Methodology + Case: Building an Activity Operation System for the Consumer Finance Industry

This article aims to systematically sort out and interpret how to build the activity operation system of the consumer finance industry through methodology + case studies. If you are a friend who works in event operations or a big shot in the industry, I hope that you can give guidance and encouragement after reading this article; if you are a colleague in the consumer finance industry, you can "make friends through writing" and communicate with each other to make progress together; if you have just entered the industry or are preparing to engage in work related to event operations, I hope that this article can help you in sorting out the framework of your own event operations.

If the product manager is the creator of the product, then the operations staff is the guardian of the product, responsible for nurturing the product's healthy growth. Event operation has always been known as a "panacea", and is therefore also regarded as the number one weapon of operators. Through event operation, it runs through the entire life cycle of users, thereby guiding the healthy and benign development of the product.

"As the saying goes, 'every industry has its own characteristics and rules, and the consumer finance industry is no exception. Today, let's talk briefly about how to build an activity operation system for the consumer finance industry."

Now let’s get back to the topic. Let’s take a look at the overall picture. This article will also focus on the event operation battle map:

Methodology

A few things you should know before doing the activity:

1. Why do we need to conduct marketing activities?

"Living without a goal is like sailing without a compass" - figuring out why you are doing an event and being goal-oriented are the primary factors for the success of a marketing campaign.

Marketing activities are a means of quickly raising a specific goal. The purpose of doing activities is to improve a certain operating indicator in the short term. The overall summary is as follows:

1. Attract potential target users and acquire more high-quality target new users (users with borrowing needs)
2. Help users quickly complete activation conversion (complete application, credit, and loan)
3. Improve the activity of existing users (increase the number of times users borrow again)
4. Improve the core performance of the product (increase the number of credit grantees/loan amount/number of borrowers)
5. Enhance or shape the corporate/product brand image

2. What is the theoretical support model for marketing activities?

"If the foundation is not solid, the earth will shake" - a mature and operational marketing activity operation system needs a strong theoretical system as a strong backing

Event operations run through the entire life cycle of users, and emotional connections between products and users are built through events. No matter where product operations start, they will eventually return to the AARRR "Pirate Model". It summarizes the five key links of product operation in the user's entire life cycle model, designs activities around the marketing goals of "attracting new customers", "activation", "retention" and "conversion" to form a marketing closed loop, and then adds the sharing logic of "self-propagation" to create a snowball effect.

Acquiring new users is the foundation of all operations, and promoting user activity can make the product vital. Improving user retention and reducing user churn can make the user scale larger and larger. Paid conversion is the key to the continuous operation of the product and operation team. If the self-propagation operation is done well, the product operation cost will be reduced a lot and the growth rate will be greatly improved.

3. How to build a general system operation model for marketing activities

“Those who do not plan for the overall situation are not qualified to plan for a specific area”

Operation is a systematic project, and any change in any part will affect the entire system. Just like "butchering an ox", if an operator wants to operate a product well, he must have a holistic view and systematically think about every aspect of the product he operates.

The ways of operating activities are varied and strange. They seem to be without rules, but in fact they all follow the same principles. The general model usually takes the core interests that users are most concerned about as the starting point, designs suitable marketing tools around the core needs of users, and packages the activities in a situational and story-telling way. Finally, by interacting with users through scenarios, users are motivated to achieve specific marketing goals.

(1) User core needs (benefits) - "No matter how much you give me, it's better to understand me"

“Find out the pain points, create the pleasure points, find the itch points”

Based on the KANO model, we sorted out the core interest demands of users in the consumer finance industry, such as "pain points (whether they can successfully borrow money)", "satisfaction points (interest rate, loan amount, flexibility of loan term, flexibility of repayment method)", and "itch points (loan release speed, brand endorsement, personalized service, emotional care)". We conducted a combination analysis of different dimensions on the demand points that different users are concerned about, set different types of activity rules, reward conditions, and participation thresholds, so as to motivate users to quickly complete the established key behavior conversion tasks.

(2) Marketing tools (tools) - "If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools"

“Don’t take on a job that doesn’t involve the right tools”

With the development of the industry, the gameplay of marketing activities has gradually become richer and more systematized, and the means of operation have gradually shown a trend of automation. The componentized, modular and replicable construction of the "small front-end and large middle-end" of marketing tools is bound to be imminent. Creating a set of mature and complete marketing tools can help the operation of marketing activities achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Examples of commonly used marketing tools in the consumer finance industry:

(3) Creative packaging - "starting with appearance, falling in love with talent, loyal to character, and lasting for benefits"

"A good horse deserves a good saddle, and a good car deserves a sail"

What gifts do you want to give to your users? What kind of activities can make them wholeheartedly help you achieve your KPI? When determining the activity ideas, you must first match them with your purpose. You can refer to your past good activity ideas, or refer to other people's good ideas and make a combination.

Let me give you an example to illustrate the importance of event creativity. For example, on Valentine's Day or Chinese Valentine's Day, when you give your girlfriend flowers, do you have to package them well? You go to the flower and bird market to buy a bunch of 999 roses, or you go to Roseonly to buy a bouquet of flowers. Which one do you think will make her happy to accept?

