Can’t retain users? Try these 9 activation techniques

The work of "promoting activation" is no longer unfamiliar to everyone. According to my observation, many operators have not been able to carry out "promoting activation" activities well.

What is activation?

Some people say that promoting activation means getting more silent users to participate in activities, some people say that promoting activation means increasing DAU/MAU, and some people say that promoting activation means awakening sleeping users...

Regarding activation, my understanding is:

With the intervention of certain operational factors, the number of visits to a certain platform, media account, community, or even a certain product will increase significantly within a certain period of time.

Therefore, activation activities are mainly responsible for the operational indicator of user activity. Generally, operators plan a series of activities to get users excited and awaken users with low activity or who are in a dormant/churn period. The effect is to directly increase user stickiness to cultivate user loyalty and indirectly win back users who are at risk of churn.

So in our daily operations, how can we increase user activity by planning activities?

Based on the financial industry I work in, I will now sort out 9 of the most effective activation cases for you.

Before we officially begin, I need to emphasize two points:

(1) The financial industry originates from the national financial system and carries with it traditional genes such as rigor, integrity, and security. The financial system is related to the country's development plans and is always subject to strong supervision by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. The operating techniques of financial products are more restrained than those of general products. For example: when operating a fund product, you cannot directly use rewards to induce users to purchase funds.

However, precisely because of the limited scalability, the operational methods of almost all financial products are not obviously differentiated. From an operational perspective, financial products are products driven by strong operations, which provides an opportunity for financial products to overtake competing products.

For operators in other industries, there is naturally more room for development, so everyone will gain more inspiration from the sharing below.

(2) The cases compiled are all actual cases of my operation team. Due to the length of the article, the description is relatively concise. I hope that you will read them carefully. Because only by reading them carefully can you understand them. Only by understanding can you draw inferences from one example and apply it to other similar cases. Then, in the future, whether it is the promotion indicators of APP or public accounts, you will not be troubled.

Below, the author has sorted out all the cases related to promotion from the cases planned in the past, and now shares them with you:

PS: Friends who often read my articles know that I usually summarize the success or failure of a case from a psychological perspective. Therefore, some new friends may feel a little confused. Let’s review this user psychological needs table (old version) first.

Click to review: "To understand users, you need this "User Psychological Needs Table""

1. Guess the rise and fall

1.1 Definition

Guessing the rise and fall, in the financial industry, generally refers to operations personnel who plan activities based on the rise and fall of the A-share market.

1.2 How to Play

As the name suggests, the gameplay of guessing the rise and fall is relatively simple. Guessing the rise and fall is a common activation model in the financial circle, and it is often played in some financial media or fund apps.

Users make judgments on whether the market will rise, remain flat or fall. If they guess correctly, they can share the rewards from the prize pool with other users who participated in the trading day. Users who guess correctly for a consecutive week (5 trading days, excluding statutory holidays) will receive a more generous reward.

1.3 Examples

Below is an example of the "XX Finance" APP.

1.4 Summary

According to the author's observation, guessing the rise and fall is the most common activation interaction for financial/investment products. Think carefully, why is it so popular? From the perspective of meeting users' psychological needs, the main psychological needs that are met are taking advantage, following the crowd, gambling, playfulness, curiosity, and security.

There is no doubt that this kind of activity, which can be carried out almost every day, will cultivate users' habits of using the product and increase the conversion rate of subsequent monetization.

Now the game of guessing the rise and fall can well achieve the operational indicators of promoting activity, so can it be optimized further?

sure!

For example, by focusing on operational indicators in terms of attracting new users/exposure, you can double the rewards by having users invite friends or successfully share activities.

Can other industries also reuse this approach?

Guessing the rise and fall is not so compatible with other industries, but we can expand our thinking. Guessing the rise and fall is based on the A-share market, which changes every day in the industry, as a breakthrough point. Other industries may try to find similar breakthroughs within the industry. (If you can’t find it, see the next case)

2. Red Envelope Rain

2.1 Definition

The red envelope rain probably originated in 2015 when Internet companies led by Tencent and Alibaba spent huge sums of money to give red envelopes to users on their own platforms, which was called "red envelope rain" by netizens.

