Tmall Double 11 event marketing tactics!

On Double 11 in 2019, Tmall’s final transaction volume exceeded 268.4 billion. 1 minute and 36 seconds after the opening, Tmall's transaction volume exceeded 10 billion; 1 hour, 3 minutes and 59 seconds, Tmall's transaction volume exceeded 100 billion; 14 hours and 21 minutes, Tmall's transaction volume exceeded 200 billion.

How does Double Eleven, a multi-billion dollar project with the participation of the entire nation, lead people into the trap? This article mainly analyzes the activity routines of e-commerce, peels off the marketing coat to see the essence, and sees how e-commerce stimulates user consumption through activities and maximizes the consumption capacity of users.

How do e-commerce companies conduct activities?

There are many things going on in this Double Eleven event. As an operator watching such a complex event, what you need to think about is: What are the key factors for a successful event? When we are doing a complex integrated activity, how should we do it? I briefly summarized the five elements of an activity: goal setting, activity rhythm, activity theme (gimmicks and benefit points), activity gameplay, and review.

What needs to be polished the most is the gameplay of the event, which requires attracting users to participate in various ways to achieve the purpose of the event. This is also the highlight of the event. A good activity can cause widespread dissemination, but an activity that users are unwilling to participate in is a failed activity. Let’s break down this Double 11 event according to the five elements of the event. You will find that complex activities become simple in an instant.

01. Goal setting

Although Alibaba has said in recent years that it will not set a GMV target for Double 11, but you know, when it comes to the specific operations staff, they still have to bear the responsibility. As an e-commerce platform, GMV is the core indicator to measure the competitiveness of the platform. GMV=traffic*conversion rate*average order value. This formula is applicable to almost all e-commerce platforms. Therefore, at the important time node of Double Eleven, each e-commerce company is making efforts to seize traffic, enhance conversion and increase average order value. In order to attract more traffic, many platforms this year have chosen to extend the event timeline to seize traffic. JD.com even moved the Double Eleven event forward to October 18.

02. Activity rhythm

The activity is like setting up a game, doing different things at different times, and once the game is set up, you wait for the harvest. Grasping the rhythm of the event is the key to its success. The rhythm of an event is usually divided into: momentum-building period (optional), warm-up period, formal period, fermentation period (optional), and ending.

Of course, companies that are not that influential can ignore the hype period, after all, users don’t have that much patience. E-commerce generally does not have a fermentation period, but event marketing focuses on the fermentation period, triggering discussions by utilizing slots and other points, thereby causing secondary dissemination.

Taking Tmall as an example, we analyze how to control the rhythm of activities.

1. Campaign period (October 20-31)

5-10 days before the warm-up period begins, the atmosphere will be heated up, huge exposure will be brought, highlights of the event will be revealed, and users will speculate and pay attention. The theme of Double Eleven 2019 is "Tmall Global Carnival", which is achieved through online and offline advertising, such as allowing Kuaishou celebrities to participate in the "Online Sales Competition" and allowing Toutiao users to participate in the "National Koi" event.

2. Warm-up period (11.1-11.10)

3-5 days before the official period, the highlights and benefits of the event will be announced, which in e-commerce mainly manifests itself in the exposure of event products, pre-sales, and the receipt of coupons and red envelopes by playing games.

3. Formal period (11.11.)

It usually takes 1-3 days to aggregate traffic conversions and optimize every detail of the conversion process.

4. Final period (11.12-11.15)

Summarize and review the event internally, announce externally that the event has been successfully concluded, package the highlights and explosive points of the event, and do a great public relations. Just after Double Eleven, Taobao sent me a battle report like this, and there was also an activity similar to member return, which was interesting and informative, as shown in the picture below.

03. Activity theme (gimmick + benefit point)

Why do people never tire of participating in these activities? Because these activities take advantage of people's curiosity to package some attractive gimmicks, and take advantage of people's love of bargains to package some big profit points.

Gimmicks and benefits are like twin brothers. Gimmicks attract attention and arouse users' interest from the beginning so that users will learn more about them. Then, we provide benefit points to let users enjoy the benefits and guide them to achieve our goals.

E-commerce platforms are also very sophisticated in making banners. The gimmick is on top and the interest point is on the bottom. If the gimmick is enough, magnify it; if the interest point is more attractive, magnify the interest point. By combining soft and hard tactics, a banner with a high click-through rate is created.

