User Operations: Practical Training Camp to Increase Conversion Rate by 50%!

Nowadays, training camps have become one of the standard products of online education. This article will use 2 key points + 3 mental methods to explain how to conduct, operate and transform a training camp. Those who are interested in training camp operations should not miss it.

Many people know me because of last year’s article analyzing the long-term investment training camp. After a year, I am going back to my old job.

Due to the epidemic this year, online education has seen a huge boom. Regardless of how much back-end conversion and final cash flow there is, the most gratifying thing is that users have developed the habit of acquiring knowledge and education online over the past few months.

Looking back at educational institutions, each one is actively moving online. In addition to offering free courses, we can see two obvious actions:

The first is to invest a lot of resources in live streaming, whether using one's own APP, some SaaS tools, or other people's platforms, such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Tencent Live, etc.

Typical cases include Chaos University’s 58-day live broadcast before the epidemic, the 10-day talk show on Dedao, and Zuoyebang, Xueersi, and Yuanfudao’s continuous learning despite the suspension of classes during the epidemic.

The second obvious action is that everyone began to invest more energy in back-end conversions.

A very good phenomenon is that people are gradually realizing that whether it is free courses or live broadcasts, they can only bring relatively short-term experience and exposure. If users need to have an in-depth experience of your teaching products, they must have an immersive experience for a period of time, so that the back-end operational conversion can be significantly improved. The most obvious change is that everyone has begun to pay attention to the training camp and continues to invest in it.

I have been engaged in online education for 5 years, and a larger part of my work is focused on growth. The conversion rate to full-priced courses is one of the important indicators to test whether our position is valuable.

There is no secret to this position: using low-cost training camps + high-quality course content + beyond-expectation services. I have managed almost hundreds of training camps. Currently, this is the most common and best means of online education conversion, without a doubt.

In this article, I will share my experience in running training camps over the years from the following three aspects, hoping to help everyone build a complete closed loop of their own training camp from 0 to 1.

1. Product side: How to design an experiential training camp?
2. Operational side: How to achieve conversion goals through training camps?
3. Summary of the full text: 3 tips for a good training camp

When it comes to training camps, there are actually several categories. First of all, we need to define the boundaries, otherwise we can't have an effective discussion. According to the purpose of the current training camp, we can divide the training camp into:

• The purpose of the traffic training camp is to accumulate traffic pools. A typical example is the Baowan 8-day training camp.
• Conversion training camps are aimed at converting students to full-price courses. A typical example is the Zebra AI course training camp.
• The training camp based on course services aims to provide value-added services and establish course reputation. A typical case is the Little Bear 21-day training camp.

What I want to discuss in this article is a complete closed-loop design from 0 to 1 based on the conversion-oriented training camp.

In fact, training camps based on conversion purposes are the most difficult to run. Although the pricing strategy is low price or even free, the organization needs to provide the best courses, the best teachers, the best services, and even invest more than twice as much resources as regular courses.

Because the conversion training camp is an experiential product for the general public (the largest traffic source), it is a face, and the face must look good so that users will be motivated to understand your inner self, and the subsequent conversion rate may be improved.

1. Product side: How to design an experiential training camp

For a training camp with experience, I will talk about two aspects here. One is how to bring experience through course product design; the other is how to build the user usage process on the product side to enhance the experience.

The two complement each other to maximize the user experience.

If we dissect it, online education products are actually composed of two parts: courses and services.

Especially now that the products provided by various institutions are becoming increasingly homogenized, how to differentiate themselves at the service level has become a key point of competition among many institutions, especially in the K12 field: the teacher qualifications, course content, and business model are all similar. The key to success is which institution can enhance users' sense of gain through good services and thus create a word-of-mouth effect.

The training camp is the best carrier for the service, allowing users to experience it through a low-cost or even free entrance, and then decide whether to pay for the full-price courses after the experience, thereby reducing decision-making costs.

Before discussing a problem, we need to clearly define it in order to determine its boundaries. This is how I define a training camp: a training camp is a highly immersive learning format that combines the main course with homework, community, and activities.

