Attracting 42 million fans in 6 years, "MINISO"'s private domain skills!

Last October, it was directly listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

This brand is MINISO . According to its prospectus, in fiscal year 2020, it had more than 4,000 stores worldwide and revenue exceeded 9 billion.

Many people may have heard of him, but they don’t know that he entered the private domain early and achieved remarkable results.

According to Liu Xiaobin, CMO and head of e-commerce at MINISO, MINISO currently has 42 million members, of which more than 30 million are active consumer members, and its private domain users exceed 5 million.

What is the concept? We can compare it with the private domain giant Heytea, whose number of members is only 35 million.

From offline traffic to official accounts, from mini-program conversion to membership building, MINISO has taken off against the trend despite the black swan effect of the 2020 epidemic through its meticulous private domain layout.

Today, let us learn how MINISO operates in the private domain.

01. Traffic diversion: Early offline layout

If you want to do well in private domain, the first step is to build a good user base.

1) Store traffic diversion

In order to effectively attract customers, MINISO’s store staff often start from the current needs of users.

For example, when checking out, the clerk will tell the user that a shopping bag costs 1 yuan, but as long as the user follows the official account, they can get it for free.

If you simply tell users that “you can earn points by registering as a member” but there is no immediate benefit, many people may not bother to register; if you can meet the user’s “immediate needs”, then the success rate will be much higher.

Although this "hook" seems unremarkable now, MINISO started to accumulate private domain in this way in 2015.

You should know that most of the brands that are doing very well in the private domain, such as Luckin Coffee, Heytea and Perfect Diary, mostly entered the market in 2017 and 2018.

In other words, while these brands were still expanding, MINISO had already completed the "primitive accumulation" of traffic.

According to Xylem Media, MINISO used this method to attract more than 8 million fans to its official account in just over a year.

In addition, MINISO's "hooks" for attracting customers will also change according to different consumption scenarios to ensure that they touch the hearts of users, such as giving away masks during the epidemic, mineral water in summer, and hot packs in winter...

2) Social fission

In addition to using stores for "primitive accumulation", MINISO also uses some fission gameplay to conduct "viral" social fission to achieve effective new customer acquisition and secondary marketing.

For example, MINISO recently launched an activity where friends are invited to help and receive large coupons.

As long as you invite 3 friends to help you, you can get a half-price coupon of "over 200-100", and the friends who help you can also get a large coupon of "over 200-80". (It has a Pinduoduo flavor, right?)

02. Retention: Official Accounts and Communities

After directing traffic to the private domain, the second step is to use official accounts and communities to retain and convert users while reducing user churn.

After observation, I found that although MINISO’s official account and community both have the function of receiving traffic, their positioning and functions are very different.

1) Official Account: Content Promotion

MINISO not only started operating its official account early, but also has its own set of content production methods.

① Personality: Close the distance

In the process of brands penetrating users, in order to reduce the "advertising attributes" as much as possible, brands often "set up" a trustworthy "person" to reach users.

MINISO has created an all-encompassing "new media team" by shaping different personality dimensions: the neutral-style Xiao M, the fairy-like feminine M Xiao Mei, and the foodie-like otaku M Xiao Zhai.

Each of them has his or her own distinct personality traits, and users can always find similarities between them and themselves (love of beauty, love of food, being a homebody, etc.). This shortens the distance between the official account and the users.

In addition, MINISO is also very good at using the images of these editors to create emoticons, which are interspersed in articles to more intuitively convey the creators' emotions to users and further narrow the distance between the two parties.

② Topic: Super target group

There are roughly two types of topics for MINISO’s articles: one is articles that share useful information and recommend products.

For example, "Short hair template is here! The face-slimming effect is comparable to "plastic surgery" and "A hairstyle that can be done without perming or dyeing! Suitable for work and school! "wait……

These types of articles are very beneficial, and users know they can get incremental information as soon as they read the title.

The other type is more emotional articles. Most of the topics in this category are more topical, such as "Nationally unified confusing childhood behaviors, is there still a chance to rescue them?" ”, the behaviors mentioned in this article, such as sticking diamonds on the forehead and spinning umbrellas wildly in the rain, are what everyone did in their childhood.