As shown in the following figure:

04. How to play the activity

Every year on Double 11, the things that remain unchanged are the benefits – discounts, shopping allowances, red envelopes, and coupons. What has changed are the various ways of playing, that is, how to send out these interest points in an interesting and fissionable way. I will not let you get them for free, but will give them to you after I drive you to do something that is conducive to dissemination and for my use.

So what makes us feel complicated is the “gameplay”. It’s similar to the way we collect likes and give out benefits to new users on WeChat. It’s just that Tmall has powerful development resources and can package various fun activities. But it is inevitable that it will be dazzling and squeeze out some high-spending groups who value their time and dislike the hassle. The main promotion of this year's game is the "Partner up to open a cat shop and share 2 billion" activity. Driven by interests, Taobao passwords are used to escape the blocking of WeChat and break through the WeChat ecosystem with difficulty. Apart from my colleagues at Alibaba, there are very few people around me who play with me.

I also received a message asking for building a building, and I was curious to see how it was played. After clicking on it, I saw what all these were.

The ultimate goal of this activity is to share 2 billion red envelopes, so how can I get the red envelopes? I quietly clicked on the strategy guide. Currently, there are three main channels:

1) Complete the task and upgrade the Miaopu by yourself. You can get a red envelope for each upgrade.

2) Building challenge, invite people to form a team to PK, the winning team will receive a red envelope

3) Get red envelopes through the respective gameplay of Alibaba apps such as Youku, UV, AutoNavi, Ele.me, and Fliggy

The essence of the gameplay is to find something that is scarce for users, or to create scarce things to influence users. The way to play e-commerce activities is not to let users get benefits for free, but to let users participate in some interesting tasks before giving them benefits. Due to the loss aversion psychology, users are more likely to use the discounts they get after their labor. In this way, by adding specific gameplay to various activities, the benefits can be distributed. We will find that the coupons, red envelopes or subsidies sent out through "playing" are more likely to be consumed on Double 11 day.

05. Review

The last element of the activity is review, which is also a very important link but is easily overlooked. As an operator, after the event is completed, you need to review and summarize, look back at the entire process of the event, see whether the event data has met expectations, and if not, analyze why. This way, you can accumulate some experience and lessons, what is good about the good parts, and how to improve the bad parts, so that future events will get better and better.

For example, the Double Eleven event did well:

1) Ecological thinking

During the event, in addition to Alibaba's three main platforms, namely Taobao Mobile, Tmall and Alipay, high-traffic apps such as Youku, UC, AutoNavi, Ele.me, Koubei and Fliggy all participated in the promotion in different forms and with varying degrees of intensity. They used their own marketing tools to distribute Double 11 red envelopes and shopping allowances through tasks, lotteries, games and other forms. Although their participation rate was not as high as that of the three main platforms, they all made their own contributions to sales to a greater or lesser extent, fully demonstrating the coordinated operations of multiple industries and systems.

The two evening parties and offline and online advertisements also made full use of the merchant’s resources.

2) Recommendations for different people

Do you feel that the platform understands us more and more? The personalized recommendations of “Guess you like” often make people take a second look. Usually, it recommends a bunch of similar products to me based on my recent browsing history. As mentioned above, task pages are different for different people. User operations are refined to such an extent that recommending what users want makes it easier to facilitate transactions.

What didn’t go so well:

1) The user's learning cost is too high and the game mechanism is not user-friendly enough

The rules of this "Double Eleven Partner" event are relatively complicated and you need to read the guide to understand them. In terms of game mechanics, many netizens complained that this activity was not user-friendly enough. They could not withdraw from the competition, nor could they form a new team. The ticket fees were too high, and after losing, there was almost no prize money left, and they had no desire to continue participating. As the marketing planner of this event, you may need to think about how to streamline the gameplay so that users can understand the rules directly, and at the same time set up reasonable mechanisms to encourage users to continue participating.

2) The activity lasts for a long time and harasses the user’s friends in the circle of friends

This was also a very troubling problem for another group of people in this event, because the entire building activity lasted for a long time, and everyone forwarded it to their friends circle, group chats, and even private chats, which caused some harassment to some people, but they had to accept the bombardment of information every day, so many people gave up the competition and sold the building later. The activity of attracting people lasts for a long time and lacks immediate feedback. If the final benefit is not big enough, it will be difficult for people to persist. Therefore, we need to think about how to give users enough stimulation within a limited time.