If you choose a bundle of 999 roses at the flower and bird market, would you like to experience whether the hospital’s WIFI speed is fast enough?

Although it is a joke, it is also an inspiration for us to organize activities. When organizing an event, the things you give to users must be creatively packaged to make the gift giver happy and the gift receiver even happier.

(4) Interaction method (scenario) - "The good wind helps me soar to the sky"

In addition to bringing full benefits to users, an excellent event should also allow users to have a sense of participation and involvement, and experience the feeling of "full fun and gain".

Let me give you an example to illustrate the importance of interactive scenarios to marketing activities. For example, when you go on vacation to the beach, you can be shirtless or wear a bikini and everyone thinks it is normal. It would be abnormal if you don’t dress like that. But if you go to the subway shirtless or in a bikini, it won’t be long before the security guard catches you.

4. What is the demand background of the marketing activities?

"Only when you have a good reason to start a war can you be successful in everything you do"

The same applies to marketing activities, which also require a suitable “identity”.

The overall background of marketing activity needs can be summarized into the following four parts: business planning, product demand, industry competitor dynamics, market hotspots, etc.

"Keep to the right path and attack with surprise" - In any battle, use the right path to unite and the surprising method to win. Therefore, those who are good at creating surprises are as infinite as the heaven and the earth, as inexhaustible as the rivers and the seas, and they end and begin again, just like the sun and the moon.

Warfare requires "keeping to the orthodox and doing surprising things". The same goes for marketing activities, which also require a "keeping to the orthodox and doing surprising" mindset. After clarifying the demand background of the marketing activities, it is necessary to integrate and deploy relevant human, material, financial and other resources.

From the two dimensions of "keeping to the right path" and "being surprising", the specific paths are as follows:

• "Adhere to the right path." Shouzheng’s main task is to build the basic framework of the entire marketing activities according to the business development plan, to seize as much strategic depth as possible for the construction of the entire platform operation system, and to ensure that the basic foundation of the operation system will not be easily shaken. The resource investment required for the "maintaining the integrity" part needs to account for 50% or more of the overall operating resources.
• "surprisingly". As the "special forces" in the entire marketing system, Chuqi's main task is to keep up with the changing trends of users, products, markets, and industry competitors, respond quickly, analyze quickly, formulate response strategies quickly, and coordinate resources from all parties to quickly promote the implementation of operational strategies. The speed and quality of the "surprising" part are the only criteria for evaluating whether an operating system is mature and whether the team's collaborative combat capabilities are qualified. The investment required for the surprising part should account for 50% of the entire operating resources. Among them, 30% of resources are needed to pay attention to market hotspots, 10% of resources are needed to pay attention to industry competitors' dynamics, and 10% of resources are needed to pay attention to product demand.

(1) Business planning

A mature platform and a qualified marketing activity system must have a mature "marketing activity battle map" as the underlying support. According to the needs of business development, static and dynamic annual marketing activity planning maps should be formulated, and then broken down into quarterly, monthly, and daily plans for detailed execution. The annual activity operation plan can be formulated based on the operational goals of its own products while referring to the annual "advertising and marketing calendar", which saves time and effort.

(2) Product demand

All marketing activities revolve around users and products. The planning of activity direction and the control of activity rhythm must be consistent with product goals and the rhythm of user needs.

Analyzing from a vertical perspective, the planning of marketing activities needs to be viewed from the overall perspective of product demand, which can be summarized into the following six aspects: attracting new customers, activation, retention, revenue, self-propagation, and branding appeal.

(3) Competitive product dynamics

“Look up at the stars, keep your feet on the ground”

The consumer finance industry is a highly competitive industry, and users have the phenomenon of "multiple borrowings". Therefore, from a horizontal perspective, the planning of marketing activities needs to take into account the product strategies and marketing strategies of industry competitors. In order to seize more market share and high-quality user groups, it is necessary to closely track the dynamics of competitors, their marketing strategies, and their marketing rhythm. Every move of competitors will affect one's own marketing strategy and marketing rhythm.

(4) Market hot spots

Chasing hot spots——"speed should be fast and posture should be practical"

"We must be brave enough to gather strength, invest intensively, and launch a saturation attack during this period of strategic opportunity. We must pounce on it, tear it apart, develop in depth, and expand horizontally."

——Ren Zhengfei

Whether the hot spots in the market can be tracked in time and converted into marketing activities in a timely manner tests an operator's organizational and responsive capabilities, and also reflects the collaborative organizational and combat capabilities of the operation team.

Operation is a process of continuous trial and error and continuous improvement. Exploring new operation strategies and new operation models is bound to encounter many pitfalls. But once the attempt is successful, you can enjoy the dividend of user growth. The hot spots themselves bring traffic. Before people get tired of it and when emotions are at their highest, the level of participation will be higher and the degree of attraction to users will be the highest.

