[Good article] Two or three points in the planning and operation process of the points mall!

Not long ago, I was promoting a points mall + membership system project, and during the process I have some experiences to share with you. As the name suggests, the points mall is points + mall. The so-called points are rewards for specific members based on member consumption scenarios and marketing appeals, while the mall is a member redemption area set up with points as purchase vouchers. Therefore, the points mall is also a kind of membership benefit. Many apps and offline companies have points malls.

In essence, whether it is currency, vouchers or points, they are all a kind of purchase voucher. Customers can use this purchase voucher to exchange for corresponding prizes or services, so points can be regarded as a currency issued by the merchant itself. If the merchants who issue points are compared to the central bank, then the points mall is the supply and marketing system under the planned economy. Just as governments can devalue their currencies through inflation, merchants can manipulate the actual purchasing power of points in a variety of ways, and can control marketing costs by setting purchase limits for each user, setting expiration dates for points, and so on.

Therefore, as a controllable means to increase user stickiness, most businesses and apps will establish such a system.

1. Original Intention

I summarize the original intention of setting up the points mall into the following points.

1. User stickiness

The purpose of improving user stickiness is often seen in apps and companies that make standardized products. In this case, merchants are highly substitutable, and customers' original intention of shopping on their own apps or offline stores is more or less because the product has some advantages, such as price, experience, convenience, etc.

However, in the absence of core competitiveness, users may not necessarily repurchase after consumption, so many businesses have invented methods such as post-consumption rebates (vouchers or cash), and gifts for multiple orders to attract customers to buy again. Although vouchers and cash back are more attractive and can attract customers to buy again in a short period of time, vouchers are directly linked to RMB, which is a big challenge to controlling operating costs, and the prizes are not rich enough, so points came into being. At the same time, since the points mall is not within the main process, some methods such as small games to increase user stickiness can be implanted as a proof of concept.

2. Ingress traffic

Improving entrance traffic focuses more on the mall attributes of the points mall. Just like every holiday, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tmall , and JD.com, and offline shopping malls such as Carrefour, Walmart, and RT-Mart will launch various preferential activities to attract customers. As a miniature version of B2C, the points mall can also use various promotional methods to attract customers. You can also use limited-time offers, rush sales and other gameplay to attract customers to log in to the app at a specific time point.

In this regard, I think the best thing is the same 8.8 yuan limited-time sale, which attracts users to visit at a specific time through a short period of low prices, and this gameplay can be expanded as a feature of marketing activities to attract traffic in this way. But from my observation, except for Same, which uses the mall as a distinctive business card for marketing, most malls are not very effective in attracting traffic. After all, the points mall is just a module of the entire app, and this kind of gameplay is more familiar to most e-commerce companies.

3. Improve user experience

Aspect 1:

By enriching the variety of goods in the points mall and increasing the types of goods that users can redeem, the user experience can be improved. Airline miles and credit card credit points are relatively good in this regard. Airline mileage points can be exchanged for free air tickets at the airline. Credit card points can be used to get discounts when paying at designated merchants, or even exchanged for high-value prizes. A more representative scenario is that when you are waiting for a flight and find that your mobile phone has no data, you can redeem a free data package with your points. (According to my experience, airport hotspots are terrible. I usually use 4G to access the Internet at the airport.)

Aspect 2:

Through the membership system of points and combined with the consumption scenarios of the app, corresponding secondary services are created. An app that has done relatively well in this regard is Air Travel. As a state-controlled app, Air Travel can provide different services based on the user's ID number and different scenarios when the user is flying, such as guessing travel beans when the flight is delayed, and data such as flight charts, thereby creating a variety of added value.

4. Increase sales performance

In fact, most of the more mature points systems now do not redeem prizes based solely on points. Most of them are redeemed in the form of points + cash.
The advantage of this method is that it reduces the price of goods without lowering the purchase threshold. It can sell slow-moving goods without worrying about the impact of the reduction in prize prices on the original goods prices. At the same time, it can recover the losses caused by slow sales and increase sales. The essence of this method is to offset product costs with marketing costs.

5. Exist for the sake of existence

This situation is the most common. The person in charge of the company believes that the points mall is the embodiment of a complete and mature app, which should be available when the app develops to a certain level. Therefore, he orders his subordinates to launch a points mall as well. It is sad that the points mall launched for this reason is not taken seriously, but according to my understanding, this situation is the most common.

2. Different types of points malls

Frequency Dimension

As the name suggests, consumption frequency refers to the number of times a customer consumes within a fixed period. There is a natural relationship between consumption frequency and consumption scenarios. For example, most users may order takeout once a day, go to the movies once every two days, but will never travel every three days. High-frequency apps are more attractive to investors because high traffic is the basis of consumption.
However, high-frequency consumption also means a low consumption threshold, so high-frequency consumption industries are mostly red oceans, and this type of app is no exception. Just like Didi and Uber , Ele.me and Meituan Waimai , Maoyan Movies and Guevara, without sophisticated marketing methods or unique core competitiveness, it is difficult for an app to attract users to keep repurchasing. It is impossible for a merchant to offer low-price promotions all the time while his competitors will offer low-price promotions one after another. It is crucial to cultivate user loyalty at this time, so this kind of high-frequency and replaceable consumer industry points mall is relatively complete. Both Didi and Ele.me will use their high traffic advantages to exchange resources for prizes and give them to users.