From here you can see that homework, communities and activities are strongly related to operations, so we will talk about them in the second part to give you a clearer framework. Here we will first talk about the design around the course, including content and product design.

The core reason why so many people are operating training camps is that training camps can replicate the offline learning experience to the greatest extent and bring a sense of immersion to users.

The strength of the sense of immersion determines whether users have the motivation to convert after participating in your training camp. The so-called immersion is actually the user experience. From the beginning to the end of the training camp, there are 11 experience details related to the user experience. I have sorted them out for you:

Although 11 factors seem like a lot, in fact, all of them are hidden in the above formula of what a training camp is. The devil is in the details. If you do every detail well, the user experience will have a qualitative leap.

First, let’s look at the content design of the course product and how to improve the user experience in this area.

1. The premise of course content design: strong correlation with transformation objects

Is your lead generation training camp strongly related to your conversion object, which may be a course, product, or service. If I give you an example, you will understand what I mean better.

Convert to course:

For example, conversion training camps such as Zebra, Walnut, Changtou, and Circle, all use low-cost training camps to achieve the goal of converting high-priced regular-priced courses.

Transformed into products:

For example, the typesetting training camp I did before was converted into membership sales of the official account editor. Another example is the distribution training camp held by Zero One, which is actually converting their distribution tools.

Transformed to service:

For example, Dabai and Snail Insurance use low-cost insurance training camps as a means to make users have an urgent need for insurance and achieve the goal of converting them to insurance consulting services.

2. Course content design includes: 3+X

When we prepare the course content in the early stage, it is not just as simple as the main body of the course, but also includes some derivatives of the content.

Course content:

Course content is the core of the training camp, and there are generally two forms of content organization.

First, design a set of courses specifically for the training camp. In principle, it should be highly universal (ensuring a wide audience), have a low threshold (even if students have no basic knowledge, they can quickly gain a sense of achievement), and have highlights (compared with similar competing products, does the course content of this training camp reflect your content advantages);

The second is to directly extract the basic courses of the full-priced courses as the training camp course content, such as the Python mini-course. The benefits of this are also obvious. First, it ensures the continuity of the courses from the training camp to the full-priced courses. Second, it greatly saves the cost of course research.

Course materials:

In addition to the course content, course materials are also what we need to consider during the training camp product design stage. Common course materials include course introductions, knowledge cards, mind maps, course notes, etc.

Course Format:

Secondly, the course format of the training camp needs to be determined in the planning stage. A more appropriate format is to use recorded broadcasts as the main format and live broadcasts as the auxiliary format. Live broadcasts are used to answer questions and provide presentations (presentations refer to small online press conferences for full-priced courses). This way, both scale and interactivity can be achieved, and the user experience will be better.

The other thing to note is what I call X.

In general, although operations can intervene less in the course content, we must also participate appropriately to ensure that the course design is moving in the right direction. There are two points that we should pay special attention to and reach a consensus with the course design teacher:

• Have you learned gradient programming? Is there a clear progression from easy to difficult, so that users can clearly feel that their abilities are improving as the difficulty of the course increases?
• Is there a rhythm to the camp? The 7-day and 21-day training camps definitely have different rhythms. Please check whether the training camp you are operating is too loose or too tight.
• Has a closed learning loop of teaching, testing, practice and evaluation been formed? Truly effective learning needs to be accomplished through deliberate practice, which is something that needs to be considered when designing course content.

Next, let’s look at the user experience from the product side and see how to improve this part of the user experience.

1. From purchase to adding class teacher link design

Taking the Zebra AI class as an example, this process actually meets the needs of both parties very well. The business side needs to use this step to accumulate users into private domain traffic for subsequent conversions, and users need to add the class teacher’s WeChat through this step to join the group and start learning.

If you have experienced the complete process, you will know that the entire purchasing process is very smooth:

1. APP, public account, and Moments poster purchase;
2. The WeChat official account pops up a purchase success notification, and the H5 reminds you to add the teacher’s WeChat (and SMS reminder at the same time);
3. After clicking, you will be reminded to make money by distributing, and you can participate in the distribution;
4. If you do not want to participate, you can cancel, and the page for adding a teacher will still be displayed;
5. Scan the QR code to add a teacher;
6. After the teacher passes the friend verification, he/she will conduct a simple user survey and label the user;
7. The teacher tells you what you need to know;
8. Before the opening ceremony, the teacher created a group.