The theoretical support system for chasing hot spots comes from the "flying geese model". The first generation of explorers can enjoy the highest benefits at the lowest cost, and the cost and effect will become worse as time goes by. For example, when WeChat Moments ads were first launched, OPPO and Coca-Cola, who were the first to try them, and Nike, who was the first to try them when WeChat mini-program game ads were first launched, made a lot of money. However, as Moments ads were gradually liberalized, the advertising effect began to be greatly discounted and the cost continued to rise.

(Image source: growing io)

The industry's most popular growth strategies in the past three years:

(Picture source and Internet)

Faced with a complex business ecosystem, strong competitors and a changing business environment, the organization's evolution and collaborative combat capabilities must keep up.

Among China's Internet companies, Alibaba is the strongest in building collaborative organizational capabilities. "Double 11" has become a training ground for Alibaba to prepare for battle, evolve its organization, and hone its technology. During Double 11, Alibaba's entire ecosystem was united, highly consistent both horizontally and vertically, and performed a concerto of tens of thousands of people. From organizational evolution to ecological evolution, they became stronger together, and stress-tested their extreme combat capabilities in products and organization. ”

5. Marketing activities should have a sense of revenue and cost

"The world is bustling with people, all for the sake of profit; the world is bustling with people, all for the sake of profit"

Total revenue = {(number of new borrowers x loan term x loan amount) + number of value-added service purchasers x purchase amount} + {(number of old borrowers x loan term x loan amount) + number of value-added service purchasers x purchase amount}

The costs of Internet consumer finance business include fixed costs and variable costs.

• Fixed costs can be summarized into three main parts: fixed operating costs, risk control system model costs, and basic IT system construction costs;
• Variable costs can be divided into four major modules: customer acquisition costs, risk pricing costs, loan issuance costs, and post-loan collection costs.

Sources of income include: interest, service fees, and total income from value-added services brought in by new customers, and interest, service fees, and total income from value-added services brought in by old customers.

Fixed costs have economies of scale. The consumer finance services provided by traditional institutions require relatively high audit costs in the risk pricing process and these costs are variable costs. The biggest advantage of Internet consumer finance is to achieve automated risk control by building a risk control system model. This change turns variable costs into fixed costs. Although it requires higher investment in the early stages, the scale effect begins to emerge as the number of users increases.

Operational activities need to be planned, designed, and evaluated based on the industry's cost-revenue structure. In addition to evaluating and measuring the value of a single activity, it is also necessary to "comprehensively predict", "comprehensively analyze", and "comprehensively evaluate" the value that each marketing activity brings to the platform from the perspective of the entire platform.

6. North Star Metrics + Funnel Model Awareness for Marketing Activities

The "North Star Indicator" is also known as the only important indicator. The reason why it is important is that once this indicator is established, it will shine high in the sky like the North Star, guiding every aspect of the entire event design. All strategies and content designs must revolve around this core goal. Without a clear core indicator as a "lighthouse", it is easy to do too much and fail to effectively concentrate firepower to launch a general attack on the core indicator.

For the consumer finance industry, the North Star indicator is always the number of borrowers and the total amount of loans, so all operational activities must be designed towards this goal.

"Funnel model". When any two things are transmitted or transformed into each other, there will be losses. The same is true in marketing activities. No matter how powerful the products and marketing activities are, it is impossible to achieve a 100% conversion rate in every link.

From the time users enter the activity page to the time they complete the various established goals, user loss is bound to occur at various stages in between. In addition to paying attention to the achievement of marketing activity goals, the part about user loss is where we need to focus our attention and analysis. By analyzing the loss situation and finding out the specific reasons, we can point out the direction and path for optimizing the next activity plan and adjusting the strategy.

"Data is the eyes of operators to understand the world." It is very important and necessary to monitor the entire marketing activity in the form of "positive pyramid", "inverted pyramid" and "campaign". Without full-process monitoring of marketing activities through data collection, after the campaign goes online, it will be like "a blind man touching an elephant". The campaign will lack overall control over the campaign, and it will be impossible to understand the overall situation of the campaign in a timely and accurate manner. As a result, it will be impossible to adjust optimization strategies in time to compensate for and improve the shortcomings of the campaign.

7. The promotion rhythm of marketing activities

“A journey of a hundred miles begins with a single step.”

After the initial planning, design, development, testing and acceptance of the operation activities, it does not mean that everything is fine. Instead, it is a new beginning. All your assumptions and expectations must be tested by the market and users to know the gap between ideal and reality.

After the event is launched, it needs to be promoted in a rhythmic manner, rather than just releasing it on various channels and letting it die out on its own. The promotion rhythm is something that must be controlled in order to operate every event well. A sense of rhythm is a skill that operators must learn. Just like cooking, the same ingredients and the same process can result in completely different taste, texture, and color in the hands of different people. The sense of rhythm is crucial.

The promotion of marketing activities also has a life cycle, and the data table after the activity goes online usually presents a "U" shape. How to control the promotion rhythm of marketing activities from "U"-shaped data performance to a straight line. The general operation rhythm is as follows:

In the early preparation period, you need to do enough preparatory work for promotion, accumulate traffic in the warm-up period, and have high-intensity exposure in the early stage of going online; when the effect weakens in the mid-term, add some means to improve it; and in the later stage of the activity, create a hot spot to attract users back.

