Alibaba’s Marketing Strategy Transformation from Tmall’s Double Eleven 2018

In the past two days, I have been studying the 2018 Tmall Double Eleven event. From the subtle details of the rules, I have vaguely discovered the transformation of Tmall and even the entire Alibaba system in terms of operational strategy, so I would like to share my speculation with you.

Above is a screenshot of the main page of the entire event. The underlying logic is to earn game coins (energy points) and support the game where 100 energy points can be exchanged for 1 yuan in cash. On this basis, it is packaged into 3 ways of playing:

(1) Sign in

From October 20th to November 9th, sign in at the preset stores to gain energy points.

Keywords : In addition to Tmall stores, several other Alibaba platforms can obtain energy.

(2) Team PK Popularity

Invite your friends to form a team of up to 5 people. And PK will be opened from October 20th to October 31st:

1. Get raw team energy.
2. Every day the system automatically forces teams to PK in pairs, consuming a certain amount of energy as a ticket which is not refunded.
3. Invite friends to help. Each user can support up to 3 teams other than his own team every day.
4. The winning team gains the energy in the energy pool. After October 31st, the team's energy will be divided according to the contributions of the players.
5. The TOP11 teams will receive the Empty Shopping Cart Grand Prize.

Keywords: The team members' naughtiness value must be ≥401 points, and the supporters' naughtiness value must be ≥500 points.

(3) Challenge miracles

From November 1 to November 9:

1. The system issues 4 tasks to each team every day.
2. According to the task requirements, ask friends for help. The historical Double Eleven purchases and naughty points of your friends will be counted towards the team mission. (As shown in the following example, the task is to invite friends who bought lipstick on Double Eleven to help)
3. After the task is completed, the team members share the team's energy.

Keywords: Users without a historical Double Eleven purchase record or naughty value have no invitation value.

The target positioning of this activity

(1) Direct traffic to other Alibaba products

Although Alibaba’s various brands have held corresponding activities during previous Double Eleven events, it is rare to highlight the concept of “one country, one chessboard” so much this time.

(2) Fission activities give up attracting new customers and turn to activation and awakening

As we all know, for new users (or growing users), there are two participation paths in a fission activity - fission initiator and fission invitee. As for the two gameplays of "Team PK Popularity" and "Challenge Miracle" in this event, it is almost impossible for new users (or growing users) to become "fission invitees" due to the restrictions of the rules.

As for the group of "fission initiators", the number of new users (or growing users) on most platforms is very limited. If the purpose is just to prevent the wool party from brushing the data, this threshold is too high.

For the "Team PK Popularity" activity, the team members' naughty value must be ≥401 points, and the supporters' naughty value must be ≥500 points. The Naughty Score is a comprehensive score based on user behavior in the past 12 months and is updated on the 8th of each month. The influencing factors (the specific algorithm is a black box and there is no way to know it) include: shopping score, credit score and reward points (family account, comment interaction, etc.).

Even if you try your best to score points after the event goes online, your naughty value will not be updated until November 8, and by then, the event will have ended long ago. As for the "Challenge Miracle" activity, since it involves historical Double Eleven shopping records, new users (or growing users) cannot participate.

Therefore, I positioned this event as a promotion and awakening, rather than attracting new customers. This is truly a rare gem in an era when the activities of bringing in new customers by old customers are in full swing on various platforms.

The three levels of Tmall’s Double 11 strategy

From the changes in Tmall’s Double Eleven gameplay over the past nine years, it is easy to find that Tmall has a very rich level of operational strategies. It has been making steady progress year by year, defending each place it has conquered and moving on to the next goal.

• The first level: Relying on special offers and store exposure to establish Tmall’s brand value and open up the operational context of the buying and selling two-sided market - this has evolved into the basic foundation of the Double Eleven strategy
• The second level: Relying on the endless stream of stand-alone mini-games every year + inviting friends to get game opportunities to acquire a large number of new users. In addition to shopping time, it also attempts to seize users' leisure time to strengthen brand awareness - this is already the basic foundation.
• The third level: This time, based on the conventional method of bringing in new users, we tried to activate and awaken old users, and at the same time, we tried to make old users go through the conversion path from cognition, understanding, desire, to action for each product line of Alibaba. If it succeeds this year, I speculate that it will solidify into a basic base.

