Operational case: Growth model design for online education courses

Introduction: Who is Xueersi Online School? What is the main service model?

Process restoration: What exactly did the 13-hour short-term class do?

Analysis: What operational strategies can we learn from?

Thinking: Some thoughts on the drainage model.

1. Who is “Xueersi Online School”?

Xueersi Online School is a K12 product of TAL Education Group. According to the Q3 data of fiscal year 2020 released by TAL in January 2020, the revenue of Xueersi Online School accounted for 18% of TAL's total revenue. TAL is valued at approximately RMB 29.5 billion. Based on the same PS valuation, Xueersi Online School is valued at approximately RMB 5.3 billion.

Xueersi Online School was officially launched in 2010 and has now grown into one of the giants in the field of online education . In its development history, the K12 investment war in the summer of 2019 had a huge impact on it.

This article mainly analyzes the core traffic-generating product in the advertising war - the 49-yuan short-term class, how it will continue to develop in 2020?

[TAL's product layout in the field of online education]

The 49-yuan short-term class is aimed at children aged 6-15 and their parents, covering all grades from middle class to the second grade of junior high school.

The K12 education market is estimated to be worth more than 500 billion yuan, which has a broad space for imagination. However, there are many players in this field and the competition is fierce. So, how does Xueersi Online School do in each aspect of short-term classes?

1. Product

In the summer of 2019, Xueersi Online School launched the [9 Yuan Trial Class] for the first time, which did not have any accompanying physical teaching materials. It was taken off the shelves less than a month after it went online, and then the [49 Yuan Short-term Class] + accompanying box teaching aids were quickly launched.

After that, [49 yuan short-term class] became its core traffic-generating product. In autumn, winter and spring, this product model was still used, but the product model was constantly optimized, and methods such as increasing the number of classes were chosen to allow users to feel more benefits.

[49 yuan short-term class] includes all grades from middle class to grade two. The main subject is mathematics, and Chinese and English are extended subjects.

2. Customer Acquisition

It has been frantically carrying out paid advertising on Douyin, Toutiao, and WeChat to grab users; at the same time, it has built its own traffic matrix and has a considerable number of users (the scale of WeChat public accounts exceeds one million, and the daily active users of the APP exceed 2 million).

3. Conversion

The WeChat community conversion method is adopted, and the tutors in the group are the main force of conversion.

After users purchase a short-term class for 49 yuan, they will be guided to follow the [Xueersi Online School Preferred Courses] official account to obtain class information and logistics information. At the same time, the service account and text messages will remind users that a tutor will contact them 3 days before class.

In addition, users will receive admission information for Chinese and English on the service account. Currently, the service account mainly focuses on admissions for Chinese and English subjects. After adding the teacher’s WeChat 3 days before the class starts, you will be pulled into a WeChat group of about 120 people and take a 5-day live class. During the 5-day trial class, you will be able to convert it into a long-term course worth 800 yuan.

4. Service

The course adopts the format of live broadcast by two teachers, with one session lasting five days and 13 class hours. In addition to the courses, daily exercises and WeChat group services are also provided, and tutors answer questions after class, providing a good user experience.

[Business process diagram of Xueersi Online School’s 49-yuan short-term class]

In general, mathematics is the signature subject of Xueersi Online School and the main subject of its offerings. English and Chinese are also involved, but the school mainly recruits students through its own traffic channels.

Next, taking the 49-yuan short-term class as an example, we will analyze the operation strategy and teaching products respectively:

2. Process restoration: What exactly happened in the 49 yuan trial class?

Let's first restore the operation actions according to the timeline:

1. Purchase a 49 yuan trial class

Users can enter the "49 Yuan Trial Class" page through multiple channels, mainly the channels shown in the figure below.

【Purchase entrance】

By offering short-term classes priced at 49 yuan on platforms such as WeChat Moments, Douyin, and Toutiao, we aim to acquire accurate users.

For users who have settled in the company's own traffic pool, the service account mainly expands the subjects of Chinese and English, and converts them through multi-frequency, strong reach + weak reach through tweets. At the same time, it recommends referral activities to paid users, and returns 25 yuan in cash + free courses for inviting one person to buy a course. The upper limit is to invite 3 people and give 75 yuan in cash + physical rewards.

[Page in the official account that guides users to expand their subjects and participate in activities]

After the user clicks the course purchase link and enters the course details page, click "Register Now", select [49 yuan one-click group membership], select the grade, and complete the course purchase.

