffic for the campaign.

Such as JD.com ’s 618, Taobao’s 11.11 and Maker Festival, Xiaohongshu ’s membership day, etc. At this level, operations staff need to strive for more strategic resources for their activities, and on the other hand, they can also cooperate and link with other departments within the site to make full use of the site channels for all-round exposure;

What new operations students need to pay special attention to here is that the application for marketing resources is not determined out of thin air, but needs to be inferred based on the transaction goals and conversion rates , and the required traffic gap should be calculated, and a comprehensive evaluation should be conducted based on the ROI of each resource position, ultimately locking in the resource position and schedule that is most conducive to the activity.

In addition to the platform resources you applied for, you can also cooperate with other concurrent activities to promote each other, collect every available exposure position on the site, and let users see the activities in as many places as possible on the site;

2. Cross-industry cooperation

At important time points, not only e-commerce platforms, but almost all industries are carrying out their own marketing activities. This requires operations colleagues to have the ability to cooperate with other industries, make full use of their own advantages, integrate all available resources, complement each other's advantages, and penetrate marketing activities into the user base outside the site.

Two points need to be made clear in this part: first, what do I need and what can the other party give me; second, what does the other party need and whether I can give it.

For example, during the 11.11 period, the marketing activity I was responsible for reached a cooperation with a financial platform. One of the goals of both parties was to expand new users, so I connected the payment method of the platform to our marketing activity store, gave users certain discounts (using XX payment on this page can get random discounts), and attracted users to open XX payment;

Our marketing activities were also highlighted in the financial platform’s mall, which expanded traffic and enabled us to convert some users with high purchasing power.

There is one thing that needs special attention here. The activity should be re-optimized for the target user group of the partner . For example, in our cooperation with a travel product, we picked out travel-related products from the activity and produced a theme marketing campaign to improve the travel happiness index.

The attempts and accumulation of cross-industry cooperation can lay a good foundation for the platform's external expansion.

3. Product features help traffic growth

Large-scale e-commerce promotions usually have a long period and involve multiple categories.

For example, during large-scale promotional activities, JD.com will carry out phased promotions based on categories. In order to get users to return during each time period, the usual practice is to make reservations for sessions. When the next event starts, users can receive reminders through WeChat public accounts or app messages, guiding users to return to the store again.

In addition to this method, you can also try the matching SNS social gameplay to attract user return and fission traffic.

There are many ways to play SNS activities. The core is user participation and social interaction stimulated by prizes (benefits). Most users go for the prizes, and after receiving the prizes, they are usually less interested in jumping to the store. So how can prizes attract users to the activity page and improve the conversion rate of the activity page?

We can consider putting the gameplay first and the prizes later.

Our channel once held a large-scale promotional event. During the warm-up period, we used the "Friend Points" gameplay to build momentum for the event on the one hand, and on the other hand, through the design of friend interaction gameplay and the stimulation of prizes, we induced users to invite their friends to participate and obtain traffic fission.

When users win prizes in interactive games , the money will not be credited to their accounts immediately. Instead, they will be told to click on a page to claim their rewards on the day the event goes online. This method of strongly binding rewards with activities not only ensures return traffic on a larger scale based on traffic fission.

The focus of this level is to make good use of all the channels you own for exposure and promotion , use your own advantages to cooperate with third parties to exchange traffic , and if possible, achieve traffic fission through some product functions or gameplay;

Activation improves user activity

Different products have different definitions of user activity. Taking e-commerce marketing activities as an example, user activity is measured based on the sales of goods. Therefore, how to attract users to place orders is the key point to consider at this level. For e-commerce, this means how to improve the order conversion rate.

1. Promotional strength + gimmicks

For e-commerce, the strength of products can be said to be the basis of marketing activities. If you want users to place orders, you need to play with the price, and this "cheap" feeling must be perceived by users. At a time when goods are being discounted and discount coupons are flying everywhere, simple price incentives have become a little weak. From the user's perspective, some gimmicks are needed to enhance the user's mentality of getting a bargain.

For example, launching exclusive benefits for new users , developing new user identity recognition functions, and launching super-low-priced products that are only visible to new users, such as free shipping for new users for 1 yuan, can effectively convert new users. The method of bringing in new users by old users is to use rewards to motivate old users and encourage new users to place orders. In addition, the atmosphere of flash sales is also to create an atmosphere of "limited-time low price" to force users to place orders quickly.

2. Precision BI

BI is a product function, namely Taobao and JD’s “Guess What You Like” function. By adding this function module to marketing activities, you can personalize the recommendations of products that users are interested in and enhance product conversion.

According to the author's observation, in every store's transaction, the transaction of the "Guess You Like" module can account for between 10-20% of the entire store's transaction, which is a growth point that cannot be ignored.

3. Refined commodity operations

Every day and every hour of online marketing activities is a consumption of resources. Generally speaking, if the product selection of key modules is not accurate, the recent top products can be retrieved. The promotion of top products in key modules can effectively improve the conversion rate of the module.

Secondly, the goods should be a dynamic adjustment process, and the user's transaction situation should determine the retention of the goods. This requires the operation to implement a horse racing mechanism for goods, do a good job of real-time data monitoring, and replace substandard goods in a timely manner, which can also ensure the improvement of conversion rate.

Retention improves user retention

For e-commerce, the main indicator of user retention is the return visit rate. In addition, large-scale marketing activities of e-commerce usually last for a long time, generally about half a month. It is very easy for users to never come back after making an order. Therefore, at the level of user retention, operations staff are also required to take certain actions to increase the chances of return visits.

