How can online education improve purchase conversion rate?

If you are working in the education industry, you will definitely be familiar with the training camp model.

I have worked in the education industry for many years and I know very well that training camps have been popular throughout the industry for a long time and are indeed a powerful tool for educational institutions to achieve enrollment.

Many online education institutions have stood out with a set of training camps, including many well-known ones: Changtou Academy, Baby Play English, Walnut Programming, He Xiaoxiang...

These institutions have achieved reduced customer acquisition costs and increased course conversion rates by relying on a set of well-polished and detailed training camps, thereby making substantial profits. In the current capital winter, these educational institutions can still maintain sufficient cash flow and are in a good development trend.

Training camps are so valuable, so how should online education institutions scientifically and reasonably plan a training camp product?

This article will discuss this topic, and the article is generally divided into two parts: theory and analysis.

• In the theory section, I will introduce to you some theoretical frameworks about training camps that I have personally summarized;
• The disassembly section will use these theoretical frameworks to disassemble the excellent training camp products on the market.

This article contains both theories and cases, and strives to explain in depth the training camp, the most commonly used operational tool in the education industry. I hope you will gain something after reading it.

Ok, without further ado, let’s get into the main text.

I. Theory

The core product of the training camp is the experience class. In the final analysis, the training camp is an iterative upgrade of the experience class in packaging form.

In the early stages of online education, in order to promote course sales, educational institutions would usually split out a portion of high-priced courses and put them together into a low-priced or even free trial course.

These trial classes can be used for customer acquisition and conversion. Through the trial classes, users can fully understand the courses and decide whether to sign up.

After the rise of mobile Internet, especially after the emergence of WeChat, everyone was included in the WeChat ecosystem. Everyone can send and receive messages and communicate with others conveniently through WeChat. The learning model of online courses + community companionship such as training camps became possible.

Since then, experience classes have often been packaged as training camps to acquire and convert customers.

The essence of a training camp is an iterative upgrade in the packaging of a trial class. The core of its product is the trial class, and its ultimate goal is the same as that of the trial class, which is to attract traffic to high-priced classes.

The popular training camp products on the market are complex and come in various forms. But if we analyze from the perspective of the user life cycle, we will find that these training camp products are inherently consistent.

This consistency is reflected in the three nodes that a user will inevitably go through when consuming a training camp product : traffic channel-WeChat community-high-priced courses.

1. Three nodes of the training camp product

Node 1: Traffic Channel

The goal of this node is to acquire customers. The operators will place the training camp products in some traffic channels, including but not limited to: WeChat official accounts, Moments, Zhihu, Douyin/Kuaishou.

In this node, users will be exposed to the training camp for the first time, and if they are interested in the training camp, they will proceed to the next node.

Node 2: WeChat community

The purpose of this node is retention and conversion. The operators will retain the users acquired in the previous node through WeChat communities. In addition, they will also guide users to follow public accounts and add private WeChat accounts.

Through this series of operations, users are circled into multiple traffic pools, ensuring that operators can reach any user.

In this stage, users complete the delivery of training camp courses and the sales conversion to high-priced courses within the WeChat community.

Node 3: High-priced courses

When the user is successfully converted, he or she will come to the high-priced course stage. One thing that should be noted here is that the course experience of the trial class and the high-priced course should be kept as consistent as possible.

The reason is simple. If the course experience is lower than that of high-priced courses, then this training camp is undoubtedly a failure, because it fails to reflect the value of the course itself, and the conversion rate of the training camp will inevitably not be high.

If the course experience is better than that of high-priced courses, the conversion rate may be higher, but this may lead to user complaints and is not conducive to subsequent user retention and word-of-mouth building.

In short, traffic channels, WeChat communities and high-priced courses are the three key nodes that users will inevitably go through in a training camp product.

Broadly speaking, any training camp product is designed around these three key nodes.

If we look at it from the perspective of traffic, these three nodes also form a funnel model.

The first layer of the funnel reaches the largest amount of traffic. With each layer down, part of the traffic will be filtered out until the final point of the funnel - high-priced courses.

For such a funnel model, the key to the problem is to improve the conversion rate between each layer of the funnel and reduce unnecessary traffic losses.

