5 strategies for membership marketing of knowledge payment APP

As people's copyright awareness gradually increases, paying for knowledge is gradually accepted by the public. 2016 is even known as the "first year of knowledge payment." As knowledge-based payment products of different models such as "Get APP" and "Zhihu Live" begin to emerge in the market, knowledge payment has become an important development trend, and more and more knowledge-based payment APPs have emerged. Next, the author of this article analyzed its membership growth strategy.

I recently took over a new project. The business includes two modules: knowledge services and paid knowledge membership. I gave it some thought before starting.

I have used different knowledge-based payment apps, some of which I have been a heavy user for many years, including Chaos University, Get, Fan Deng Reading, WeChat Reading, JD Reading, Geek Time, etc. I have even bought courses on NetEase Cloud and 36Kr. Knowledge payment does have a relatively good prospect, and there is no need to pay attention to the critical voices.

Confucius started to promote knowledge payment more than two thousand years ago, but it was not done on mobile phones at that time. The core of the membership system is one thing: to continuously expand member privileges.

There are two parts to consider when planning your membership privileges:

1. The first part is privileges: they need to be closely linked to the business. For example, the core privileges of JD Plus members include product discounts, multiple gold beans that can be used to offset expenses, and shipping coupons.
2. The second part is non-core privileges: the purpose of these privileges is to allow users to experience the benefits of the privileges immediately. In order to make up for the inability to experience membership privileges in a timely manner, many APP membership privileges will include membership of Youku, iQiyi and Tencent video websites or music products, because watching videos without ads and listening to copyrighted music are privileges that can be felt immediately.

Some APPs add a lot of insignificant privileges to make the membership privileges seem numerous. It seems that there are too many, but in fact they cannot impress users. My personal suggestion is that the expansion of privileges should be practical.

Another situation is to divide membership status into multiple types, such as gold, silver, bronze, iron, diamond, etc. The difference lies in the change of the granularity of the privileges. For example, the degree of discount on purchasing goods is different. It seems that there are more choices, but it may make users doubt the effectiveness of membership.

1. Three types of membership in the same APP

The new project business I accepted is similar to Get. After segmenting a certain vertical field, it provides users with recorded courses, live courses, graphic content, and physical goods, so my priority in studying is Get.

There are three types of membership in the Get APP, namely, audiobook membership, e-book membership and tips membership, corresponding to three types of services respectively.

Figure 1-1 Get App v8.2.0 version member screenshot

First, let’s look at the core rights of the three types of membership.

The core benefit of audiobook members is "massive audiobooks, free to listen to all", which means that after purchasing an audiobook membership, you can listen to any book under the "Audiobook" Tab on the homepage; the core benefit of e-book members is "90% of e-books free to read"; the core benefit of tips members is "thousands of tips for free viewing". Each membership card corresponds to a core benefit, and the other benefits are actually of little use.

Secondly, we look at the duration combination of each membership.

There are three types of audiobook membership: annual membership, monthly membership, and continuous monthly subscription; there are four types of e-book membership: annual membership, continuous monthly subscription, six-month membership, and monthly membership; there are three types of tips membership: annual membership, continuous monthly subscription, and monthly membership.

Among these different durations, monthly membership refers to purchasing a single month. The difference between it and a continuous monthly subscription is the price. As I understand it, the purpose is to drive users to purchase a membership of the "continuous monthly subscription" duration through price discrimination.

2. The Enlightenment of Centurion Black Gold Card

The Centurion Black Card is the black (highest) level version of the "Centurion Series Debit Card" launched by American Express in the UK in 1999. It is also called the "Black Card" because the main color of the card is black.

The Centurion Black Card is recognized worldwide as the "King of Cards". This card is targeted at top groups and has no upper limit on the credit limit (the Centurion Black Card in China is a co-issued credit card, so there is a credit limit, and the credit limit is between 2 million and 10 million). Most of the cardholders are politicians, billionaires and celebrities from various countries, and are invited by American Express. Card applications are not accepted.

Cardholders can enjoy the world's top member-exclusive privileges, benefits and services.

The above introduction to black cards comes from Baidu Encyclopedia. There are many cases of black cards that will surprise you. If you are interested, you can search and have a look.