After purchasing the course, fill in the delivery address. The service number and text message will remind you of the successful purchase instructions at the same time, and the tutor will contact the user before the class starts to provide information such as class information.

[Trial course purchase process]

2. After purchasing the course - before the course starts

After purchasing a course, users may need to wait a few days before the course starts. During the waiting period, there are several things to do:

• Guide users to follow the service account, deposit traffic in the service account, carry out subsequent expansion, and bind the account.
• On the service account, guide users to participate in the trial class and the new user mentoring activities.
• Guide users to actively add the tutor’s WeChat account and enter the trial class community.
• Before the class starts, there will be an opening ceremony, self-introduction, brand promotion, course arrangement, etc.

3. Classes in progress

The course consists of 5 days of live classes with 13 class hours, an average of 2-3 class hours a day, and each class hour ranges from 15 to 20 minutes.

The class will be held on the Xueersi Online School APP, and the tutor will remind everyone to enter the classroom before the class starts.

13-hour course schedule: (taking Grade 1 Chinese as an example)

[Take Grade 1 Chinese as an example, 13-hour course schedule]

The WeChat group is mainly responsible for the tasks of supervision and assistance: cooperating with the main teacher to make fixed-point announcements, reminders, and post-class summaries of the day's courses; regularly reminding users in the group to take notes and check in, complete homework, and the tutor corrects homework in the mini program; at the same time, the tutor can reward gold coins based on user behavior.

【Check-in and knowledge sharing in the community】

4. After the course starts

After the five-day trial class ended, the tutor disbanded the group on the sixth day and urged parents to "continue to sign up for the full-price class if they have not yet signed up, and add the full-price class tutor's WeChat if they have finished signing up."

3. Analysis: Operational strategies that can be used as reference

Low-priced box trial classes are the mainstream way to acquire customers in online education. Although they can acquire a large number of customers in a short period of time, it is currently known that most online education companies are in a loss-making state and do not have a short-term profit model. This may also be related to the characteristics of educational products.

However, what ultimately matters for low-priced trial classes is the conversion rate and renewal rate of regular-priced classes. Apart from the product and service itself, the most important thing about this is the operating method.

There are three main points worth learning from the operation of Xueersi Online School Experience Class:

• According to the differences in user needs in different time periods of spring, summer, autumn and cold, products + channels work together according to user needs, allowing users to come with purpose and in a targeted manner.
• Through multi-channel reach in different ways, product automation + WeChat operation personnel operation, the operational efficiency has been greatly improved.
• The ultimate community counseling system, a long-running community SOP, professional answers, comfortable attitude and personalized service.

IV. Some questions and thoughts on attracting users to the 49-yuan trial class

In the 13-hour trial class, the operation processes and links were generally mature and complete. However, the life cycle of most communities is relatively short, and group activity is difficult to maintain. The decline in group activity is a pain point and difficulty.

1. Active community

Currently, the active group actions that can be seen in the Xueersi Online School experience class include urging attendance, homework check-in, daily sharing, etc. If we can consider more abundant in-group activities to promote activation and retention, design "surprises" for users, and enable users to continue to feel the value of the group, it may play an important role in the activity of the group.

2. Standardize the words

The language used by community tutors is very standardized and easy to train and take on the job. However, when encountering personalized needs, the standardized content often cannot solve user problems in a timely manner. The planned language also makes it difficult to reflect the intimacy and trustworthiness of the tutors.

3. Price competition

As far as we know, the 49-yuan trial class product model has always been the main model for attracting traffic for Xueersi Online School and Yuanfudao. However, since the spring of this year, Yuanfudao has abandoned the launch of 49-yuan products and has switched to 9-yuan traffic-attracting classes.

Xueersi Online School is still relying on the 49-yuan courses to attract traffic in the spring. This has lasted for more than half a year since last summer. It is unknown why Yuanfudao gave up the 49-yuan traffic-generating product.

But one or two guesses may be that a traffic-generating product has been exposed to the market for a long time, and users are tired of the product. At the same time, with the emergence of more traffic-generating products in the K12 market, the products are cheaper and relatively more competitive, and the cost of attracting traffic and acquiring customers is also lower.

In the first quarter of 2020, many changes have occurred in the traffic generation models of the K12 online education market. Let us wait and see which traffic generation model will become the hottest in 2020!

Author: Moon River

Source: Moon River