In recent years, influenced by policies and markets, people's copyright awareness has become increasingly strong, and video platforms have realized that paying for content is an effective business model to obtain higher commercial value and form a healthy competitive situation.

Based on the core driving force of paid video content, major video websites have built a membership growth system to create a rich and valuable membership experience and enhance user favorability and stickiness.

The membership growth system divides different membership levels by growth value. The higher the level, the greater the benefits you can enjoy. Use differentiated level benefits to encourage users to maintain or upgrade their levels, create a sense of superiority among users, and cultivate user loyalty to the platform.

Growth value is obtained by completing growth tasks, and growth tasks point to the platform's expected behaviors.

This article mainly analyzes the VIP membership growth system of the three major mainstream video platforms: Tencent Video, iQiyi, and Youku.

1. Membership Rights

Comparing the membership benefits of the three platforms, Tencent Video’s is relatively rich, followed by iQiyi, and Youku’s is relatively basic.

The three membership rights are mainly reflected in: viewing privileges, improved audio and video quality, downloading privileges, identity privileges, and promoting multilateral profit models.

1. Viewing privileges

It is the most basic and important part of the entire membership rights and is the main motivation for users to purchase VIP membership. The three platforms have done enough to differentiate between non-members and members in terms of viewing privileges, such as:

• By becoming a member, you can skip the long opening ads and watch the main film directly;
• Members can watch the broadcast programs in advance, while non-members need to delay watching them one day;
• Some variety shows have specially added member-only extended versions or member-only supplementary versions, which non-members cannot watch;
• Members can watch past programs, but non-members cannot watch them;
• For TV series that support advanced on-demand viewing, members can pay to watch them in advance.

There are many categories for movie payments.

First of all, they are divided into three categories: free, members exclusive, and paid. Paid movies for members can be divided into watching movies with member discounts and watching movies with coupons (members will be issued movie coupons every month, and if the coupons are used up, they will be converted into member discounts).

2. Improved audio and video quality

For example, Blu-ray 1080p, Dolby audio-visual, and HDR effects enhance the user's viewing experience.

3. Download Privileges

For example, download acceleration, downloading and playing at the same time, parallel downloading, and scheduled downloading are suitable for scenarios with download needs. For example, when the network signal is poor or when traveling on business, users can download videos in advance to avoid viewing experiences affected by network problems.

4. Identity Privileges

Member logo, exclusive themes, exclusive customer service, member barrage, offline activities, etc., highlight the superiority and uniqueness of membership and satisfy user vanity.

For example: barrage interaction is one of the main user behaviors. Exclusive barrage forms are open to VIP members to highlight membership privileges and stimulate non-members to become members. Of course, when designing member-exclusive barrages, one also needs to consider whether it will affect the enthusiasm of non-members to send barrages.

5. Promote multilateral benefit model

Regularly distribute mall coupons, travel, life and entertainment welfare packages, TV membership discounts, co-branded memberships, etc. to promote diversified user consumption scenarios.

• Tencent Video has paid novels and comics, as well as doki fan rankings, and VIP members enjoy corresponding gift packages;
• In addition to mobile and TV memberships, iQIYI also has FUN memberships (novels, animation) and sports memberships;
• Youku mainly promotes life, entertainment, shopping and consumption scenarios.

2. Membership Level System

The following is an analysis based on the membership level benefits and growth tasks on the mobile APP.

1. Tencent Video’s membership tier system

Tencent Video’s membership levels are divided into eight levels, with differentiated rights and interests configured between the levels to encourage users to pursue an upgraded experience.

First, some basic, low-value rights and interests that need to be vigorously promoted and have no cognitive threshold are arranged as basic-level rights and interests, such as movie tickets, free movie tickets, novel and animation tickets, doki gift packs, and welfare coupons.

These benefits are available at every level, with the only difference between levels being in quantity.

At the V3 level, new privileges are added to participate in offline activities and free shipping coupons for the mall. The growth value corresponding to V3 is exactly the growth value of the reward for recharging annual card membership, which is a good incentive for users to recharge annual card membership.

V5 is an intermediate level, and those at the V5 level are basically relatively stable member users. At this time, new phone bill benefits were added to strengthen incentives, and at the same time, TV membership discount privileges were added to begin guiding users to expand to large-screen membership services.

The last level of Starlight membership further adds a number of exclusive and high-value benefits. To upgrade from V7 level to Starlight membership, you need to actively unlock it. When you choose to upgrade, 16,800 growth points (V-force points) will be deducted, and the level will be valid for 1 year. Starlight membership is set up in a way that users can actively upgrade, which is equivalent to a redemption mechanism.

Configure high-value level benefits as incentives, create an unstable level state by deducting growth values ​​and limiting validity periods, strengthen the incentive effect on users, and thus continue to maintain users' enthusiasm for pursuing upgrades.