But after the operators' keen innovation, the gameplay of Red Envelope Rain is now richer.

2.2 How to play

Generally, within a fixed time, a full screen of dynamic red envelopes will appear in the APP to interact with users. Users can get certain rewards by clicking on the dynamic red envelopes on the screen.

This red envelope is not necessarily a real cash red envelope, but a reward related to the business. For example, Internet finance can include some experience money, growth value, interest-free coupons, or even physical peripherals, etc. Credit card business can include points, interest-free coupons, points doubling cards, interest-free quotas, peripherals, etc.

This is a method that can not only activate users, but also promote monetization conversion to a certain extent by issuing various cards and coupons with thresholds.

2.3 Examples

The case I am going to share with you below will be launched at four fixed time periods every Monday. If users miss the first or second session due to various issues, it doesn’t matter, there are still the third and fourth sessions waiting. This will help users reduce a lot of psychological burden and enhance the experience.

2.4 Summary

"Red Envelope Rain" is a way to promote activity, but it is better than the previous "guess the rise and fall" case because the "Red Envelope Rain" interaction includes prizes with marketing nature. But on the other hand, can the interaction of "guessing the rise and fall" also be combined with prizes with marketing nature?

On the other hand, can we also increase traffic by setting certain tasks, such as sharing with friends to help them get more opportunities to grab red envelopes?

3. Collect the fragments

3.1 Definition

Let’s talk about jigsaw puzzles first. Generally, a core character prototype/IP prototype/core event is visualized and cut into several pieces, and people restore them in the process. I believe that many people, like me when I was a child, often played with good friends.

Jigsaw puzzle is a very traditional game. As early as 1760, this popular and beneficial form of entertainment appeared almost simultaneously in France and Britain. So it has a history of about 260 years.

Today, jigsaw puzzles have been integrated with electronic games, educational toys, and even art. It is a popular intellectual game with many variations and varying levels of difficulty, making it a fun game to play over and over again.

However, the gameplay of collecting fragments is not exactly the same as that of a jigsaw puzzle. Gathering fragments does not require too much brainpower to restore, but rather requires users to collect all the fragments to restore the entire picture. It is more task-oriented, and operators often link tasks with operational indicators in activity settings.

3.2 How to play

Continuing from the definition, the gameplay of collecting fragments is that users complete different tasks in order to obtain certain rewards.

Users can obtain fragments through daily tasks; they can exchange fragments for other virtual items, such as diamonds and energy commonly used in games; and they can complete the task of collecting the required fragments by giving them to friends on the same platform. Finally get the corresponding reward.

3.3 Examples

Tencent's game "Contra - Return" will launch a "fragment collection" event every time a new hero or new skin is released. Every time an event is released, it will arouse the enthusiasm of the players. They will actively complete daily tasks, interact with friends to give/ask each other for the fragments they lack, and even use their accumulated diamonds to exchange for new skins.

Regarding the detailed rules and gameplay of the case, the author would like to share it with you in an intuitive way through screenshots.

3.4 Summary

Jigsaw puzzle games have a long history and are quite popular. In the mobile Internet era, they can be creatively integrated with various businesses, which is enough to prove that this way of playing is very popular among users.

When operators combine puzzles with actual game skins, they will also introduce gameplay such as sharing and participating in tasks in order to achieve traffic, conversion rate, and activation operation indicators.

Let's try to open our minds. Fragments are generally square in shape. Can we make them three-dimensional in terms of gameplay? For example, prisms, cubes (magic cubes), etc.

We can also extend the gameplay of collecting "game skin fragments". As can be seen from the definition, the way to play the collection of fragments is mainly in the picture. Then we can play it by analogy, such as various personalized cards, including credit cards, subway cards and various commemorative cards. You can also try to split the design draft of the hot product into certain equal parts to plan activities.

4. Spread the slogan

4.1 Definition

Slogans refer to short sentences that have a programmatic and agitational effect and are used for oral calls; spreading slogans means spreading these short sentences, and can also be extended to spreading information.

