Case! “User incentive” routine fails? See how others do it

Now that you have users, what next?

In the past two years, various "accounts" have become a battlefield for grabbing traffic . In addition to information applications, various practical tools , browsers , and search engines have also become content portals, all hoping to capture users' attention and extend the time their attention stays as long as possible.

Therefore, returning to the question at the beginning of the article, acquiring customers is only the first step, and the act of "completing registration" is just the beginning of the user growth system.

The user growth system, in other words, is a membership system. This somewhat "old-fashioned" saying is actually a systematic project to gain insight into users, increase stickiness, create a sense of participation, express platform care, and achieve core user cultivation and continuous monetization. This is also the "big problem" that needs to be considered comprehensively after acquiring customers.

In this issue, we focus on the information field, selecting The Guardian, The Washington Post , The Wall Street Journal and the social news website Reddit as observation samples, and analyzing what tricks each company uses to cultivate users.

As a comprehensive daily newspaper with global influence, The Guardian launched a digital paid membership plan in 2014 and began to promote it in 2016. At The Guardian, there is a team of about 50 people dedicated to membership, whose work includes data analysis , business development, marketing , customer experience, and more.

Subdividing paid membership tiers

The Guardian's paid members can be roughly divided into three levels: "Supporter", "Partner" and "Patron", and the amount of fee determines the content access and level of participation.

In just one year, the number of "Supporters", the most basic level of membership, soared from 15,000 to 200,000, bringing the Guardian £1 million in monthly revenue. While achieving gratifying results, The Guardian has also set itself a "small goal": it hopes that the number of paid members will exceed one million in 2019.

The Guardian has gone through dozens of explorations and attempts to promote its membership system, placing membership promotional materials in different places: from links at the bottom of articles to links placed within the text, to pop-up ads, social network dissemination, and subscription email push. It has tried them all and significantly increased the number of member participation with overwhelming publicity.

Currently, The Guardian has set up a membership entrance in a prominent position on its official website, and you can click it to enter the "supporter" introduction page.

As the main membership level promoted by The Guardian, "Supporters" need to pay 5 pounds (6.99 US dollars) per month and can enjoy privileges such as receiving membership gifts, no APP ads, joining the global Guardian reader club, and receiving customized member emails.

The webpage also uses considerable space and earnest language to persuade readers to join: because advertising revenue is getting less and less, and they do not want to be interfered with by business and politics, but they also want to protect editorial independence, so they can only turn to the readers for support, so that everyone can work together to create a better and fairer news environment.

#Video: Support The Guardian

In addition to "Supporters", there are two higher levels, "Partner" and "Patron", which require monthly payments of £15 and £60 respectively. The higher the level, the more privileges you get:

At the "Good Partner" level, you can get 6 "Guardian Live" tickets or 4 Guardian publications (choose one of the two); you can get priority ticket booking, no booking fee, ticket discounts, and you can bring a friend to participate in the event.

At the "Old Customer" level, you can get 6 tickets and 4 publications, and you can also participate in the salon exclusive to senior members.

Knowledge-based services: offline salons, open classes, workshops

Because it targets a mid- to high-end readership, the value-added services promoted by The Guardian have a strong knowledge attribute: from free books to high-level salons and courses, The Guardian always maintains its own professional tone.

"Guardian Live" is a high-quality offline salon event specially launched by The Guardian for its membership system. Each issue invites famous experts to share their views and communicate with readers. Members of both the "Good Partner" and "Old Customer" levels can enjoy benefits such as priority ticket purchase 2 days in advance and 20% discount on ticket fees. Readers participating in the event can take part in thematic discussions and debates, and discuss profound topics and viewpoints with senior experts and journalist friends , such as "Democracy in an Age of Crisis", "Are We Living in a Post-Truth Era?" and so on.

In addition to Guardian Live, the Guardian has also launched the "Masterclasses" project, which brings together award-winning industry insiders to conduct courses and workshops, with different projects almost every day. There are many areas of study available: from "non-fiction writing" to "the soul of the city", and even "character sketching", "extraterrestrial life" and so on. The program also offers benefits to two higher tiers of membership.