After the black card model was learned and developed by Amazon and Costco (the model that Xiaomi advocated back then), many domestic platforms learned from the model and also achieved success, but it is more often called "membership-based e-commerce."

The more advanced platforms have added a three-level distribution and head-recruiting operation plan on the basis of the membership system.

But these are not the focus of our discussion in this section. The inspiration that the black card gave me is that there is no need for many types of membership cards. It will be more conducive to publicity if they are unified into one. The user's memory cost is low, and it is also easy to introduce the advantages of the card to other users.

Therefore, when I plan the membership cards for the project, I will unify them into only one card face, and there will not be multiple card types.

3. Duration Combination

The membership card duration combination must include at least monthly, quarterly, and annual membership card projects that I have worked on in the past. There is also an "experience card" that is very helpful in attracting new members, so there will be an experience card whose duration and price can be changed according to the operation strategy. The operation can set the name, card face, duration and price of the experience card in the background, and it can even be set to only 0.1 yuan a day.

The four time combinations for the project membership cards are: trial card (≥1 day), monthly card (can be subscribed for consecutive months), quarterly card, and annual card.

4. Five strategies for growth

1. Method 1: Amplification of core interests

The content provided to users by our project includes recorded courses, live courses, e-books, physical books, and peripheral cultural and creative products. For these content combinations, purchase discounts, free shipping coupons, and free e-book reading are core benefits. The granularity of core benefits is set on the premise of ensuring no loss. The core benefits include the following four:

• Recorded courses: 1,000 recorded courses are free to watch, and paid courses are 20% off;
• Live classes: Watch 100 live classes of big names for free;
• Free shipping coupons: 10 free shipping coupons/month. Avoid using the words "free shipping for the entire store". Free shipping for the entire store cannot give users a definite sense of value. Numbers are specific, while "the entire store" is vague. Numbers can better convey a sense of value.
• E-books: 1,000 e-books are free to read, and paid books are 30% off. In addition, you can get the first release of e-books through the group’s resources and open them to members first.

2. Method 2: Adding Associate Members

It refers to user exchange and card promotion with other products that have memberships.

The advantage is that we can exchange users from both sides and make users feel that it is worthwhile to buy our membership card. They can also obtain membership of other platforms, or get membership discounts on other platforms. The following platforms can be considered:

• Zhihu
• Weibo
• JD Plus Member
• B Station Member
• WPS Member
• Members of Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video Websites
• NetEase Cloud Music, QQ Music, Xiami Music membership

3. Method 3: Open Platform—API

After the open platform is built, other companies can apply for access to our platform. Their membership points can be exchanged for our membership discounts, and the redemption granularity includes partial discounts and full discounts.

But there is one point that needs to be considered. The points of the connected enterprises cannot be issued randomly. The amount of RMB that can be exchanged for points on their platform needs to be used as the basis to define how much deduction amount their points can be exchanged for on our platform.

Avoid the extremes of points being easy to earn and points being difficult to earn. This will allow more users to be connected to cross-industry cooperation. These companies also need discounts to give back to their users, or they also need to make their users feel that they are fighting for discounts for them. The industries or companies that can be connected include:

• airline
• Banking: Credit card points
• Didi Chuxing

4. Method 4: Exchange Sesame Credit for membership deduction

The Gold Sesame Credit score can be obtained through the user's authorization. Users only need to authenticate with the Sesame Credit score once to receive a membership card discount, lowering the threshold for users to purchase membership.

Different amounts of deductions can be issued to users according to the level of Sesame Credit scores. The deductions can only be used to purchase membership cards, and there must be no loss.

5. Method 5: Cooperation with other points malls

Treat the members of our platform as commodities and register them on platforms such as 10086 Points Mall, Didi Chuxing Points Mall, and Alipay Points Mall. Users can use their points on the platform to redeem membership card discounts on our platform and achieve growth targets.

The above are my thoughts on the growth of membership of knowledge-based paid apps. There will not be a monopoly among knowledge-based paid products. After all, the content and fields covered by knowledge are too broad, and vertically segmented scenarios can produce many profitable products.

In the past, businesses that were particularly dependent on scenarios, such as music training and online piano teaching, are now successful. This directly proves the change in user perception and the existence of opportunities for success. We look forward to making our current products successful many years later.

Author: Mango Taoist

Source: Mango Taoist