The whole process of user growth fission of "old bring new"

Without users, there is no revenue. In an era of scarce traffic, many Internet companies regard "number of users" as the most core indicator and constantly pursue user growth . So, how do we achieve the difficult problem of user growth? The author introduces the "old and new" recommendation method to help companies achieve growth faster and more effectively.

Without users, there will be no revenue and no financing for expansion, so many Internet companies regard "user volume" as their most core indicator and always pursue user growth.

There are only three ways to increase user growth:

1. Achieve user growth through channel advertising. This method is the fastest and most effective, but its disadvantage is that it is more expensive.
2. Bring in new users through recommendations from old users. The focus is on the base of old users. If there are too few old users, it is meaningless to have old users bring in new ones.
3. Through natural traffic, users come from spontaneous searches. It is only possible to bring in a large number of users when the product has a particularly high reputation or there is a gap in the market.

Today we will focus on the user growth method of "old user recommendations", hoping to give some inspiration and help to those who are working on user operations/growth/fission/old users bringing in new users.

1. Why should we have the old employees mentor the new employees?

1. Multi-channel accelerated growth

The difference between doing and not doing old customer referrals is, simply put, that there is an additional channel. But everyone should know this formula: 1.01^365=37.8. At a daily growth rate of 1% for old customers referring new customers, the number of users will increase 37.8 times after 365 days. There will be growth only if the channel is put into use, otherwise there will be no growth. The growth will be snowball-like and accelerated if old customers bring in new customers.

2. High quality and easy to convert

The essence of "olds bringing in new ones" is to use the resources/channels of old users to recommend and expose products and bring in new users. Old users recognize the company's products, and the users around them will also have a natural trust in them, making them more likely to convert and pay. Old users are definitely surrounded by the same target users as them, which is accurate and concentrated. Doing a good job of attracting new users through the old user channels can also reduce activity costs.

3. Risk-resistant and self-growth

If the quality of a delivery channel suddenly declines, it will be difficult for the company to cope with and reverse the situation in the short term, and the company can only continue to look for new channels. However, a mature business of bringing in new users can continue to bring users to the company and achieve self-growth.

2. The underlying logic of old-to-new growth

First, we need to clearly define the scope of new and old users, and start investigating the motivations and resistance of old users in making recommendations. Then, we need to identify the core pain points of new users and the product solutions we provide, and finally, we need to design the entire growth chain of bringing old users in to new users.

Second, we need to understand the three core driving forces behind old users’ willingness to make recommendations:

1. The desire to share or show off. The purpose is to express myself and seek recognition, and to let friends know what I am doing through sharing, such as running 200 kilometers with Keep, or learning 500 words with Mint Reading;
2. Profit driven. You can get cash or physical rewards by recommending friends. For example, if you invite new users to place orders on Ele.me, you can get a red envelope of up to 15 yuan.
3. Altruism. If I see a good product that may be helpful to my friend, I will recommend it to him. For example, if the content of this paid course is very good, you can now give it to 5 friends to watch for free.

Third, design rewards for old employees to bring in new employees, and plan sharing platforms and paths. When designing rewards, you should first design the incentives for result indicators, and the rewards should be as large as possible. Then, you should design the rewards for process indicators, and try to expand the top traffic of the funnel model of bringing in new customers as much as possible.

The best rewards are products or services that users want, such as online education courses, VIP membership time for audio and video apps, and coupons and red envelopes from food delivery/e-commerce platforms. Currently, the best sharing platform is WeChat. Users’ social chains are basically within WeChat, and the reach effect is circle of friends > active WeChat groups > personal friends.

Fourth, remember the traffic formula for bringing in new customers: number of paying customers brought in by old customers = number of old users x activity participation rate x new customer acquisition efficiency x conversion rate. The data from these four links determine the size of the business of bringing in new customers.

1. The larger the old user base, the greater the potential for old users to bring in new customers.
2. To achieve a high participation rate, users must have strong willingness, low threshold and high rewards.
3. The four magic weapons for attracting new customers are “targeted audience, pain point solutions, high frequency of rigid demand and free trial”;
4. High conversion rate: demand + strong trust + limited-time discount + worry-free returns and exchanges.