Large-scale promotional activities are basically divided into three stages: the warm-up period, the formal period and the climax period. The main function of the warm-up period is to create momentum through appointments, attracting user attention through methods such as SNS and deposit fission, so that there will be a bigger explosion in the official period.

This requires operations to set the rhythm of the activities , and they can also split the rhythm from the perspective of category or theme, present it to users in the form of a "promotional calendar", and set up an appointment button to allow users to return regularly.

The author's promotional rhythm during Double 11 is divided into two dimensions: one is price and the other is category. The category dimension is booked in the form of a theme. For example, November 1st is Goddess Day, and the promotional benefit point on this day is 100 off for purchases over 199 yuan. November 3rd is Supermarket Day, and the benefit point on this day is 30% off for two items.

No matter when users see this page, they can see the different benefits and main categories of the entire event in advance, and choose the appointment and reminder functions on their own;

Increase revenue

E-commerce is actually at the forefront of this link, but this does not mean that there is nothing to do in operations at this level. What can be considered here are the goods and preferential strategies;

1. Coupons

At present, e-commerce companies have basically achieved the accurate distribution of coupons, identifying preferred categories based on user purchasing attributes and distributing coupons in a targeted manner. In addition, you can also use the pre-placed SNS game to issue coupons, push information when the coupon usage date begins, and let users jump to the coupon purchase page in time to achieve accurate conversion.

In addition to the precise push of coupons, the setting of coupon denominations also needs to be optimized. The reference standard here is that the threshold for using the coupons needs to be slightly higher than the average order value of the platform/category. This can not only increase the usage rate of the coupons, but also increase the average order value.

For example, if the average customer spending on a certain category of products is 30 yuan, then the threshold for using a 5 yuan coupon can be set at around 40 yuan.

2. Product strategy

For e-commerce, a marketing campaign is composed of traffic-generating products, hot-selling products and regular products. Among them, the traffic-generating products are low-profit or even negative-profit products, which are used to attract users to click and pay attention. Hot products usually need to meet at least two conditions:

First, the products on the top best-selling list of the platform/category;

Second, the price is indeed lower than that in non-activity periods. These products are the main ones that drive sales, and strict production rules need to be established, and they need to be dynamically adjusted based on data results. Third, classified tab products, these items are mainly designed to meet long-tail demand.

On the basis of the above routine operations, you can also add some marketing methods to stimulate users, such as limited time purchase (flash sales), setting inventory, releasing at the top of the hour, and igniting user enthusiasm through time and scarcity.

3. Pre-placement vehicle strategy

Guiding users to add items to the cart is, on the one hand, to facilitate conversions; on the other hand, the items in the cart represent the user's strong desire to buy. After adding items to the cart, you can accurately perform refined operations on these items, breaking the last line of defense in the user's purchasing decision.

For example, by adding a cart or paying a deposit of 1 yuan before the event starts, you can get a discount on the product during the event. On the day the event takes effect, guide users to return to redeem the discount. Even if the user ultimately fails to purchase, the items in the shopping cart have accumulated very important user information for subsequent operations. Whether it is guiding users to choose "price reduction reminder" or pushing similar products to users, it can further improve user conversion rates.

4. Full discount strategy

Compared with discounts on a single item, discounts across categories can encourage users to buy more things in order to complete the order.

Under this premise, on the one hand, it is necessary to increase the categories of products participating in the event, and on the other hand, to set up a tiered discount. For comparison: 199-100; 399-200; 499 minus 300, which are actually 50% off, but users will try to reach the 399 discount threshold because the amount of items added to the cart is dozens of yuan more than 199; and the same applies to the 100 yuan discount for every 199 or more. Once the amount exceeds 199, users will unconsciously want to get the next 199, thereby increasing the transaction.

Refer self-propagation

The self-propagation mentioned in "Growth Hacker" is viral marketing . The indicator to measure user propagation is the K factor. The calculation of this formula is not complicated: K = (the number of invitations each user sends to his friends) * (the conversion rate of people who receive invitations into new users).

Assuming that on average each user invites 20 friends and the average conversion rate is 10%, K = 20*10%=2.

According to the above formula, we can see that when K>1, the number of users will increase accordingly. If K<1, then the number of users will stop growing through this channel when it reaches a certain size.

How to improve K factor?

According to the formula, two levels need to be optimized. The first is to increase the number of times users spread the message, and the second is to increase the conversion rate of the party being spread. Therefore, we need to design activities around the "sharing mechanism" and stimulate users to share and spread through a series of reward mechanisms to help activities or products gain more exposure.

Moreover, because users mostly share on social media , the trust relationship between acquaintances will allow the event to attract more new users, such as old customers bringing in new ones, and group leaders getting free meals, etc. In order to guide users to spread the message while increasing the conversion rate of the recipient, both parties should be considered to receive rewards.

The author once organized a very popular event. The gameplay was very simple. Users would invite their friends to form a group to buy a certain product. The groups would be ranked according to the time they formed the group. The top three group leaders with the shortest time would receive rewards. After the event was launched, the sharing rate increased by 28 percentage points, and the group creation rate doubled, but the corresponding group formation rate decreased by more than 20 percentage points. The reason is that most people want to start their own group to get rewards and are unwilling to join other people's groups.

We subsequently made corresponding adjustments based on the activity data, changing it so that both the group leader and group members can receive rewards. This solved the problem of low group formation rate and increased the conversion rate of shared orders by 18 percentage points.

This article was compiled and published by @小黛 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games