4.2 How to Play

Spreading slogans is a niche way of playing that is used in smaller scenarios, but this way of playing is very important and can act as a connector between APP and social platforms. In general activities, it is possible to achieve the goal of promoting activation while increasing brand exposure and even attracting new customers.

4.3 Examples

For the annual Dragon Boat Festival, you can either play the sentimental card from the perspective of the origin story of the festival, or start from the special objects of the festival, such as the H5 mini-game related to "Eat Zongzi Together". If you are more creative, you can also try to let Qu Yuan travel through time and space to the mortal world to eat zongzi of different flavors with people...

The following example is quite interesting.

The theme is "Spread the slogan, get a red envelope, and take the rice dumplings home". The main gameplay is very simple. You need to share the activity link of the APP to WeChat friends. After the sharing is successful, you can view the slogan on the activity page on the WeChat end; then enter the slogan in the designated input box of the APP to have a chance to get red envelopes, rice dumplings and other gift package rewards.

We noticed in the following design drawings that this case has cooperated with SF Express, which provides fee reductions for prize delivery, but this requires users to register on SF Express’s WeChat official account before using it.

4.4 Summary

According to the data of the event, the spread rate of "Spread the slogan, get red envelopes and take the rice dumplings home" reached 70%, that is, out of 100 users who browsed the event page, 70 users participated in forwarding it.

In addition to using the rewards of rice dumpling gift packages to satisfy users' psychological needs of getting a bargain; the simple task of obtaining slogans through direct sharing satisfies users' laziness; filling in the form of passing slogans between friends also satisfies users' psychological needs of playing; the prompt on the activity page "A total of XXX red envelopes have been divided up by XXX people" makes users feel afraid of losing (satisfying the psychological need for security), encourages hesitant users to participate in the activity as soon as possible, and increases the sharing rate; the long column on the activity page shows the rewards users have received, which happens to create a herd mentality for users who have not participated in the activity.

In this excellent case, the author is still wondering if there are some optimizations that can be done? For example, by making the slogan more provocative and interesting, such optimization may better improve the conversion rate of attracting new customers.

Finally, I would like to share a little trick with you:

During the process of planning an event, the product operation team encountered a problem that due to the lack of intercommunication between the APP and WeChat systems, when users shared event links from the APP to WeChat, the APP system had no way to quickly confirm whether the users actually shared them. In fact, we can solve this thorny problem by "spreading slogans". I hope this can provide some inspiration to everyone.

5. Do a jigsaw puzzle

5.1 Definition

Playing a jigsaw puzzle is different from collecting the pieces above. The difference is that the puzzle focuses on unknown/known images, and users need to restore the shuffled fragments within a fixed area. The fragment collection method focuses on users using known images and collecting all fragments of the image.

5.2 How to Play

Generally, users can get certain rewards by completing puzzle tasks. It can exist alone as a form of interaction, or it can be interspersed in certain activity themes, such as the following case.

5.3 Examples

The theme "Your Exclusive Benefits for Reading Day" is a welfare interactive activity with the theme of Reading Day. Let's take a look at the design draft of the activity first.

Obviously, the "burden" of the activity is set on the cover image of the book. The cover image is the picture that needs to be puzzled, thus cleverly combining the "puzzle" gameplay with "Reading Day". This activity has three levels of puzzle difficulty ranging from simple to complex. After clearing a level, you can start the lottery and receive an exclusive book list.

5.4 Summary

Exclusive book lists and rewards. Here, the author would like to remind you that the first three puzzle pieces may be a bit too many. What should we do? In fact, this is a problem that needs to be solved between what users pay and what they expect to get.

Generally, you can encourage user participation by increasing rewards rather than directly increasing them. The essence of activation is to play with users and make them more active than before.

So you can add something fun to each puzzle, for example, every time the user unlocks a level, you can pop up a prompt/joke/work on the puzzle to make the puzzle itself more interesting.

The last step is to generate an exclusive book list that is also interesting enough for users to find interesting. The best is to have exclusive content that makes users feel excellent or that enhances their own personality.

