In-depth analysis of Pinduoduo's fission activities

Everyone knows that Pinduoduo has done a great job in fission activities, and "cut a knife" has become everyone's impression of Pinduoduo's group bargaining activities. However, when we use similar routines to do activities, the gains are not equal. Why is this?

I have seen many cases analyzing Pinduoduo's fission activities , and every case talks about how powerful Pinduoduo's fission is.

Why can’t we get the same effect as Pinduoduo even though we copy an activity completely according to Pinduoduo’s activity process? Why is it that the same fission activity is effective on Pinduoduo, but has no such good effect or even no effect when used on one’s own products?

This article attempts to analyze the reasons why Pinduoduo's fission activities are successful based on Pinduoduo's entire traffic system, as well as how we need to consider and plan activities when doing fission activities .

Users and products form a mutually beneficial system, in which users and products are interdependent and mutually beneficial.

The same is true for Pinduoduo's fission activities. Behind the seemingly simple fission activity, it actually forms an ecosystem for traffic retention and monetization together with Pinduoduo's crowd positioning and other activities.

Only by starting from the entire system can we better see the power behind it and use it better for ourselves.

1. Pinduoduo’s North Star Indicator

Other activities form an ecosystem for traffic retention and monetization. Only by starting from the entire system can we better see the power behind it and use it better for ourselves.

What is the so-called North Star Indicator? It must be the unity of the product's commercial value and user value .

This indicator must be the core indicator that guides the product to operate in a healthy and normal manner. It must be an indicator that can reflect the product status in a timely manner and can have a positive impact on the product.

Around this North Star indicator, we will definitely have some core process indicators, and fission must be based on these process indicators to provide services and guidance. If fission is done simply for the sake of traffic, then the final traffic will be difficult to be converted into real users. They will come and go, and it will be difficult to bring long-term value to the product.

For e-commerce platforms like Pinduoduo, to a certain extent, the North Star indicator is the number of orders . This indicator can well reflect the development of the platform and realize a positive cycle of product value and user value. However, the GMV indicator has a certain degree of vanity and lag, and it is difficult to truly reflect the actual situation of the product.

Judging from the current activities launched on Pinduoduo, all of Pinduoduo's fission activities are carried out around this North Star indicator; and in the process of fission, in addition to obtaining registered user traffic, various activities such as browsing products, free orders, and returning red envelopes for orders will be set up to promote user order conversion .

Pinduoduo’s strategy is that as long as you spend enough time on my product, I will find a way to convert your first order, and then gradually cultivate user habits and increase user ARPU value .

2. What is fission?

Fission is a concept in physics. When atoms produce nuclear fission reactions, they can continue to split and grow exponentially. 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 6..., this is called fission.

The trend of WeChat fission is bulk propagation, with multiple propagation nodes spreading simultaneously, gradually expanding the crowd and forming a network. This fission model is more conducive to the spread of fun, interesting and useful activities/content.

In fission, the core underlying logic is the logic of sharing conversion: What is the motivation of user A to share and spread . Next we will talk about them one by one.

1. The underlying logic of fission

The key to fission activities is the invitation action and the establishment of invitation relationships. The difficulty and reward of the invitation action determine how many users will participate and how many users will successfully participate, while the establishment of invitation relationships is the key to whether the prizes can be successfully distributed.

What kind of user A (user characteristics) completes the invitation sharing action in what scenario and for what motivation, and why does user B (here refers to the invited user) participate in the activity or complete the corresponding action .

User characteristics, scenarios, actions/rewards must be a whole and are the key to the success of a fission activity. That is, we need to design our scenarios and actions based on the user characteristics of user A to better reach our target users.

Here, we focus on the action/reward factor, which is, to a certain extent, a very critical factor that affects whether fission is successful.

Why do users share/invite?

There are two aspects for users to complete this action. One is motivation, and the other is the ability to complete the action. These two elements make it possible for users to complete the sharing/invitation behavior .

From the user's motivation, why do users want to complete sharing/invitation?

Generally speaking, users may share for five reasons:

1) Identity needs: seeking recognition, understanding and a sense of belonging. For example, the “Like” button on a social platform satisfies users’ psychological motivation to seek recognition, and enhances user content sharing and user stickiness on the platform.

