User Operation: AARRR Model for Products from 0 to 200,000 Users

Without further ado, the full article is structured as follows, basically following the AARRR model , and the keywords for each stage are also listed:

1. Who are your users (user iteration thinking in the product life cycle )?

2. How to get users in? ( Laxin -DNU)

3. How to get users to come frequently? (Activation-DAU)

4. How to retain users? ( Retention – Retention Rate )

5. How to get users to pay? ( Conversion - AR PU)

The following mainly revolves around a preschool education app (hereinafter referred to as Product A) that I operated from 2015 to 2017 as a case study. Each point introduces an example from the operation process and uses data and charts to deduce and explain the point of view. The statistics of the alliance for product A are as follows:

Who are your users?

The first step in user operation is to figure out who your users are. You may scold me, do I even need to ask this? Shouldn’t you figure it out when you start writing the BP?

Not really. For example: in mid-2016, one year after product A had been in operation, the company's top management was still discussing whether or not to continue looking for channels to buy traffic. The operators of course insisted on buying it. After all, compared with the market cost of dozens or hundreds of dollars to activate a user, spending 6-8 yuan to get a CPA can steadily attract new users, and the data reports will look quite good.

The opposing side (product and market) uses DAU as an argument. Even though buying volume reduces the cost of acquiring customers, the selling point and conversion of the product are in a closed ecological loop such as video surveillance and garden management. Even if the visitors are parents or educators of appropriate age, they can only have a superficial experience of the product in the tourist mode, and it is difficult to retain them, let alone convert them.

As for the discussion results, it is not the focus of this case. What I want to say is that this case appears to be a discussion about customer acquisition costs and methods, but in fact, the question of "who are your users" has not been thought through clearly. That is: different product life cycles require iteration of target users .

Based on the analysis of the graph, if the product is in the introduction stage, then your users are the leaders of the Education Bureau, kindergarten principals and teachers, and parents of children in the kindergarten. It makes no sense to buy volume from channels outside of this independent and self-circulating user ecosystem to acquire the C-end. For example, competing products such as Zhangtong Baby and Weijiayuan only have login functions but no registration functions.

If the product is in the growth stage, that is, your users, in addition to the introduction period users, also include parents of children of appropriate age and non-cooperative kindergarten institutions, the premise is that your product iteration speed must keep up, that is, you need to provide your changing users with iterative products that can fully meet their needs at different product life cycles.

So “Who are your users?” is not static. You can “stay true to your original aspiration” but don’t forget that you may “change forever.” What operations need to do is to capture this change and submit it to the product in the form of demand.

For example, Beijing's Zhihuishu has also gradually transitioned from the introduction stage to the growth stage and then to the mature stage, from the initial closed ecosystem to the current expansion of the ecosystem through product iteration functions such as "activity zone", "daily lottery", "online consultation" and "parenting topics" on the core function of "home interaction". It has successfully evolved a home interaction tool product into a parent-child parenting platform for 3-6 years old, and successfully made profits through "baby insurance" and "online mall".

Back to the case, since the project was launched in February 2015, Product A was in the introduction stage, so the users were clear and it also achieved rapid growth through seed users (detailed analysis in the following point). After the open registration function was launched on December 17, it was actually intended to transition from the introduction stage to the growth stage:

However, due to the limitations of product iteration speed and quality, the data shows that it was not successful. Therefore, the above controversy about whether to buy volume has an answer.

Summarize:

In different product life cycles, the objects of user operations will change accordingly, and this change will determine the operation mode and cost of user operations. Therefore, timely research on the operation objects and feedback the needs to the product is the first step to test the operation capabilities. At the same time, operations should infer whether the cycle switching is reasonable based on the speed and quality of product iteration. Therefore, user operations must have user iteration thinking in the product life cycle.

How to let users in? (Laxin-DNU)

After understanding the user iteration thinking of the product life cycle, we need to consider how to attract new users through user operations. The editor thinks that we should pay attention to four points:

1. Making good use of leverage: Maximizing the advantages of projects, teams or products, establishing resource barriers, and forming differentiated competition is making good use of leverage;
2. User segmentation: build user models and establish user portraits ;
3. Endowment effect: Use the endowment effect of users to grasp their pain points;
4. Lower the threshold: To attract new users, it is necessary to reduce user participation costs and education costs.

The following is an analysis of these points with the case of product A, and the final summary:

There are five key nodes for product A in attracting new customers, namely A in March 2015, B in September, C in March 2016, D in June, and E in September. Except for June, the other five nodes are all the start of the school year. This is determined by the product form. So I will talk about the operation of these five nodes separately:

Node A (March 2015): The company structure was initially completed, and the operations department and marketing department were established. During this stage, MNU was increased from zero to more than a thousand people, mainly through the central enterprise background of the investment parent company, market public relations with the Education Bureau, and the acquisition of seed kindergarten users. The main tasks in this operation stage are to formulate operation policies, promote brands , build a user system, issue accounts, provide park training and answer customer service questions.

Node B (September 2015): This is a real milestone for operations. Taking advantage of the summer vacation time in July and August, operations planned activities for parents and teachers respectively. Teachers uploaded creative posters and posted them for selection; parents participated in the Cute Baby Show selection event, and selected iPads based on indicators such as the number of likes, and prepared posters and other materials. After the school season started in September, all cooperating kindergartens went into the kindergartens to promote the product, give out awards on site, and interact with users to form secondary dissemination. There are a few details:

• Plan separately for parents and teachers, i.e. user segmentation;
• Teachers re-cut and match the promotional posters. Most kindergarten teachers are girls born in the 1990s, so they have an innate love for cutting and matching work similar to beauty and faceu , which lowers the threshold;
• Paste it on the park bulletin board or display wall, that is, make good use of the grip;
• Upload the results map to the activity area for selection, which is the endowment effect.

