Dismantling Pinduoduo’s gamification operation and promotion methods

I believe that many people hate the last 0.1% bargaining in Pinduoduo. The grand prize is within their reach, but they still can’t get it no matter how hard they try. Knowing it’s a scam, people are still addicted to it. Have users become stupid? Obviously not. Behind this is the grasp of every move of users' psychological activities and a deep understanding of users' various psychology. This can also explain why the 788 million monthly active users of Pinduoduo are actually based on precise user psychological marketing.

Today we will use a user psychology driven model to analyze the most common marketing method: check-in!

If sign-in is separated from the current gamification operation routine, I believe it will be the most useless marketing method. The most familiar way of signing in is to sign in to the platform to get points. If you sign in for a certain number of consecutive days, the points will be doubled or you can get a big coupon. Points have no appeal to users, and no one will sign in to the platform specifically for the points. If users can get a no-threshold coupon by signing in continuously, on the one hand, the time cost for users to swipe a coupon is too high. Usually, sign-in activities will only attract a small number of users who are looking for bargains to participate, and no purchasing stickiness will be formed. For the platform, it is obviously not cost-effective to exchange user sign-in behavior for the participation of users who are looking for bargains.

So what other tricks can you play with sign-in? Taking Pinduoduo as an example, everyone will definitely think of Pinduoduo’s fancy routines. Signing in is obviously not spared, and the fancy gameplay has reached a new height. However, no matter how fancy the gameplay is, Pinduoduo’s operations are still needed to answer these three questions.

Question 1: What goal does the platform want to achieve through sign-in?

Question 2: How to make users willing to be tricked (participate)?

Question 3: How to maximize the benefits of users rather than users exploiting the platform?

I studied Pinduoduo's various game routines and sorted out its gameplay ideas. We will use the following model to disassemble its sign-in activity.

All of Pinduoduo's gamification operations are essentially redesigned with retention - attracting new users - and activity as the closed-loop goal, and each link has very strong guidance to drive user participation. First of all, retention is the core goal. The platform retains new users and converts them into sticky users. The social circles of sticky users are used to reach more new users to achieve the goal of attracting new users. The traffic is then distributed to merchants and brands to achieve the goal of activeness.

Today’s users are very savvy and those who work in operations must have felt this deeply. Elaborately designed activities often have few participants, so how to get users involved has become the biggest headache for operations. Let’s take a look at how Pinduoduo’s sign-in makes users participate willingly?

Insight 1: User psychology: driven by interest

For example, I believe everyone must have been tricked like this. If a merchant tells you that if you buy products worth one thousand yuan in my store, you will get a chance to participate in a lottery and have a chance to win the first prize, you will definitely laugh. But the merchants do the opposite and let you try your luck by drawing a prize before you make a purchase. You think to yourself that you haven't spent anything anyway, so you might as well give it a try. Then you take the prize out of the box and give it to the clerk, who exclaims that you are the first one to have won the first prize since the establishment of this prize. Then he shows it to you, and it is indeed the first prize. However, this first prize cannot be taken away for free. It originally costs eight thousand and you need to buy it for one thousand. At this time, most people will be deceived willingly, because the clerk satisfies two of your psychological needs. One is your vanity, because you are the first one to win the prize since it was set up, and no one else has ever won it. The other is your aversion to loss, because giving up means giving up a reward of 7,000 yuan, which is greater than the loss of 1,000 yuan you paid. In fact, as soon as you leave the store, the clerk will use the same method to trick the next person. This explains why users will continue to participate even though they know it is a trick. This is the magic of user psychological insight.

This leads to the most important rule, which is the "reward upfront" rule, and the rewards must be stimulating enough!