(2019 Tmall "Double Eleven" online event operation and promotion rhythm chart)

8. Risk management awareness that activities should have

“Once there is a proper profit, capital becomes bold. If there is a 10% profit, it will be used everywhere; if there is a 25% profit, it will be active; if there is a 50% profit, it will take risks; for 100% profit, it will dare to trample on all laws; if there is a 300% profit, it will dare to commit any crime, even at the risk of being hanged.”

The financial industry is the place closest to money, and the closer to the money, the greater the risk and the darker it is.

Operating a platform is like nurturing the growth of a sapling, which requires sufficient nutrients to thrive. The risk is the "vampire" that parasitizes on the small trees and steals nutrients. Only by eliminating this risk can the saplings thrive and grow into towering trees.

From an overall perspective, the risks of Internet marketing activities can be summarized into four major categories: black industry risks, demand risks, technology risks, and market risks. Among them, "black industry risk" is the most common and frequently occurring risk in the industry. The financial industry is a highly regulated industry. "Market risks" do not occur often, but once they do occur, they will be devastating. "Technical risk" and "demand risk" are the most common risks in daily work.

Risk control and user experience are contradictory. It is easy for the situation of "if it is too tight, it will die, and if it is too loose, it will spread" to occur. Risk control will hinder some users from participating in activities, which runs counter to user experience. How risk control can keep out as many malicious behaviors as possible while minimizing the impact on user experience is a game.

A common principle in the industry is: "light control", "heavy detection" and "quick response" to balance the needs of user experience and risk control.

• “Light control”: When designing risk control strategies to block user operations, actions should be light rather than heavy.
• “Re-detection”: Analyze and detect user information (including static and dynamic data) in as many dimensions as possible, and perform real-time or offline calculations to dynamically analyze the risk level of each user and the behavior they take.
• "Quick response": After detecting the risk of the user, quickly block it. The key word is fast, which means that you need to have a detailed understanding of the business and plan key actions in advance to minimize losses.

Case Analysis

Consumer finance industry activity operation framework diagram:

1. User acquisition

Before acquiring new users, you need to first clarify what core user pain points your product solves? Who are the target users of the product? Where do these users gather? Who has influence over these users? Where can we find these influential people?

Considering the above questions can help us narrow the scope and find users first more effectively.

In recent years, the demand for loans from users in the financial industry has exploded. The driving factors can be summarized as follows:

• First, the boundaries of borrowing users continue to expand vertically, from the best users at the top of the pyramid all the way down, the user base is becoming more and more inclusive, and the expandable user base is getting larger and larger.
• Second, there are more and more repeat borrowers. As users have multiple loans and under strong operations and marketing, the same user is competed for by multiple platforms at the same time.

Channel operation is at the forefront. No matter how good a product is, it must first be launched to be tested by the market and users. The more channels are expanded, the more new users can be reached. After the product has been verified in the early stages of the market, it will quickly grow bigger and stronger through the use of paid advertising, thereby completing the established marketing and promotion tasks.

With the development of the industry, traffic has been basically divided up by various large platforms, the growth rate of the incremental market has begun to decline, and the operation of the existing market has become the top priority. At this time, cross-industry cooperation has come on stage, cross-marketing has been carried out between each other, and both platforms have been jointly expanded and strengthened. By holding a matrix of fission marketing activities, more benefits can be brought to sharers and sharees, activating the platform's existing users while bringing more new users to the platform, thus forming a positive cycle. At the same time, we pay attention to new industry trends and industry marketing and operation strategies and follow up quickly.

Industry event cases:

(1) Newbie benefits: Recommended star rating - ★★★★★

360 IOU: Register to receive a 30-day interest-free coupon + apply for an 88 yuan cash bonus (withdrawable upon payment of 20 yuan or more). Newbies only need to complete two steps. Analysis shows that 360's North Star indicator for newbie benefits is "acquiring more credit users."

Fenqi Le: Register to receive a 1,000 yuan interest-free first installment coupon + a 20% discount coupon (for borrowing money) for service fees + a 20% discount coupon (for paying off credit cards) for service fees + a 1,000 yuan shopping voucher exclusively for new customers. Fenqiele’s reward goal for new users is very clear, which is to hope that users can complete their first loan and installment purchases as quickly as possible. Because Fenqi Le’s e-commerce attributes are stronger than other consumer finance companies, e-commerce discounts account for a relatively large proportion of the exclusive benefits for novices.

China UnionPay Financial Services: New registered users can receive a 30-day interest-free coupon worth up to 50,000 yuan + exclusive products for new users + a 39-yuan voucher upon successful credit approval + 30-yuan cash for meals when borrowing over 10,000 yuan. China Merchants Bank Financial adopts a step-by-step and phased reward method to reward new users at key behavior conversion nodes, thereby motivating users to complete the conversion.

Anyihua: New users can register to receive a 28-day interest-free coupon + 15 yuan in cash for credit + 80 yuan in cash for borrowing. The same tiered reward method is used to reward new users at key behavior conversion nodes, while widening the gap between credit rewards and loan rewards, in the hope that users can complete loan transactions more quickly.