Node C (March 2016): Similar to Node B, except that the product life cycle is in the introduction stage to the growth stage, so the user base is larger and there are more hooks. At this time, an activity called "Record the Colors of Spring with a Paintbrush" that makes good use of the endowment effect is very popular:

Node D (June 2016): This node was mainly caused by the purchase of volume mentioned above. After a short burst, there was no increase in activity. That is, at that time, there was no way to reversely infer whether the cycle switch was reasonable based on the product iteration speed and quality.

Node E (September 2016): Same as B and C

Summarize:

1. Make good use of the hook: Among the five nodes, Node A used the background of its parent company to find the Education Bureau as a gateway, harvesting the first batch of seed users who were also the most difficult to obtain. The other nodes used the closed scene of the kindergarten to maximize the dissemination.
2. User segmentation: In the B node, we make use of the idle time to prepare in advance, and during the peak period, we re-cut and post personalized posters for the teacher group and hold cute baby competitions for the parent group to meet the different needs after user segmentation.
3. Endowment effect: "One's own children are always the best" is fully reflected in this case. Whether it is a social network or self-media , utilizing the endowment psychology of users can always gain unexpected sense of participation and self-propagation.
4. Lower the threshold: You can try it. For the same user group, the level of participation is definitely different in the order of beautiful photos > posing > best couple faces > themed photos of people and scenery > pure text. This is because the cost of user participation is different.

How to get users to come frequently? (Activation-DAU)

After attracting new users, the real test of operational capabilities is to start promoting activation. At present, many Internet companies of all sizes still regard DAU and DNAU as an important KPI indicator for operations. The editor thinks that there are three points to pay attention to:

1. Build a user growth system
2. Establishing a user incentive system
3. Make good use of users' sunken capital

As usual, the picture above speaks for itself. The picture below is a screenshot of the DAU of product A.

We can see two hot spots in the graph, August 17, 2015 and March-April 2016. Let’s take a look at what happened:

Node A:

After reading this, I believe you all have understood that this explosion of activity is mainly due to the launch of the functions of earning points through activities and tasks, and exchanging points for gifts. The points system is to build a user growth system, in which users gain growth by completing tasks and participating in activities. At the same time, a user incentive system is built, in which users are incentivized by exchanging points for gifts.

Node B: This node is mainly about Product A cooperating with a portal platform to plan and organize a series of "Storytelling Competition" activities. Through online registration, offline auditions-preliminary rounds-finals, and in conjunction with the user growth system and incentive system, it creates the second explosion point of DAU. The details will be expanded after the editor discusses the operation of the event .

Summarize:

Building a user closed-loop system of user growth system and user incentive system, making full use of the user's sunk capital in the design (such as continuous sign-in to give gifts) is essential for user activation and increasing DAU. The relationship between them can be seen in the figure below:

How to retain users? (Retention – Retention Rate)

In the first point, the editor quoted the concept of product life cycle. Then, to discuss retention, we must first understand another related concept: user life cycle . Here is a model diagram from iResearch:

First of all, you have to understand that any product has a corresponding user life cycle. Don’t try to make your users “immortal”. What we need to do is to extend the user life cycle as much as possible through product iteration and operational means while converting users at the same time.

Like the product life cycle, customer value is also S-shaped. Operations begin to intervene from the introduction stage. At this stage, the main focus is on the next-day retention rate and the 7-day retention rate. Some game products also look at the 14-day retention rate. In the mature stage, user value reaches its peak. At this stage, the main focus is on the monthly retention rate and the 90-day retention rate. After entering the dormant period, user value slowly decays until it disappears. At this stage, operations mainly focus on lost users, that is, recalling lost users through client push , SMS, EDM, and offline activities . Let’s take a look at the case of product A:

For Product A, due to the product's particularity and its life cycle, its retention rate is much higher than the Internet average. The monthly retention rate can even reach 74.95%, and the March retention rate also reaches 47.79%, which can be said to be unrepresentative. However, during operations, we have encountered abnormal retention rates by analyzing the retention rates. For example, if the retention rate is very low for a group of new users who are enrolled during the peak period, it is very likely that the users have forgotten their initial passwords. What the operators need to do is to contact the corresponding teachers in the kindergarten and cooperate with the account query and password initialization services. Otherwise, these customers may be lost.

How to get users to pay? (Conversion-ARPU)

When it comes to user conversion and ARPU, we must first understand what user needs are. We draw a model for product A. Basically, all products can use this model:

Let’s look at the case again. There are three main parts of user conversion for product A:

1. Online video, school bus, access control;
2. Points redemption;
3. Custom photo albums.

Although the ARPU value of this product was very low until I left, we can still analyze it: the main conversion modes such as online video, school bus, and access control meet the essential needs of users.

That is: the need for self-safety; customized photo albums, where users can add the baby nursery photos in the App and their own uploaded life photos for layout online, creating an electronic photo album that can be printed. Babytree has even split out an independent App for this business, which shows how great the user demand is.

This demand belongs to the user's subsidiary needs, namely: emotional needs, desires and expectations;

The last item, exchanging points for goods, takes advantage of users' love for getting a bargain and the feeling and feeling of getting a bargain. There is a saying that goes, what users want is not a bargain, but the feeling of getting a bargain.

The author of this article @老付 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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