6. Check-in

6.1 Definition

As a front-line worker, one thing you must do every working day is to clock in and out of get off work. The hardworking and wise operations staff immediately came up with a plan for a "punch-in" task that was mainly aimed at promoting activity. In fact, it is an extension of the traditional "punch-in at work" and is a task that allows users to continuously participate in a certain activity.

6.2 How to Play

The ways to play check-ins are generally themed and of shorter duration, such as checking in to go to bed early and get up early; there are also daily check-ins, such as Mint Reading.

PS.: Mint Reading first appeared on WeChat Moments in 2017. The author noticed the daily check-in sharing copy "I am on the **th day of Mint Reading, and have read **k words." Mint Reading is an online education platform that provides paid tutoring/learning services in English. The operation mode is daily check-in interaction.

6.3 Examples

Now, what I want to share with you is a widely applicable check-in case - "Early to bed and early to rise check-in challenge". Generally, check-in means getting up in the morning. The author has planned a "early to bed + early to rise" combined check-in activity. How to achieve it specifically?

First set a time interval. Users who check in within the interval are deemed to have successfully checked in and can receive rewards. The rewards can be peripheral items, or experience money related to the platform's business, interest rate coupons, peripheral prizes, and other rewards.

6.4 Summary

In people's minds, going to bed early and getting up early is good for health. On this basis, users who check in before or after bedtime are incentivized through virtual and physical prizes. It has to be said that "early to bed, early to rise, and punching in" is also a good thematic way to promote activity.

In terms of the underlying logic, rewards and incentives are used to satisfy users’ psychological needs to get a bargain; rolling rewards suggest to users that many users are participating in the activity, which actually satisfies users’ herd mentality.

If there is a chance to optimize this activity, you can use a heartfelt way of expression. For example, after you successfully check in every night, a pop-up window will pop up with a beautiful inspirational quote suitable for nighttime reading, and after you successfully check in in the morning, a spoof inspirational short sentence will pop up. Or you can push a suitable music.

In short, this type of activity is highly reusable, and the rules and planning are relatively simple, so basically all 2C platforms can try it.

7. Catch dolls

7.1 Definitions

Catching dolls has always been a popular form of daily leisure and entertainment, and can be found in even remote small towns along the 18th tier.

In fact, there is a convincing reason why offline claw machines attract so many boys and girls from a psychological perspective. The activity of catching dolls itself caters to people's love of playing. One coin can often get rewards worth dozens or hundreds of times more, satisfying the user's psychological need to get a bargain; grabbing dolls is an interactive activity with instant rewards, which satisfies the user's psychological need for laziness.

But these user satisfaction only exists in offline scenarios. What will be the effect if it is moved online?

As long as the scene and gameplay of catching dolls are restored realistically enough, the same exciting experience can be brought to users to the greatest extent, just like the remote catching dolls project that was a hot entrepreneurial project in the past two years (controlling the claw machine in real offline scenes through mobile phones). However, if you play it completely in the way of remote catching dolls, the cost is too high and it is not advisable.

7.2 How to Play

Users click on the H5 page on the mobile terminal to trigger a series of interactive effects. For example, by clicking the grab button, the "claw" on the page will slowly descend to grab dolls and other rewards. The number of grabs is generally increased by successfully sharing and completing tasks.

7.3 Examples

Halloween is coming soon in mid-October 2018. In reality, many people born in the 1990s and 2000s have gradually accepted this traditional festival from a foreign country, and people usually dress up for this festival.

"Wouldn't it be fun to have a date with a ghost?"

…

"Why don't we catch ghosts together~~"

So the creative idea with the theme of "Ghost Catcher" came out.

Let’s experience it together:

The specific way to play is that the user opens the activity H5 link on the mobile phone, clicks to start coin insertion, and the claw automatically grabs the dolls. At the same time, the screen will have background music, sound effects, motion effects, light brightness and other effects.

On the page, users can view the rewards and distribution status of the event in "My Record"; clicking "Invite Friends" can trigger the pop-up window of "Guide friends to invite help"; clicking the "Receive 5,000 Red Packet" button will enter the page to guide new users to register for the APP.

In terms of rules, users have two free grabbing opportunities. After using up the opportunities, they can help by inviting friends to help with coins.