(2) Newbie guide: Recommended star rating - ★★★★★

Take the 360 ​​Loan Newbie Guide as an example:

When a new user enters the APP for the first time, benefits for novices will pop up immediately, such as "you can borrow up to 200,000 yuan, receive a coupon with interest-free period of up to 30 days", and "you can get a red envelope of 88 yuan by submitting your application". Click the "Get it now" button to automatically jump to the face recognition page to start authentication. After clicking start verification, you will enter the risk control automatic review link, and then wait for the review result. If you choose to exit, an advertisement will pop up to retain the user twice, reminding the user to continue applying. For users who continue to apply unsuccessfully, the system will send a push in 1 minute to remind them again. After clicking push, you will enter the face recognition page again to urge the user to apply for credit.

Analysis and interpretation: In terms of guiding new users, 360 Jieqiao used benefits as a precondition (interest-free + red envelope rewards), productized activities for two strong guides, and finally carried out three conversion marketing campaigns through marketing methods such as PUSH, SMS, WeChat public account reminders, smart telemarketing, and manual telemarketing to activate these users.

2. User Activation

At a time when customer acquisition costs are rising, if you spend a lot of time, money, and manpower to acquire new users but fail to do a good job of activating them, the traffic you have introduced will be lost in vain.

Generally speaking, if you want to quickly activate new users, you have to prescribe the right medicine. Activation means letting users experience the value of your product for the first time, taste the "sweetness" of the product as early as possible, and complete the conversion of key behaviors. Only then can they retain and finally continue to use the product repeatedly for a long time.

Examples of industry activities:

Fenqi Le uses the productized function of holding the "reserve fund" activity as the "number one weapon" for user activation, providing users with a reserve fund of 2,000 yuan with 0 interest and 0 payment, as well as the discount of borrowing in the current month and repaying in the next month and unlimited use, allowing users to quickly experience the core functions of the product and thus quickly complete user activation.

China UnionPay Financial organizes a "compensation for rejection" campaign. If a new user fails to obtain a credit limit on their first application, they will receive a cash compensation of up to 88 yuan. This is done by giving users benefits to attract users to complete their first application activation.

3. User Retention

Activity improvement = increase new users + improve new user retention + promote old users + recall lost users

From the perspective of user retention, the platform is like a reservoir, with one faucet for injection (new users pouring in) and one faucet for outflow (silent old users pouring out). Whether the reservoir can be filled with water and when it can be filled with water depends on the flow and speed of injection and outflow. The higher the customer retention rate, the faster the water level rises. On the contrary, the water level will not only not rise, but may even drop.

From the perspective of the user's life cycle, when new users have passed the novice period (completed their first loan), they enter the retention stage, which is the longest stage in the entire user life cycle. Therefore, apart from attracting new users, everything we need to do is to extend the user’s “survival” time on the platform as much as possible.

The specific paths are as follows:

1. Retaining people through products, relying on the products themselves to retain users is the highest level of competitiveness.
2. Retain users through scenarios and expand high-frequency scenarios. Retain users through scenarios, such as daily life payments and other scenarios with high frequency characteristics and a high degree of standardization. Usually, users can be captured by mastering these scenarios.
3. Retaining people through benefits. Retaining people through benefits is simple and crude, but also very effective. For example, by holding marketing activities, users can be given appropriate interest rate discounts and the loan rate level can be appropriately lowered.
4. In order to retain customers through the membership system, some consumer finance institutions (such as Anyihua, Fenqi Le, Haier Finance, and 360 IOU) have begun to experiment with paid memberships. After paying the annual fee, users can enjoy privileges such as exclusive manual customer service, promotional coupons, and priority review of loan applications. 5. Retaining employees through operations. Strong operations are also important means to improve user stickiness. For example, more and more organizations are beginning to operate content communities, providing users with a platform for complaints and communication.
5. Daily check-in, fixed-time lottery, welfare community and other methods are also commonly used and effective means to promote activity.

Examples of industry activities:

Retention is the top priority of the entire platform operation, so activities aimed at user retention are the most abundant.

A. Paid members, recommended star rating - ★★★★★★

Zeng Ming, chairman of the Alibaba Committee, once said this about paid membership: "Innovation in business models is essentially about adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing the user value chain, cutting out values ​​that are useless or costly to users, and amplifying the value that users care about most, so as to stand out from the competitive market."

In the second half of the Internet, the surging dividends of the incremental market are no longer there, and the operation of the existing market has become the top priority. How to tap the potential value of users? In the era of "stock competition", membership may be the best way to improve user loyalty.

At present, building a paid membership has the following value:

1) Increase revenue: The platform increases revenue by collecting membership fees, thereby improving the company's profit margin.

2) Improve the platform user retention rate: The platform makes concessions, and users pay voluntarily to enjoy better and differentiated services. Through rights, incentives, and care, the platform allows users to continue using its products, keeping users in its own ecosystem and stimulating repeat consumption. Let "super users" bring more benefits to the platform, make users more loyal to the platform, and thus improve the overall retention rate of the platform.

