Anniversary event promotion example

Coinciding with the company's anniversary and the current political environment tightening restrictions on online education advertising, we took this opportunity to design a "task reward" referral campaign as it was a "good time" for brand promotion.

This was also my first attempt at a “task & reward” system, and I learned some methodologies on how to balance the user experience and project costs of the system, which will also help me gain experience for (possibly) developing a task system in the future.

Therefore, with the help of marketing activity planning, think about the "task reward" system from a product perspective.

1. The purpose of the “task & reward” system

Whether it is the mainstream products on the market or competing products in online education, more and more of them use the "task & reward" system to carry out tasks that an activity or product function hopes to get users to complete, and then give users various benefits.

Before clarifying the purpose, you need to at least clarify:

• Who are the users of this product/this feature/this activity?
• What are the characteristics of the users?
• What are the users’ demands or scenarios for the product/feature/activity?
• What is the value and purpose of our product itself?

If it is unclear who the users are, then in an activity without target users, for an activity that thinks its target users are "all users", it is easy for the platform to have low user participation, a high proportion of users taking advantage of the platform, serious cost losses and unsatisfactory final results due to inappropriate task design.

For referrals, it is very important to distinguish the user's design purpose for the "task & reward" system.

For example: If the target users of the activity are trial class users, then the product/operation side will hope that this group of users can become our full-price class users, so the core purpose should be centered around "conversion"; then the tasks should be more focused on learning behavior, homework output, and results display, so that users can feel after completing the tasks that "Ah, I can gain so much from studying here, my learning has been fruitful, and I have also received rewards", then it will be a success.

After clarifying the user and product goals, the "task & reward" system is intended to extend the user's LTV in the product, make more users active, and enable them to continue using the product and participating in activities; therefore, the purpose of the "task & reward" system is to:

1) Cultivate user habits

The "task & reward" system means that users can complete tasks and receive rewards, thereby gaining benefits or spiritual satisfaction. By allowing users to complete fixed tasks, users will gradually become dependent on the product, such as logging in, clocking in, sharing tasks, etc.

2) Enhance user stickiness

By allowing users to complete tasks, the time they spend in the product can be increased, thereby increasing user activity and retention. For example, shopping apps like Taobao and Pinduoduo can set up a task of "browsing for xx seconds to get a reward" when they want to increase the exposure of a certain category or venue.

3) Familiarity with product/activity model

By allowing users to complete core tasks, users can quickly build a sense of what the activity/product does. And based on the continuous reuse of the "task & reward" system, after cultivating habits several times, users will be able to continuously perceive how to participate in each activity, thus eliminating the cost of educating users.

2. Key points of the design of the “Task & Reward” system

Based on the purpose, the core design points of the "Task & Reward" system are centered around the polishing of "tasks" and "rewards".

1. Key points of “task” design

1) Task design should not be limited to form, but should fit the user scenario

When I designed tasks myself before, I would limit myself to the form of a list, always thinking about "putting together tasks". If I put together enough tasks, the list content would appear to be more "rich"; but in fact, this idea and practice is very dangerous and wrong, because the design of tasks does not take user scenarios into consideration, then the user's participation and enthusiasm will inevitably be low, and the final result can be imagined.

Therefore, the form of the task is not important. The most important thing is the task content that fits the scenario and can be recommended to users at the right time . For example, this month we designed a referral free class activity. The initial sketch was in the form of a task list (as shown on the left). Later, after communicating with the boss, we realized that such a task was meaningless and forced.

So we changed the triggering logic of the task to recommend the appropriate task to the user at the right time (as shown in the right picture):

• When entering the page, you will be informed that you can receive a free course package (reward) and obtain it (task) after completing the sharing.
• After successfully receiving the gift package, inform the user that there are still xxxx points that have not been received (reward) and how to receive them (task);

Designs like this, which contextualize tasks and recommend tasks based on the user's current psychology and scenario, are much better than leaving a task list there waiting for users to actively click on it.

In addition, we should pay attention to the sense of hierarchy of tasks . The sense of hierarchy means that when designing tasks, we should fully consider the connection between tasks. They should not be too similar or too detached. In other words, the correlation between tasks should not be too dense. For example, all five tasks are shared, but the content of sharing is different.

