The user operation system of Perfect Diary and Three Squirrels!

This article mainly shares with you the user operations of three cases, namely Pop Mart , Three Squirrels and Perfect Diary , hoping to provide useful reference for you.

Pop Mart: Channel layout and IP creation

Let’s talk about the company Pop Mart first.

When we study Pop Mart’s financial report, prospectus, and a series of operational actions throughout history, we will find that this is a company that is very good at operating strategy and has its own thinking.

I think one of the important reasons why it has been able to achieve this in just a few years is that it is a user-centric company, not a sales-centric company.

On this basis, there are two very important strategies.

The first strategy is the layout of the channel campaign. Pop Mart has many offline retail outlets and online stores. In terms of sales channels, which one is its main one?

The second strategy is, for this type of cultural and creative products, how does Pop Mart operate its IP?

1. Layout of online and offline channels

I checked Pop Mart’s sales data. If we divide Pop Mart’s sales into three channels: retail stores, online channels, and vending machines, can you guess what the sales ranking of these three channels was last year?

The actual sales data ranking is retail stores > online channels > vending machines. In other words, retail stores account for the bulk of their revenue.

Some bosses have fallen into this misunderstanding. We have realized that it is a good choice to operate private domains and users online, which can achieve continuous repurchase and transactions of customers. But we have overlooked the fact that offline can still bring value to users.

Many companies that are doing well in e-commerce easily overlook the value that offline retail can bring.

A good private domain management method is not just to accumulate users in the private domain offline and then continue transactions.

The correct approach should be that after the user has stayed in the private domain for a period of time, we can guide him offline to give him a good experience and service, and then lead him back to the private domain for continued conversion in the private domain.

After providing online services for a period of time, users will be directed offline, and the cycle will continue.

We must be clear that users must complete multiple offline contacts with us before they can remain in our private domain for a long time. If he only reaches us multiple times in the private domain, his stickiness is actually not enough.

Having served many traditional enterprises and having more than 10 years of experience working in the Internet industry, my impression of Pop Mart is that online, it is more about facilitating transactions and facilitating access; offline, it is more about giving users a stronger sense of experience and a stronger perception of the brand.

Why can Pop Mart’s offline retail stores achieve such high sales? Let me first talk about its offline retail models.

Pop Mart’s offline retail stores include black gold experience stores, pop-up stores in shopping malls, and some Pop Mart’s history museums to show how each IP is designed and produced.

Pop Mart's Black Gold Store and Pop-up Store, source: Pop Mart official Weibo

The purpose of experience stores like this is to enhance the user's feelings and let users experience fun.

In addition, its offline retail stores also produce customized products based on the characteristics of each city. For example, Pop Mart in Chengdu has giant panda-themed designs. Then there are also various city limited edition blind boxes to present the art galleries of that city.

Therefore, Pop Mart’s retail is targeted at the needs of user experience, brand emotional resonance and city commemoration, and it has many customized stores and products.

So, why are Pop Mart’s online sales so high? The reason is that its online function perfectly replicates the experience of drawing a blind box.

I don’t know if you have ever played Pop Mart’s various online blind box drawing operations, such as the blind box drawing machine in the WeChat mini-program. The purpose is to replicate the experience of drawing blind boxes online as closely as possible.

Therefore, Pop Mart’s sales on WeChat Mall increased from more than 20 million to 270 million in one year, which is a very high multiple increase.

Tmall is also an important customer acquisition channel for Pop Mart.

In fact, for some mid-range snack brands, Tmall has become a customer acquisition channel rather than a revenue platform. They lose a few dollars for every order they sell on Tmall.

Although they lost five or six yuan on the order, they regarded this five or six yuan as a customer acquisition cost, and then settled the users in the private domain and maintained customers in the private domain.

The next time the user completes the transaction in the private domain, the brand will no longer have to pay channel costs for the customer repeatedly. This is probably the logic. The same is true for Pop Mart.

This is Pop Mart’s choice of channel layout. Let’s take a look at how Pop Mart builds IP.

2. Build IP and continue to iterate

Pop Mart’s most important IP is called Molly. After this super IP Molly was created in 2017, its revenue accounted for 89% of Pop Mart’s sales that year.

However, in the future, Pop Mart must continue to iterate its IP and cannot rely heavily on the Molly IP. It would be embarrassing if any cross-border cooperation of this IP collapsed.

The operating logic of a brand IP is, on the one hand, to allow the IP to continue to play its residual heat, and on the other hand, to allow other IPs to grow and achieve higher sales.

Therefore, Pop Mart has done a lot of important things in order to continue to build the Molly IP.

First of all, Pop Mart is constantly innovating in the Molly series, such as launching a series of auspicious beasts from the Forbidden City. In order to allow the brand to break out of its circle, it also participates in the production of customized versions of various TV dramas or variety shows.

Pop Mart's auspicious beast, picture source: Pop Mart's official account

Then, Pop Mart also developed some derivative products for Molly. Because many people want to have more than one doll, they will create some imaginations, such as launching Molly's family members.

In order to better retain old users, especially those who like Molly, Pop Mart officially launched a lot of doll transformations and exchanges, a series of games and interactive activities around the IP, and also created corresponding online communities, all with the aim of better retaining users.