2) The need for emotional catharsis: the need to relieve stress and escape reality. Humans are emotional animals, and things like anger, happiness, and fun are easy for users to share.

3) The need for personal integration: refers to the need for individuals to improve their credibility, stability and status through certain behavioral performances or sharing. For example, the following types of content in WeChat Moments: New Year’s fortune, monthly fortune, etc.; certain tests; certain research reports, etc. These types of content meet the needs of personal integration, and forwarding them to friends' circles is to improve one's credibility and status.

4) The need for social integration: that is, the need for social interaction, strengthening connections with family, friends, etc. For example, zodiac signs, food, emotions, etc. can easily bring people closer together and ease the atmosphere of communication.

5) The need to show off: seeking a sense of superiority and positive feedback. For example, there are some fancy ways of showing off on Zhihu: "What is it like to have a very beautiful girlfriend?", "What is it like to be admitted to Tsinghua University or Peking University?", "What is it like to earn 100,000 yuan a month?", etc. These contents have a high number of views on Zhihu.

Simply put, being interesting, useful, beneficial, and having something to talk about are the keys to users sharing.

• Interesting: NetEase Drama Contest and NetEase Personality Test, on the one hand, can become social currency in your circle of friends, increasing everyone's understanding and topics of conversation.
• Useful: Sharing of useful content, but research shows that useful content has a higher collection rate.
• Advantages: Profitable, distribution, group buying, task treasure, invitation gifts, bargaining and other activities all take advantage of the public's desire to get a bargain. After all, who doesn't like to get a bargain?
• Have something to talk about: increase your social currency and shape your own personality in your circle of friends.

Based on the user's ability, is the user's motivation to share greater than the resistance? Can the user's resistance be fully reduced in the process to increase the user's motivation to share?

Motivations include prizes, medals, and rewards that users can get by sharing. If users can get 100 yuan by downloading an App, who would not want to download it? However, whether users can stay after downloading is a great test of the operation skills and the ability to handle subsequent traffic.

User resistance includes the smoothness of the operation path, the complexity of completing the action, etc. Provide users with clear and explicit guidance, do not let them think and choose, and only let them see the prizes and action paths. This will reduce a lot of resistance in the intermediate process.

Spiritual rewards vs. material rewards, which one is more contagious?

We can see that many of Pinduoduo's fission activities are designed based on rewards such as cash/coupons/food, and there are many universal rewards such as cash rewards. But why do many people who copy Pinduoduo's activities ultimately fail?

The reason why Pinduoduo designed this kind of reward activity is, on the one hand, because of the universality of Pinduoduo's user population . Who doesn't shop online nowadays? Who doesn't buy something online? But it is not necessarily the case for your own platform. Are the people coming here your potential target audience? Will there be a chance to convert these target users in the future?

When taking over user traffic, Pinduoduo has designed various means of user retention and activities for browsing product activity pages. Browsing pages can earn gold coins, which can be exchanged for cash and free order rewards. After placing an order, completing certain actions can earn cash rewards. The series of reward actions are formed into a coherent action, making users addicted and falling in love with shopping on Pinduoduo .

As long as users can go shopping on Pinduoduo, it is easy to convert them. After all, buying things on Pinduoduo is like free. Small items worth a few dollars are also free shipping. The cost of placing an order for users is very low. Buying a bunch of things will cost less than 100 yuan. There are even first-order cashback activities to promote conversion.

However, most products are not universal, and their target users are not as wide as Pinduoduo's. Moreover, the products that can take over the traffic may be very limited, making it difficult to retain and convert users. This is also a problem that many people encounter when doing fission: fission activities take time, energy and money, and also bring about user growth during the activities, but users cannot be retained and it is difficult to form direct conversions. This is what we call false traffic.

The key is to design prizes based on the attributes of your products and the characteristics of your target users, so as to ensure that the traffic we receive is accurate and effective.

2. Basic gameplay of fission

From the fission activities currently launched by Pinduoduo, we can summarize them into the following basic gameplay:

Bargaining to get products for free was the core method of Pinduoduo's early fission.

Daily cash collection, cash wheel, and cash guarding are all activities where you can get cash by completing actions within a limited time . The actions here are mainly about inviting friends. Each activity page corresponds to a final withdrawal amount. The final withdrawal amount for receiving red envelopes every day is 100 yuan, the final withdrawal amount for the cash wheel is 500 yuan, and the final withdrawal amount for guarding cash is 1,000 yuan. It seems that the ability of Pinduoduo users to invite friends should not be underestimated, and it can steadily bring more traffic and users to Pinduoduo every month.