Tasks cannot be unrelated to each other, or even have nothing to do with the theme of the event. For example, for an anniversary event , there may be a bonus pool where everyone helps each other divide the bonus. This is a typical case of forgetting user demands for the sake of operational goals.

The form is not important, what is important is the content and timing.

2) Balance user experience and operational goals, with “users being able to play” as the top priority

In order to make users enjoy the game and have a good user experience, it is necessary to make the difficulty of the tasks moderate and make the tasks valuable and relevant to the theme/product.

For example, during an event, the operator hopes that users will share to bring in more traffic and conversion leads. However, from the user's perspective, such a sharing task does not seem to be closely related to the event, and the user does not perceive the value and emotions conveyed by the event from the task. Therefore, they will behave casually and take advantage of the situation.

Therefore, when balancing user experience and operational goals, tasks need to be packaged. The methodology I have summarized should be: What are the users' current needs and pain points → What are the operational goals → Combine the two .

For example, regarding the “sharing” task that I have been thinking about recently, users’ feedback is that they are tired of always sharing posters. So the information I get from this is: the user’s pain point - they are tired of sharing posters as a form of sharing, and they don’t want to share posters anymore because they are not original; the user’s needs - they want to share when the time is right, but they don’t want to share posters anymore.

Assuming the goal of the operation is to increase the sharing rate, is it possible to package the shared content so that users will be impressed and willing to share it? So I thought of referring to NetEase Cloud's annual report and collecting the "first times" that happened to children using the product to form a memoir/growth manual. This would attract users, make them feel that it is memorable, and make them naturally willing to share , thus achieving operational goals.

3) Have clear mission objectives

In the design of the task system, users are given clear goals at different stages, so that when they understand the tasks, they can clearly know "I have completed xx task, and if I complete a few more, I will be able to win the ultimate prize"; therefore, it is necessary to make reasonable allocations in page display, timely message reminders, and reward feedback, so that users can always clearly focus on each task goal.

2. Key points of “reward” design

1) Rewards should be designed in a step-by-step manner and should be proportional to the difficulty of the task

As I understand it, tiered rewards also need to have a sense of hierarchy, and the source of this sense of hierarchy is that the rewards must be proportional to the difficulty of the task. The purpose of doing this is to allow users to have a clear perception of the difficulty and rewards of the task, and to reduce the cost increase problem caused by wool-pulling.

For example, in an activity, Task 1 is easy and a chance to win a lottery is given after completing it; Task 2 is difficult and a chance to win a lottery is also given after completing it; such a design will cause users to be more inclined to complete easy tasks and feel that difficult tasks are "not worthwhile", so fewer people will complete them.

Haha, users are very smart!

2) Provide timely message reminders and help users identify their next goal

Let me emphasize one point here. No matter what product/activity you are creating, everything you do for users must be clearly and accurately communicated to them .

If the product does not clearly inform users of everything it has worked on, how can we expect users to "dig deep and discover surprises"?

The purpose of doing this is to make users clearly understand that "there will be rewards if you put in effort, and the rewards are proportional to the effort", and in the page display, it is necessary to create a warm atmosphere for the user's psychological feeling of receiving rewards; such as page flowers, ribbons, gold coins, banners, and text such as "Thank you for your efforts, congratulations on receiving xxx gift", "Congratulations baby for receiving the support of xxx people, hereby give you xxx reward".

After clarifying the first step - "everything done for the user must be clearly informed", the second step is " timely notification ". The purpose of timely notification is to give users immediate satisfaction.

People are very concerned about their own interests. Think about when you apply for a refund on Taobao, you are also very anxious to know whether the money has arrived, whether you have been cheated, etc. Therefore, you must inform users in a timely manner about the rewards. Page pop-ups, APP push, WeChat template messages, etc. can all be used, instead of quietly putting them in the reward list and letting users discover them on their own.

The third step is to " help users identify their next goal" and provide good guidance. After receiving the reward, it is easy for users to not know what to do next, or forget the next step because they feel the activity is complicated.