3) Filter function: Through paid membership, the platform’s high-value, high-stickiness, and high-loyalty “super users” are screened out, and then refined operations are carried out to activate users through different rights and interests systems and incentive systems at different stages of the user’s life cycle, thereby promoting user growth, delaying churn, and adding more “super users” to the platform.

4) Cross-industry cooperation: Use members’ rights to guide users to attract new members, open up cross-industry cooperation through traffic exchange and brand linkage, form mutual traffic diversion, and jointly expand the incremental market of each other’s platforms.

5) Scenario marketing: Use membership services to completely close the loop of a user's demand scenario, thereby occupying the minds of a user and monopolizing a market share sustainably for a long time. Today, the Internet has become a stock market. How to find growth in the stock is the second breakthrough for enterprises. On the one hand, members can serve as a transition for enterprises from the traditional product profit model to a model with membership income as the main profit model, relying on membership fees to achieve operations; on the other hand, as loyal users of the product, members can be incentivized to complete secondary dissemination by giving profits.

The essence of membership is to have a continuous interactive relationship with consumers. To design a good membership system is not a simple accumulation of rights and interests, but involves collaboration in multiple fields and multi-layer operational logic. Nowadays, when providing services to their members, various Internet companies are also deliberately focusing on meeting the core needs of members while providing corresponding services to meet the related needs of members. The industry calls it a full-chain service ecosystem.

"Paid membership" is a system that is absolutely "user/consumer" oriented. What needs to be placed at the core of this system is not the product, not the transaction behavior, not the business operating indicators, but the paid members. As for whether the platform's "paid members" have really played the role expected by the platform, the key, after all, lies in the platform's accurate and in-depth exploration of the core demands of these paid members. Therefore, expanding the membership base, increasing membership renewal rates and repurchase rates, and enhancing the scalability of cross-border services are the keys to the success of major platforms.

The user membership design is essentially a business model scenario design. It uses membership to reduce the cost of acquiring traffic, stimulating activity, and brand communication, and continuously obtain more benefits from super users.

In summary, from the perspective of product operation, there is a very broad space for the operation of members' rights and interests, including traffic introduction. Each right is a marketing tool. Generally, we think from these five perspectives: membership = operation + product + brand + communication + business thinking.

The operational means for members are generally carried out from the following aspects:

(1) Combination of exclusive products and brand operations

By cooperating with brand owners, we can increase users' awareness and trust in product brands. On the other hand, operators can also participate in the marketing system of exclusive products by "using more high-quality users to attract more high-quality merchant resources."

(2) Cross-industry equity operations to increase user interaction

Introducing new benefits is a powerful means of attracting new users. Through diversified cross-border marketing, more user demand scenarios can be covered, thereby attracting more new users.

(3) Membership discounts

The platform organizes membership discount events to stimulate more "wait-and-see" "potential super users" to become loyal fans of the platform. On the one hand, it expands the base of "super users" on the platform, bringing more revenue to the platform while also increasing the number of active users on the platform; on the other hand, by giving concessions to users, it creates a psychological expectation of "getting a good deal", increasing user recognition and loyalty to the platform.

(4) Membership Day

With the concept of "Membership Day" as the core, we held Super Membership Day fixed-line activities, offered the "bait" of free membership experience to attract more users, combined with different merchant brands, and integrated resources for centralized promotion. Form good member brand awareness on the user side, maintain core users, and improve member activity.

(5) Get cashback benefits by becoming a member

By holding member-exclusive activities such as "Become a member and get cash back benefits", on the one hand, more unconverted existing users can be converted by giving benefits, and more "ordinary users" can be converted into "super users"; on the other hand, more new users can be attracted through cross-industry joint operations.

B. Large-scale theme event operation, recommended star rating-★★★★★★

The best life is a long-lasting one.

——Zeng Guofan

The idea conveyed by the author of "Games Change the World" is that life is always dull, and we need to create a little surprise from time to time to satisfy our "heart flow" in order to continue to have the motivation to struggle.

Holding large-scale theme operation activities is like a ritual, a topic, and like a festival. It will be mentioned and paid attention to by people at a fixed time every year, then it will boil over and finally calm down, but it will still be talked about by people. People will consume more or less, and will talk about it more or less before and after meals. Perhaps this is the significance of large-scale theme operations, with everyone participating and interacting, just like a festival. People like the lively atmosphere that breaks through the peaceful life.

The structure of a large-scale theme event is generally that each activity sub-module is independent of each other in terms of system design, and is progressive in terms of theme planning. Each activity is independent of each other in the system, and the dots are connected into a line on the theme, and they are exited in order, pushing the activities one after another to a climax.

Take 360 ​​IOU's "New Year's Benefits - 1 billion interest-free subsidies" as an example to analyze the operation of large-scale theme activities:

Activity theme: New Year’s start-of-work benefits.

Marketing gimmick: Give away 1 billion interest-free funds.

User core needs: loan discounts.

Activity North Star Metrics: Longer borrowing terms and more borrowing amounts.