For example, "It's 2021, are you still ashamed of talking about menstruation? ”, the embarrassment and awkwardness mentioned in this article are still encountered by many girls today.

By selecting topics for the latter type of super-target group, MINISO has further expanded the coverage of its articles.

It is not difficult to see from the likes, views and comments that as the user coverage becomes wider, the interactivity and activity of the articles also increase.

③ Content: Paving the way for conversion

In order to improve conversion, MINISO has also put a lot of thought into the content.

First, create an official community for seeding.

In the past two years, the trend of "planting grass" has become more and more popular, and many people have become accustomed to "doing homework" online before buying things.

After realizing how attractive “content seeding” is, MINISO has officially launched the campaign, pushing various “seed seeding” articles on its official WeChat account from time to time:

From clothing to daily necessities, MINISO has taken care of every aspect.

In addition, each recommended product is equipped with a link to purchase the single product, which allows users to directly jump to the mini program to place an order. In this way, the shopping process is greatly shortened, and the conversion efficiency increases every minute!

Secondly, distribute coupons in push articles to stimulate users to place orders and further improve conversion efficiency.

MINISO often distributes benefits at the end of articles, sometimes in the form of coupons for purchases over a certain amount, and sometimes in the form of discount coupons.

There are two benefits to doing this. First, it creates a feeling of "benefits in push notifications" for users, thus increasing user stickiness. Second, if users happen to see the coupon, they may collect the coupon and place an order, after all, the discount is real.

2) WeChat community: distribute benefits and increase conversion

Compared with official accounts, the purpose of MINISO’s community is very simple - to increase user stickiness and thus improve conversions by distributing benefits.

First of all, the group owner Xiao M clearly told users that there are 0-yuan trials, flash sales, good product recommendations, and occasional surprises in the group...

This not only demonstrates the value of the community, but also creates a feeling for users that the benefits within the group are much better than outside, which is conducive to user retention.

Secondly, the group owner immediately provided welfare feedback to new users after they joined the group - guiding users to click on the link to receive the new member gift package. While quickly converting new users, it also established the image of the group as "really offering benefits".

Finally, I found that the link to receive the new gift package is the mini program , which not only shortens the user conversion path, but also helps to direct users to the mini program, killing two birds with one stone.

However, to be honest, apart from the good benefits for joining the group, MINISO's community operation does have room for improvement:

Although the official said that their community will be operated in a refined manner according to different users, to achieve thousands of groups with thousands of faces;

(Photo source: Morketing)

But in terms of actual experience, it may be because the channels I joined the group were relatively single (offline stores and official accounts). The three groups I was in not only had no rhythm in pushing (a wave of new member benefits were sent when new members came in, and there were very few other coupons), but also often had small advertisements inserted. Now it has become a group for everyone to "help" (and not all of them are for MINISO)...

03. Conversion: Mini Programs are highly efficient

The third and most important step for MINISO to enter the private domain is to convert users through mini programs.

With a flagship store on Tmall and physical stores offline, how does MINISO change users' shopping habits and make them use mini programs more frequently?

1) Priority one-hour delivery service

Now, MINISO has cooperated with Ele.me, Meituan and JD Express to provide users with a "one-hour delivery" service. As long as users place an order on the mini program, they can receive their selected items within an hour.

For those users who are too lazy to go out to physical stores, but don’t want to wait for several days to place an order at the Tmall flagship store, the “one-hour delivery” service perfectly meets their needs.

In order to help users develop the habit of placing orders on mini programs, MINISO will also issue "free delivery coupons" and various "discount coupons" from time to time.

In this way, not only the ordering rate of users on the mini program is increased, but also the users originally dispersed by Meituan and Ele.me can be re-deposited into its own traffic pool.

2) Scan code to purchase service

Offline queuing has always been a pain point faced by physical stores. Adding checkout points will increase costs on the one hand, and cause waste of resources during the off-season on the other.

To address this situation, MINISO launched the “Scan QR Code to Buy” service on its mini program.

Users only need to take out their mobile phones while shopping, scan the codes of the items they want to buy one by one, check out directly on WeChat, and then verify the exit code when leaving the store.