If readers really don't intend to spend money, they can also register as a "Friend" of The Guardian, where they will also have the opportunity to get ticket booking opportunities and participate in The Guardian's membership activities.

It is undoubtedly wise for a newspaper targeting middle- to high-end readers to choose to build a closer relationship with its readers by providing high value-added membership services. Unlike the "paywall", a punitive mechanism that prohibits reading without payment, David Magliano, the executive in charge of The Guardian's membership system, believes that the membership system they provide is an "incentive mechanism": providing paying readers with additional high-end, premium content and projects, which is actually a "reverse paywall".

The Washington Post launched its membership system, PostPoints, in 2007, making it the first newspaper to do so. After 10 years, the membership system is still operating normally and has not changed much from its original form.

The above picture is the Washington Post's description of the PostPoints membership points system and privilege details, which can be briefly summarized as follows:

Platinum membership is the highest level and is open to readers who subscribe to The Washington Post daily;
Gold membership is open to readers who subscribe only to the Sunday edition of The Washington Post;
Silver membership is open to readers who do not have a long-term subscription to The Washington Post and only read individual articles.

The way to earn points and the privileges enjoyed by members of different levels are slightly different.

For example, when platinum members purchase publications from The Washington Post offline, they can enjoy discounted prices and accumulate points. For the same purchase, gold members can only accumulate points, while silver members cannot earn points without a physical card. Some activities and services are also only open to high-level members, such as the opportunity to communicate with columnists, visits to The Washington Post's archive system, etc.

Not limited to content consumption, infiltrating into offline life scenarios

Unlike other membership systems, the accumulation of PostPoints is not limited to the Washington Post system . Points can also be earned by shopping in offline shopping malls, pharmacies, fresh food stores and other places that have cooperated with The Washington Post.

For readers, such a membership system is not a burden. Readers just need to do everything as usual: read newspapers, go shopping, watch movies , buy food, etc., and earning points is just a matter of convenience.

Another special channel for earning points is community and volunteer activities: readers can accumulate their own points by participating in blood donation and other community volunteer activities.

It can be said that readers of The Washington Post have already formed a community , and the PostPoints membership system is designed to strengthen connections between readers. Readers can redeem their points for opportunities to participate in events such as free pizza and even a golf party in Iceland.

When the membership program was launched in 2007, 60 merchants and over 1,000 stores had already formed partnerships with The Washington Post. CVS Pharmacy was one of the first businesses to see the value of the membership system. Former regional vice president Gordon Howard felt that this way of connecting consumers and advertisers was very innovative, and that this dialogue was built on community connections and trust.

“The membership program is a material investment in our readers and advertisers,” said Steve Hills, former general manager and president of The Washington Post. “The Washington Post’s readership forms the most important relationship in the Washington area, and our membership system strengthens that connection. We are also excited that this membership system will strengthen our value in the eyes of Washington’s businesses, consumers and communities.”

Although some people questioned that the PostPoints membership system accumulates points slowly, The Washington Post still developed 140,000 members in its first year. Kevin Schulman from Prime Group also commented: "This membership system really has the potential to strengthen connections between consumers and create value for readers in this way."

In 2014, The Wall Street Journal launched the WSJ+ membership . If the membership system of The Washington Post is friendly to the people, then WSJ+ is very high-end.

In theory, WSJ+ is only open to subscribers of The Wall Street Journal, but if someone wants to join without subscribing to the newspaper, they can also pay a membership fee of US$189. It can be said that the entire WSJ+ is a club. It is only open to readers or members of The Wall Street Journal. Its benefits are only available to members, and its activities can only be participated in by invitation.

There is no grading system in the WSJ+ membership system. As long as you join, you will have equal access to benefits. WSJ+ offers a variety of benefits: visits to the editorial office, shopping mall discounts, and even free travel, mainly focusing on the mid- to high-end route.

However, the most commonly used form of welfare is admission tickets to high-end events that are not open to the public. For example, private museum visits, art performances, private cinema screenings, etc., and the locations are all over the world.