Of course, in-depth user operations are also very important. For example, Pop Mart’s second-hand market transaction volume has exceeded 100 million yuan, and its repurchase rate has reached 58.8%. This is a very high repurchase rate. Friends who have worked in retail should have a deep understanding of this.

In addition, Pop Mart will also deliberately guide users to post their orders and spread the word so that more people can know about its brand.

The result of building the IP in this way is that by 2020, Molly's share of overall revenue has dropped to about 30%, but in fact its sales are still growing rapidly. Compared with 2017, the increase is about 10 times.

Three Squirrels: Experience detail optimization and interactive marketing

Let’s talk about Three Squirrels. This is a brand that I like very much. I think it is completely centered on user experience that has enabled it to gain a foothold on Taobao, and its experience is continuously iterating and evolving.

As early as 2013, Three Squirrels' experience and packaging were very impressive.

At that time, the packaging of most nut brands was purely nuts. However, the nut packaging of Three Squirrels is very complete, with both outer packaging and inner packaging, as well as wet wipes, fruit shell bags, sealing clips, box openers, napkins, small gifts, etc. It can be said to be a complete gift package.

Why do they make the granularity of the experience so fine? Because they held a brainstorming meeting internally.

The team members found that many nuts have similar pain points, that is, users will have various "uncomfortable" aspects when eating them, such as the shells are difficult to open and thrown everywhere, hands get dirty after eating, the packaging is ugly, the price is high but the quality is not necessarily good, and they are easily affected by moisture, etc.

In response to these problems, Three Squirrels chose to start from the details and make optimizations and improvements to enhance the user experience. This also made it stand out quickly.

Now Three Squirrels is doing more things around users. They have created the Three Squirrels IP, produced children's cartoons, built IP-related amusement parks, etc. Behind this is a complete set of IP operation logic.

When it comes to interactive marketing with users, Three Squirrels is also quite interesting. In order to conduct an in-depth study of the Three Squirrels case, I went to "**" their customer service during Taobao's Double 11 event.

Everyone knows the IP of Three Squirrels, which is positioned as a pet. Their posters are also filled with similar texts, such as "What we give to the owner is always beyond the owner's imagination" and "You can belong to others, but I only belong to you".

This kind of copywriting makes users feel embarrassed if they don’t buy your products.

What I wanted to feel at the time was how they created the image of a pet to give the owner this kind of experience. So my way of "teasing" was very simple and crude. I just asked the customer service directly: Can you tell me a joke?

The customer service of Three Squirrels said: Please wait a moment, sir. I will help you find it.

Then he actually found a joke and sent it to me.

I was very surprised and happy at the time, and praised him. The customer service representative then said: Master, the little squirrel thinks you are like a game.

I asked him what game it was, and the little squirrel said: Minecraft. (A sandbox game)

I immediately thought that he was really good at saying cheesy love words, and I really liked that, so I couldn't help but buy some things to help him boost his Double 11 sales.

This is a slice of Three Squirrels’ interactive marketing with users online. You can take a look.

Perfect Diary: Content Reach and Traffic Flow

Finally, let’s talk about Perfect Diary.

Perfect Diary was founded in 2016. Many people say that Perfect Diary started with Xiaohongshu, but I think they only see the surface. In essence, Perfect Diary is a user-centric brand.

It knows that users need a lot of tools when making decisions, and these tools may be a variety of content and various makeup and color trials.

It puts these makeup and color trial contents on Xiaohongshu by beautiful young ladies or internet celebrities with a say, allowing the young ladies to reinterpret its products from different angles and let users see them in more content forms.

So many people see the traffic of Xiaohongshu on the surface, but what we should pay more attention to is how to reach consumers on these traffic platforms in a way that they like and with content that they like.

This is just the starting point of Perfect Diary, which is to plant seeds and let more users know about it.

After planting grass comes conversion, but Xiaohongshu’s transaction closed loop is not good. The actual behavior of most users is that after being attracted by the product on Xiaohongshu, they go to Tmall or WeChat to search and place an order.

When users search or place orders, Perfect Diary begins to settle users in the private domain.

Many people may have heard that Perfect Diary has done a good job in private domain accumulation. It has WeChat groups, mini programs, high-quality content, and a series of operations of personal IP accounts.

These are not the most important things. The most important things are:

After Perfect Diary settles users in the private domain, the traffic in the private domain can be transferred from the official account to the community to the personal account, and then the personal account can recommend various official accounts, videos, live broadcast content, mini-program products, etc. to support the interaction between the personal account and users.

It is the traffic in the private domain that is connected from one point to another. In short, it keeps users in the private domain and prevents them from leaving.

Therefore, Perfect Diary has developed a very complete set of user traffic path flow logic in the private domain. Once users come in, they cannot leave you. Every time they complete an action, there will be the next action to guide the users, allowing them to settle in this private domain.

Many business owners only regard private domain as a tool. If you only regard it as a tool, you will definitely not do this well. Just like many car companies have developed apps, but after doing so they found that there is still no one using the apps.

The fundamental problem is not with the private domain or the APP, but that the company has not thought clearly about how to operate users, and what are the service and experience paths of users on your platform.

Private domain is not a purely social or personal account issue. It is a complete systematic approach from user positioning to product positioning, to traffic flow logic, to user growth operation logic.

Author: Mantou Business School

Source: Mantou Business School (mantousxy)