In-depth analysis of New Oriental Online event operations

I believe everyone has experienced the "money-burning war" in the online education industry in the past two years. Whether it is offline subways and bus stations, or online short videos and social platforms, you can see overwhelming advertisements of some online education giants everywhere, and even some large-scale variety shows can also see the presence of these giants.

In the eyes of these online education giants, "burning money" on advertising seems to have become a consensus, and whoever does not do it will be eliminated. The purpose of "burning money" is simple, which is to seize market opportunities and compete for user traffic.

However, as policies on education and training are further tightened, especially strict supervision on advertising, the entire industry has begun to return to rationality, gradually shifting from the past extensive and cost-effective customer acquisition methods to more refined operations.

So how to achieve this step? Private domain.

In fact, maintaining the growth of educational institutions, in addition to acquiring new users, can also be achieved by allowing old users to play a greater role.

Therefore, when the cost of acquiring new users becomes higher and higher, and even the money-burning model is stopped, it becomes inevitable to tap into the more cost-effective old user resources.

The best way to achieve this is private domain, which is also the choice of most online education companies, including the familiar New Oriental .

Although New Oriental is not the first to enter the private domain in the education and training industry, it is definitely the most active.

In the process of understanding New Oriental’s private domain operations, I added no less than 10 corporate WeChat accounts and corporate WeChat communities through their private domain traffic generation activities in just a few days. This shows how much New Oriental has invested in this area.

Of course, the final effect is also obvious. With the support of the private domain, New Oriental Online's paying users reached 2.14 million in the first half of 2021, a year-on-year increase of 62.5%, among which the number of paying users of K12 education accounted for the highest proportion.

So, let’s take a look at how New Oriental specifically conducts private domain operations.

1. Detailed explanation of the activity process

1. The first step is channel diversion

After analyzing so many private domain cases, I think New Oriental’s traffic-generating method can be described in four words: “simple and crude.”

Why do I say so?

Because at New Oriental, there are all kinds of free physical prizes, including small appliances, stationery, musical instruments, etc. If users want to get these things, they need to first scan the QR code to add corporate WeChat, enter the corporate WeChat community, and then invite enough friends to help.

Of course, there are other ways to get lessons in a group, but this method of inviting friends to help get the physical goods is the most common and also the most effective.

Because I have joined many such activity groups, and the number of group members is increasing very quickly.

So, what specific channels does New Oriental use to attract traffic?

1) WeChat service account push

First of all, the most commonly used is WeChat official account. After users follow New Oriental’s official account, they will receive event scripts and posters pushed by New Oriental from time to time.

If users want to gain benefits, they need to scan the QR code to add New Oriental’s corporate WeChat account, and then the operator will guide them into the group.

2) Official APP

Secondly, on New Oriental’s official APP, there are also special event banners to attract private domain traffic, such as the "Summer Charity Live Broadcast" event seen here.

After the user clicks in, he will see the QR code of Enterprise WeChat at the bottom of the article. After the user scans the code and adds it, he can get relevant learning materials for free.

3) WeChat Mini Program

Then, on New Oriental’s WeChat applet, users can also see various traffic entrances such as “information group” and “grab red envelopes”.

After the user clicks in, he will be guided to follow the official account. After following, the corporate WeChat QR code will automatically pop up, and the user can scan the code to enter New Oriental’s corporate WeChat private domain.

4) Invite friends to increase traffic

Finally, by inviting friends to help, utilizing the relationship network of participating users, and encouraging users to forward to their Moments or WeChat friends, the purpose of fission and drainage can be achieved.

The largest number of users are attracted in this way, because users asking for physical prizes can be seen everywhere in the activity group. After all, real things are more attractive than free courses.

2. The second step is to accept traffic

When it comes to user acceptance, New Oriental, like many other education and training companies, chose WeChat for Business.

Moreover, when users scan the code, sometimes they scan the same code and may not add the same corporate WeChat account.

Because there are too many users participating in the event, even though a corporate WeChat account can passively add more than 2,000 friends a day, there is still a risk of the account being blocked.

Enterprise WeChat has an advantage that one QR code can be bound to 5 enterprise WeChat accounts at the same time, greatly increasing the user acceptance capacity of the event.

In addition to adding the corporate WeChat account, New Oriental will also pull users into various activity groups.

However, before joining the group, New Oriental will ask users to choose the corresponding stage of study first, in order to facilitate the subsequent refined operation of the community.

3. The third step: operational transformation

In terms of operational conversion, New Oriental has also taken a lot of actions, mainly through one-on-one private chats on WeChat for Business, customer circles of friends, and communities.

1) 1 to 1 private chat conversion

The first point is conversion through 1-on-1 private chat. After users add New Oriental teacher’s corporate WeChat account, they will receive push activity information from time to time.

However, New Oriental will never bombard users with activity information.

On the contrary, New Oriental is very restrained when pushing messages one-on-one, usually only once every 1 or 2 days.

Moreover, the greetings will not be cold and stiff. Instead, the parents will use warmer and more emotional words, such as "I know you are busy" or "This message is only available to special parents". This will make parents feel that they are enjoying special treatment without it being too abrupt.