From this point on, we can divide these three nodes into two stages:

2. Two Phases

Phase 1: Traffic Channel-WeChat Community

The core of this stage is a link, which connects the external traffic channel on one end and the WeChat community of the training camp on the other end.

Through this link, users come to the WeChat community of the training camp from external channels. From the perspective of private domain traffic, it is equivalent to users entering the private domain from the public domain.

The first priority of this link is to make the link as smooth as possible, reduce user discomfort during the process, and reduce traffic loss.

Phase 2: WeChat Community-High-Priced Courses

Unlike Phase 1, the core of Phase 2 is not the link but the routine.

Please don't laugh.

At this stage, users have already come to the WeChat group. So, how can we guide users to high-priced courses while completing course delivery and ultimately achieve sales conversion? This is the core task of this stage. Relying on link drive is certainly not enough to complete this task, and it requires routines.

It takes a relatively long process for users to convert from trial classes to high-priced classes.

During this process, operators need to maintain high-frequency communication with users and use multiple routines to enable users to complete the course purchase behavior.

These routines also reflect the operator's deep insight into the user group.

"Traffic channel-WeChat community" and "WeChat community-high-priced courses" are the two stages that users go through in the training camp products. The core of the first stage is the link, and the core of the second stage is the routine.

Next, we will start from these two stages and analyze in detail the excellent training camps on the market from the perspective of links and routines.

Okay, let’s move on to the disassembly.

2. Disassembly

Phase 1: Traffic Channel-WeChat Community

"Traffic channel-WeChat community" is the first stage that users go through. If we further split this link, we will find that this link often involves three nodes: official accounts, WeChat private accounts, and WeChat communities.

In other words, after completing this link, the user will complete these operations respectively: follow the official account, add a private WeChat account, and finally enter the WeChat community of the training camp.

It should be noted that WeChat private accounts and WeChat communities are necessary links in this chain, but following public accounts is not necessary. Due to the continued decline in the opening rate of official accounts, many training camps have removed official accounts from this link.

In order to give everyone a more intuitive understanding of this link, let’s look at an example from Who’s Teaching.

Case 1: Who to learn from

The link between “APP – WeChat community” of Getuixue.com is very well designed.

There are many educational institutions that have APPs on the market, such as Yuanfudao, Zebra English, Changtou Academy, etc.

However, the links between their "APP – WeChat community" seem to be very similar, without any major highlights.

Only Who's Learning From makes people's eyes light up.

Getui has made this link into a truly "fool-proof" link, with extremely low operating costs for users. A user with no APP operating experience can also successfully complete the migration from APP to WeChat by following the link instructions.

First, open the GSX app and enter the details page of a training camp, as shown below:

From the details page, we can learn that this training camp is: a 5-day training camp for mathematics proposition experts, which is free of charge, with a period of 5 days and one class per day.

When we click the orange button "Register Now" in the lower right corner, a pop-up window will pop up at the bottom to guide users to follow the service account, as shown below:

The pop-up text notifies users that "open class registration is successful", which connects well with the previous link.

Then the copy at the bottom reminds users to follow the official account and guides users to move on to the next link in the chain.

When the user clicks the "Follow the official account now" button, the WeChat mini program of Who’s Teaching will be immediately opened. Everyone, please pay attention. From this step on, users officially enter the WeChat ecosystem from the APP.

In other words, Getuixue completed the connection from APP to WeChat through WeChat mini-programs.

In order to further reduce the user's learning cost, the mini program page also thoughtfully provides users with a step-by-step demonstration of how to follow a public account.

In fact, users can completely follow the public account without watching the step-by-step demonstration, because the design of this link is so "foolproof".

Let’s look at the following:

When the user clicks the "Follow the Official Account Now" button, he will come to the customer service conversation interface of the mini program. The mini program that needs to be sent is already prepared for the user in the lower right corner. As shown below:

When the user sends the mini program, the QR code of the Getuixue official account will automatically pop up, along with a text guide to follow.

When the user scans the QR code to follow the official account, a message will pop up automatically, congratulating the user on their successful registration and guiding them to add the salesperson’s WeChat private account, as shown below:

When users add a private WeChat account, sales staff will immediately send out an electronic version of learning materials to narrow the distance between themselves and the users and increase their favorability.

