The most comprehensive guide to gamification user growth strategies

01. “AARRR” Theoretical Definition

As the penetration of online Internet traffic becomes increasingly concentrated, products that occupy the minds of users are gradually taking shape, and few new products can continue to attract users. Not only is it difficult to maintain a steady growth in the number of daily active users, but increasing the number of registered users is also a major problem that plagues the KPI indicators of the product user growth department.

Traffic is becoming more and more expensive, and the traditional user growth strategy in the form of "subsidies" has obviously become difficult to maintain long-term connections between products and users, and the pressure of product operating costs is also unbearable. In order to ensure maximum utilization of traffic, data-driven new user growth strategies came into being.

When it comes to data-driven user growth strategies, the AARRR model cannot be ignored. We usually break down and summarize the growth target links into the "AARRR" model, namely Acquisition (acquiring users), Activation (stimulating activity), Retention (improving retention), Revenue (increasing revenue), and Referral (spreading recommendations), as shown in the figure.

In this funnel-shaped model, a portion of the introduced users will be lost at a certain link, while the remaining users will reach the next link and achieve the final conversion as the process goes deeper.

The five links in the “AARRR” model are as follows.

(1) User acquisition: Allowing potential users to come into contact with the product for the first time, or more broadly understood as “attracting traffic.” There are many ways to acquire users, such as discovering through search engines, clicking on website ads, downloading after seeing media reports, etc.

(2) Stimulating activity: After acquiring users, the next step is to guide them to complete certain “designated actions” so that they become long-term active and loyal users. A "designated action" can be filling out a form, downloading a software, posting a piece of content, uploading a photo, or any behavior that enables users to use the product correctly and efficiently.

(3) Improving retention: If the product lacks stickiness, the result will be that new users will continue to pour in, while old users will quickly leave. Usually the cost of retaining an old user is much lower than the cost of acquiring a new user. Therefore, improving user retention rate is an important way to maintain product value and extend product life cycle.

(4) Increase revenue: All business entities are profit-seeking, and the vast majority of entrepreneurs are most concerned about revenue. Even free products in the Internet age have their own profit models.

(5) Spreading and recommending: The rise of social networks has facilitated “viral spread” based on user relationships. This is a new way to promote products at a low cost. If used properly, it may lead to explosive growth in users.

But this article does not focus on data-driven growth hacking strategies. Let’s think about the following three questions.

(1) The AARRR model emphasizes data-driven operational strategies. However, if multi-dimensional user data cannot be obtained in the early stages of a product, how can high-value multi-dimensional user behavior data be obtained at low cost?

(2) The AARRR model is straightforward and clear, but in addition to conducting operational analysis through long-term data monitoring, is there a more efficient user growth solution with a shorter cycle?

(3) The AARRR model provides a modular product growth solution, but users who do not meet the target conditions will be lost at every stage of the model. How can we directly find high-quality target users at the user acquisition layer?

The above three questions mainly revolve around three important factors to consider when promoting user growth strategies in product departments, as follows.

(1) Growth cost: How to minimize product operating costs while acquiring the same number of users.

(2) Growth efficiency: How to obtain the maximum number of product users in the same operating cycle?

(3) Growth quality: How to increase the proportion of seed and high-potential users while acquiring the same number of users.

We need a set of operational plans based on the AARRR model to refine actionable operational plans for each link around the three topics of growth cost, efficiency, and quality. Therefore, the gamification growth strategy with the AARRR model + Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method as the theoretical framework came into being.

02. Theoretical definition of Octagonal Behavior Analysis

Octagon Behavioral Analysis is a method to help game designers design a product (including work, life, goal management, team management, etc.).

This method can be implemented and popularized with greater force in our work and life, allowing people to gain happiness and a sense of accomplishment from using the product just like playing an interesting game, ultimately helping companies achieve their business goals, thus achieving a win-win situation for all parties, as shown in the figure.

The Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method is composed of the common octagonal shape plus the core driving forces corresponding to each corner. These eight core driving forces can help us design a complete product that makes users happy to use the product, allows the product to obtain user value conversion, and forms a continuously improving platform to provide users with more high-quality products and services.

Due to limited space, we only give a brief introduction to the eight core driving forces, as follows.

(1) Mission: epic significance and sense of mission

It means that human beings believe that the significance of what they are doing is more important than the thing itself, and they must do their best to achieve the goal in order to comfort their inner world.

(2) Achievement: Growth and sense of accomplishment

It refers to the driving force that we gain by using products to learn skills and overcome difficulties. However, challenges are particularly important in this process, because trophies and medals obtained without challenges are meaningless.