Activities: new users and existing old users.

How to play:

• step1. When the user enters the activity page, he can receive a coupon with a maximum of 5 interest-free periods. There are two types of interest-free periods. There are 12 interest-free periods and 5 periods, and it requires a maximum deduction of 3,000 yuan or 6 periods. 3. Each period is 40 yuan. The purpose of the use threshold and deduction fee limit for interest-free coupons is to encourage users to borrow longer and more amounts of money. On the other hand, the interest-free fee deduction limit is to balance activity experience and risk control from the perspective of cost and black industry control, thereby ensuring the profit margin of the activity.
• Step2. After the user completes the loan, he can get a lottery opportunity. The higher the loan amount, the higher the chance of winning the lottery. He can get a maximum of 7 lottery opportunities. He can win one iPhone and the total amount of prizes per iPhone is limited. After borrowing, you will get a lottery opportunity. The higher the amount of the loan, the more opportunities you will get a lottery, which will prompt users to make more payments.

Through the above two key steps, the links are linked, and users are constantly stimulated to complete the loan.

• Step3, "Follow the WeChat public account to increase the amount of 20,000 yuan" to divert traffic to the official account to increase the number of fans of the WeChat public account.
• Step4, as a traffic diversion portal, divert traffic for paid members on the platform, attract more new users to become paid members, and add more "super users" to the platform.

C. Solid brand activities: recommended star rating - ★★★★★★

The value of solidification activities is to leave a solidified impression in the user's mind, thereby occupying the user's mind, so that when users make decisions, the first thing they think of in their minds is your platform, reducing user decision-making costs and decision-making paths. For example, if you want to drink milk tea, you will think of "Heytea" in your mind at the first time, you will think of "Heytea" and "Coffee" in your mind at the first time, you will think of Starbucks at the first time.

Typical representatives of the industry:

China Merchants Finance: By setting up an "activity calendar", after sorting out annual, monthly and daily activities, users can clearly know the content of the platform's discount activities and leave a fixed impression in users' minds to increase users' stickiness to the platform.

D. Tool-driven driving of life and consumption scenarios: recommended star rating - ★★★★★

"Only those who get the scene can stand invincible!"

Financial scenarios themselves are low-frequency scenarios. Compared with daily or monthly "rigid demand" APPs such as social networking, e-commerce, payment, takeaway, and maps, user stickiness and activity are lower. In the past, companies might have paid more attention to the power of channels, but now they need to take action around customers. Using customer behavior data can more accurately reflect users' risk characteristics and preferences, and then recommend appropriate products to them and make timely adjustments according to their needs to form higher-level product development.

For example: For example, the operating conditions of China Merchants Bank’s credit card analysis, the proportion of traffic in non-financial scenarios has accounted for 44%, and as China Merchants Bank continues to expand consumption scenarios, the proportion of traffic in non-financial scenarios is increasing.

(Picture source and the Internet)

E. Check-in activity: Recommended star rating - ★★★★

The main function of check-in is to make inactive old users more active, because people's impressions will gradually fade over time. The function of sign-in is to remind users every day that if such an application exists, it will associate it with the first time to encounter related usage scenarios. Once you sign in continuously, there will be a cost of giving up. At the same time, it can be operated in combination with various preferential activities to effectively activate users.

F. Content value + community-driven: recommended star rating - ★★★

Community is the basis for the platform to establish a sense of participation between users. Community can allow the platform to communicate in depth with users and bring closer relationships. At the same time, the community can also conduct in-depth content dissemination. The operation of a platform involves all aspects. It is difficult for users to understand the detailed information of the platform products through the micro-customer service system and WeChat system, and it is difficult for the official website documents to be perfect. At this time, the community is a good platform and channel for communicating with users. Through community precipitation and continuous maintenance content operation, the activity of existing users is maintained.

For example: For example, the "Lu Tan Talks about Money" of China Merchants Finance, the "Youliu Community" of 360 IOU, and the "hot information" of Baidu Youqian.

4. Operational strategies for revenue growth

The 28 principle is a common law. In business, 20% of users contribute 80% of revenue, and in the field of consumer finance is no exception.

Based on the 28th principle, when the industry's big cake shrinks, consumer finance institutions need to think clearly: which users are your core users must be kept; those users can strategically give up - often they have to give up.

Identifying core users is relatively simple, but you should also avoid two misunderstandings:

• First, link core users with high credit rating users. In fact, in the 28 principle of user contribution, users with high credit ratings are usually not within the 20%. A simple example is credit card customers. The majority of the revenue of credit card business is interest income, and those users with current bill installments and economic conditions are the main contributors to interest income. Another reason is that users with high credit ratings usually flow to low-interest loan products and eventually become users of licensed institutions such as banks. For general platforms, they can’t keep them even if they want to.
• The second is to link core users with high re-borrow rate users. It is of course right to increase the re-borrow rate of users. Many platforms rely on high re-borrow rates of nearly 70% to support the rapid growth of their business. However, for individual users, frequent borrowing does not bode well. In many cases, the borrower's capital chain may be extremely tight, and even fall into the dilemma of repaying loans with loans. Among the re-borrowing users, which are the core users with high stickiness and which are high-risk users need to be distinguished specifically.