At the same time, we will briefly inquire about the child's situation to prepare for subsequent refined operations. Finally, send the invitation link to join the group, as shown below:

The user clicks on the group link to enter the training camp’s WeChat group, and the “APP-WeChat community” link is ended.

The above is the link design of Who’s Teaching. We can briefly review it and find that there are two highlights of this link of Who’s Teaching.

1. After completing this link, users will enter the four main WeChat traffic pools: mini programs, official accounts, WeChat private accounts, and WeChat groups. Multiple traffic pools will circle users, ensuring accurate reach of users and preventing user loss.
2. At the same time, the link remains very smooth. Each link fits together very closely. Although there are many links and steps, the whole process is done in one go and is very natural, without any obvious discomfort.

To a certain extent, this also allows users to have a good impression of the institution's brand without taking any courses.

Of course, you can also add some new user-attracting methods to this link, just like Walnut Programming, and integrate it into the group buying method.

Case 2: Walnut Programming

Walnut Programming's training camp adopts a group-buying method. The group registration fee is 9.9 yuan, and the individual registration fee is 49 yuan. In order to ensure the user experience of the group buying function, the link of Walnut Programming relies on WeChat mini-programs.

Then let’s take a look at how this training camp, which relies on mini programs and integrates group buying gameplay, designs its links.

First, scan the QR code to enter the Walnut Programming Training Camp mini program. As shown in the figure:

From the details page, you can see that users have three options for signing up for courses: initiate their own group purchase, participate in someone else's group purchase, or purchase individually.

When the user clicks the 9.9 yuan group purchase button, the page jumps directly to the payment page.

The remaining places and remaining payment time are displayed at the top of the page, prompting users to complete payment as soon as possible.

The middle of the page displays the refined selling points of the course and guides users to fill in their mobile phone numbers, which will be used to remind users to attend classes after the course starts.

After the user fills in the mobile phone number and completes the payment, he/she will be redirected to the course selection interface.

On this page, users can choose the appropriate class start time according to their own schedule, corresponding to different classes.

After selecting the start time of the course and clicking the "OK" button, the user will successfully start the group.

Next, the mini program prompts the user to turn on message notifications to get reminders of the group purchase progress, as shown below:

After turning on message reminders, the mini program will guide users to add the salesperson’s private WeChat.

Like GSX, this step also provides users with clear step-by-step instructions, as shown below.

After the user clicks the "Click to reply with the number 0 to add a teacher" button, he/she will be redirected to the customer service conversation interface of the mini program.

Reply with the number 0, and a page link and a paragraph of dialogue will pop up, as shown below.

Click the link and you will see two QR codes, one is the operator’s private WeChat account, and the other is the service account QR code.

If a user follows a service account, a page link will automatically pop up to guide the user to share it for the second time. When the user enters the page, he will see his own exclusive promotional poster.

If the user scans the QR code to add the salesperson’s WeChat, the next step is to create a group using the normal procedures.

The above is the training camp link of Walnut Programming.

After reading this article, I believe you will have a preliminary understanding of the link design of the training camp. Next, we will enter the second stage and see what course selling routines are used in WeChat groups.

Phase 2: WeChat Community-High-Priced Courses

The goal of this stage is user conversion. While completing the delivery of trial courses, try to direct as many users as possible to high-priced courses.

There is no doubt that this stage is the main body and essence of the training camp product. Links cannot form the core competitiveness of a training camp product. Only the value of the experience class itself and the routine design around it are the real core competitiveness of a training camp product.

After dissecting almost all the popular training camps on the market, I summarized the course selling routines in WeChat communities into three parts. They are course delivery, user education and closing deals.

• The first stage is to provide user value, gain user trust and ensure a good user reach through course delivery;
• The second stage, based on the first stage, is to brainwash users and let them understand the necessity of learning high-priced courses;
• The third link, based on the first two links, quickly facilitates user transactions through strategies such as limited-time specials, group buying, and flash sales.

In short, the first link provides value, the second link introduces the product, and the third link facilitates the transaction.

These three links are closely linked and progressive, together forming a conversion funnel connecting trial classes and high-priced classes. They are the underlying logic and framework for user conversion for most training camp products on the market.