(3) Empowerment: Creativity and timely feedback

It drives players to immerse themselves in the creative process, constantly figuring out new things and trying different combinations. By constantly experiencing the creative process, while paying attention to the results of creation, and obtaining timely feedback.

(4) Possession – Ownership and sense of ownership

It drives players to own or control something and be motivated by it. When a person feels a sense of ownership of an item, he or she will naturally want to improve the performance of the item. This driving force is the main source of human desire to accumulate wealth.

(5) Social - Social influence and relevance

This driving force corresponds to "respect and self-actualization" in Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory. The "social" mentioned here is the collection of all social factors of people, including master-apprentice relationship, social identity, social feedback, partnership, competitive relationship, etc.

(6) Scarcity — Scarcity and Desire

People may want a product simply because it is rare or inaccessible (due to quest mechanics, game time limits, etc.), which incentivizes them to get it as soon as possible.

(7) Unknown: Unknownness and Curiosity

People are always attracted because they don’t know what will happen next. This is the driving force of unknown and curiosity. When something goes beyond one's usual pattern recognition system, the human brain will immediately go into high-speed operation mode to pay attention to this sudden thing.

(8) Loss - Loss and the Escape Psychology

No one wants bad things to happen, which means they don’t want their previous efforts to go to waste, and they don’t want to admit that they have done useless work. “Disappearing opportunities” (such as limited-time sales) are also an effective application of this core driving force.

03. Application of Octagon Behavior Analysis Method in User Growth

The Octagon Behavioral Analysis Method was first used in the gaming industry to increase user growth, allowing users to actively immerse themselves in the gaming scene and bring commercial value to the product.

The eight core driving forces correspond to corresponding strategies based on user psychology as a reference standard. In addition to being applied in gaming scenarios, they can also be extended and applied in other products.

According to the different characteristics of the 8 core driving forces, they can be divided into: left brain driving force vs. right brain driving force, white hat gamification vs. black hat gamification, as shown in the figure.

Left brain drive vs. right brain drive can be understood as external motivation vs. internal motivation.

Left-brain drive tends to rely on external motivation, where you are motivated because you want to achieve something tangible, such as a goal, item, etc. The right brain drive is mostly intrinsic motivation, such as being creative and spending time with friends. It does not require any goals or rewards because the act itself is a reward.

In operational work, product managers are more inclined to use operational methods based on extrinsic motivation. These measures help to improve KPIs in the short term. For example, by sending cash red envelopes and vouchers to users, it can directly lead to an increase in order volume.

However, such an approach is difficult to sustain because external motivations will weaken internal motivations. Once external motivations are stopped in operational activities, users may be lost.

Another thing to note about the Octagon is that the Core Drives at the top of the Octagon are very positive, while the Core Drives at the bottom are more negative.

The core driver at the top of the Octagon is called white hat gamification, and the core driver at the bottom is called black hat gamification.

To make it easier for everyone to understand, let’s take a successful example, which is Pinduoduo’s “Friends Bargaining” activity, as shown in Figure 5-12. The gameplay of "bargaining with friends" seems simple and easy to understand, but in fact it covers almost all the behavioral points in the Octagon Behavioral Analysis Method.

(1) Mission: Bargaining with friends provides the initiator with a goal to complete the bargaining task within a limited time. The desire to get discounts drives users to complete tasks, and the bargaining process will continue to strengthen users' sense of mission.

(2) Achievement: Achievement is when users use their social relationship chain to complete the bargaining task and successfully obtain the task prize at a price of 0 yuan. But achievement is not limited to the gift itself, but also lies in the material reflection achieved by the user through his or her own social value, which stimulates the user's sense of achievement.

(3) Possession: The prize picture and the introduction details page drive users to own the product by completing the task.

(4) Scarcity: The reminder “xx hours left” constantly reminds users that prizes are scarce and that they must complete the bargaining task within the required time, thereby increasing users’ sense of urgency and involvement.

(5) Escape: Escape lies in two aspects. On the one hand, users can avoid traditional purchasing methods to obtain prizes. On the other hand, the task prizes are screened and provided by the platform, allowing users to avoid the process of actively screening and purchasing products and directly reach the purchase scenario.

(6) Unknown: "XX yuan has been saved" is a known factor during the task process, but it is unknown how much money can be saved at the end of the task. Curiosity about unknown discounts can drive users to participate in the task.

(7) Social: “Bargaining with friends” is an operational activity designed based on the user’s social relationship chain. If there is no social relationship chain, the task cannot be carried out. At the same time, the use of social relationship chains also raises the threshold for participating in activities and increases the fun.