Loan cashback category:

By holding the "Borrow Money and Cashback" event, the more money the user borrows, the higher the amount of cash back, which stimulates users to complete longer periods and more loan amounts.

5. Fission propagation

The invitation mechanism is just a commonly used new-hiring tool in the early stages of the product. With the operation and development, it has gradually emerged to activate functions such as converting users, activating old users, awakening silent users, recalling lost users, increasing revenue. With orders with increasingly high traffic and increasing customer acquisition costs, the invitation friend function has gradually become the favorite and even standard configuration of major Internet platforms due to its high conversion rate, low customer acquisition costs, and high user customer base quality. It has also begun to become one of the indicators for the KPI assessment of the company's operating position.

As a platform, why should we design a friend invitation mechanism? To sum up, there are only three points:

• First, the product is really good, providing users with an entrance for recommendations to friends to satisfy their own sense of honor after using it.
• Second, by inviting friends to your platform to participate in the event, earn some real rewards.
• Third, if other family members have it, your family must have it, even if I don’t.

In the Internet finance field where feelings hurt money, don’t naively fantasize that users will willingly recommend their products as "tap water". Only money is the most core driving force. The invitation scenario is basically how to use money to help users help the platform attract new users.

Basically, there are currently the following types of invitation rewards for consumer finance:

1. Invite gifts (both parties make profits), which can attract new traffic; the effect can be traced;
2. Fission red envelopes (profits from multiple parties) play a role in attracting new traffic; the effects can be traced;
3. Group buying (profit from multiple parties) plays a role in attracting traffic and converting; the effects can be traced;
4. Distribution (direct benefit), new conversion is easy to spread; effects can be traced
5. Share benefits (one party makes profits), attract new traffic, and the effects can be traced
6. Others; medal rewards, check-in marketing, and personal posters (honors, sharing) play a role in brand promotion and improve user stickiness.

(1) Inviting friends to enjoy gifts: Recommended star rating - ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

User incentive mechanism: a driving mechanism for users to make money.

User requirements: loan discount.

Reward method: basic reward + ladder reward,.

Activity goal: Through ladder rewards, attract inviters to invite more new users and add more fission levels.

(2) Invite friends to enjoy interest-free: Recommended star rating - ★★★★★★★★★★

User incentive mechanism: a driving mechanism for users to save money.

User needs: Save money - loan discount.

Reward method: The more friends you invite, the more rewards you will receive.

(3) Invite friends to increase the credit limit: Recommended star rating - ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

User incentive mechanism: a driving mechanism for user increase.

User requirements: Get more credits.

Reward method: Successfully invite friends to get the credit limit.

Activity goal: By packaging the credit limit, you can get a certain amount of credit when successfully inviting friends, and encourage users to complete more friends invitation goals.

(4) Partner: Recommended star rating - ★★★★★★★★★★★

User incentive mechanism: a driving mechanism for user increase.

User requirements: Get more credits.

Reward method: Successfully invite friends to get the credit limit.

Activity goal: By packaging the credit limit, you can get a certain amount of credit when successfully inviting friends, and encourage users to complete more friends invitation goals.

(5) Invite friends to enjoy a gift: Recommended star rating - ★★★★★★★

User incentive mechanism: a driving mechanism for users to save money.

User needs: Get the desired physical reward.

Reward method: Successfully invite friends to receive physical rewards.

(6) Fission-related friend invitation activities: Recommended star rating - ★★★★★★★

User incentive mechanism: profit-driven (making money) + emotional-driven (sharing desires) mechanism.

User requirements: Get real cash rewards.

Reward method: Share the event with friends and ask friends to help. If friends successfully complete their goals, they can get corresponding cash rewards, so as to create brand voice communication and bring more new users to the platform.

6. Branding demands

What is the brand? Why are there brands? What role does brands play in our lives?

What does Liang Ning say is a brand? It's the brand if you want to take a selfie with it.

Let’s first imagine a scenario: if there is no brand in the world.

One day you suddenly wanted to buy a set of fitness equipment, so you opened Tmall and hundreds of brands appeared after searching. From the appearance, there is almost no difference. But due to the different materials used, the prices vary. How do you choose at this time?

Do you believe that more expensive products have better quality? Maybe this is your only criterion for judgment at the moment, otherwise you will have to check various information in detail to see which brand is best for you - there is no doubt that such a life will consume a lot of energy.

So what is the value of a brand?

When you want to buy a set of sports equipment, the first thing you think of is Under Armour and a shirt, the first thing you think of is Tommy. Therefore, the main function of a brand for users is to make life simple! For merchants, brands are a means to distinguish their products from competitors and thus continue to make profits.

Charity activities endorse brands, that is, to promote their own brand by doing good deeds, have become one of the most commonly used methods for enterprises.

Example 1: Paipaidai's "Thousands of People and Tens of Millions to Work Fund" Plan

Example 2: China Merchants Finance’s “Credit Youth” Program