Pop Mart and Starbucks’ user operation strategies!

With the rise of the private domain trend, everyone has devoted themselves to the private domain.

However, the operation agency found that the private domains of many brands only remain at the stage of building frameworks (official accounts, communities and mini-programs).

For example, official accounts are used to post posters, and social groups are used to send coupons... Private domain actions are all aimed at pushing users to place orders quickly.

The result of this is that users' trust in the brand drops rapidly and users quickly run away.

Ultimately, the reason these brands failed is that they did not understand user operations and failed to establish "effectively maintainable, long-term and loyal relationships" with users.

However, the operation also observed some brands that did very well in user operation:

For example, Pop Mart sold 50 million trendy toys in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 49.3% through refined operations for users at different levels...

For example, Babycare attracted a large number of loyal users by inviting fans to co-create official accounts, becoming a unicorn in the maternal and child category with a GMV of over 5 billion.

Another example is NIO, which uses extreme user operations to allow 140,000 users to purchase domestically produced new energy vehicles at a unit price of 400,000 yuan.

Today’s article will talk about how brands conduct “user operations” in the new private domain era?

01 How to establish a private domain operation system with users at the core?

At the 2021 year-end party for operators, a guest mentioned, "The relationship between us who work in the private domain and our users is like love."

1) Acquaintance: Fully understand the user

If a brand wants to attract users, it must first understand them and stratify and group them.

As the first blind box stock in China, Pop Mart has done a very good job in this step.

Pop Mart sold 50 million trendy toys in 2020, with revenue of 2.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 49.3%.

It can be said that such achievements are inseparable from its "deep grasp" of users. For this reason, Pop Mart has started to stratify users from its official account:

In addition to the official account "POPMART", a membership account "Member Club" is also opened for high-net-worth users to carry out refined operations for different users.

For example, compared with the rich introductory content in the official account menu bar, the member account will focus on the "box draw" and "membership benefits" that users care about most, which not only saves users' energy in obtaining content, but also improves reach and conversion efficiency.

In addition, Pop Mart will also establish different communities for ordinary users and member users. There are often relatively few official staff in the communities of ordinary users, leaving users with ample space to make friends;

In the member user community, the official will also find high-value users through labeling and data accumulation, so as to provide one-to-one services and conversions.

2) Knowing each other: Creating value for users

Liu Run, founder of Runmi Consulting, mentioned at the fifth anniversary celebration of Xiaoetong: "Continuously add water to the brand pool, that is what truly belongs to you."

From Xiaoetong's 5th Anniversary Celebration Conference

So, how can we ensure that the water (users) in the pool continues to increase without being lost?

Simply put, if a brand wants to "retain" users, it can reach users through WeChat Moments, official accounts, and communities, so that users can continue to gain value.

① Circle of friends: building a personal image

For brands, Moments is an excellent venue for establishing personal image and demonstrating value.

Take CK as an example. As a fashion brand, CK used WeChat Moments to create the fashion expert IP cici.

Cici will post her daily outfits on WeChat Moments at different time points to provide users with outfit inspiration.

These circles of friends are called #CaptureMovingMoments#. In order to better get everyone involved, Cici will also let everyone pick their favorite outfit type and publish the statistical results on the official account.

② Official account: output value

Although Moments is the first image that a brand presents to the outside world, it also has the disadvantages of limited output content and insufficient value supply.

At this time, the advantage of official accounts as the "main battlefield for content output" in the WeChat ecosystem comes into play.

For many brands with high decision-making thresholds or relatively low visibility, outputting valuable content through official accounts can not only "continue" the "first good impression" established in the circle of friends, but also enhance their own professional image and improve user trust.

Take the medical beauty giant "SoYoung" as an example. Due to the mixed quality of the Internet medical beauty industry, many medical beauty platforms do not hesitate to publish false and exaggerated cases in order to help medical beauty institutions attract customers.

This phenomenon not only harms the vital interests of users, but may also lead to a crisis of trust within the industry.