2) Moments activity push

The second point is to push it to customers’ circle of friends. New Oriental’s corporate WeChat customer circle is basically filled with various activities where you can get physical prizes for free, and this is also the activity that many parents are most enthusiastic about participating in.

With the help of customers’ circle of friends, on the one hand, the official endorsement of the company name makes it appear more credible, and on the other hand, it can also increase the exposure of the event and expand the drainage effect.

After all, some users may feel that social information is too complicated and are unwilling to open it, but they will still read the Moments.

3) Group buying activities

The third point is group buying activities. In addition to encouraging users to invite friends to help, New Oriental’s physical rewards will also guide users to share through group buying.

Because there are so many people in the community, some users will take the initiative to share their group buying links in the group.

Moreover, since the members in the group are relatively precise target users, the success rate of group buying will be greatly improved.

4) Free materials lead to conversion of low-priced courses

Fourthly, get free materials and complete the conversion to low-priced courses. Free learning materials will always be an indispensable means for educational institutions to attract traffic.

Therefore, in the community, New Oriental will first guide users to receive free learning materials, and then realize the user's conversion to low-priced courses.

This is actually a very clever way of conversion, because for most users, after receiving the materials, they may need to continue to enroll in courses to realize their value.

The above are some of the operational actions New Oriental has taken to promote user conversion. Of course, there are other transformation methods. If you are interested, you can observe them yourself.

4. The fourth step, fission growth

Finally, how to achieve sustained user growth is also an issue that needs to be focused on. New Oriental’s private domain user growth is actually well integrated with traffic and operational conversion, forming a perfect closed loop.

1) Invite friends to help get physical rewards

As mentioned many times before, New Oriental’s “Limited Time 0 Yuan Physical Prizes” campaign is the main way New Oriental uses to achieve user growth.

Whether it is in the customer circle of friends or in the corporate WeChat community, users can see a variety of physical rewards. For a single user, there is always something you want.

If a user wants something, he needs to invite friends to help and reach a certain number of people, usually more than 10 people, so that New Oriental can achieve the goal of user growth.

2) Invite friends to buy courses in a group

The second method is to use group buying activities to achieve user growth. In many previous private domain cases of educational institutions, their group buying activities were mainly aimed at increasing the conversion of low-priced courses.

But at New Oriental, you can see group buying activities of "0.1 yuan", so their main purpose is to increase users.

In the activity description, it can be clearly seen that after users successfully join a group, they must join New Oriental’s community in order to receive the corresponding group rewards.

Based on physical rewards, through the help of friends and group buying, New Oriental quickly accumulated a large number of private domain users on WeChat, and also established a large number of corporate WeChat communities.

And this is just the first step for New Oriental to layout its private domain. When the private domain traffic pool becomes larger and larger, I believe New Oriental will use various methods to achieve the conversion goal.

2. Event Highlights

In fact, looking at New Oriental’s entire private domain operation process, the process is not complicated. It is just traffic diversion - fission - conversion - fission again, but based on personal experience, the effect is really amazing.

According to relevant data, with traditional advertising methods, the customer acquisition cost for educational institutions has reached hundreds or even thousands per person.

However, New Oriental chose to use this low-cost approach to first deposit users into its own private traffic pool, and then achieve multiple conversions through subsequent refined operations, which undoubtedly greatly reduced the company's customer acquisition costs.

Next, let’s summarize some of New Oriental’s highlights in the private domain.

1. A wide variety of physical prizes

When it comes to the most attractive prizes for users, they are actually never free traffic-generating courses, because there are free courses everywhere on the Internet now, and users may not have the time to watch them, so they naturally have little interest in them.

Therefore, if you want users to be willing to add friends, join communities, and share with friends, the most direct and effective prizes have to be physical objects, because users can see and touch these objects and feel the tangible benefits.

New Oriental seems to have grasped this point and launched a large number of physical prizes with a wide variety of categories, giving users more choices. In this way, the traffic-generating effect will naturally be good.

2. Group students by grade level for more precise operation

Before users enter each activity group, New Oriental will ask users to select their academic stage first, and then match them with the corresponding group.

The purpose is very simple. Users in different stages of education must have different course needs. If they are put into one group indiscriminately, it will be difficult to operate them later. However, if they are classified into groups in advance, subsequent refined operations will be easy.

3. Share parents’ feedback in real time to increase the credibility of the event

Many users still have doubts about the various physical rewards in the community. They would wonder, "Is it a scam?", "Will they not ship the goods if the requirements are met?", and so on.

At this time, New Oriental’s community operators will share the feedback from parents who have received prizes in the group. After reading it, other users in the group will have a stronger belief in the authenticity of the event and increase their participation in the event.

3. Conclusion

For the online education industry, spending money to grab traffic is not a long-term solution after all. However, under policy supervision, it may not be a bad thing for education and training institutions to return to rationality ahead of time.

The long-term approach that educational and training institutions should follow is to shift their focus from how to raise funds and how to harvest traffic to how to improve the refined operations of the company's brand, products and services.

New Oriental’s decision to focus on the private domain of WeChat for Enterprise is the first step in making changes based on the market environment.

Author: Seeding sales

Source: Seeding sales