The key point here is to add a personal account first, conduct user research, and then create a group to complete the sedimentation of the personal account and reduce the churn rate of people joining the group.

2. Front-end page design for class

In terms of the design of this part, after I have experienced nearly 100 training camps, I think Changtou’s is the best. Let me give you two examples: the daily class reminders and the design of the class interface.

The daily course reminder is sent out through a service account template message, which consists of five parts: "A message from the head teacher" + "Course update progress" + "How to listen to the class" + "Today's course name" + "Unsubscribe operation".

Even those who have never taken an online course before can enter the course smoothly, and the teacher's words are different every day, changing according to the learning progress, making people feel that it is not a cold course reminder sent by a machine, but much more humane.

All course contents of the official account are displayed in a list. Completed courses are marked with a “✔”, and unfinished courses are reminded with a “little red dot”.

The design of the "little red dot" is very clever. I guess the product manager referred to WeChat. When students see it, they subconsciously want to click on it. From the product level, it stimulates students to take learning actions, thereby increasing the completion rate.

The course content is pushed on time at 8:30 every morning, and consists of "audio" + "comic and graphic course content" + "summary card" + "self-test questions" + "achievement card".

The audio content is exactly the same as the comic text content. It is probably because many people are commuting during this period, and the audio method will be more in line with the scene.

2. Operational side: How to achieve operational goals through training camps

In this section, I will talk about the big and small operations of the training camp.

The so-called big operation: how to operate the training camp at a macro level through the entire process from enrollment, group joining, opening ceremony, classes and learning;

The so-called small operation is: how to operate the training camp at a micro level by focusing on the key links of the training camp, namely classes and learning, homework and feedback, and in-group conversion.

1. Macro-level operations

A training camp is a systematic and relatively large process. If your company wants to hold a training camp but does not have sufficient operating staff, you must draw up a full-process operation flow chart during the planning stage.

As shown in the figure, do not miss any link:

Here I would like to focus on the enrollment process, which is also the most headache for many operations students. Whether it is a large company or a small company that is cold-starting, my sharing below will be of certain reference value to you.

When talking about enrollment, we cannot fail to mention traffic and channels. I have shared the issue of traffic acquisition on Knowledge Planet before. Regarding this part, every time before I take action, I will think and execute from two dimensions, internal and external, so as not to miss any drop of traffic.

Some operations colleagues may wonder how traffic acquisition can be called internal? However, if you are in a large company with a large internal traffic pool, you should know that this division is necessary.

Internal channels:

• Traffic within the site, including PC, App, mini-programs, etc.
• We-media, including subscription accounts, service accounts, Toutiao accounts, Dayu accounts, Baijia accounts, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, Xiaoetong, Qianliao, iQiyi Knowledge, etc.
• Communities and groups, including UGC communities, WeChat groups, QQ groups, etc.

External channels:

• Advertising alliances (such as 360 and Sogou, in simple terms, people looking for ads) and DSPs for advertising (such as Guangdiantong and Toutiao information flow, in simple terms, ads looking for people)
• Search engine placement
• 2 Weibo 1 Douyin platform and KOL cooperation
• Joint promotion of news media platforms (Tencent, Sina, NetEase, Phoenix), video playback platforms (Youku, Tencent, iQiyi) and super apps (Taobao, Baidu, Meituan)
• App store promotion

Before each training camp, walk from inside to outside as described above to ensure that the publicity coverage is 80% or more.

Distribution fission:

In addition to the official publicity, we also need to utilize the first wave of users who purchase the training camp, that is, the seed users, and use them to amplify the volume.

The most commonly used and proven effective method now is the distribution fission method. Here we have to mention Zebra AI classes again. Their entire enrollment system consists of: "low-price purchase + distribution + task treasure".