The operators of Pinduoduo must be familiar with the winning routine we just gave as an example. The page for the first sign-in is as shown above. The red envelope that looks exactly like the WeChat red envelope gives you a surprise of winning the red envelope. When you open it, it tells you that you can withdraw 8.27 yuan. As a user, I thought to myself that I was given 8 yuan before I even made any purchases on Pinduoduo. Others’ check-ins gave 2 points, but your check-in gave me 8 yuan, which was exciting enough. Nowadays, the stimulation of user activity rewards is very important. No matter how fun your game is designed, if the user's interest drive is not established, the participation in this activity will not be too high.

Insight 2: User psychology: a sense of goal achievement

A typical scenario is running a marathon. If your initial goal is the finish line, I believe the finish line will seem farther away the more you run. If you break the goal down into N segments, each with a goal of 500 meters, you will feel that the finish line will be closer and closer each time you achieve a small goal. In other words, when users participate in your activity, and you tell them that they can withdraw their daily sign-in bonus if they sign in for 30 consecutive days, I think users will start to give up the next day after signing in because this goal is too difficult to achieve. But what if you break it down into small 7-day goals? Let’s see how Pinduoduo tricks us.

After signing in, it will remind you of the progress of your goal in several important scenarios. One scenario is to remind you to sign in again tomorrow when you log out. Of course, there are also several tasks in the middle that ask you to turn on push reminders. Another scenario is that after you click to sign in the next day, it will continue to pop up a window to remind you of the progress.

The goal is a sense of achievement, and Pinduoduo uses two principles, namely psychological cues to guide actions and loss aversion as a driving force.

Psychological suggestion guides actions. One is the brainwashing of copywriting, and the other is the brainwashing of role models in a loop. This is the design of product strength. Let’s look at the black words emphasized by Pinduoduo and the progress bar below. Your goal is very close to you, only 6 days away. The goal is also very clear, which is the privilege of withdrawing money via WeChat. The action word is “continuous signing” to guide you to take this action. The WeChat payments received by different users scrolling above suggest that you can indeed withdraw money.

In fact, many users at this time are thinking about withdrawing more than ten yuan of sign-in money after 7 days, but they often ignore the fact that the fourth goal of Pinduoduo's operation is to fleece users and minimize the cost of attracting new users, retaining users, and promoting activation. Few users notice the four words "Random amount" in the pop-up window. At the same time, the user withdrawal information scrolling above that xx user received a 0.3 yuan WeChat withdrawal will also be selectively ignored. Because the design of this pop-up window cleverly highlights that the user's desired goal is to obtain the privilege of withdrawing money from WeChat, but little do they know that the withdrawal amount after 7 days is only 0.3 yuan.

Many students thought, isn’t this deceiving users? Will users be fooled again the second time if they are fooled the first time? Some students may think, I know you are trying to trick me, but I will persist for 7 days, and I will cheat you even if it is only 0.3 yuan. If 100 million users think this way, Pinduoduo can be fleeced to death. Is this actually the case? Obviously not. Pinduoduo has 788 million monthly active users. Many users have been deceived one after another, and are still addicted to the gamified operation modules. In addition, if you do not place an order, Pinduoduo will also be able to prevent you from withdrawing the 0.3 yuan after 7 days. This is what we mentioned in the model we shared. The principle of Pinduoduo's fleecing users is based on big data user tags and different activities for different people.

On the 7th day of signing in, I felt so sad that I had no tears. Not only did the number of sign-in beans I earned each day decrease, but in the end I needed to have 3,000 sign-in beans to withdraw cash. I, a user who wanted to take advantage of the platform, was perfectly exploited. Not only did I contribute 7 days of monthly active traffic, but also, if I did not sign in for 14 consecutive days, the platform activity rules told us that all account balances would automatically expire. In order to verify that Pinduoduo is a tag-based event with different faces for different people, I asked my friends to sign in at the same time. I found that the sign-in beans obtained by each person every day are different in the two behavior scenarios of placing an order and not placing an order. More sign-in beans can be obtained by placing an order, and at the same time, the withdrawal privilege of up to 5 yuan can be perfectly unlocked on the 7th day.

