Double 11 event operation plan and planning!

Event operation is an important aspect of operations work. In addition to having comprehensive and systematic knowledge, an excellent event operator should also have efficient execution capabilities in project control, process promotion, department coordination, and resource integration to promote the completion of the overall event KPI.

The outstanding performance of an S-level event often allows many new stores to stand out, and can determine the allocation of event resources in the next few months and increase the store's importance in the eyes of the store manager.

1. Build an activity model

In the “people, goods and place” of e-commerce, activities play the role of “place”. A successful activity can effectively combine people and goods through the role of “place” to maximize its effectiveness.

Building an effective event model is the foundation of the "venue". The event PM should coordinate and control all matters in the three stages before, during and after the event.

Before the event - prevention is better than cure

Make adequate preparations before the event, align the goals/budgets/resources/plans with those of each department, and ensure that there is no deviation in the understanding of the information by each department. Good advance planning is better than any remedial measures afterwards.

Active - Comprehensive Monitoring

During the event, the whole activity is comprehensively monitored to see whether the warm-up/official/countdown/return nodes are effectively executed, and the dimensions of page/product/data/user/activity mechanism are monitored in real time to identify problems and make timely adjustments.

After the event - comprehensive review

In the later stage of the activity, it is necessary to review the activity in multiple dimensions, summarize the experience and lessons, and include them in the experience and lessons library to provide a guide to avoid pitfalls for future activities.

2. Activity Program Guide

(This is only a guide and may not be applicable to all types of activities. It can be tailored according to actual conditions.)

1. Set reasonable activity goals

The annual sales target is usually set in advance and broken down into each event based on the monthly sales performance targets.

The GMV target for the entire event will be set based on the inventory value of goods, the level of the promotion, available resources and budget, and past historical data to set a reasonable target.

Decompose KPI according to the set goals and break it down into the smallest particles

GMV=UV*conversion rate*average order value

l UV: UV is broken down into free search, self-access, paid promotion, and other traffic.

l Conversion rate: compare the conversion rate of activities in the same period/the conversion rate of the same industry

l Average order value: Estimate the approximate average order value based on the main product’s price, related sales, discount threshold, etc.

Data breakdown of different bands:

Store sales target breakdown:

Estimate the available budget based on the established GMV target.

GMV and product costs are both known quantities. If the company requires a profit margin of 15%, then the available budget can be extrapolated.

Profit margin = (GMV-product cost-budgeted cost)/GMV*100%

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Budget cost = GMV-GMV*profit margin-product cost

With this expense, you need to plan your expenses carefully so that every penny can have high output!

The budget expenses are generally spent on coupon subsidies, product subsidies, on-site hard advertising and off-site marketing, etc. The amount of each expense section is allocated according to the specific activities case by case. If the emphasis is on marketing, then off-site marketing will account for a larger proportion. If the emphasis is on subsidies, then product subsidies will account for a larger proportion to control the ROI.

2. Clarify the theme of the event to make it sound more attractive

After the event is spread, the theme of the event is the bridge connecting with users.

A good event theme should include six elements: concise, easy to spread, easy to understand, relevant, interesting, and memorable.

The theme of the event can be freely combined by the purpose of the event, the promotion industry, the promotion population, the event season, and the promotion intensity. After determining the general direction of the event, you can lock in the theme keywords.

3. Activity rhythm

Usually the rhythm of an event is divided into three stages: warm-up, official event, and return event . The operational actions, page displays, and store rights and interests will be different in the three stages.

l Warm-up period: This is a water storage process, which I think is the most core stage. During the warm-up period, publicize and inform the event to increase the popularity of the event and guide users to grab coupons, share, collect and purchase. The more thorough the warm-up preparations are, the greater the explosion will be during the official period.

l Formal period: If you do well in the warm-up period, then the formal period will usher in a big explosion. This is a good time to harvest! Coupons received during the warm-up period are usually only valid and usable during the official period. The early water accumulation and warm-up make everyone ready to shop during the official period. The conversion rate of adding items to favorites and cart items is generally 25-40%. With customer service and text messages urging users to buy, orders can come in even more!

l Return period: You can observe the sales data of the products during the official period, and deliver targeted reach to high-conversion users, which will help the return activities to make another sprint!