(8) Authorization: Users who help their friends bargain contribute their own user value to the bargaining activity. The amount that different users help to chop off is not only random but also updated in real time, which makes it more creative.

By using the Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method to review Pinduoduo's "Friends Bargaining" gameplay and deeply explore Pinduoduo's gamification product design ideas, we can see that:

Most effective user growth operations essentially utilize the octagonal behavior analysis method based on different user behavior factors. The more flexible this method is used, the more significant the user growth effect will be.

04. Combination of “AARRR” and Octagon Behavior Analysis

The above cases introduce how to apply the Octagon Behavior Analysis Method to operational activities to increase product user growth, but the example of the "Friends Bargaining" activity is only a review analysis from the perspective of the Octagon Behavior Analysis Method.

Next, we analyze from the dimension of a universal user growth model, linking the Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method with the AARRR model, combining the two, and conducting an in-depth analysis of each layer of the funnel-shaped AARRR model, as shown in the figure.

1. Get layer

(1) Traditional method

Acquire users from various channels (such as search engines, WeChat, Weibo, Toutiao and other self-media), but the number and quality of users acquired through each channel are different. At this time, the product team and the operation team must pay attention to the number and quality of users converted from each channel, and focus on promotion channels with higher ROI (return on investment).

The problem with the traditional approach is that it focuses operations on channels without locking in target users in the early stages of operations. Promotion channels are certainly important, but the focus of ROI evaluation is to find users who are more interested in the product, rather than simply finding general users who are converted through channels.

(2) Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method: Achievement + Mission

The user growth strategy based on the Octagon Behavior Analysis method must first focus on the achievements and mission of user behavior. Achievement is an external factor, which is a measurable product or service that can be directly displayed to users.

Mission is an internal factor. It is the vision that drives users to participate in operational activities and achieve achievements after measuring the value of the achievements. There are two key factors here:

ö The value of achievement itself can be directly measured and should not be too obscure or fictitious;

ö When evaluating the achievement value of the activity, the target user group must identify with the achievement and be willing to contribute value to it.

(3) Case

"Baidu Knows" hopes that users will help maintain content order, and has organized core users to form "Sesame Generals" whose responsibility is to manage content such as transfer classifications, recommendations or encrypted answers.

The product revenue of Baidu Encyclopedia is the number of entries written. "Sesame General" launched an activity called "Tadpole Group" with the slogan "Defend the power of knowledge" to give users a sense of mission, as shown in the figure.

The activity uses various "privileges" to attract and motivate users, creating a sense of accomplishment for users, and enabling the platform to produce larger and higher-quality entries in a timely manner, thereby realizing business revenue and product value.

2. Activation layer

(1) Traditional method

Generally, after acquiring the user, the next step is to guide the user to complete certain "specified actions" (such as posting pictures, updates, comments, etc.) to make the user a long-term active and loyal user. The key to activating users is guidance.

For example, traditional offline businesses use in-store displays and active guidance from waiters to let customers immediately understand where there are empty seats, where to get menus, how to use coupons, how to apply for membership cards, etc. E-commerce platforms attract users to enter the landing page to browse products and place orders through registration instructions, channel page recommendations, coupon push, etc.

(2) Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method: Possession + Escape

The user growth strategy based on the Octagon Behavioral Analysis method focuses on guidance at the activation level, but the crux of the matter lies in the behavioral path that guides users to make decisions, and whether there is a clear goal that users can reach.

Therefore, first of all, you need to let users know that the goal is a product or service that can be obtained through certain methods. At the same time, take advantage of the user's desire to "escape" (that is, avoid the conventional route and take shortcuts) and tell users how to obtain the product or service in the fastest time.

Here, too, there are the following two key factors.

ö The goal of showing users must be products or services that users can desire and should not be too abstract.

ö The threshold for users to "escape" activities should not be too high, and the task should be within the user's ability.

(3) Case

Timed "red envelope rain" is a very common operation method. The core idea of ​​this operation method is timing, attracting target users to visit the page at a fixed time, and significantly increasing traffic. However, this operation method has the following problems.

ö Single gameplay: users only visit the page at fixed times, and will be lost in large numbers after participating in the "red envelope rain" activity, and the traffic cannot be sustained.

ö The activity threshold is too low: a large number of non-target users will not become target users after receiving red envelopes, and a large part of the operating resources are wasted.

The "Million Red Packet Rain" event previously planned by Taobao Tmall is shown in the picture.

First of all, the activity has added an interface mechanism of "invite friends to increase the number of times", that is, users can increase their number of game times by inviting friends to click.