Those who are good at accounting will definitely admire Pinduoduo's operations. The retention cost of 5 yuan has brought about real order conversions, and perfectly keeps out the "wool party".

Insight 3: Fresh sense of achievement in user psychology

If the sign-in action is too monotonous, I believe many people will find it too boring and easy to forget it during the daily process. Pinduoduo adds more tricks and cleverly achieves the goals of attracting new users and promoting activation in the process.

How to get beans privileges

The user's psychological expectation has been established that they can withdraw cash via WeChat after seven days. During this process, Pinduoduo does not want you to just sign in, close the app and leave. It needs to keep you on its app and spend some time every day.

Pinduoduo tells you that you can receive extra beans and exchange them for money every day. Are you willing? If you knew from the beginning that you would get nothing in the end, you would definitely not be willing to do it. However, Pinduoduo brainwashed you when you signed in on the first day. It constantly strengthened the privilege of being able to withdraw cash, which gave you a very strong motivation and drove you to involuntarily complete the tasks it asked you to complete.

In this process, let’s add a sense of accomplishment to explain why users are willing to be fooled a second time after being fooled the first time. A user like me who got nothing after being fleeced by Pinduoduo will definitely not be fooled a second time. It seems that Pinduoduo has harmed the users, but in fact it has harmed the low-value users who are unwilling to place orders. Of course, I may still be pulled back to the platform by their bargaining. However, its CEO is a technical person, and the user-tag-based mechanism is the secret weapon for this type of activity to promote low-cost activation and retention. Ordinary platforms cannot replicate this type of game marketing without this technology. A large number of high-quality users who place orders will be given the privilege of withdrawing money. After these users sign in and withdraw money, regardless of the amount, they at least think that Pinduoduo is a trustworthy platform. At the same time, they will share their rewards in a ostentatious manner. Once shared, it is equivalent to an endorsement in the circle of friends. Pinduoduo's activities are real, not a purely deceptive routine.

Bean Planting Game

The core of this bean-planting game is to speed up the maturation of the beans. You need to place an order on the designated page to mature them immediately and get sign-in beans. If you don't want to place an order, it will let you browse the designated page for 60 seconds. Pinduoduo is a platform, and it is estimated that the browsing traffic will earn merchant promotion income. In addition, if you forget to sign in one day, the bean will die the next day. There are two ways to revive it. One is to place an order, and the other is to spend beans. It costs hundreds of beans to revive it once, which is equivalent to cleverly recovering the sedimentation cost.

During the process of exiting or returning, Pinduoduo will put up all kinds of "obstructions", but clicking "return" will allow you to open the treasure chest, and the experience is not too bad. The purpose is to make you spend more time. I guess the funnel of Pinduoduo's operation in the background is like this. There is a very strong positive correlation between user browsing time and depth and conversion rate.

Feed the cat game

In this process, I seriously doubt that Pinduoduo is conducting mutual traffic diversion between activities, and cleverly linking the activities together through pop-ups. Feeding cats is a cultivation activity, just like the bean-planting game, but during the daily sign-in process, its pop-ups push different games to allow you to obtain sign-in beans, which always gives users a sense of freshness.

Getting cat food enters another task line, which is still a task scene centered on traffic and ordering, and at the same time directs traffic to other task lines.

We have broken down Pinduoduo's sign-in logic very clearly. We believe that gamification operations will gradually become the biggest tool for retaining or activating users. Of course, the operation of Pinduoduo is a very brain-burning job in itself, which requires operators to have a very accurate grasp of the psychological driving force of users, and then design various interactive processes, and be able to maximize the use of traffic, while providing traffic to products and connecting activities to guide each other.

Finally, the essence of user operation is still based on big data-based technology that can be used to identify thousands of people with different needs. Otherwise, such activities will attract a large number of free users, which will be difficult for general platforms to replicate.

Author: User Operation Observation

Source: User Operation Observation