3. Which industries are suitable for old employees to mentor new employees?

Based on the scenario of old employees bringing up new employees, several characteristics of industries suitable for old employees bringing up new employees are summarized:

• The industry is highly specialized and information is opaque, making it difficult for ordinary users to make decisions. They are more willing to trust the recommendations or suggestions of friends, such as the decoration industry and the automobile industry.
• The product is effective, but I am not sure whether it will work for me. It varies from person to person. People are more willing to believe in word-of-mouth recommendations, such as the education industry and weight loss products;
• For relatively standardized products with little difference, you will buy them if someone shares them, without having to worry or make a decision. Such as fruits, snacks or daily necessities;
• The threshold is low and you can make money if you have the resources, and ordinary users can operate it easily. For example, rebates and distribution platforms.

4. How does the education industry achieve growth through old employees bringing in new employees?

The education industry has been booming in the past few years, and users believe in word-of-mouth recommendations. Today we will take the education industry as an example to talk about how old employees can bring in new employees.

1. Weekly learning sharing check-in

The most common fission activity is learning check-in. Users can generate exclusive learning reports and share them with friends, communities or friends circles to complete the check-in.

Users can log in to the official account or APP, generate their own exclusive posters, save the text and posters and post them to Moments, then take a screenshot and upload it after 1 hour. Rewards will be sent after the system has reviewed and approved it.

Common check-in frequencies are divided into "once a month, once each in the first and second half of the month, once every 10 days, or once a week". You can increase or decrease the frequency based on your own new customer acquisition effect, conversion situation, and budget cost. You can also give special rewards for the first and continuous participation or cumulative participation X times to encourage more users to participate.

After testing, "sharing to Moments will increase exposure and have the best effect in attracting new users."

I made a time distribution chart based on the actual registration time of new users. 14:00-16:00 and 17:00-21:00 are two peak times, and users can be encouraged to share or be encouraged to do so during these times. Common rewards for punching in:

• Directly give class time, test materials, recorded classes or extracurricular books, multiple choice 1;
• Points can be redeemed;
• Win prizes such as iPad, mobile phone or study abroad summer camp.

There are two parts of learning sharing check-in that will affect the effect of attracting new users. One is whether the poster can attract users to scan the code, and the other is whether the landing page can attract users to take the course.

To make an excellent poster, you need to pay attention to these four parts: main title, selling point copy, matching materials, color style, and guide scanning copy. I summarized and sorted out the characteristics of posters with better effects and came to 7 conclusions:

1. "Tsinghua University, Peking University, top students, famous teachers" and other authoritative and well-known endorsements
2. Themes such as "Summer and Winter Vacations, Midterm and Final Exams, and the Start of School Season"
3. "Today's benefits, this week's benefits, Double 11" and other benefits
4. Posters of life scenes such as "subway, elevator, family"
5. "Improve a little bit every day" and other soft copywriting such as hard work and diligence
6. Textbooks/information packs and other study-related posters
7. The background color should be dark, real person or comic style poster

The purpose of a landing page is to persuade users to complete the actions we specify, such as filling in information, downloading an app, purchasing products and services. The conversion rate of a landing page can be improved by using information such as "valuable titles + benefits when registering + product and service selling points + creating scarce or limited-time discounts".

Taking the landing page below as an example, the course acceptance rate when the registration form is embedded in the page is only 20% (this data is for reference only). Placing the course acceptance form more prominently at the front increases the course acceptance rate by 5%. Then, changing the H5 to a mini program style increases the course acceptance rate by another 10%.

In addition, based on the weekly learning and sharing check-in, there are many extended ways to play:

• Collect likes in Moments and win XX rewards;
• Invite 20 friends to follow us and get XX rewards;
• If you check in for 21 days, you can get a full refund of your tuition fees.

2. Course/Physical Group Purchase

Group buying is a relatively mature e-commerce activity tool that can be used to promote conversions and increase GMV, as well as to attract new customers. It is also very suitable for the education industry. Users can initiate a group and invite X friends to join. After the group is formed, everyone can get a group reward.

The common group buying structure covers the main picture, title, details, original price and group buying price, evaluation and other information. On this basis, we have made iterative optimizations. The homepage only highlights the prizes and buttons, and uses the 0 yuan group starter to lower the threshold for starting a group, which can ultimately increase the "group starter rate and group completion rate."

The education industry generally uses formal courses, recorded courses, extracurricular classics books, test papers and materials, school supplies and desk lamps as group buying products.

• The opening and formation rates of formal courses are moderate, the friend conversion rate is high, but the disadvantage is that the cost is too high;
• The rate of starting and forming a group for recorded classes is low, but the friend conversion rate is high;
• Examination materials and famous books have high rates of group creation and formation, and medium conversion rates;
• The rates of group creation and formation for school supplies are high, but the conversion rate is low. For comprehensive comparison, it is better to use recorded courses, famous works or test materials.