4. Venue layout

The venue layout is designed through Demo, and different modules and traffic lines can be used to form a venue that meets different needs.

What is a module?

The module is the entrance for the venue traffic. When traffic flows into the venue, different groups of people will be diverted to different modules.

Taking offline supermarkets as an example, after people enter the supermarket, girls may go to the beauty area, while the elderly will go to the fresh food area, mothers will go to the maternity and baby area, and so on. Different areas divert different user groups.

Modules are built into floors, and people are then diverted from the space.

Why do most shopping malls put cosmetics on the first floor and men's clothing on upper floors? This is also a design based on the browsing routes of men and women when shopping in malls.

Online modules will be more flexible than offline modules, free from the constraints of physical transportation in space. Online modules can realize personalized module display through the system.

What is a moving line?

Similarly, combining with the layout of offline supermarkets, people who have been to supermarkets have all felt that there will be route guidance for which area you want to go to, and you can roam around the store like a fish in water; or if you just want to stroll around, there will be a route to lead you forward, and the dazzling array of goods and immersive shopping experience will allow you to keep shopping happily. This is the designed customer flow route.

A good traffic flow will make people more willing to shop, stay longer, see more, and be more likely to convert.

Similarly, for online activities, most users who come to the venue do not have a clear purpose, and most of the users who have a clear purpose complete their shopping behavior through search. When online users visit an event venue, because they are not restricted by space, most of them scan the site in a jumpy manner and do not browse through the site one by one like they do offline.

At this time, the flow of traffic in the venue is like a shopping guide, guiding users where to start, what to look at first, and what to look at later? Through reasonable page layout and element combination, guide users to see more and stay longer. Plan traffic routes reasonably, avoid blind spots as much as possible, provide users with clear guidance, and design routes that meet operational indicators and goals.

A good traffic flow design can reduce the user page bounce rate, increase the user stay time, and improve the purchase conversion rate.

Combined with the rhythm of the event, the store rights and interests at each event point in time are different, and the displayed page will also change accordingly. Therefore, for an event, the operator needs to plan different event page displays according to different stages.

Activity warm-up page example:

5. Product planning for events

After planning the venue layout, the next step is to plan the event merchandise.

Each floor in the venue corresponds to event product selections with different requirements. The event operator needs to explain the product selection requirements (number of slots, product attributes, discount rate, etc.). The product selection colleagues will fill in the product selections according to the needs and output a list of event product selections.

6. Spread the logic of gameplay

The activity can achieve the effect of "person-to-person spread". The gameplay logic is to use the user's sharing motivation to carry out fission diffusion and dissemination.

The ancients said: "Tao begets one, one begets two, two begets three, and three begets all things." Fission propagation is carried out through the method of one to ten and ten to a hundred.

Bargaining, group buying, sharing fission coupons, and lucky draws are all conventional e-commerce operation tools for communication and fission, which drive users to share and spread through profit.

The most commonly used methods on Pinduoduo are bargaining and group buying. Through the method of old customers bringing in new customers, it gradually expands the communication circle with people as the center and introduces more new traffic.

I won’t go into detail about the specific communication and marketing methods here. Alibaba’s backend marketing tools are very mature. Operations personnel only need to effectively combine marketing tools and products and select the first batch of seed users.

3. Activity Tools & Templates

1. Event Calendar

The event calendar is the magic weapon for event operations.

Activities require advance planning. You can’t just do something today and then do something else tomorrow. This is a lack of planning and professionalism. Plan activities by making an activity calendar, set activity levels, and break them down into annual/quarterly/monthly sales targets to make full-year activity plans.

|Year-round events calendar

Click to view full image

| Break down into quarterly/monthly activity plans

2. Activity workflow diagram

During the event planning process, many lines are often carried out simultaneously. The event PM needs to promote the coordinated work of multiple departments. The event workflow diagram is an essential tool in the overall management process. It can normalize and standardize activities, and at the same time improve the efficiency of project management.

The flow chart should clarify the key responsibilities of each line, the direction of the process and the relationship between the matters. A good workflow will bring about efficient execution and is the guarantee of the success of the event.

(This is a company activity workflow for everyone to participate in. This process is not applicable to all activity businesses.)