The main reason is that Alibaba, which has no social genes, faces many difficulties in acquiring traffic within the WeChat social circle, but it has to do it, so it seems rather awkward and does not spread so comfortably and naturally.

What can we learn from the event?

1) Looking at the refined operations of user stratification from the perspective of 88 members, since the year before last, when large red envelopes were suddenly given to 88 members at 10 p.m. on Double 11, I began to feel that Alibaba was serious about its membership system. And these members with high spending power did not disappoint Alibaba. It pays to go above and beyond expectations for high potential users. Instead, many small companies that have only survived for one or two years often come up with a membership system, but no one notices it and no one gives you the chance to play with it. A membership system requires time, energy, financial and material preparation.

88VIP can actually be interpreted as a solution for Alibaba to deeply tap into user value. It can not only improve user retention, but also increase user loyalty. In addition to enjoying the discounts of the original shopping platform, 88VIP also brings together the rights and interests of Youku VIP membership, Ele.me super membership, Taopiaopiao national card, Xiami super VIP, etc. The connection of this account system actually establishes a connection between all aspects of daily life data such as eating, drinking, playing, shopping, housing, transportation, etc. These multiple data dimensions are also constantly enriching and improving user portraits, so as to further understand users, realize refined operations, and maximize user value.

During the event, Alibaba also "thoughtfully" launched an event called "Sprint your naughty value, quickly upgrade to 88VIP". Users with a Taobao value of 800 or above only need to invite friends to help, and by collecting 5188 Taobao values, they can sprint to 1000 Taobao values ​​and purchase 88VIP for 88 yuan. Basically, as long as you find two 88VIP friends to help you, you can meet the requirements. The clever operation colleagues took the opportunity to harvest a wave of paying loyal members.

Therefore, operations need to think about how to screen and maintain high-value users through mechanisms such as membership systems when the number of users reaches a certain scale, so as to improve the user's life value cycle.

2) Taobao Live: How to use mechanisms to keep users active

This year, the explosion of Taobao Live has brought a substantial increase in the transaction volume during Double Eleven. According to official data from Taobao Live, on the pre-sale day on October 21, the transaction volume guided by live streaming increased 15 times compared to last year. Just 1 hour and 3 minutes after the opening, the transactions guided by live broadcast exceeded the entire day of last year's Double 11; at 8 hours and 55 minutes, the transactions guided by Taobao Live had exceeded 10 billion. In addition, in industries such as home improvement and consumer electronics, transactions guided by live streaming have increased by more than 400% year-on-year. It is said that there are only 12 waiters who can accomplish all of this. So how do these 12 waiters make the anchors work hard on the live broadcast and sell goods crazily?

In order to let more people know about Taobao Live and increase transaction volume, Taobao Live has adopted a traffic resource incentive + horse racing competition mechanism. This mechanism effectively stimulates merchants and anchors to work hard at live streaming in order to get better resources.

1) The anchor must ensure the number of live broadcast days and duration to enter Taobao Live

2) Traffic resource rewards to encourage anchors to promote and convert traffic

3) The rankings in the qualifying competition are constantly reshuffled to select the best anchors

By motivating anchors and merchants, empowering them and helping them increase sales, this is truly a way to achieve great results with little effort. Therefore, with a good mechanism, the live broadcast system can operate in a healthy manner, allowing merchants and anchors to maximize their value, and operations can save time and effort. As operators, we need to think about how to establish mechanisms to achieve goals quickly and efficiently in our daily work. For example, establishing a membership system, user incentive system, etc.

Summarize

Double 11 is not just the operation of one department, but a large-scale exercise that brings together products, brands, markets, and operations BD. It is like concentrating the best products, best experiences, coolest gameplay, most advanced artificial intelligence, best resources, greatest exposure, and most strategic play of the year. So I say that Double 11 is the project that enables people to grow the fastest in Alibaba and even in the entire Internet! It is a parade of advanced weapons!

Behind such a large-scale event is the collaboration of countless teams and some invisible details. What we can do is to study and learn some basic ideas, and summarize and refine some routines and highlights. Based on your own positioning and characteristics, find a method that suits you.

However, when imitating, you must not be blindly copying and unrealistic. For a large-scale brand event like Double Eleven, it is impossible for an ordinary company to replicate it without a certain scale, a strong team, and powerful resources.

Author: Ponyfish

Source: Ponyfish