Then, after users have “tasted the sweetness”, it is necessary to help them clarify the next goal/stage, and use the time difference before the sense of satisfaction disappears to provide timely guidance, so that users can gradually become familiar with the complete “task & reward” system.

3. Example: Anniversary Event Design

The above contents are the key points summarized through the examples of the upcoming anniversary event design.

In the anniversary event held last month, the "Task & Reward" system was also used; the good and bad performances will be recorded here to facilitate review and avoid subsequent pitfalls~

1. Use the “reciprocity principle” to design scenario-based tasks

The principle of reciprocity means that " we should try to report in the same way everything others do for us "; because humans are social animals, they need relatively equal interactions with each other to maintain social operation and individual survival; therefore, this "give and take" principle is deeply rooted in people's subconscious.

Once someone does us a favor, we naturally feel a pleasant "guilt" in our hearts; in order to eliminate this guilt, we tend to repay the other person in the same/similar way.

Just like supermarkets providing tasting services and shopping malls offering free samples, they all use the "principle of reciprocity" to facilitate marketing or negotiations.

Therefore, in the anniversary celebration, this principle was also used to set up scenarios to guide users to complete sharing tasks.

After entering the event page, users can watch the anniversary theme video and directly receive a free trial class related to the anniversary theme. The purpose is to allow users to feel the benefits we provide in this event without any barriers. After successfully receiving the benefits, users are reminded that "other rewards can be obtained by completing event tasks." At this time, the proportion of users willing to participate is about 80% (project review data, desensitized) . Therefore, in this scenario of "giving users a taste of the benefits first," the success rate of guiding them to complete tasks is relatively high.

2. Timely reward reminders and task guidance

During the anniversary event, sufficient guidance was provided for the timely distribution of rewards, which was also mentioned in subsequent user feedback; however, the period after the reward distribution was not well utilized to provide guidance for the next task. Users were simply allowed to enter the venue on their own and click on the task list to view the task.

In addition, reflection concluded that the behavior of "users are about to achieve rewards" also needs guidance and timely push; one of the venues for this event is to upload and share videos, and the top 66 people who collect likes will receive anniversary cakes, and the top 150 people will get 1,000 points. The rewards were very attractive, but not many users received them in the end; no notification messages were sent to the 67th, 149th, and 151st users who were about to receive the rewards. On the one hand, this caused users to feel disappointed that they worked so hard but ultimately did not receive the rewards; on the other hand, there was no timely push, resulting in a poor user experience for the event.

Therefore, in subsequent activities, reminder nodes such as reward distribution and critical user assistance need to be sorted out to continuously optimize the user experience.

3. Make users enjoy the game while keeping project costs under control

At the beginning of product design, on the one hand, we need to consider the cost of users understanding the task and the attractiveness of the task to ensure that users are motivated and have fun ; on the other hand, we need to measure whether there is a match between the task and the reward, and whether the user's completion of a task can bring value to the product/activity to ensure that the cost -effectiveness of the project is maximized .

1) Users enjoy the game and feel motivated and engaged

First of all, before users start to complete the task, you might as well give them some motivation . For example, as soon as they enter the activity, you can give them xx rewards, some of which are monetary rewards, and some are spiritual rewards related to the theme (such as theme videos, free courses, picture albums, magazines, etc.). The purpose is to make users believe that participating in this activity can indeed bring rewards, and to bring users' emotions into it first.

Secondly, users should be made to feel and have a strong desire to win a prize ; users should not only be informed in a timely manner of what they can get, but also what others have already received ; for example, if the lottery is regarded as a live broadcast on Bilibili, "barrage of comments floating by" may be a suitable design direction; if the lottery is regarded as a lucky thing, "red envelope rain falling from the sky" may also be a suitable design direction.

Users are easily infected by others in group activities. When they see the list of big prize winners, they may be infected by the atmosphere of "I want to win the big prize too", which can then be transformed into motivation to complete the task.

Finally, after telling the user what the task is and what the reward is, don’t forget to clearly tell the user how to complete the task. Often due to limited page layout, it is difficult to fit so much task information on one page. Even if it is included, users may not read it carefully. Therefore, a more appropriate approach is for the system to automatically determine the current task step and then remind the user what to do next .

