The summer K12 war is about to get hot, and everyone has tried every possible way to attract customers. Recently, there is a product called "Check-in for Free Learning", which is very popular on the distribution platform. Some single products even sold 30,000 orders in one day, with revenue exceeding 10 million.

The core highlights of the 0 Yuan Learning product are: rich content, low unit price, and you can learn for free if you persist in learning, taking into account all the benefits that users want.

Are these customer acquisition methods that seem to be effective replicable or are there any pitfalls in operational planning? Let’s disassemble it together.

1. Learn the 1+5 hot design formula of products for free

This case takes the three products Tiantianlian, Changba and Hexiaoxiang as the objects of disassembly. Let’s take a look at the popular design formula of 0-yuan learning products to find the design principles and ideas of a popular product.

• Practice every day: 396 yuan = 6000*knowledge points + 330294 real questions + Chinese, English, and mathematics
• Changba Parent-child Oral English: 249 yuan = 500* Oral English + 1000 + Vocabulary + 125 lessons + 100 scenes
• He Xiaoxiang Chinese Studies Course: 299 yuan = 300 Tang Classical Chinese Texts - Poems - Lyrics - Songs, plus 9 physical books

The numbers shown on the product packaging are definitely worth it at a glance. Regardless of whether the content is really good or not, it is just the money for a meal. As long as you persist in learning, the full amount will be refunded. There is no reason to refuse.

According to the 20 distribution platforms surveyed by Yifan, it is very likely that Changba Parent-Child Oral English product will sell 30,000 copies in one day, which is also in line with the real-time revenue of 1,000 for a 0-yuan learning product.

So what are the details behind these packages? Let’s continue looking at:

1. Highlights of product packaging for free learning

• 0 yuan learning: reduce the pressure on parents to buy learning courses and give advance notice that they can get cash back;
• Long course duration: Generally, the market for a course is 20-100-200 or more classes, which makes the unit price of the course very low;
• Affordable purchase: In addition to free learning by checking in, physical or online virtual products will also be given as gifts;

From the user's perspective, the product packaging has rich content and low price, and if you persist in learning, you can learn for free. For users, this is an irresistible product with the lowest cost and the greatest value. Channel parties are also most willing to promote this kind of product. This model is a derivative of the low-price group buying model such as Ahashool, and the core user psychology is the desire for bargains.

2. Types of product durations for free learning

• Short and light courses: 2 weeks of classes, cash back after full check-in;
• Medium and light courses: 125 classes, 120 days of attendance within 180 days;
• Long and light courses: 299 days of check-in and continuous learning;

From the perspective of product duration, the demands are different. Generally speaking, medium- and short-term classes are taken over by large classes. The hope is that users can experience the quality of the platform's small classes through short-term learning experiences. In this process, users are given more opportunities to experience formal classes, and are given promotions to choose the platform's high-priced classes, or are encouraged to share to bring customers to the platform.

3. Several types of courses that can be learned for free by checking in

• Recorded and broadcasted light classes are generally AI classes or test-oriented classes with supporting teaching materials or material classes that users' children can learn on their own;
• Live classes, large live classes, mainly based on teacher live broadcast + coach community services;

Judging from the course design types of 0-yuan learning products, each company mainly focuses on light-course products with simple content and short learning time, which can very intuitively allow users to develop an interest in learning. There are also similar large-class products such as Puxin Education, which design 0-yuan learning in the form of continuous large-scale live broadcasts, and convert annual courses through live broadcast + community services. The course packages involved can come in various forms, but the key point is that it is free or there are rewards after the final learning.

4. The design of check-in rules can be divided into the following categories

• Time-limited check-in times: Tests the user's perseverance, with average commission rates;
• Limit the number of check-ins within a certain period of time: Consider the learning time and completion rate of each check-in, which is user-friendly and has a high rebate ratio;

The design of the clock-in rules is the core of 0 Yuan Xue and the most critical part of the entire product design. The friendliness of the clock-in rules determines the user experience. Generally speaking, limited clock-in requirements over a period of time are best, but from an operational perspective, in order to control the overall operating costs, strict clock-in requirements will be set to ensure that a certain proportion of people cannot complete the clock-in.

5. Design of rules for check-in fission

• Users are forced to share in order to successfully check in;
• Sharing in Moments is not mandatory, but you can get a chance to win a prize by inviting friends to join;

Since the unit price of the product is extremely low, there must be a variety of demands behind such a product.

The two most important requirements for 0 yuan learning are:

1. Through students' learning, we can build students' favor for this learning platform and encourage them to purchase other courses or formal courses.
2. In addition, the long-term and continuous learning of students can bring new users to the platform through fission, which is also a core focus of the light course product. Of course, there will also be many problems, such as: virtual check-ins, not sharing in Moments, etc.