First, use low prices to filter out more accurate users, then use distribution to stimulate users' first sharing after purchase, and then use the bait of Taskbao to stimulate users to continue sharing in order to get a certain physical prize.

To be more specific, I drew a picture of their entire process to give you a better picture:

1. The product has its own word-of-mouth fission effect, buy it at a low price of 9.9: 5 AI interactive classes + luxurious supporting materials + full cash back for 5 days of check-in
2. After purchase, you will be prompted to join the distribution: invite 1 person, get 30% cash back + lucky red envelope
3. Use Taskbao + physical bait to attract users to share continuously: invite 10+ people, get 30% cash back each time + 10 lucky red envelopes + painting gift packs

Nowadays, adding distribution fission to the enrollment process has become standard. It is strongly recommended that you make a relevant combination with your own products.

2. Micro-level operations

The devil is in the details of the training camp. By operating key links, we can enhance the user experience in the training camp and thus increase the conversion rate. It sounds easy, but it is extremely difficult to do. This is also my biggest feeling after doing a hundred training camps. Every time I am not careful, there are many details that I regret to the point of turning green in my intestines. Why didn’t I think of it at the time?

I divide the operation of the training camp's audience level into 7 most important key operation nodes: group entry, opening ceremony, class, homework, community activities, conversion and closing ceremony, and share some tips for specific operations.

Joining the group:

When privately chatting with users to join a group, I usually use a phrase like "reply with one of your favorite emoticons" to give them an instruction.

This small action can bring two benefits. First, the operator can know exactly whether the user has received your message. Second, it can increase small interactions with users. In addition, one hour before the camp starts, depending on the number of people joining the group, decide whether it is necessary to send a group message again to ensure the group entry rate.

After the user joins the group, you can give the user a prompt on the group name. For example, you can change the group name to [Read the group announcement before joining] to let the user know what he can do now.

Changtou Academy is very clever in guiding users to join the group. After joining the group, you can find Banban to receive a financial management e-book, and after taking notes, you can get the next one. In addition, you can also send pre-study test questions in the group and let users complete the pre-learning test in the group. This operational action can also trigger relevant discussions about the learning content in the group, and it is also a very good reminder design after joining the group.

In addition, it is very necessary to arrange an ice-breaking session within the group one hour before the camp starts. Trainees can introduce themselves and set up a learning FALG. In this way, the operations department can also learn more about what they want to know.

Common icebreaker templates include:

• Nick name
• area
• Position
• How did I learn about the *** training camp?
• My goal in participating in the *** training camp is

Opening Ceremony:

The opening ceremony is usually hosted by the operation staff or teaching assistants, who mainly introduce the camp’s course content, course objectives, study plan (it is best to have a savable picture of the course schedule), and the teachers/teaching assistants/seniors in the camp.

If your company has a strong brand endorsement, you can also include an introduction to the company and founder (a video is best here, you can refer to the opening ceremonies of Baowan and Walnut Programming).

In addition to self-congratulation at the opening of the camp, you can invite previous students to share in the group to increase the interactivity and credibility of the training camp. For example, at the opening ceremony of each case analysis activity, I will invite the previous champion to share in the group.

In addition, at the end of the opening ceremony, remember to emphasize tomorrow's learning tasks in the group. It is also recommended to compile a complete copy of the important documents and processes related to the opening ceremony and send it to the group and privately chat with classmates. Whether the first-day experience is good is crucial to whether users will follow suit, so it must be done well from the beginning.

Class session:

In addition to your app, it is best to make the course content available for learning on H5 and mini programs to reduce users' operating costs.

In addition to the reminders of the official account template messages, the group should also publish the day's learning content. When publishing group notifications, they should be released together with the passcode to make it easier for students to find the content to be learned today from a large amount of information in the group.

Assignment links:

Here I would like to talk about the staffing of the training camp. I have previously shared the staffing setup of the community camp of the Changtou training camp, which is mainly composed of four roles: class teacher, seniors, subject teachers, and class representatives.

For an operation team with spare capacity, it is strongly recommended to have the above personnel in addition to assistants and teachers.