Because there are so many activities, the editorial department has arranged the activities into a calendar to make it convenient for members to choose according to their own schedule. Judging from the situation on the website, these activities are very popular and many have been sold out.

WSJ+ launched by The Wall Street Journal is quite appealing to readers and achieves the goal of deepening connections with readers and attracting new readers. As chief consumer officer and president of global management at Dow Jones, Katie Vanneck Smith approves of the Wall Street Journal's approach and feels that "this is also a way to give back to readers."

As a social networking site that provides entertainment and news content, Reddit's media attributes are not as prominent as the above-mentioned media: it calls itself the "front page of the Internet", allows users to post external links, and also allows users to publish original content on the platform.

The core of the membership incentive system of such a content sharing community is the gold coin system (Reddi Gold). In addition, there are points (Karma) and incentive medals (Trophy).

The way to obtain gold coin membership is simple and crude:

You can get Gold Membership by just recharging $3.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Becoming a gold coin member can get many privileges, including turning off advertisements, changing skins, creating virtual images, creating secret communities, loading more comments, testing new features, obtaining gold coin medals, and more than ten other functions.

Positive incentives among users: the more you share, the higher the quality, the more rewards you will get

In addition to obtaining membership through recharge, publishing high-quality content in the community can also receive "gilding incentives" :

You can give Reddit coins to the author of a good article. You can give it directly under the article or click on the author's personal homepage to give it. Each coin donation will cost $3.99 (the price of a one-month coin membership).

The process of giving is undoubtedly wonderful. A senior reddit user said that gilding other people's content is one of his favorite things to do on reddit.

For users, receiving gold-plated incentives is quite encouraging - after all, this is encouragement given to you by readers you don’t know spending real money. Many users may not be able to get "gold-plated incentives" even after hanging out on Reddit for several years.

Since the launch of the gold coin system in 2013, Reddit's gold coin revenue has continued to grow. This year, gold coin revenue is expected to exceed the one million US dollar mark - although it is not much compared to its tens of millions of US dollars in advertising revenue, its value cannot be measured in monetary terms: after all, this is the money that users are willing to pay for the platform.

Likes and dislikes are also counted into the points

In addition, Karma is also a major indicator for judging user contribution. In addition to the moderators who control the content of the forum, readers also have considerable autonomy and can Upvote or Downvote based on the quality of the links, posts and comments provided by users - they are equivalent to "likes" and "dislikes", and each like and dislike corresponds to a Karma value of plus/minus 1 point. If there are many likes, the post will be pushed to a higher and front position, making it easier for others to read it; if there are many dislikes, it means that these useless posts will have no chance of being on the front page.

Therefore, the Karma value posted on a user’s homepage means the value of the user in the Reddit community.

Platform-side incentives: Screening user content to reward virtual medals

If the above incentives occur between users, then Trophy is the reward provided by the community to users - this is an incentive mechanism launched by Reddit to thank users.

The incentive medals are divided into two sets: one set is the "reward" medals , including more than 20 medals based on content contribution itself, such as "Best Comment" and "Good Chain Links"; the other set is the more scarce special skill medals , including more than 10 skill-based medals such as "Translator", "CSS Expert" and "Artist". After users obtain these medals, they will be posted on their personal homepage.

Reddit not only gives badges to users, but also holds badge ranking activities : each badge will select the most powerful user of the previous day; in addition, some special awards will also be set up, such as the annual best award.

Reddit's user growth system is actually simple and pure. It revolves closely around "content contribution": when you contribute to the community, other users will recognize you, and the Reddit platform will also recognize you; otherwise, you will be excluded by users.

Whether it is a media or a social networking site, the user growth system is not as simple as “paying money to get membership”. Through in-depth insights into users, we understand and focus on their core interests and growth trajectories, thereby achieving maximum sticky growth and paid revenue. When it comes to social sharing, users can not only grow on the platform, but also give back to the platform through their own content contributions, thus forming a healthy content ecosystem.