How to increase user base by 100 times by bringing in new users from old customers? Master these two key operational skills

First, we need to clarify one question: Why do we need to operate referrals?

This is because referrals are essentially an activity or product that needs to be promoted to various channels through operational means, and must also be combined with specific user operation strategies to improve the effect of attracting new customers.

So at the implementation level, I think we can focus on two aspects: "promoting the old" and "bringing in the new".

1. Promote aging

The first is “promoting the elderly”, the basic meaning of which is to reach old users and promote sharing.

First of all, let’s look at the channel level. Needless to say, all means that can reach old users must be used, such as the PUSH function of the APP, template messages and tweets of the official account, group messages of personal accounts, etc.

For these channels, the natural traffic source of referrals can easily give people the feeling of "living by luck", because its operating results depend on the traffic quality of the channel.

Why do many organizations choose to let old users follow a special public account? The purpose is to promote referrals; because the stickiness of this public account must be the highest among all public accounts, and the referral conversion brought by this channel must also be the highest and best.

Secondly, the best way to “promote aging” is to gather old users together from the beginning. There are only two ways to concentrate: the first is to establish a community, and the second is to accumulate it in the personal accounts of the sales team.

Establishing a community of old users is a means with low operating costs and good reach, and its implementation involves four main steps.

• Establish a simple operating mechanism to ensure that old users in the community have a basic level of activity;
• Hold a live briefing to promote referral activities, and explain the rules and benefits of referral activities at one time;
• Provide personalized posters and concise copywriting for forwarding;
• Establish an honor system and competition mechanism to motivate old users to refer others to your account to the greatest extent possible.

One of the deepest feelings I got from doing referral operations is that the community is an indispensable tool for referral operations, and we must pay attention to the reasons for creating the group and the level of activity after the group is created. The higher the stickiness of the community, and the higher the proportion of users willing to refer, the better the referral conversion will be.

In fact, the community is just a form of organization. The key lies in the "skeleton" that supports the organization, that is, the operating mechanism.

In this regard, Baby Playing English has good experience. In order to strengthen the "promoting aging" effect of referrals, it has developed a promoter system. By recruiting paying users, it has formed a promoter team with a clear distribution system, which has helped Baby Playing English achieve considerable growth in the early stages.

So, how to form a promoter team? The answer lies in a cycle: casting a wide net -> stratified screening -> key development -> casting a wide net again.

• Casting a net: The initial stage of referral promotion is a process of casting a net. The first batch of candidate lists can be obtained through referral data;
• Layered screening: stratify users based on referral data, set standards, and contact them in batches;
• Focus on development: After a detailed understanding, some candidates for promotion will appear, and they will be developed with emphasis and invited when they are mature;
• Cast a new net: mobilize the first batch of promoters and other channels, configure referral rewards, and start a new cycle.

In addition to the above two points, the author has participated in referral projects for online 1-on-1, live small classes and other products and found that incentivizing teachers or sales who have most frequent contact with users will double the referral effect; the core of this is operating their personal accounts, especially the management of sales personal accounts.

So, how can sales reach old users and promote referrals?

This involves the management and performance incentives of the sales team. By building a reasonable management system and promotion system, and establishing standardized execution assessment actions, we can ensure that everyone urges old users to share one-on-one. As long as we see the rewards for successful orders and set a benchmark, we can ensure the implementation of referral activities.

2. Bringing new

Let’s look at the “bringing in new customers” aspect. The so-called “bringing in new users” mainly includes two aspects: how to convert new users brought by referrals; and how to bring in more new users.

Unlike direct conversion through fission, new users brought in by referrals need to go through a series of processes such as registration, trial listening, diagnosis, etc. before they can be successfully converted. Doing so can ensure that the converted users have high stickiness and loyalty, and can enhance the volume and quality of core referred users. This is also the main reason why different incentives should be formulated according to the depth of user behavior when designing referral strategies.

In addition, the sales staff of the referral team often follow up directly with these new users. Once the conversion is successful, it will greatly increase the enthusiasm of the sales staff and ensure the continuous advancement of the referral activities.

As for how to bring in more new users, we need to consider the frequency and name of referrals. We can learn from how VIPKID does it.

VIPKID’s referrals are divided into three types:

• Basic type: including personalized posters, friends and family coupons, posters with recommendation prizes, gifts for sharing, and old members bringing in new members. The basic reward is the hours of the main course, and the additional rewards include physical prizes, high-quality open classes, live broadcasts by foreign teachers, learning videos, etc.
• Hotspot type: Based on the basic type, it is transformed into a new interactive form and launched in combination with hotspots. The rewards are not much different, but the exposure brought by hotspots is emphasized; such as the school season, "Empresses in the Palace", "Children's Day", "Anniversary", "Time Machine", etc.
• Functional: related to teaching functions, such as course videos, parent V classroom, VIPKIDFM, foreign teachers taking you to see the world, Planet Library, etc.; they all have sharing functions, and the rewards are energy stones (VIPKID points system), which can be redeemed.

It is said that VIPKID can promote 8 referral activities including the above three types every month. Such high-frequency promotion ensures that the number of new users brought by referrals is several times higher than that of the industry. This is also the core of VIPKID's so-called referral rate of more than 50%.

3. New Thoughts on Referrals

Whether it is fission, referral, distribution or group buying - it is essentially a tool; the key is to look at the operational strategy design from the perspective of products, services and users.

Products are actually very easy to understand. The first thing is whether the product solves the needs of users and whether the overall experience is good or even exceeds expectations in the process of solving the needs. If the needs are not solved, including the experience being average, forced promotion and referral will be ineffective.

Let's talk about service, which is reflected in the service during the use of the product and the Q&A feedback during promotion and referral. The former belongs to the link of the product itself, which must be demand-oriented and exceed expectations; the latter is whether it can generate tolerance for users, because no matter how simple the referral path is, it is easy to exceed the user's cognitive limit; so service is very necessary and may even become a good tool to promote referrals.

Finally, let’s talk about the design of operational strategies from the user’s perspective. Most products don’t actually have this problem because the user’s perspective is single, and the user and the payer are the same person. But for K12 products, this is a big problem because the user is the child and the payer is the parent.

Only consider children for referrals? Seems unrealistic.

Ask parents to make referrals? How to connect it with the product experience is a problem.

Currently, many referrals are ineffective because they don’t consider how to connect the two types of users. How to let parents know that their children are using the product and be willing to recommend it is worth careful consideration.

4. Summary of the whole series

The author used four articles to analyze the core logic and operation strategy of referrals, and there are three basic viewpoints:

• (1) The essence of referrals is that old users bring in new users. The definition of new and old users needs to be combined with one’s own business judgment, and the degree of trust between users and enterprises should be used as the dividing standard.
• (2) Referral is actually an activity or product. When designing it, we must consider sharing efficiency, conversion efficiency and sharing frequency to determine the specific user path and new user acquisition methods.
• (3) Referral operations are divided into two aspects: promoting old customers and bringing in new customers. Promoting old customers focuses on community operations and sales outreach, while bringing in new customers requires consideration of new users’ experience conversion and the frequency of referral promotion.

Referrals are an important means of attracting new users in online education. They require multi-faceted considerations in terms of products, operations, management, technology, etc., and emphasis must be placed on iteration and testing. Strategies with different focuses must also be introduced based on the life cycle of the enterprise. This is a systematic project, but once successfully built, user growth will benefit greatly.

Author: Dugu

Source: Wild Operation Community (id: dugu9bubai)