Sign-in, Duoduo Orchard and Duoduo Make Big Money are the key to taking over the incoming fission traffic . Signing in can earn you sign-in beans, which can be directly cashed out, 1 yuan = 100 sign-in beans; in Duoduo Orchard, you can complete designated actions to get water drops and fertilizers, and after planting the trees, you can get a box of fruit mailed to your home, realizing fruit freedom; in Duoduo Make Big Money, you can complete designated actions to get gold coins, which can be exchanged for goods. At the same time, there are many free incentives on this page to stimulate users to buy.

Signing in, Duoduo Orchard and making a lot of money are not only the key to retaining existing traffic, but also the key to recalling users. The activity here also includes inviting friends. Inviting friends can get more sign-in beans; inviting friends to Duoduo Orchard to come back and water the plants can also get water drop rewards.

Pinduoduo has made full use of the connection of social relationships. In the early stage, it relied on fission to obtain information about users' friends, and then continued to recall users through various activities and the social relationships between friends.

As long as the social relationship between friends continues to exist, there will always be a chance to recall them again in the future.

3. What kind of users will be attracted by the gimmick of the fission activity?

Everyone likes to take advantage, but some people prefer to take advantage without losing face, which also determines which users can be attracted by fission activities?

Anyone can invite friends to get cash, suitable for general products with multiple SKUs. Any user group is a potential user of the platform. After attracting users, they can be converted through a variety of products.

When choosing prizes, you must match them with potential target users. You should use prizes based on what the potential target users like as a gimmick for the fission activity.

In addition, according to the principle that birds of a feather flock together, if you want to further control the quality of incoming traffic, restricting the invitees is also a key point.

4. Risk control and freeloaders

The "wool-grabbing party" does not mean using technical means to cheat. Most of the "wool-grabbing party" refers to those who take advantage of the benefits and leave immediately.

I think people who work in operations have both love and hate for the freeloaders. After all, many of the freeloaders are highly contagious people, and activities can be spread quickly through their social circles. However, most of the users brought by the freeloaders are freeloaders who leave immediately after receiving the freeloaders without any stay. (It still proves that retention is not really done well and the wool party cannot be retained)

The most amazing thing about Pinduoduo is that even if I know that you are a freeloader, I will not restrict you, but I will try every possible way to convert you and the users you bring.

Another type of super wool party uses technical cheating. One IP can split into many users, and use these fake users to fleece the platform. The last time KFC was fleeced was actually because the platform’s risk control was not in place. If the control is in place, how is it possible to be swiped for tens of thousands without even realizing it?

Restricting users by IP and device is also a common method of risk control.

I have talked a lot about the analysis of some basic elements of fission before, and I also want to share with you more thoughts related to the underlying layer of fission. Next, let’s take a look at the detailed analysis of Pinduoduo’s fission activity.

3. Analysis of Pinduoduo’s fission activities

When analyzing Pinduoduo's fission activities, we will mainly start from the user paths of the inviters and the invitees, and analyze the flow path of the fission traffic and the acceptance path of the user traffic. What is more difficult than attracting users is retaining them and keeping them to create value.

1. Bargaining for free

Analyzing the essence of fission, user A, who loves to take advantage of a bargain, invites user B to click to bargain because he wants to get a physical product for free.

According to the principle that people are divided into groups, the people invited must be users B who like to take advantage. Therefore, when designing the interaction, when users B help, the emphasis is on showing that users B get a product for free. Such an activity design can allow user A to bring user B, user B to bring user C, user C to bring user D..., and a node continues to spread outward, forming fission.

At the same time, each activity page of Pinduoduo forms a complete closed loop of all activities, forming the flow and utilization of traffic through retention pop-ups, pop-ups, and King Kong area icons.

Judging from the user paths I have experienced so far, Pinduoduo is no longer pursuing rapid user growth. Instead, it is looking for ways to allow users to complete their first order conversion by offering free check-in and cashback, thereby breaking the ice and turning traffic into users. The key is to ensure that users can continue to retain the platform.