In terms of prize setting, we have set up a gameplay similar to collecting cards, that is, when users catch 3 different ghost cards, they can get a big gift package; in addition to the big gift package, there are also scattered rewards, such as physical peripherals, experience money, interest rate coupons, JD cards, etc.

7.4 Summary

After reviewing the activity, we found that the average number of downloads per person was 8, which means that on average each user invited at least 3 users to help, indicating a high level of user participation.

Although the operational indicator of this activity is to increase user activity, we have added channels such as following the official account (not required when participating in the activity) and registering for the APP without affecting the user experience. The marginal cost of acquiring users in this way is lower, so later we also made this activity into a template activity to interact with users.

In this activity, there are many kinds of "dolls" to be grabbed, including JD shopping cards, platform growth values, physical objects around the platform, and virtual coupons. By adding coupons through interaction, the cost of users obtaining coupons is actually increased, which makes users develop a mentality of avoiding losses and thus increase the usage rate of coupons.

If there are any parts of this case that need improvement, the reward part is mostly related to platform products. If conditions permit, you can actually optimize the types of rewards to gain more favor from new users. In the registration channel part, only a fixed channel page was used at the time. We believed that by optimizing a more attractive page, we could increase user registration conversions.

This is a real interactive case from daily life. Most users already have the concept of catching dolls, and they feel a sense of déjà vu when entering the activity screen. Similar interactions can also be found in some games or offline life. For example, the gameplay of button eggs can also be applied online.

8. Connect

8.1 Definition

Lianliankan refers to a casual entertainment mobile game that focuses on eliminating identical characters. For example, "Fruit Connect", "Connect Love Elimination", and various extended products such as "Digital Connect", "Pet Connect", "Fruit and Vegetable Connect" and so on.

Among them, "Fruit Connect" is the most famous one, and don't forget that "Happy Match" also has a similar operation and gameplay.

8.2 How to Play

I believe everyone is familiar with the specific gameplay of "Fruit Connect". The game uses super cute fruits and vegetables as the protagonists. When players move or eliminate the images, or even lightly touch them, the fruits and vegetables will make various expressions and even sounds; after successfully eliminating them, they will receive corresponding rewards or props.

8.3 Examples

In fact, you can also use the "Fruit Connect" game, which is popular among users, to promote products.

What activities do we usually do to promote the children's day? In terms of the population, basically apart from products such as education, insurance, and children's products, there is no user group that would participate in Children's Day.

In order to allow users who would not normally celebrate Children's Day to participate in the event as much as possible, we first need to explore the connection between this festival and users. Although it is said that children over the age of 12 no longer have the opportunity to participate in the nominal Children's Day, basically all our users have participated in Children's Day, which is the connection point.

By finding the connection and keywords between nodes and users, and then conceiving the gameplay of the nodes and the characteristics of the users, we finally planned this activity to promote user activity with the theme of "61 Children's Day - Are you an adult or a child?"

The gameplay of the activity is roughly divided into 5 parts according to the process:

①Choose the formation "Children" or "Adults"——②Flip the cards to memorize objects with characteristics of different eras——③Start the connect-the-dots game——④Successfully pass the level and join the formation——⑤Wait for the formation PK result and share the rewards.

The children's formation focuses on warmth, and the elements are all taken from childhood, such as glass balls, shuttlecocks, slingshots, etc.; while on the adult formation side, the elements mainly reflect the representative items in the lives of modern adults, such as ties, luxury cars, diamond rings, etc., which form a sharp contrast with the elements of the children's formation.

The game uses two formations to give users a sense of being in a group, which actually satisfies the users' herd mentality and their psychological needs for playing. Therefore, we adopted the method of memory erasure in the process and set up different levels to let users have enough fun.

P.S.: Similar elimination games also include memory games, which can be used in actual cases if appropriate.

8.4 Summary

Back to the activity itself, the reason why it can be shared with you as a case is mainly because it is a case with high difficulty and significant results. From the perspective of the user psychological needs model, its functions of splitting the formation, eliminating the puzzles, and dividing the rewards correspond to the psychological needs of following the crowd, loving to play, and taking advantage, respectively.

