How do operations personnel start to increase user scale to ensure product revenue?

First, a common question:

What is the most important thing about Internet products?

Of course it’s the user.

Users determine the life or death of a product. The larger the user base, the lower the marginal cost of the enterprise, even approaching zero. If an enterprise wants to achieve long-term success, it must overcome the hurdle of profitability. Any business model that is not for profit is rogue. So what is the relationship between user scale and a company’s profitability? To this end, let's first look at two formulas:

Revenue = AR PU value (average revenue per user) * number of paying users

Number of paying users = user scale * payment conversion rate

From this, it is not difficult to find that the three factors that affect revenue are: ARPU value (which can also be understood as average order value), user scale and payment conversion rate.

We will not discuss the average order value here. The pricing of a product for its related functions or services is more based on factors such as cost and brand premium, and there is not much room for operators to manipulate.

For paid conversion rate, we need to use the conversion funnel more and break down the overall data step by step to understand the root cause of the final result. As for how to use the funnel principle to split and analyze data, we will talk about it next time.

This time we will mainly discuss how operators can increase user scale to ensure product revenue.

1. Ideas for increasing user scale

Let’s take an example to show how to increase the user base.

I'm sure everyone has done this math problem when they were young: there is a pool with water being filled (drained) and drained at the same time. How long does it take for the pool to be filled (emptied) of water? Analogizing to the user scale, operations staff are trying desperately to acquire new users, while users are slowly lost at the same time, and what is finally left is the difference between the number of new users and the number of lost users.

At this point, our idea for increasing our user base naturally came to light: a two-pronged approach of increasing revenue and reducing costs.

Open source means attracting new users. However, given that the cost of acquiring new users is becoming increasingly high, the cost of attracting new users in some areas has even reached more than 200 yuan per person. Moreover, if the operator is unable to retain users in the product, then no matter how large the number of new customers is, it will be just a passing cloud. When new users become passers-by and never come back, all your efforts will be wasted.

There is no difference in the final user scale between attracting 1,000 new users and retaining 10 and attracting 100 new users and retaining 10, but the cost and efficiency of the latter are far better than the former. So today we will mainly talk about how to retain more users while keeping a certain number of new customers, that is, saving money.

2. How to save money efficiently and ensure the growth of user scale

Throttling can be divided into two parts. The first is to reduce user churn, and the second is to recall lost users.

2.1 Reduce user churn

To work on reducing user churn, we first need to define what churn is.

2.1.1 Who are the lost users?

Different products have different definitions of lost users. Here we first distinguish the concepts of lost users and inactive users. Some users are very troublesome. They may not log in for ten days or half a month, but will suddenly go online to mess with the server. Then such users cannot be regarded as lost users, but only as inactive users.

So what kind of users can be defined as lost users? We are going to speak based on data. Through analyzing previous user data, we found that if most users do not use the product for 20 consecutive days, they will never use it again. Then we can take the value of 20 days as a cutoff point, and define any user who does not use the product for 20 consecutive days as a lost user.

2.1.2 How to avoid user churn

In the previous times, when I was analyzing how to avoid user churn, I was more inclined to increase the user churn cost by strengthening the emotional connection with users, inducing users to spend energy or money, etc., so that they would think twice before intending to leave. Today, let’s talk specifically about what we base our decisions on about what measures to take towards users in order to increase their churn costs.

We have previously defined what a churned user is, so let’s define a highly active user. We can refer to the core indicators of each product itself, such as the number of times content is produced, the number of logins, the number of interactions, etc., to screen a group of highly active users.

Because highly active users must be retained users. We can analyze and compare this group of users with the churned users to see which attributes the highly active users have but the churned users do not, such as avatar settings, interaction status, number of friends, gender settings, etc., and then use A/B testing to quickly trial and error to determine whether these attributes play a decisive role in ensuring user retention .

Taking a certain dating app as an example, everyone knows that in the field of dating apps (especially stranger dating), whoever wins the women wins the world. With the influx of high-quality female users , there will naturally be no shortage of gay men following suit. You can refer to the policy of "men A, women free" in many bars for this reason.