Tencent Video’s growth tasks include purchasing memberships and other paid tasks, as well as a series of tasks to cultivate user habits, such as signing in, watching videos, downloading videos, using barrage, binding mobile phones, etc.

A rough estimate of the time required to upgrade from V1 to Starlight Member is: 7 days, 1 month, 3 months, 5 months, 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years.

When the membership expires, the growth value decreases at a rate of 20 points per day, which is equivalent to the growth value of completing the daily sign-in reward. Take advantage of users' loss aversion to keep them as members.

2. iQIYI’s membership tier system

iQiyi’s membership levels are divided into seven levels.

Compared with Tencent Video, iQiyi does not make obvious differentiation for each level in terms of level rights configuration, but instead provides incentives and reinforcements for several key level points. LV3, LV5 and LV7 are the level points for incentive reinforcement.

At LV3, TV membership, FUN membership and sports membership benefits will be added.

The number of days for these three types of memberships at LV5 level has been increased from 7 days to 30 days, the amount of coupons for Star Diamond members has also been significantly increased, customer service has been upgraded from VIP to senior exclusive, and three new rights and interests have been added.

The highest level, LV7, doubles the number of free days for relevant members based on the previous level.

In promoting VIP membership, iQIYI has adopted a variety of strategies based on social fission:

1. Players above LV3 are eligible to send movies to friends;
2. LV5 and above members can enjoy member red envelopes. After sharing the red envelopes with friends, you can receive VIP membership days together with your friends;
3. When you are at level 7 and your growth value is greater than 34,800, you can choose to consume 6,000 growth values ​​to give your non-member friend a 1-year VIP membership.

The growth tasks set by iQiyi include: daily check-in, watching videos, and purchasing membership.

A rough estimate of the time required to upgrade from LV1 to LV2 ~ LV7 is: 10 days, 1 month, 3 months, 10 months, 13 months, and 3 years.

Finally, when the membership expires, the growth value decreases at a rate of 6 points/day, which is equivalent to the growth value of completing the daily check-in reward.

3. Youku’s membership tier system

Youku’s membership levels are divided into seven levels, and the level benefits are generally simple, with most of them being discount coupons.

Currently, Youku’s only growth tasks include paid tasks: purchasing memberships and watching paid movies.

Combining the level growth value division to look at Youku's level upgrade cycle, assuming that members accumulate growth value only by completing growth tasks to open an annual card (considering that the number of times there is a small demand for paying to watch movies is negligible), that is, the growth value increases at a rate of 1,600 points per year, it takes 1 year to upgrade to LV3, 2 years to LV4, 4 years to LV5, 7 years to LV6, and 20 years to LV7.

Obviously, such an upgrade cycle is too long, which dampens users' enthusiasm for upgrading. It is speculated that the current focus of Youku VIP growth system is on attracting users to maintain membership through preferential membership prices, rather than on motivating users to upgrade and cultivate user loyalty.

In fact, relying on the fact that they are both Alibaba-affiliated, Alipay and Taobao have done a lot of promotion for Youku members. For example, Alipay points can be redeemed for Youku membership, Taobao 88VIP members can enjoy Youku membership, and Youku membership gift packages are often given away during events.

Relatively speaking, the threshold for Youku membership is relatively low.

In order to allow users to maintain their membership, Youku has made a setting: when the membership expires, the growth value will decrease at a rate of 20 points per day.

Conclusion

The setting of Tencent Video's membership growth system feels relatively delicate overall, and the pace of level upgrades is well controlled. Differentiated rights and interests are arranged in the level configuration, and the upgrade system is also cleverly designed.

Tencent Video’s membership benefits are the most abundant among the three platforms, but in reality the opposite situation may occur: because the benefits are too many and complicated, the user’s cognitive cost is increased. Specific data analysis is required.

iQiyi’s membership growth system is quite standard, and the various types of membership benefits are a major incentive for users to upgrade.

It is estimated above that it takes about 3 years to upgrade from LV1 to the highest level LV7. When users reach LV7, they will no longer be motivated to upgrade; the incentive effect of the membership growth system will be greatly weakened, and the life cycle seems a bit short.

Youku’s membership growth system is the simplest, and the configured level rights are mostly related to consumption coupons, focusing on promoting VIP members and multilateral consumption scenarios. The growth tasks are single and the level upgrade cycle is too long. In general, the user incentive design of the membership growth system is not very good.

Although this article analyzes the VIP membership growth system of video platforms throughout, we should not forget that for video products, the decisive factor for users to open a membership still lies in the video content of the platform. The VIP membership growth system is an operational auxiliary tool used to improve user stickiness and cultivate user loyalty.

Author: Xihe_Lala

Source: Xihe_Lala

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