To be more down-to-earth, let me take the case analysis training camp that I have been doing recently as an example. There are two roles in my training camp, one is the operation officer and the other is the leader. The operation officer is mainly responsible for the user experience (such as organizing learning, recording check-ins, reminding homework submissions, etc.), and the leader is mainly responsible for knowledge empowerment to help users complete activities better and easier.

Everyone can arrange a suitable role in the training camp according to their actual situation. Different roles in the community can play a role in urging users to submit homework in various ways. After all, only when users start doing their homework can they further experience your course products and invest more sunk costs, and the probability of active conversion will be greater later.

In addition, it is better to have an independent group or small program to host homework, so that everyone can see the homework submitted by others in the first time and publicly. In addition to motivating themselves to hand in homework, mutual learning among classmates is also a form of learning. In addition, if you are a dedicated operator, you can start commenting in the group as soon as a user submits his homework, thus boosting the learning atmosphere within the group.

In addition to the teacher's comments on homework, the subject of homework comments can also be appropriately extended. For example, users who did excellent homework the day before can be invited to give a simple evaluation of today's homework. This can not only increase user participation in the training camp, but also increase the interaction rate between users.

How to motivate users to persist in completing their assignments is also a major concern for many operations.

The common way to play is to check in and get a full refund of tuition. In fact, I recommend the step-by-step check-in. This is the same principle as Mission Bao, which takes advantage of the user's sunk costs. Since I have persisted for 4 days, if I grit my teeth, I may be able to persist for 7 days. Set up small gifts for completing each level to increase users' expectations.

For example, when I was running a book club, there was only one best reader in each session, but I would make a flexible choice to send out small book boxes based on the activity rate and the quality of completed assignments in each session. This would undoubtedly be an extra surprise for users and would also increase their favorability towards the event. A good phenomenon that has resulted is that more and more people have benefited from the book club and are willing to become leaders. Currently, the book club that I run myself has been scheduled until early September.

If you have technical ability and you are doing a 21-day training camp, it can be divided into 3 stages, 7 days for each stage. You can get the second stage learning materials only after submitting the first stage homework. I tried this when I first entered the education industry, and the homework check-in rate was very high. You can also try it.

Community Activities:

Community activities should be carried out, but they cannot be done randomly. I suggest that they be carried out around two goals: "enhancing users' enthusiasm for learning" and "improving users' conversion rate."

I would like to share some of the activities I often do in the community, hoping to bring you some inspiration, mainly:

Small tests and final exams at each stage, systematic sharing by outstanding students in the past, daily sharing by outstanding classmates, live broadcasts and Q&A sessions by teachers of regular courses in the group, and community operations that turn the excellent discussions generated in the group every day into picture materials.

Conversion stage:

The conversion process involves two steps: group conversion and personal account conversion. Group conversion comes first, and personal account conversion comes later, serving as a sprint for conversion.

The tools that can be used for WeChat group conversion include 6 categories:

1. Buried Point
2. Discount strategy
3. Bandwagon effect
4. Word of mouth effect
5. Scarcity Effect
6. Service Commitment

Let me explain what each conversion tool means:

Buried point:

Release the hook of full-price courses at the right time and in the right way. Important time points include the opening of the camp, during/after class, and closing of the camp. The main methods include private chat, group chat, and circle of friends scripts.

Promotional strategies:

Commonly used discount strategies for WeChat group conversions include trial listening, vouchers, special offers, group subscriptions, buy-one-get-one-free, cash back, discounts, exchanges, gifts, and lucky draws. Among them, limited-time and limited-quantity large coupons, group purchases, and buy-one-get-one-free are the most frequently used in group conversions.

Bandwagon effect (group conversion):

Taking advantage of the herd effect of WeChat groups, users are stimulated to make impulse purchases. Common methods include requiring users to post their orders and offering cash back or gifts, and placing orders in a chain within the group.

Word of mouth effect:

In the middle and late stages of the training camp, teachers of full-priced courses and outstanding students from the past can be invited to share in the group to reduce users’ distrust of full-priced courses and increase their confidence in purchasing.

Scarcity Strategy:

In the final stage of the training camp, sales sprints are often carried out using methods such as quotas, flash sales, price increases, and pre-sales.