Consumption Depth

The term "depth of consumption" was coined by the author. The author believes that the criterion for distinguishing the depth of consumption is whether users need to provide more basic information during the consumption process.

The basic information of these members is very important, because with this basic information, further exploration can be done from both the product and operation perspectives to plan products with better experiences and operate activities that are more suitable for users.

Just as it is easier to beat high-frequency consumption than low-frequency consumption, it is easier to beat deep-depth consumption than shallow-depth consumption. Alibaba has derived many business lines with Alipay as the center. Many companies that have grown in size hope to obtain this part of user information and have set up their own Internet financial companies. Even if they cannot attract deposits, they can still capture some high-quality user information.

In addition to Internet finance such as Alipay, many industries have innate deep consumption scenarios, the most obvious of which are the train ticket booking and air ticket booking industries as well as the hotel industry, because this type of consumption will leave a large amount of basic information. For example, the basic information left by 12306 during the registration or ticket purchase process is desired by countless businesses, because through the consumption on 12306 combined with the basic information of members, businesses have countless marketing methods and product line derivatives. Of course, the reason why users leave this basic information is because of industry monopoly and natural trust in the official. 12306 did not disappoint everyone's expectations and the basic data was not leaked. Of course, 12306 does not need to consider the issue of repeat purchases, nor does it need to work hard to increase its share in transportation, so there is no points mall.

However, the air ticket booking industry is completely different from the train ticket booking industry. Due to policy reasons, the air ticket booking industry has not formed a monopoly giant like 12306. Major airlines, OTAs and offline ticketing services all have a certain say in the industry, and at the same time want to increase their say by further occupying market share. In order to attract new customers, major airlines and OTAs will regularly launch promotional activities. In order to attract repeat customers, major airlines have launched their own mileage programs (frequent flyer programs). Mileage points can be redeemed for prizes, including air tickets. The mileage program (frequent flyer) in the 1980s is considered to be the most successful market innovation in the history of civil aviation. Students who fly frequently can do some research and find out that HNA Group has even derive other business lines with the help of these high-quality members. Another example of this is the use of credit card points, which uses user information such as ID numbers to plan a model for exchanging airline miles and credit card points.

3. Operation and Cost

1. External cooperation

The Points Mall’s external cooperation is mostly through advertising space and sponsor nominations to increase the exposure of partners in exchange for certain prizes.

The types of prizes are mostly vouchers, physical prizes, and points. For example, points can be exchanged for vouchers from partners, physical prizes from partners, and points from partners. There are many ways to implement it, whether it is sent by the merchant himself or bound to a fixed unique identifier (usually a mobile phone number).

The points to note here are nothing more than finding and controlling partners. In external cooperation, because there will be disputes between each other, we must be cautious to prevent discovering problems with the partner's products after the cooperation. This matter should be handed over to a dedicated BD to avoid taking up too much energy.

2. Selling at a higher price

The advantage of this method is that costs are controllable, but attention should be paid to the attractiveness of the prizes to users. When selecting products, you should choose prizes based on the scenario. If the prizes are not in line with the scenario of the app, it will be difficult to improve sales performance. At the same time, you should pay attention to the company's qualifications, because the business scope of most Internet companies is information services, and you should consider whether they have the qualifications to sell physical products and services. At the same time, regarding the issue of taxation for sales of physical goods, any economic activity is subject to taxation, and it is necessary to coordinate with the finance department to clarify whether the sales are given as prizes to platform sales partners, or whether the prizes are purchased by the platform and sold at a premium (the value-added tax is calculated based on the premium of the goods). If it is provided by a partner, the points mall acts as a platform for consignment sales, and the value-added tax can be paid by the partner. If you purchase the prizes yourself and sell them at a premium, you should adjust the tax standards for this type of prizes based on the premium to save costs.

3. Invest in operating costs

R&D costs

This is the additional cost provided by the partner interface when special prizes need to be launched online. It is necessary to consider the value of the product to itself to avoid poor results after launch and waste of R&D manpower.

Procurement costs

This is the situation when purchasing prizes for users. When purchasing prizes, the staff can control the quality and type of the prizes and decide based on user preferences. This requires the company to provide a certain budget every month to decide. In addition, if you are not using points to redeem but selling at a higher price, you need to pay attention to the tax costs.

Mailing costs

In order to prevent user information from being leaked to partners, larger platforms sometimes require themselves to provide mailing services under certain circumstances. In this case, costs will be incurred for packaging, postage, and replacement of damaged items. What needs to be considered at this time is who will pay for the postage and how to reduce costs. Whether it is a small department or company level negotiation with the express company. Generally, large companies will have fixed mailing needs, and they just need to follow the regulations. In order to control costs, most of them use EMS.

Summarize

The Points Mall is actually a derivative of a mature app. Therefore, the primary factor that determines the quality of a points mall is the positioning and strength of the app, and of course the resource investment. Therefore, whether it is to attract traffic, increase user stickiness, or increase sales, we must start from the app itself and dig out the core competitiveness of the app, rather than focusing on the points mall.

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This article was written by @Tongcheng Travel Product Manager Fu Xinyu and published by (APP Top Promotion). Reprinting this article requires the consent of Top Promotion , and please attach the link to this article!