2. Invite friends to get cash activities

The fission game, which was very popular last year, adopts the same strategy as bargaining, which makes users decide that they are just a little bit away from getting cash/prizes, and encourages users to take action. After taking action, there are sunk costs. Seeing that they are very close to the goal, they can't bear to give up.

When the user is about to give up and exit, a retention pop-up window will pop up: get a 5x cash card, and the amount of support for inviting 1 friend will be multiplied 5 times. Suddenly, it seemed as if the dawn of victory was seen again; the words "giving up the reward" and the cross on the pop-up window were very hidden, allowing users to follow Pinduoduo's instructions without thinking.

At the same time, it also points out the goal for users. If you don’t know who to invite, Pinduoduo will tell you that you can speed up withdrawals by inviting xx friends. Use your own social relationships to further recall users for Pinduoduo.

The same applies to activities where you can invite friends to get cash. For B users who have helped, the key is not to seek to get more B users to help, but to find ways to make B users who have not converted convert.

3. Cornucopia

Completing the task will earn you cornucopia cash and WeChat change. The withdrawal cycle is one week. If you fail to complete the task and withdraw the cash within one week, the cash will be invalid and you will have to start over.

The tasks here are basically browsing, drawing free-order rewards, completing orders to check in for free-order rewards, etc. Most of them are tasks for user retention and conversion. The traffic generated by fission is converted through browsing, ordering and free shipping.

What is particularly interesting here is the cash withdrawal secrets made by Pinduoduo. There is no official formal text description, but a guide posted on WeChat Moments in the user's tone. What I want to tell you here is that it is very simple to withdraw cash, just click once.

Most of the fission activities currently retained by Pinduoduo still use WeChat cash payments as the means of fission. Compared with the previous bargaining for free items, the user group is more universal, and users do not have to worry that the free items from Pinduoduo may have quality problems and be unwilling to participate in bargaining activities.

In addition, in terms of retention, compared with the previous Duoduo Orchard, the current sign-in activities and Duoduo Big Money Activities are more suitable for the current product development stage and can bring more support to the product. In the original Duoduo Orchard, the fruits might not be liked by everyone, and not everyone would be willing to participate in Duoduo Orchard’s activities. However, free-of-charge prizes and cash rewards are suitable for everyone and can effectively stimulate users to complete order conversion actions.

After the conversion of the first order, we will be able to understand what users like to buy on Pinduoduo in the future, and recommend more products of interest to users, thereby promoting user conversion again.

4. Thoughts on Pinduoduo Activities

Based on Pinduoduo’s activities, I have a few thoughts that I would like to share with you.

1. Starting from the end determines the quality of fission flow

Fission must be the beginning, the starting point of traffic, not the focus; we need to look at the final utilization efficiency of traffic, and our fission activities also need to have a target point. In other words, we focus on the North Star indicator to see whether each of our fission activities has achieved our core indicators and auxiliary indicators.

If it is not achieved, what is the reason and how can it be optimized later?

For example, the goal of our fission activity is to attract 30,000 new users and convert 300 users to place orders. The 30,000 traffic target here is not the core key. The core key is how to convert users. This is the positive value that fission activities can truly bring to the product.

2. Taking over traffic is the key

Today, Pinduoduo is no longer simply pursuing rapid user growth, but is trying to find ways to take over each incoming traffic and convert each incoming traffic.

If users have not yet converted despite the incentive of free items, Pinduoduo will also offer a limited-time 1 yuan purchase offer to new users to promote user conversion. In Pinduoduo's current strategy, conversion is the key to taking over incoming traffic and turning it into users.

3. Social recall of users

The traffic generated by fission comes from certain social relationship chains between users, and these social relationship chains are the key to attracting new users and recalling them.

The efficiency of recalling through social links is higher than that of PUSH and SMS, and it is easier to convert.

There are obvious social relationship reminders in Pinduoduo's fission activities. Inviting xx friends can double the withdrawal, which stimulates you to recall long-term inactive users.

The above is a simple analysis of Pinduoduo’s fission activity.

In summary, the essence of fission is what kind of user invites user B in what kind of scenario and with what kind of motivation, and for what reason user B clicks and participates in the activity ; if you figure out the paths of the inviter and the invitee, and understand the users and the products, fission won't be that bad.

Author: Operation Wang's Growth Diary

Author: Operation Wang's Growth Diary