The underlying reasons for this change in play style

(1) The population growth dividend disappears

Luo Zhenyu said in his 2017 New Year's Eve speech: Today, the Internet's demographic dividend has disappeared, and occupying market share has turned into occupying wallet share and time share. Because the capacity of the wallet and the capacity of time are conserved. We can compare the growth rate of China's Internet population in recent years and the growth rate of Tmall Double Eleven GMV over the years.

(This data comes from a report released by the Queen of the Internet in 2018)

It can be clearly seen that the month-on-month growth trends in these two figures are very similar. As the saying goes, go with the flow. With the current online customer acquisition efficiency decreasing and costs skyrocketing, looking back at the old users we already have, there is actually still a lot of life cycle value that can be tapped.

(2) Pinduoduo’s cannibalization of low-end consumer groups

Before 2010, Taobao's brand positioning in the eyes of the general public was exactly the same as Pinduoduo's current one. Taobao was then able to whitewash itself by relying on Tmall’s positioning of authentic, high-quality and big-name products. But at the same time, he also gave up the "Longxiang Land" where he started his business. Now the rise of Pinduoduo happens to fill the gap left behind by Tmall's rapid development. Therefore, for Tmall, the demographic dividend that can be tapped is being further compressed.

As an aside, in the past two years, the media has talked about consumption upgrading and then consumption downgrading. In fact, these are all pseudo-concepts. Apart from creating marketing concepts and social emotions, they have no practical significance. If I have the chance, I will write a separate article to talk about my views.

(3) As the big brother of the Alibaba Group, Tmall needs to step up and help its brothers

Previously, people were lamenting that WeChat , as the leader of Tencent, carried too many things, and that “use it and leave it” was just Zhang Xiaolong ’s wishful thinking. Whenever a new product line comes out, WeChat always lends a hand to its younger brothers out of political correctness. Now Alibaba has gradually recognized and followed suit. So whether Tmall, Alibaba's top company, is willing or not, it has to bring in brands like UC and DingTalk that have nothing to do with it.

Product experience is the cornerstone of fission

Nowadays, many companies are obsessed with exponential growth. However, if they don’t close the valve of user churn , no matter how large the number of customers they acquire, it will only be a temporary solution. I don't want to talk about any strange and clever skills here, because although they can instantly double your tactical strength, it's like taking a magic pill. But from the perspective of the company's operational strategy, none of this matters! The real key is user experience .

I have ranked the importance of user experience in each module of the platform as follows: basic product/service experience > process experience for obtaining products/services > activity project experience > visual experience.

In other words, the underlying experience is more important than the surface experience. Of course, this ranking is not absolute and will be fine-tuned according to the business model. For example, for a website that sells self-designed clothing online, if the visual experience of the webpage is terrible, users will easily think that the design of the clothing itself is not very good. So in this case, the web page visual experience can be classified as "getting product process experience".

But it doesn’t mean that we should not do fission to attract new customers if we focus on the experience of old users. In fact, the two are not contradictory. Tmall’s activity of keeping new customers out is a bold attempt. Anyone working in the Internet industry should know the AARRR model - acquisition, activation, retention , recommendation, and revenue. Recently, a corresponding iterative theory has appeared on the market: R AR RA theory - retention, activation, recommendation, monetization, and acquisition. This theory places acquisition of new customers as a postponable result of business development rather than a prerequisite for business development.

As mentioned above, against the backdrop of the disappearance of the demographic dividend and the increasing importance of user experience, the underlying foundation for fission and attracting new users is precisely to do everything possible to make the users of existing users feel happy.

However, while I am impressed by Tmall’s brave attempt at “Double Eleven Partners”, I also have a question: in the “Team PK Popularity” session, will the psychological pressure brought to users by the daily entry fee PK gameplay offset the fresh experience of the gamification of this event?

I guess we can only wait for feedback from users afterwards.

Source: The Helmsman of the Carp