This is a manifestation of the "escape" mechanism, and "possession" refers to the "red envelope" itself. At the same time, the event also introduced a "surprise red envelope rain" mechanism, that is, if the user completes the task of inviting 5 friends in the previous "invite friends and increase the number of times" task process, another task reward will be activated - "surprise red envelope rain".

Of course, you can also directly invite friends to start the "Surprise Red Envelope Rain" activity.

After reviewing the entire operation, we found that the seemingly simple form of "red envelope rain" presentation has a very sophisticated operational logic behind it: using "red envelope rain" as a clue to drive the user's "ownership" psychology, while also driving the user's "escape" psychology, and supplemented by the gimmick of "distributing rewards" at fixed times, which is equivalent to adding medium- and long-term operational methods to a short-term operation.

3. Retention layer

(1) Traditional method

Traditional offline merchants use the following methods to improve user retention.

First, use word of mouth. If a product or service is well made, users will be very willing to recommend it to people around them, and the retention rate of users introduced by familiar people will be higher.

Secondly, by utilizing the potential needs of users, on the spiritual level, the cultural spirit of the product or the company inspires users, and users are satisfied on the spiritual level.

Finally, encourage users to invite their friends to participate in the event. Users can share activity recommendations with friends to get cash back, gifts and other benefits.

There are two points to note about improving user retention rate.

ö Don’t rush to acquire new customers without costing the activity, while ensuring the quality of your products and services.

ö Do not directly use material rewards to encourage users to share, but set up a convenient activity sharing function and ask users to help share.

(2) Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method: Authorization + Unknown

For user growth strategies based on Octagon behavioral analysis, the key to retention lies in two-way drive from both the product level and the user level.

From a product perspective, users should be allowed to actively create value for the product on an ongoing basis, and the product system should be able to obtain feedback in a timely manner. At the user level, create unknown exploration scenarios and motivational feedback for users to inspire users on a spiritual level.

The more unknown factors the platform provides to users, the easier it is for users to create, and while creating, more unknown factors will be triggered.

Here, too, two key factors need to be noted.

ö The creative capabilities and scope authorized to users should be within the controllable range of the platform, with authorization boundaries and set thresholds.

ö The drive of unknown elements should be continuous and renewable, and rooted in every demand scenario in the user's creation process.

(3) Case

The case is based on Tmall’s operational activity – “Ideal Cat Paradise”. The Ideal Cat Paradise activity was a very classic operation activity of Taobao in the past, as shown in the picture.

This activity makes good use of the "authorized + unknown" octagonal behavior analysis method, which is worthy of our in-depth analysis.

Here’s how to play the ideal cat park activities.

ö Open the Taobao App, then shake your phone to enter the event page, click the "Go to the store and grab red envelopes" button or the icon of any brand store to participate in the game: receive red envelopes, cat food, shopping allowances, or directly enter the event page to adopt a random cat.

ö Users can randomly receive red envelopes, shopping allowances and cat food when shopping in brand stores. At the same time, small games are built into each store page, and users can trigger random tasks by participating in the games.

ö When the user raises the adopted cat to 8 kg, he/she will deliberately adopt the next cat. After raising 3 cats, you can participate in the event on June 6, 11, and 18 to grab red envelopes worth up to 618 yuan. You can also open a big treasure chest by visiting 10 brands on the page.

Through the above methods of participating in the event, we can see that, first of all, the event authorizes users to "adopt a cat randomly."

The adoption of the first cat is random, and the adoption of subsequent cats is chosen by the user based on his or her own wishes. At the same time, in the "Cat House", users can also use props to dress up the cats, turning the act of raising a cat into a creative development game while still retaining the pet elements that touch the users' emotions.

During the cat's growth process, it needs to complete certain tasks, such as paying attention to the store, participating in activities and games in exchange for cat food.

Driven by the psychology of empowerment, users will take the initiative to complete various tasks, and the unknown factors interspersed in each task will drive users to continue to participate in other activities.

For example, when you follow a store and enter the store details page, you will see randomly triggered mini-games on the channel page, such as "Catch the Cat's Tail" and "Grab Cat Food".

After users participate in the game and receive random rewards, they will browse store merchandise and even place orders in a continued scenario. There are many other ways to play like this in the Cat Paradise event.

Combining the Octagon Behavioral Analysis Method of "Authorization + Unknown" with "Possession + Escape":

On the one hand, physical rewards are used to drive user retention. On the other hand, different distribution times are used to alleviate the time points when users are prone to fatigue during the activity, thereby improving user retention rate throughout the entire life cycle of the activity.