Service Commitment:

General educational products have policies such as a three-day refund if the user is not satisfied with the lessons, which is the finishing touch to motivate users to make the final purchasing decision.

The conversion sprint of personal accounts is mainly carried out in conjunction with group conversions, playing a reinforcing role, so I will not go into details here.

Closing Ceremony:

The last part is the closing ceremony. A closing ceremony with a high degree of completion includes the following contents:

Learning review:

Review the entire process of this training camp, including what is learned, what are the key points (it is best to have a document or information package for everyone to increase everyone's sense of achievement), and the explanation of the test questions (including the stage quizzes and the final test)

Role model display:

Excellent students can be invited to share their work in the group and be rewarded in the group. Rewarding with "kind + scholarship (discount coupon for full-price courses)" is a common and effective way.

Conversion implantation:

The graduation camp stage is the climax of conversion. Here I would like to take the graduation camp of Walnut Programming Training Camp as an example. Their conversion is through group purchase reservations within the group, with instant discounts through crowdfunding. The more people in the group buy full-priced courses, the lower the price will be. Moreover, after the purchase, if you forward the link to the group, you can also receive a limited edition physical gift package. Every step takes advantage of human greed and is designed particularly cleverly.

In addition, many friends have this doubt: the training camp is closed, should the group be disbanded?

My suggestion is to disband the group. After the conversion period, it would be wise to disband the group in order to save operational pressure, avoid it becoming an advertising group, and avoid public opinion pressure.

Finally, I want to talk to you about the issue of data indicators. Since it is a micro-level operation, what do we rely on to judge our operational results?

It must be the data. Previously, my group member JJ shared 11 data indicators that affect the operation of the conversion training camp. I will borrow them for your reference. These are all process indicators, but if we carefully examine each data, it can help us have a good result indicator.

3. Summary of the full text: 3 tips for a good training camp

Nowadays, training camps have become one of the standard products of online education. As operators, we must not only understand the surface, that is, how to carry out, operate and transform training camps, but also think about the essence of training camps and why we should do it? What is its contribution to the company? What is its position in the industry? What are the future development trends?

I don’t recommend that students who are in charge of operations hold an overly utilitarian mindset and operate every training camp with a close eye on conversion rates. In my opinion, training camp is a great way to understand users. By immersing them in the same environment for a few days or even a month, we can get closer to users, which makes it possible to make better products and create better services.

To sum up, I have summarized the key points of the entire article into three principles for running a good training camp.

Tip 1: Grasp with both hands, and both hands must be strong

The left-hand products mainly include course content products and product-side user usage process design.

Right-hand operations mainly include two levels: large operations and small operations. They improve the operational efficiency of the training camp by grasping the process and key points.

Tip 2: Before going all in , please check your own personnel and goods first

People: Training camp is a typical heavy operation model. Before going all in, you have to consider whether you have the internal operational manpower and energy to continue doing this. If you don’t want to invest, don’t expect results.

Goods: Goods correspond to courses, products and services. If we want to run a training camp, we certainly don't want it to be a one-time deal. How to continue to attract old students to repurchase is a question that we must think clearly about from the beginning.

Field: The field corresponds to the environment that the training camp wants to create. Please check the 11 key points related to user experience in the training camp to see whether a good learning atmosphere has been created for users online and how immersed users are in learning.

Tip 3: Durability and Innovation

Anyone who has run a training camp knows that every time you run one, it feels like you’ve been skinned alive, and it’s extremely painful. I said something before that has been recognized by many people, and I’d like to share it with you too.

“Don’t do training camp anymore, it’s too hard!”

“Please continue to do the training camp if you still love education.”

Tempering your mindset is not something that can be achieved overnight. It is related to how you view this matter and whether it is valuable enough.

In addition, with the large-scale expansion of the training camp format, whether it is course design, experience form, conversion form... each company is becoming more and more homogenized. Training camps need more innovation and iteration, which also requires operators to have continuous learning ability.

Being able to do something that everyone else is doing and make it better is a skill.

Author: Mu Gongzi

Source: dugu9bubai