04. Repeat purchase: Membership system

As we all know, users who become members are more likely to remain loyal to the brand and create more value for the brand during their life cycle.

Therefore, MINISO has built a membership system full of details, and you can't help but accept it:

1) Regular Member

Regular members are the cornerstone of MINISO's membership operations. To this end, MINISO has spent a lot of thought on setting up regular members.

① Low entry threshold

The first step for MINISO to become a member is to lower the entry threshold and allow more users to become members.

Now, it is very easy to become a member of MINISO. You can register by just logging into the WeChat mini program with one click.

The mobile phone number can be directly pulled from WeChat, and the user does not need to manually enter the details. The registration path is very short, and there are only three steps as follows:

② Member Advanced Settings

For the operation of regular members, MINISO has a complete points system. Depending on the points, ordinary members are divided into ordinary cards, silver cards and gold cards.

Users can accumulate 10 growth points for every 1 yuan they spend. Growth values ​​of 0 – 2999 are ordinary cards, 3000 – 5999 are silver cards, and above 6000 are gold cards.

(Silver Cards have the same benefits as Gold Cards, but the benefits are weaker)

In addition to the growth value (obtained through consumption), the membership card interface also has a progress bar that shows the user's current location, how far away from the next node, and how much money is required to upgrade.

For example, my current growth value is 1269, and the membership card will indicate that I still need 1731 (approximately 174 in consumption) to upgrade to a silver card member.

In addition to allowing users to more intuitively understand their growth value position, the 174 yuan can also serve as an anchor point to highlight the preferential strength of "paid upgrades".

What does it mean? MINISO allows users to "force upgrade" by paying. It only costs 19.9 to upgrade from a regular card to a silver card (you can also get a 59 minus 20 coupon), and it only costs 39.9 to upgrade from a silver card to a gold card (you can also get a 99 minus 42 coupon).

Anyone who is a little bit good at math can figure it out immediately. Paying 19.9 to upgrade will give you a 20 yuan coupon, which is equivalent to free. It is obviously much more cost-effective than spending another 174 yuan (the same applies to gold cards).

Through such "little tricks", MINISO can effectively stimulate users to upgrade their membership levels, thereby increasing user stickiness.

2) You+ Member

In addition to the regular membership system, MINISO has also launched the MINISO+ membership.

This You+ membership is similar to a super VIP among VIPs, and enjoys privileges that regular members do not have, such as large coupons, super discounts and pre-sale purchases.

So, how does MINISO get users to purchase the You+ membership?

First of all, he will recommend membership to you when the user needs special benefits. For example, when you are checking out and placing an order, it will display a small floating layer saying “Open a card and enjoy 95% off”.

Second, they make you feel like you’re getting a good deal. For example, the coupon in the middle of the card opening page is called a "blood-recovery coupon". Users spend 9.9 to open a card and can get a 10-yuan discount coupon in the end, which seems to be a very good deal.

Finally, MINISO will personally do the math for you and tell you that if you open a MINISO+ membership, you will be able to save 420 yuan this year. By comparing 9.9 and 420, it will further give users the impression that it is a “good deal”.

In fact, when it comes down to it, MINISO is carrying out tiered operations for different user groups.

For ordinary users, MINISO will guide them to become silver card or gold card users as soon as possible through accumulation or payment, and enter the mature stage;

For loyal users, MINISO will further improve user loyalty through the premium experience brought by payment, extend the life cycle of these users, and enable them to generate higher ARPU values.

05. Conclusion

Although the market's evaluation of MINISO is often accompanied by negative comments such as "cheap", "inferior quality" and "pseudo-Japanese style", we have to admit that MINISO's private domain is indeed well done - it has an early layout and a complete system.

From offline traffic to detailed innovation in various refined operations, almost every step is closely centered around user needs and moves forward step by step.

It is precisely this super-strong private domain operation method that enabled MINISO to survive 2020, which was known as the "offline store winter", and emerge as a dark horse and ring the bell of the New York Stock Exchange.

Of course, the long-term development of a brand cannot rely solely on private domains. The most important thing is to return to the product itself.

After all, there are endless new ways of operating, but high-quality products are always king.

Author: Routine Editorial Department fun

Source: Routine Editorial Department fun