Deep dive into the four major ways to grow educational apps

Online education has been a very hot field in recent years. There are many articles analyzing its growth model online, but I found an interesting phenomenon, that is, few people talk about the growth method of online education apps.

Perhaps for most Internet apps, the usage frequency of online education apps is relatively low, and a large proportion of online education users (such as K12 users) exist on the PC side, which means that many people will focus on the growth of online education by acquiring registered users and paying users.

In fact, online education users cannot do without APPs, especially tool APPs. For example, Zuoyebang and Xiaoyuansouti have tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of users, and many online education companies increasingly emphasize that users use APPs to sign up for courses.

Under this trend, it is necessary to systematically sort out the operational growth of online education apps (including knowledge payment), especially the fission growth. This article attempts to sort out several commonly used gameplays.

01 Fission Activation

What is fission activation? That is, information is pushed through channels such as SMS, APP push, public account template messages, etc., with the help of attractive rewards and expression copywriting, to help new and old users participate in fission.

For online education apps, how does the recall of new and old users relate to fission?

First, design exclusive benefits that match different types of users. You can use the RFM model, pyramid model, etc. to stratify them, and then launch fission activities such as invitation gifts, support, group buying, etc. to maximize the growth contribution of different types of users.

The second is targeted recall. It is recommended to give priority to the APP’s own message push function, because it is better than other recall forms in terms of reach effect and user experience. For example, SMS or public account template messages require users to browse the message page before jumping to the APP. Users will find it cumbersome and easily lose.

Finally, whether it is an old user logging in or a new user registering, exclusive benefits will be displayed in the form of pop-up windows, distributing coupons, free courses, etc., and then gradually guiding them to participate in fission activities, or pop-up windows will guide users to participate directly.

For example. A knowledge-based payment APP launched a "Limited-time Free VIP" campaign in order to activate new users who have not logged in for a long time.

First, the APP message push function is used to release activity information to target users, who then enter the APP directly. Then, a pop-up window is displayed with the words "free" to attract users to click on the fission activity page. Finally, under the influence of "send a 7-day VIP+ knowledge calendar to a friend", users enter the login link, obtain the poster, and share it.

It can be found that using the APP push function to reach users is a very effective operational means, especially the message reach mechanism based on user portraits and built around user needs and scenarios, which is of great help to fission growth.

For example, the APP push function supports A/B testing experiments. By dividing user groups and matching different push copy, it can verify the recall effect and subsequent fission effect of different message content, providing data accumulation for the iteration of subsequent fission activities.

02 Invitation with courtesy

Regarding the gameplay of APP fission, the author uniformly calls it "invite with gifts", which means inviting friends to send gifts. The key to analyzing this gameplay is the invitation form and gift form.

The most basic form of invitation gift is to help, and the standard of helping is to receive courses, including receiving free courses (expressed as registration) and purchasing paid courses. Therefore, the key to distinguishing different types of polite invitations is the form of the gift. Based on this, the author sorted out several common invitation and gift playing methods:

1) Share gift pack

As mentioned earlier, one of the means for many online education apps to activate new users is new user gift packages, which are the easiest to combine with fission. In most cases, the shared gift packages often include discounted courses, limited-time memberships, free shipping of physical items, etc. Both new and old users can get them (euphemistically called exclusive), but it is only a "qualification" and the prerequisite is to complete the invitation task.

“Get VIP for free” is a typical example of sharing gift packages. Of course there are other typical cases.

An online education APP uses "free shipping on physical learning gift packages" as an attraction to guide old users to invite friends to purchase courses. In addition, the physical gift packages are distributed in stages based on the number of invites, with the aim of increasing the sharing rate. The invitation poster for external publicity highlights the "magic course coupon", which is actually a 3 yuan lead-in course that is worth 196 yuan off. It is obvious that the company hopes to use price as a means to increase the purchase rate of new users.

The sharing gift packages of an online parent community APP are mainly free courses, and the invitation mechanism is slightly different. Every time you invite one person to take a course, you get one more chance to get other courses for free, for a total of four times, which is equivalent to one person inviting four people. Because both parties in the fission receive real course benefits, this is a friendly and mutually beneficial growth strategy.

2) Discounts for bringing in new customers

The discount for bringing in new customers is a very basic way of selling products in the education industry, especially for offline institutions. Coupons of a certain amount can bring in very accurate customers, so it is very suitable for online education.

According to the author's observation, a leading K12 education APP is an absolute expert in the application of "old customers bring in new customers discounts". Because of the strong brand advantage and teaching reputation, and considering the high average order value, the 100 yuan coupon is very attractive to potential users, and the invitation rewards are cumulative, ensuring the frequency of new invitations. However, the threshold for receiving coupons is slightly high, and friends are required to attend courses, which is undoubtedly based on user conversion considerations.

A leading knowledge payment platform APP also adopts the discount strategy of old customers bringing in new customers, but there is no course attendance requirement. Its regulations stipulate that as long as one person is successfully recommended, both parties will each receive a 20 yuan discount (two 10 yuan coupons). The discounts can be accumulated and can be used to purchase any course.

For the discount for bringing in new customers, there is a core threshold for issuing coupons, that is, the invitees must be purely newly registered users. Both Xueersi and Dedao have obvious requirements, which shows that coupons can play a very practical role in converting new users.

3) Recommend points

Many Internet apps like to reward users with points and use reward redemption to maintain circulation and reduce customer acquisition costs. Online education is no exception and is often combined with fission.

For example, a certain children's AI course APP has a points system called "Zebra Coin". One Zebra Coin is equivalent to 50 yuan in cash or a coupon. You can get it by inviting one person to buy a trial class. The more you invite, the more you can accumulate. There is also a rich mall to help consume "Zebra Coins", but the inviter can only be a trial class user.

Another example is a certain vocational education APP, which often launches some live broadcast sharing. After users sign up for the live broadcast, they will be provided with recommendation quotas. There will be a tiered invitation reward, which is divided into three levels of 1 person, 3 people, and 5 people. The prize is a certain amount of "research value". The invited users only need to make an appointment for the live broadcast. It is obviously a strategy of bringing in new users with the main purpose of activation.

4) Group purchase of physical items

A major growth strategy for many public accounts is to give away physical prizes to attract fans, and there are similar strategies for APP growth.

Taking a certain AI course APP as an example, physical books are given away for free through group buying. If the group leader invites 4 people to register for free courses, 5 people can get the books with free shipping at the same time. Therefore, as long as the physical prizes are attractive enough, have a sense of scarcity and value, and reflect a strong desire to own them, they can bring about considerable results in attracting new customers.

However, no matter what kind of invitation-gift gameplay is used, it is based on attractive rewards. It is a double-edged sword. Although it can attract new users, it can also attract a group of "wool-gathering parties". What's more, the fission based on APP will also have some problems with poor experience.

Therefore, in the actual implementation process, from the time new users download the APP to completing registration and activation, we must do our best to do a good job of risk control and optimize the experience.

03 Conclusion

Let me talk about my understanding of APP fission. Its essence is a set of productized growth processes. The core depends on whether the fission theme and rewards are attractive, and whether the user participation path is smooth. However, to achieve the ideal level, operational assistance is also needed.

Therefore, growth is not entirely driven by products, but the combined effect of various factors. This is the real charm of “1+1>2”.

Author: Lonely Bacteria

Source: Wild Operation Community (id: dugu9bubai)