In summary, a good product includes five parts: product packaging + learning time + learning content + check-in rules + fission design. Only when these parts are linked together can the final result be achieved.

It seems like a very good product, but in reality, during the operation, many operations lack end-game thinking and cost calculation. This resulted in the problem of operating redemption after a certain Bear 0-yuan check-in product sold 1 million copies recently.

2. Check in for free to learn this product. Operation cost breakdown and calculation

According to Yifan's communication and investigation of the distribution platform, for a free learning product to be listed on the distribution platform, it is generally necessary to open a 40%-50% transaction commission to the platform. Some platforms even require a separate reward for each user who completes a transaction, such as 100 or more.

Based on the cost of the distribution platform, we simply calculate the cost of a user to the platform:

That is, for a product with a unit price of 398 yuan, after it is put on the distribution platform, the actual user payment unit price obtained by the company is 188.8 yuan, which accounts for 40% of the total cost. Then the second wave of fixed costs we have to face is the 0 yuan cash back after the students complete the check-in.

Let's take 10,000 users as an example. The actual cash received by the enterprise is only 188.88 yuan. Let's calculate the possible exchange costs that the enterprise may face:

From the perspective of cost breakdown, once the redemption ratio of zero-yuan education products reaches 50%, the company may face the situation of redeeming at a loss. During Yifan’s research, it was found that there were indeed similar check-in products that failed to meet repayment requirements, which caused great resentment among consumers.

3. The operational black hole and possible opportunities of 0yuanxue

In addition to the ability to repay, if an educational enterprise really wants to imitate this kind of free learning product, there may be the following problems:

1. Serious product homogeneity

On the distribution platforms currently available, there are more than five options for one product category. Although this type of light course looks simple to produce, it actually requires a relatively long production period for the production team. What you must avoid is a situation where the same product already exists as soon as you produce it, resulting in huge cost investment and low results.

2. The fission capability of punching in is invalid

As many companies educate users on products for free, users regard clocking in as a task and have no loyalty to the platform. First, the possibility of a user buying 5 products on a platform is reduced. Second, due to the lack of sharing detection methods, forced distribution to Moments has become a well-known way for users to cheat.

3. Design of operational risk control

Judging from the cost accounting just now, although it seems that a single product has high revenue, if the risk control design is poor, there will be a trend of over-redemption. The company not only fails to gain users after making a product, but also suffers a huge loss of costs. So how to design the effectiveness of user redemption and user sharing fission is a key to learning fission sharing products for free. There are also some startups that do not have technical support but have great risk control design and iteration capabilities.

4. Lack of distribution channel reserves

If you want to sell free courses or other small and light courses like these, one thing you definitely need is a strong channel or your own resources. When many companies are developing light course products, they think that as long as the product is good, it will be fine. In fact, this is not the case. When creating such a distribution platform to acquire customers, it is necessary to consider the reserve of channel personnel;

As the saying goes, laymen watch the excitement, while experts see the doorway. Although there are many problems with 0 yuan learning, for small and medium-sized enterprises, if they want to quickly obtain a group of effective seed users, this is also a good means;

Here are some optimization suggestions for the 0-yuan learning card-punching product:

• Optimize the reward form for sharing results: in addition to free learning by checking in for 0 yuan, add real-time rewards for invitations, covering the entire learning cycle, to ensure that users are willing to truly invite users, but in terms of reading points rewards and rewards for successfully inviting one person, increase fission capacity.
• Innovate the form of learning process: The goal of 0-yuan punch-in learning is to allow users to complete the learning, and the promotion of mutual learning is very important. You can try to design periodic PK activities to ensure the mutual relevance of users.
• Coupon rewards in the design stage: In addition to the rewards for checking in and learning for free, you can also send users multiple coupons during the operation process of the stage to encourage users to learn other products. Enhance repurchase. At the same time, you can set up periodic invitation incentives to promote the re-sending of coupons and products and increase new user purchases.

To sum up, the core of this article is:

• Master the design formula of the "1+5" 0-yuan card-check-in learning product;
• Pay attention to the financial risk operation design of zero-yuan learning products to ensure that the company has no net outflow;
• Before creating a 0-yuan learning product, pay attention to the following issues: product homogeneity, failure of fission capability, operational risk control design, and lack of channel reserves;
• Pay attention to the redesign of sharing forms, learning process, and stage rewards to ensure that users are more motivated.

I hope that through the analysis in this article, I can give you some suggestions on the design of zero-dollar learning products to avoid the revenue black hole of growth.

Author: Yifan

Source: Yifan