During a user research on this type of software, an operator discovered that female users who were approached by gay men after their first registration tended to be more likely to stay with the user in the future, while female users who logged in early but were ignored were more likely to leave. So what can we do after discovering this rule? It's very simple. Register multiple aliases and hook up with users when they first register. When other real users get involved, slowly withdraw from their sight.

This method of operation not only takes advantage of the two factors that women want to be noticed and that dating apps are only valuable if they can serve the purpose of making friends, but also takes advantage of the human nature of users who like to show off. If we are attentive, or our friends happen to be veteran users of this type of dating app, it is not difficult to find that one thing these users often do is: take screenshots of how many unread messages they have, and then post them to their own circle of friends, pretending to complain: "Oh, so many people harass me every day, it's really annoying."

Therefore, we need to find the key factors that determine whether users remain active or leave, and use all possible operational means to smooth out the difference, so that more users can choose to stay.

2.2 Recall lost users

So if the user has indeed been lost, is there nothing we can do? Of course not. Information is so easily disseminated nowadays, we still have many ways to reach our users.

The conventional methods are generally as follows:

1) Email EDM

The advantage of this method is large sending volume and low cost. But the disadvantages are also obvious. Chinese people do not use email as a daily means of communication like foreigners do. We mostly just use email as a tool for communication at work. Especially when your user group is students, they don’t usually use email. Many people even register an email address just for the purpose of product registration, and after using it they may not even know where they threw their account and password. Therefore, the open rate of this type of recall email is very low.

2) Client push

This method can be said to be a benefit brought by the mobile Internet era. Because it is a push within our own product, the cost is very low, it can be pushed in large quantities, and the open rate is also very high. But the problem is that if the user has set the policy to reject push notifications, then the information cannot be delivered to the user through push notifications within the product. Even if the user has not set a setting to reject push notifications and we successfully deliver the information, there is a certain possibility that the user will directly uninstall the app. After all, the user has just forgotten about you. Once you push, he will realize that he has not uninstalled you, and then your product will disappear from his device forever.

So, if the user uninstalls your product or refuses to accept information push, can our operations staff really not push information to the user in this efficient way? Of course not, after all, Internet people are notoriously "rogue". In addition to the push from this site, we now have third-party push to choose from. To put it simply, several products join one alliance. Then all products within this alliance can push news about each other's products.

3) SMS

It is recommended that operators use this method with caution. Although its arrival rate is very high, its cost is much higher than the first two methods. Even if you have channels to get low operator prices, most users are sensitive to their mobile phone numbers, and sending such "nuisance text messages" is likely to cause complaints from users. If you must choose to use this recall method, be sure to put more effort into the copywriting .

The above three are the conventional methods to recall lost users. One thing our operations staff also need to make clear is that users cannot leave without reason. Their loss must be because the product cannot meet their needs in some aspect. Therefore, before we recall, we must ensure that the reasons that led to user loss have now improved. In this way, when he comes back, he will not leave. Otherwise, he will come and leave again, which is still an invalid recall.

In addition, recall messages are more or less harassing, so it is necessary for operators to turn this harassment into an attractive gift or even a surprise based on user needs.

For example, users of e-commerce products are often concerned about whether the product has discounts, so we can package the recall message into a push discount to encourage users to come back and check. If we want users to download a new version, we can emphasize that the new version solves a certain security payment issue. I think for this kind of function involving money transactions, many users will still be eager to download the new version.

For social products that focus on interpersonal interaction, users can be recalled through friend relationships. For example, Llinkedln often sends me emails such as "Do you know so-and-so?" (These recommended friends are all related to the company I am currently or previously working for)

As for information-type news portals, what attracts users is nothing more than the speed of reporting on current events and the depth of analysis. Then the operators can push relevant information to users as soon as a major event occurs, attracting users' interest and clicking to read. Remember to do it as soon as possible, because for news and information products that emphasize effectiveness, if you push them too late, the user will have already seen the related content through other channels, and the possibility of clicking again will be very small.

Today, we introduced some basic methods for improving user retention rate , including how to reduce user churn and how to effectively recall lost users. User retention is the basis for increasing user scale. In the current environment where the cost of attracting new users remains high, its importance is self-evident. As a user operator , it is important to realize that if users cannot stay, then acquiring more new users will be futile.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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