3. WBS (Project Breakdown Structure)

WBS and activity workflow diagram are a pair of CP. Through the tasks to be completed in the activity workflow diagram, the activity project can be broken down into the smallest work packages, and each work package should have a corresponding person in charge. The combination of WBS and Gantt chart can also show the progress and completion time of tasks.

4. Marketing Tools

I call marketing tools the “Eighteen Sales Methods”. If you effectively choose marketing tools and combine them with activities, there will always be one that will make your users buy.

(1) Promotion of discounts for purchases above a certain amount

Shoppers can get certain discounts as long as they purchase corresponding products at a specified price within a specific period of time.

There are mainly two forms: tiered discount and discount for every purchase.

l Tiered discounts, for example: 10 off for purchases over 100, 50 off for purchases over 300, 80 off for purchases over 500;

l Get a discount for every purchase over a certain amount. For example, if you set a discount of 20 yuan for every purchase over 200 yuan, then an order of 230 yuan will actually cost 210 yuan, and an order of 430 yuan will actually cost 390 yuan.

(2) Single product promotion

Enjoy certain price discounts when purchasing designated products within a specific period of time.

Example: During the promotion period, the product is 40% off. The original price is 100 yuan, but it costs 60 yuan when purchased.

(3) Package promotion

Combination sets of products are sold at discounted prices.

For example: Product A is 50 yuan, Product B is 80 yuan, and the promotional price of the A+B product set is 100 yuan.

(4) Gift promotion

After purchasing the main product, you will receive a free product (multiple products are allowed)

(5) Free gift promotion

There is a promotion where you can get XX product for free when you spend over XX yuan, and there is a promotion where you can get XX product for free with an additional XX yuan when you spend over XX yuan. The difference between this promotion and gift promotion is that it is distinguished by the price of the corresponding product order, and can be set in stages.

For example, if you spend over 300 yuan, you will get a selfie stick; if you spend over 500 yuan, you will get a power bank; if you spend over 1000 yuan, you will get high-end headphones, etc.

(6) Bulk Purchase Promotion

There are two discount types: M yuan for any N items and M items with N discounts.

(7) Deposit promotion

Before the product is officially sold, we adopt a promotional model of prepayment of deposit, and you can enjoy a preferential price by paying the deposit in advance.

There are many ways to play the deposit pre-sale: deposit pre-order, which is equivalent to confirming the order with the deposit; deposit leverage, for example, a deposit of 10 yuan can be deducted from 30 yuan.

(8) Coupons

There will be coupons with different thresholds in an activity, and the ratio of threshold value/average order value will be divided into three structural types: low, medium and high.

Low-threshold coupons: coupons with a threshold value/average order value < 0.5; without this, it will be impossible to increase conversion rates through coupons.

Mid-threshold coupons: Coupons with a threshold value/average order value between 1 and 1.5 times; without this, users will not be stimulated to increase the number of purchases.

High-threshold coupons: coupons with threshold value/average order value > 2; without this, it will be impossible to stimulate high-value users and significantly increase the store’s average order value.

5. Store inventory list template

Pay special attention to the inventory status of hot-selling products (main promoted products) to avoid insufficient inventory of products launched during activities, which will affect the overall KPI.

(*Sold out rate before Double 11 = inventory before Double 11 / Double 11 transaction target)

6. Activity review template

There are five essential modules for review: store overview, products, promotion, industry & competitors, and process;

l Store overview: store KPI completion status (how is the same level compared with last year? How is the month-on-month growth compared with the previous promotion?), sales volume, number of units sold, average order value, PV, conversion rate and other data;

l Products: sold-out status of promotional products and hot-selling products;

l Promotion: Compared with the previous activity data, the promotion section data of this activity;

l Industry & Competitive Products: Your ranking in the industry (increasing or declining), analyze the strengths and weaknesses of competitive products (learn and imitate the good parts, and avoid the shortcomings);

l Process: Are there any obvious pitfalls during the activity? Let them sink in to avoid making the same mistakes next time.

The above is the overall idea of ​​store activity planning. You can tailor it according to the scale of your own store or the level of the activity, and develop activity plans and plans that match your own business needs.

Author: Albert's Operational Thoughts

Source: Albert-Zong