In response to this, SoYoung has adopted a multi-level content layout to solve the problem of the difficulty in distinguishing the authenticity of medical beauty information. The content columns of its official account cover many aspects, including medical beauty experiments, appearance reviews, plastic surgery science, celebrity interviews, and aesthetic psychology.

In the early stages of development, through the output of high-quality original content, SoYoung not only helped users to gain an in-depth understanding of medical beauty information, but also directed traffic to its own platform, converting potential customers into real transactions.

36kr once reported that in 2017, SoYoung’s WeChat official account had 380 million page views and reached 120 million people.

③ Community: Content interaction

In addition to official accounts, brands can also continue to create value for users by building communities.

Based on user needs, common communities can be divided into shopping guide, content, service and fan communities.

As the name suggests, in shopping guide communities, brands often provide users with discount information and group buying scenarios through various marketing activities.

This type of community mainly serves consumers who are price-sensitive and pursue cost-effectiveness, such as Be & Cheery’s group buying group and Luckin’s welfare group.

In content-based communities, brands can enhance user awareness and meet user needs for learning, consultation and discussion by producing valuable content.

For example, Perfect Diary. Every afternoon, the group leader Xiaowanzi provides skin care knowledge popularization in the group, and this knowledge popularization is often closely related to the products recommended that day.

If the recommended product of the day is a mud mask, Xiaowanzi will share some basic knowledge about facial cleansing in the group.

Blackheads are formed when oil deposits are oxidized by air. Mud mask can mainly clean the oil on the skin and the dirt in the pores, allowing the pores to breathe freely! ! Keep your pores clean to prevent blackheads from forming.

If you insist on using mud mask to cleanse in the summer, your makeup will not get stuck.

Service-oriented communities are mainly suitable for the home appliance and 3C industries. Their main function is to provide users with after-sales maintenance and functional consultation, thereby improving user favorability.

For example, the group buying community formed by Gome Electrical Appliances can also provide daily home appliance repair, cleaning and other services after the peak promotion.

Fan-type communities mainly serve enthusiasts of niche categories. They find "organizations" through communities, socialize, and gain a sense of identity.

The most representative category among them is trendy toys. WeChat Open Class once mentioned that today, if you make trendy toys without building a community, the entire business system will be incomplete.

According to incomplete statistics from Pop Mart, it has 30,000 communities on WeChat, where users help each other, share limited-edition trendy toys, and buy and sell second-hand goods...

It is worth noting that unlike the "Rui Xingfu Li Guan" who has a strong presence in the "shopping guide community", official staff of the Pop Mart community rarely speak in the group.

They mainly use operational tools to launch a series of activities in the community, such as check-in activities, like click-to-support, puzzle assistance, and box draws, to guide users to participate spontaneously, which not only diverts traffic to the mini program but also keeps the community highly active.

3) Love: Attract users to create value together

After the first two steps (understanding users and creating value for users), most users tend to recognize the brand and voluntarily place orders, but how to make users become loyal users of the brand?

There is a concept called "stored value", which means that the more personal effort people put into a product, the more loyal they will be to it.

In other words, brands need to attract users to co-create value.

When a user makes a lot of personal efforts for a brand, it is easy for him to become a fan of the brand.

① Growth co-creation

When it comes to "old customers bringing in new ones", many users will think of Luckin Coffee's "buy one, get one free" and VipKid's "free classes, get classes" campaign. Simply put, it is about distributing certain "sweets" to encourage old users to invite new users.

However, if that's all, users' attention will often be focused on the "sweetness" and they will not associate themselves with the brand, nor will they develop more emotions towards the brand.

Therefore, NIO started to engage in "growth co-creation": by giving points, it incentivizes users who have bought cars to do offline work such as attracting new customers and explaining products.

These old users can not only earn a lot of points by inviting new users to test drive and pick up their cars, but they can also participate in "volunteer activities" and appear at major auto shows to provide consulting services to new users, thereby obtaining identity certification as "car owner volunteers."