For example, one of the tasks in the anniversary event is "Share the blessing message and collect likes to get a chance to win a lottery"; the steps of this task are "Share → Friends enter the page to like the message → Collect 6 likes", which is actually quite complicated for users.

First, we need to understand the scenarios in which users perform tasks and what are the more difficult to understand:

• Where do I share?
• Where are my friends going to like this post?
• How many likes do I need to collect? Is there a time limit?

Therefore, timely guidance is provided according to the obstacles encountered in the above scenarios, so that users can feel the smoothness of the operation and the timeliness of problem solving of "you have been helping me to complete tasks and get rewards".

2) Control costs and establish risk control mechanisms

Any large-scale marketing campaign cannot be 100% guaranteed to be free of scams. Even if 100% risk control is implemented, the user's motivation to participate will most likely be "killed" by risk control. Therefore, there should be room for establishing a risk control mechanism in the design of product logic.

During the anniversary celebration, two methods of controlling costs were summarized:

A. Limitation of times/capacity

When designing the anniversary celebration, the task system was "complete 4 basic tasks + 4 new invitation tasks" to get the highest reward. Considering that users will work hard to complete tasks for a chance to win a lottery, we have set an upper limit on the number of draws based on the average person's ability to bring leads and the effectiveness of the total leads of the activity.

At first, I was wondering what would happen if there was no restriction on whether to complete the basic tasks, and the highest reward could be obtained by completing 8 invitation tasks alone. The final result proved that this would bring a large number of invalid clues.

To control the upper limit of the number of times, we need to consider the control of tasks and rewards for each activity based on the clue effects, costs, and task completion rates of historical activities of the same size.

B. Control the user groups involved

For specific activities or tasks, the participation threshold can be appropriately raised to ensure the quality of the results. For example, a common product feature of online education products – monthly sharing (complete sharing tasks and get rewards, with the purpose of increasing the sharing rate and thus bringing in leads) requires controlling the participating user groups, such as the participation of users who have just registered for full-price courses within 2 months.

If everyone can participate, then the quality of leads brought by trial class users can be imagined (at the trial class stage, users themselves have not yet converted, so how can they bring good leads to the product?)

4. Novel interactions can be tried continuously

This may not have much to do with the "Tasks & Rewards" system, it's just a review of the page design.

The anniversary event changed the previous long-screen sliding interaction method and designed it with reference to the one-screen up-and-down switching venue method of Alipay's five-blessing collection. The purpose of this change is to give each venue an equal probability of exposure and to ensure that each page carries independent content, which is independent of each other but also connected as a whole.

At first, we were worried about this new way of interaction, and that users might not be used to it or wouldn’t be able to operate it. However, the results proved that trying new interactions did not have any negative impact. Instead, it provided a good “education” for subsequent iterations based on it.

Actually, now that I think about it, even Alipay, a product with allergy-related volume, can try this, so why can’t we? Maybe being conservative won’t go wrong, but trying new things is what every product manager is constantly pursuing.

IV. Conclusion

Through the product planning of this anniversary event, our thinking on the “task & reward” system has also deepened a lot. To sum up:

1) There are three purposes for creating a "task & reward" system, namely, to cultivate user habits, enhance user stickiness, and familiarize users with product/activity models. Before thinking about the purpose, it is necessary to first clarify the user group, user characteristics, user demands, and the product's own value goals.

2) There are five key points in the design of the "task & reward" system, namely:

• Task design should not be limited to form, but should fit the user scenario;
• Balance user experience and operational goals;
• Have clear mission objectives;
• Rewards should be designed in a tiered manner and should be proportional to the difficulty of the task;
• Timely reward message reminders.

3) Taking the anniversary event as an example, the key points of the application of the "task & reward" system in this event are:

• Use the "principle of reciprocity" to design scenario-based tasks;
• Guidance on the behavior of “users are about to achieve rewards”;
• For users to have fun, they need to be motivated and have a sense of participation (first give them motivation, make them feel and desire to win prizes, and how to complete the task);
• Control costs and establish risk control mechanisms (limit the number of times and control the user groups involved);
• Escape from the "conservative" comfort zone and be brave enough to try new gameplay and new interactions.

Author: Cucumber Morning News

Source: Qinggua Media