In fact, the starting point of the gameplay of this activity "61 Children's Day - Are you an adult or a child" is "to target adult user groups, use Children's Day as a node to plan a fun activity, and increase user participation to increase user activity in a certain period of time. It is purely accidental that the gameplay of "Connect the Dots" came to mind.

It is indisputable that the "connect the dots" style of gameplay can be used in different interactions. It can itself become a game. If it can be combined with holiday nodes, product user groups and even platform product characteristics, it will have different interactive effects.

The example given here, which seems to have little potential for reuse, is actually to tell everyone that this type of gameplay is open and has more possibilities.

9. H5 Generation

9.1 Definitions

H5, which means the fifth generation of HTML (HTML is the abbreviation of "Hypertext Markup Language"). From a technical perspective, it refers to all digital products made with the H5 language. For example, most of the web pages we see on the Internet are written in HTML. "Hypertext" means that a web page can contain pictures, links, and even non-text elements such as music and programs.

From an advertising or marketing perspective, H5 turns advertising information into a scene, allowing users to spread or interact more intuitively through QR codes or forwarding links.

Scenes often include multiple modules such as pictures, audio, video, maps, conference registration, product links, etc. It is a mobile advertising model that is popular in the mobile Internet era.

Here we mainly share H5 cases with generated picture scenes.

9.2 How to Play

The generated picture scene H5 is mainly generated by interactive questions, such as various personality tests, various fun and interesting questions, etc.

A common example is that the Baidu team will plan some public welfare H5s with promotional significance on every environmental protection-related node, such as Earth Day, Environmental Protection Day, and No Smoking Day; there is also a personality test series produced by the NetEase team.

9.3 Examples

During the Lantern Festival, do you plan some mini-game interactions through templates of third-party mini-game marketing platforms?

The biggest advantage of this third-party H5 mini-game marketing platform is its stability and high efficiency. Generally, operators can complete a simple interactive mini-game by replacing the images and audio materials themselves. However, it is often limited by the limitations of the template itself, leaving no room for the operator's planning. If we take into account innovative interactive gameplay, it is clear that this template-based H5 mini-game is not a long-term solution.

What I want to share with you here is a generated H5 with the theme of "Come to my hometown to celebrate the Lantern Festival on Lantern Festival". The gameplay of this case is extremely simple, but it is loved by many users.

Entering the event homepage, users only need to select their hometown (i.e. region) to generate a mobile phone poster with the attributes of that region. The content is accurate, concise and distinctive, and it can be said that this small poster covers everything.

We can see from the generated page that this is actually a business card with the characteristics of the hometown. With such a beautiful description, many users will spontaneously promote their hometown and invite friends to like it. This is actually a business card that increases social currency.

There are benefits to be claimed at the end. In fact, this is an entry point to guide users to follow the corporate WeChat public account through benefits. From the final data, we can see that the net number of followers reached 4,000 in two days.

9.4 Summary

Back to the activity itself, the core function of the homepage is mainly to share with partners and there are benefits here. Users can share the generated page with their friends and like it. Data shows that users will participate to a large extent in the process of liking. This way of playing is actually to stimulate users' high-level psychological needs, such as self-expression, showing off, etc. The psychological need to be recognized and to show off is further sublimated in the ranking section.

The "Benefits Here" button guides users to follow the company's WeChat official account to achieve the goal of increasing users. Virtual prizes such as JD shopping cards, growth points, platform experience gold, etc. are rewards that satisfy users' psychological needs to get a bargain. In terms of operation, it can be said to be very simple, and the whole process meets the requirements of simple and uncomplicated user experience.

Back to the generated H5, the case I shared with you is also of reference significance. Unlike the high-cost cases planned by large companies such as NetEase and Baidu, it is easy to implement in many small and medium-sized products and can achieve a multiplier effect.

This type of generated H5 is generally designed to achieve operational indicators of increasing the number of active users. In fact, creativity is the most challenging test of the operator's innovative ability, because apart from personality tests and answering questions, it is difficult to think of other effective ways to play.

Author: Shengjie is not surnamed Li

Source: Shengjie is not surnamed Li