Three operational insights I gained from a Spring Festival red envelope event

During the Spring Festival, we planned a red envelope event based on our company's products with the theme of "Post blessing updates to receive red envelopes". Now that the event is over, let's talk about every content worth sharing from event planning to execution. This article is more about sharing some insights gained from this personal experience in product operation , which may be of some inspiration to you.

Event Overview

The theme of this product operation activity is "Publish blessing dynamics to receive red envelopes", and the activity rules are as follows:

1. The sender of the red envelope posts a blessing message in the product and can also include a red envelope with a custom amount and quantity;
2. After the blessing dynamic with a red envelope is published, all my fans who follow me will receive this new dynamic notification. Fans who repost my blessing dynamic can receive a red envelope.
3. My fans' fans can also receive a red envelope when they repost this blessing dynamic. Each person is limited to one red envelope, while all are taken.

At the product level, the following key operations need to be completed:

The first step is that as the publisher of the blessing dynamic, I write a piece of content that I need to publish, and then put this blessing in a red envelope. When I publish this red envelope blessing, all the fans who follow me will receive this blessing notification.

The second step is that after my fans enter my homepage, they can click the red envelope button and repost the blessing post to receive a random red envelope.

The activity operation rules and product actions are shown above. We do not have very high expectations for the effectiveness of this activity internally, because we feel that users are not very motivated to convey a blessing message. From the time the event officially started on New Year's Eve to the end of the Spring Festival holiday, the actual data results generated by this event really exceeded our expectations. The following is the growth of activity data on New Year’s Eve. This indicator reflects the number of times users reposted the content (some detailed data has been hidden due to sensitive information).

From the data growth, we can see that the enthusiasm of the actual participating users far exceeded our expectations. We found that a large number of users joined the event because they discovered it themselves or were introduced by friends, so that my partner and I who were monitoring the event on New Year's Eve were both in a panic, because we count the data hourly and adjust the red envelope amount at any time. We originally planned that there would not be too many participants and the pace would not be too tight. However, after the actual event started, the fast pace, the speed of collection and the high number of reposts were beyond our expectations.

Judging from the data from the beginning to the end of the event, we used less than half of the budget and completed data indicators that were three times the expected results. Overall, this event was relatively successful. Regardless of the purpose of the participants during the event, from the perspective of product operation, the planning and execution of this event was relatively successful. Based on this, I have summarized the following thoughts and share them below.

1. Activity operation is based on products

The reason why it is called product operation is that it must be based on the product. The starting point and foothold of the operation must revolve around the product. If there is no trace of product in an operation plan , it must be a failed operation plan. Because, without products, no effective results can be achieved. This result can be data, user usage habits, or user feedback during the use of the product. Event operation is based on products and what is operated is the product function. The event is just a way to externalize this function.

In this product operation activity, users' behaviors are all based on the product. In this process, the event planner creates a scenario for users to use the product, and then assists with certain incentives to focus users' attention on the product. Human nature pursues profit, so the learning cost and usage threshold of the product will gradually be covered up. Just like we use Taobao to shop now, we need to register a Taobao account, fill in complex registration information and delivery address, and open Alipay , and then we have to do real-name authentication to open Alipay. Just looking at the registration and activation process alone, it is complicated and lengthy enough. However, in order to buy cheap and good products, users will selectively ignore this complicated process. Therefore, operational activity planning is to create a scenario for users to use the product, and then let users participate based on a certain purpose.

2. Users won’t do what you planned

Users use products because the products can meet certain needs of theirs. We use Taobao to buy goods at home and use WeChat to meet our needs for remote communication. However, the core functions that users can actually use may only be the tip of the iceberg of all the product functions. Take WeChat for example, its functions are so powerful that we cannot even imagine it, but each individual user may only be able to use a few of the functions that they think are important. In addition to chatting and Moments, some people use WeChat to hail taxis and some people use WeChat to buy movie tickets. These functions are not designed to meet the needs of all users. Conversely, users will not use the product in the way we planned.

In this operation, we originally focused on blessing dynamics, so we prepared a lot of blessing contents with beautiful sentences in the early stage, thinking that users would repost them because of the good contents. But what is the actual situation? After users receive blessing messages with red envelopes, they don’t even bother to read the content and directly repost and receive the red envelopes. Remember, you’ll miss out if you’re slow! From the perspective of product operation, our goal has been achieved. In this process, users have become more familiar with the product, and their activity and attention have increased. But we also know that users' behavior does not always follow the way we planned. Therefore, if product design and event planning are quick and easy, an ordinary product function can shine brightly with the support of a careful operation plan.

3. Product operation is an excellent opportunity for product self-examination

Product management is responsible for designing and developing products, while product operations are responsible for using products. In the early stages of development, most product design decisions are made based on the product manager ’s prior judgment of user needs. Therefore, this prior design needs to be verified, and product operations are the most appropriate prosecutors. The scope of product operation includes not only activity operation, but also user operation and content operation . Depending on the product type, content operation may not be a must for every product, such as tool products. Event operation and user operation are basically essential for most product operations.

Taking the operation of this event as an example, during the entire planning process, my partner, as the main planner, was able to discover many product improvements in the process of formulating event plans and rules, because the main planner was simulating the product usage process in the role of the user, which is different from the problems seen by the product manager in the design stage.

As mentioned earlier, users will not follow our plan, let alone ordinary users who are independent and have individual thinking. Moreover, the role of the main planner in a product operation activity is very critical. He needs to control the progress of each link of the activity, including event planning, product, marketing promotion, etc. This is an extremely critical hub role. It can be said that the success or failure of an event depends largely on the main planner.

In addition, during the execution of operational activities, users will have the most intuitive feeling about the product. Can users effectively get the core concept conveyed by the product? Can the core functions of the product meet user needs? These problems will be exposed one by one through the scenario created by product operation activities, so product operation is an excellent opportunity for product self-inspection.

Finally, there are several interesting conclusions. First, for red envelope product operation activities, the amount of the red envelope is not the most important. On the contrary, the number of red envelopes plays a key role. In other words, using 1 yuan to buy 100 red envelopes and using 100 yuan to buy 100 red envelopes have the same single-time communication effect. Second, users will only remember one key feature of a product. Even if the product has many very good functions, users will only remember the product because of a certain pure point. For example, people initially remembered WeChat because of its free text messages.

The above is some sharing on this product operation activity. If there are any shortcomings, I hope you can point them out!

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

This article was compiled and published by @唐仁 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!