At NIO Day, the annual gathering held by NIO for its users, some old users said, "Official certification like 'Owner Volunteer' makes them feel like they have truly become partners of NIO while attracting new customers to NIO."

② Content co-creation

In addition to growth co-creation, many brands are also trying content co-creation.

For example, Babycare, a maternal and child unicorn with an annual GMV of over 5 billion, collects "Mom's Stories" on its official account to create a "Dear Museum" to truly co-create content with users.

In this column, some users share their experiences of raising babies with cleft lip, and some record the process of their children’s umbilical cord being wrapped around their necks during childbirth but eventually turning the corner…

These users share their stories on Babycare’s official account, helping the brand gain extremely high traffic while also earning considerable royalties and encouragement from countless strangers.

For example, when Santonban launched its products, it did not provide a variety of combinations, but instead encouraged everyone to "provide more than just choices for the infinite possibilities of a cup of coffee."

So everyone can see that on Xiaohongshu, the main marketing platform of Santonban, the drinking method of Santonban is ranked at the front position of the related entries. After users click on it, they can see thousands of spontaneously created notes, introducing various fancy combinations such as cold brew, milk brew, and combined brew, which greatly enhances the user's sense of participation.

4) Stay together: Create a user growth system

Anyone who knows a little about "user operations" knows that for a brand, users have a life cycle. No matter how loyal users have been to the brand, they will eventually inevitably enter a period of decline.

Therefore, the last step of user operation is to create a reasonable user growth system to extend the user life cycle as much as possible.

First of all, many brands choose to build a reasonable membership system.

For example, Starbucks sets up “little stars” among its members.

In order to extend the upgrade time for users, Starbucks sets a higher difficulty level between the Jade and Gold levels, but this may cause users to "run away" due to "difficulties in upgrading."

So Starbucks launched the star rating system, using visual stars to enhance users' motivation to consume.

In addition, users can accumulate gift stars and redeem various Starbucks products, including but not limited to coffee beans, baked goods, specialty cups and Starbucks peripherals.

Secondly, some brands will extend the user life cycle by setting up various special activities.

For example, Sandunban’s “Return Plan”.

The Return Plan is a long-term empty can recycling plan launched by Sandunban in the "Santonban Hidden World" WeChat applet in August 2019, with a frequency of twice a year.

After users make an appointment on the mini program, they can go to the offline return point on the designated open day and exchange their empty cans for peripheral products.

It is worth noting that the activities and peripheral redemption of Sandunban’s return plan each season are different from the previous season, which also encourages users to continue to participate and explore more possibilities.

02 Is user operation really the brand’s moat?

There is no doubt that user operation can not only help brands understand the voice of users and avoid "self-satisfaction", but also enhance user loyalty.

For example, Lululemon, a sportswear brand that has been very popular in recent years.

Domestic media once said that if Lululemon continues to implement its current user brand strategy to the extreme, even if Lululemon's capital chain breaks one day, it may not even have to wait for investors to make a move, as checks from users will fly to the company like snowflakes.

Although the idea of ​​sending checks is an exaggeration, this fanatical user loyalty has indeed allowed Lululemon to successfully break out of the circle with a pair of yoga pants.

At its peak, Lululemon's market value even reached 300 billion, surpassing Adidas at one point.

However, if too much emphasis is placed on user operations, resulting in a deep binding between users and brands, problems similar to "fan backlash" may also arise.

For example, when Cha Yan Yue Se was on the hot search list some time ago, many users said that some of Cha Yan Yue Se’s irrational fans were very scary and really ruined the good impression of passers-by.

It can be seen from this that the sustainable development of a brand cannot rely solely on user operations. Only when it is supported by solid technology and a good image can its effect be maximized.

03 Conclusion

At the 2021 operators' year-end party, Mr. Zhang Feng, senior director of the enterprise WeChat industry, mentioned that the private domain has entered the 3.0 era, which is an era from traffic to "retention".

This means that the purpose of private domain operations has evolved from "growing" to "in-depth operations of users (members)."