4. Monetization Layer

(1) Traditional method

There is only one core goal at the monetization layer: to increase revenue. As for how to increase revenue, three main issues should be considered: payment breaking point, payment sustainability and payment process analysis.

Regarding the payment breaking point, product managers need to determine whether the current payment point is reasonable, such as whether to first drive users to try related functions or services for free and then start the payment process, or to start the payment process when the product functions or services are released. Because once the payment point is not designed reasonably, the payment point will become a user loss point.

Regarding the ability to sustain payment, product managers mainly focus on the repurchase rate, including the functions of the product's repurchase points, user payment frequency, payment time interval, etc.

Regarding the issue of repurchase rate, the RFM model is an important tool for measuring customer value and customer profitability. It is widely used in many customer relationship management (CRM) analysis models and can provide reference for product managers in the product payment process and function design process.

Regarding the payment process analysis, product managers mainly focus on the factors that affect user churn in each key process in the payment process. At the same time, they also need to further analyze the activities and product functions that drive business revenue, and horizontally evaluate the user conversion of each activity and product function.

Currently, most products will establish their own point currency system, such as points for community products, gold coins for live broadcast products, props for game products, etc. These are all internal currencies of the product.

At the same time, we create an IP-based product image and design related ancillary products for it, such as dolls, key chains, water cups, etc. Designing a reasonable points currency system and creating IP-related products that users appreciate and will continue to pay for will also have an impact on product revenue.

(2) Octagonal Behavior Analysis Method: Scarcity + Social

For user growth strategies based on Octagon Behavior Analysis, the key to monetization lies in how to drive user conversion and how to drive continuous user conversion.

From a product perspective, we should focus our product design on creating scarcity of products. We should control the functions, services, quantity and duration of scarce products, while maintaining users’ expectations for the functions or services of scarce products, to achieve a perfect balance.

At the user level, we need to increase users' tendency to share content related to product features, services or commodities, create "social currency", use people's willingness to share with others to shape our own products or culture, and establish unique user circles or cultural groups around the products to achieve the purpose of word-of-mouth communication.

By creating scarcity through product design and user cognition, the value of the product can be subtly improved and reflected in the price of the product, thus optimizing the payment breaking point and increasing the average order value.

On this basis, we build specific user circles around product features, and use the user's social relationship chain to convey product concepts and values ​​to more similar users. As the relationship chain gradually extends and the product value is continuously strengthened in the social process, the problem of product payment sustainability is solved.

Here again, there are two key factors:

ö The creation of product scarcity must be based on existing product types, have basic user consumption awareness, and cannot be overly innovative.

ö The user circles or cultural groups formed based on product characteristics and user social relationship chains must have relatively positive and healthy values;

(3) Case

On December 11, 2020, Pop Mart, the "first blind box stock", was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

In 2016, Pop Mart transformed into a trendy toy retailer, started the "IP+blind box" operation model, and launched blind box products such as the Molly constellation series. The company's performance grew rapidly and even stimulated the development of the "blind box" economy.

Blind boxes originated from Japan's lucky bags, which refer to boxes containing dolls, souvenirs, props, etc. of IPs related to animation, games, film and television. Because the box does not indicate which doll is inside, consumers can only know after purchasing it and opening it, so the box is called a blind box.

Blind boxes are mostly sold in the form of a product combination of a large number of fixed models and a small number of hidden models. At the same time, in order to balance user purchasing needs, even unpopular models will be added, which greatly increases the challenge for users to open the blind box.

In order to further increase the "scarcity" of blind box products, Pop Mart added hidden items with extremely small probability of winning into the blind box. The randomness and scarcity of blind boxes drive users to constantly "draw blind boxes" and repurchase them multiple times without realizing it.

In addition to the "scarcity" product design, social gameplay further enhances the user coverage of this multiple rounds of repurchase conversions.

Various online social platforms provide users with a broader communication scenario, and users' willingness to share increases with the convenient communication methods. If a user happens to win a limited edition blind box doll, this sharing motivation will be even stronger.

Circles of users with the same hobbies can communicate online, share each other's preferences and emotional resonance, thus forming a "circle of like-minded people".

Some blind box players even create secondary works of the dolls in the blind box based on their own personalized preferences, and upload the results to social networking platforms to gain group recognition and self-satisfaction.

For Pop Mart's operators, developing refined operation plans that are in line with the interests and preferences of this group of highly sticky users will further enhance the brand recognition of users in the "circle of like-minded users", thereby increasing order conversion rates.

Author: Mu Ning Talk

Source: Mu Ning Talk