3. Distribution promotion

There are two ways to distribute in the education industry:

(1) Low-price course distribution

The purpose is to promote low-priced courses and increase course revenue. Users can distribute after registering. Old users will be rewarded 20%-50% for each distribution order. Usually, the reward is instant + high rewards for the top X distributors. It is suitable for ordinary people to participate.

(2) Promotion Ambassador

The purpose is to promote high-priced courses. There are thresholds for this kind of distribution. You need to fill in information or purchase courses before you can become a promotion ambassador to avoid internal personnel colluding with friends to cheat. It is suitable for big Vs, teachers or institutions with resources.

4. Course Unlock

The original purpose of course unlocking was to continuously attract users to attend classes. The second class can be unlocked after the first class. In order to maintain a consistent class rhythm, one class is unlocked every week.

Some people use course unlocking to attract new members, which is essentially similar to a group buying activity. Meishubao’s 1 yuan unlocking requires you to pay to unlock. After payment, you will be informed that you also need to invite friends to help, allowing users to complete the operation step by step. Both Shao Nian De Dao and Tencent Classroom adopt the method of giving away classes for free. If your friends can get them for free, you can also get them for free.

5. Voting

Voting activities were particularly popular in the past few years for attracting new users. They took advantage of people's desire to compare and vanity, stimulating users to ask their friends to vote for them. Currently, voting activities are often blocked by WeChat. Smaller companies can try it. It is also recommended to use mini programs as the activity carrier.

• Voting activities should have a theme that attracts users, such as 98 looking for the top student in elementary school or the most beautiful homework photo.
• The reward must be large enough to convince users that it is real, and a third-party notary agency can be used to enhance credibility.
• In addition, we must be careful to prevent cheating, as many users may vote fraudulently;
• It can also be used for internal employee voting, teacher popularity voting, merchant ranking voting on a certain platform, etc.

5. Other common growth cases

There are many examples of old employees bringing in new employees that have done particularly well in the market, and everyone is very familiar with them.

1. Pinduoduo-bargaining activity

Pinduoduo's bargaining activities are entirely based on profit-driven users to attract new users, attracting user participation through high-value products, cutting large prices in the early stages, giving users hope of successful bargaining immediately, and gradually raising the user's silence cost, forcing users to bring in more friends to bargain.

After friends help users bargain, they can also participate in receiving the gifts, thus forming a fission and continuously attracting more users.

Key points: high-value prizes, bargaining limit setting and guiding friends to collect prizes, do everything possible to improve conversions in the middle links, reduce costs and increase ROI. At the same time, the quality of this type of users is poor, and their value may be low in the short term, so you can look at the long-term value of users over a longer period of time.

Pinduoduo has also launched similar activities such as "Get Cash Every Day", "Compete for Red Packets" and "Cash Roulette", which are more suitable for multi-category and high-frequency business scenarios.

2. Be polite when inviting

Currently, all major platforms are carrying out the "invite and get gifts" activity for old and new users. For every user invited, both new and old users can get corresponding prizes. This rewards old users for cultivating continuous use and also promotes new users' first-time use.

For example, Ele.me, Meituan Waimai, Dingdong Maicai, Futu/Tiger Securities, etc., e-commerce platforms mostly use platform coupons/red envelopes, and securities platforms mostly use free stocks, lotteries or reduced commissions.

3. Team up to open red envelopes

Another more attractive reward is "cash splitting", which is essentially inviting friends to help you complete tasks, and you can get rewards. This type of activity is very easy to be fleeced, and risk control is particularly important. Therefore, Pinduoduo uses random cash to reduce costs and risks, while Meituan Takeout uses platform coupons/red envelopes.

VI. Conclusion

If you want to do a good job of bringing in new users, you must systematize, productize, and process-based these fission gameplays, and sort out the entire chain of growth from old to new users, "including old users' activeness, event reach, event-driven new user acquisition process, new users' conversion to payment, and new users' silent awakening," formulate operational strategies for each key link, and optimize the data of each link.

Remember to evaluate the overall effect and ROI of each activity from old customers to new customers, and find a growth strategy from old customers to new customers that suits you. In addition, the growth of old customers by bringing in new customers requires long-term optimization. We need to continue to think of new strategies and ways of playing, verify the effects through A/B testing, and retain those that are effective.

Author: Sun Ming

Source: Internet Operations School