Stage 1: Course Delivery

The first session is aimed at completing the course delivery of the boot camp. The course delivery process is often achieved through WeChat groups, so this link, to a certain extent, determines the value of this group to users.

It is precisely because this group is valuable that users will not quit the group or block the group, thus ensuring good user reach.

This part often includes these operational actions: opening ceremony, learning tasks posted in the group every day, and the final graduation ceremony.

Through these operational actions, the institution completed the curriculum delivery of the training camp.

This link is the basic link and also the top priority. If this link is completed well, it will greatly enhance the user's trust in the organization and will be of great help to subsequent conversions.

In order to give everyone a more intuitive understanding, let’s look at the example of Zebra English.

First of all, Zebra English did a very good job at the opening ceremony of the training camp.

At the opening ceremony, the operation staff will first convey the teaching methods, course content, and common problems of this training camp to users in a very detailed and appropriate manner. As shown below:

Next, it was time for group members to introduce themselves to each other, which was also the highlight of the training camp’s opening ceremony.

First of all, Teacher Alan, who is in charge of this training camp, will take the lead in introducing himself and post a self-introduction video in the group. At the end of the video, he will guide parents to post their children’s self-introduction videos in the group. As shown below:

At the teacher's call, parents posted their children's self-introduction videos in the group. Teacher Alan would also send voice messages, comment and reply one by one, and @the relevant parents. As shown below.

The above is the opening ceremony of the Zebra English Training Camp. We can see that the opening ceremony of Zebra English consists of two parts.

First, introduce the teaching methods, course content and other information of this training camp to parents; second, group members introduce themselves to each other.

Personally, I think the biggest highlight is the self-introduction session.

The opening ceremony of all training camps will introduce the teaching methods and course content of this training camp, which is almost a standard feature of training camp products.

But by allowing the children to introduce themselves and respond to comments one by one, there is an additional interactive process. This is different from the opening ceremonies held by other institutions, which often just instill information in users in a one-way manner.

On the one hand, when users introduce themselves, it invisibly adds a sense of ritual to the opening ceremony; on the other hand, this kind of interaction also enables operators to quickly narrow the distance between themselves and users, gain initial trust, and allow users to form a good brand impression, laying the foundation for subsequent conversions.

In addition to the opening ceremony, there are also learning tasks posted in the group every day, as well as the final graduation ceremony. Through these three links, Zebra English completed the course delivery of the training camp.

Zebra English’s daily learning tasks can be divided into three parts.

First of all, every afternoon, the teacher in the group will remind everyone of the lessons unlocked today, and users need to complete the lessons in the APP.

Then, at dusk, the teacher will post a video in the group and assign corresponding learning tasks. After users complete their homework, they need to record a video and send it to the group. The teacher will also send voice messages to comment and reply to each question one by one.

Finally, at bedtime, there will be an "ear training" session where the teacher will post English nursery rhymes in the group and encourage parents to let their children fall asleep while listening to the nursery rhymes.

The above three steps will be carried out in the group every day until the end of the training camp after 5 days.

The graduation ceremony after the training camp was relatively simple. It was just a posting of a speech about the closing ceremony in the group.

Step 2: User Education

The second link is user education. You can also understand the education here as "brainwashing". This link is the core link of user conversion.

If we say that through the first link, the user's sense of trust is enhanced, it is ensured that users will not quit the group or block the group, and good user reach is guaranteed.

Then, the second step is to actually carry out the "brainwashing operation" within the group.

After all, the purpose of the training camp is to attract students for high-priced courses.

These "brainwashing operations" often include the packaging and introduction of companies and products, sharing of cases of outstanding students, endorsement and support from authoritative figures, etc.

As a paid institution for providing financial knowledge, Changtou Academy is very strategic and methodical in this regard.

Compared with K12 education, financial education is not a rigid need, and most users have a very superficial understanding of financial management, or even no financial awareness at all.

Therefore, Changtou Academy’s brainwashing education for users largely adopts the strategy of “cognitive subversion”.

First of all, the monitor will post an article in the group every morning and lead everyone in morning reading. Judging from the content, these articles almost all emphasize to users the importance of financial management and pave the way for subsequent conversions to high-priced courses.

Here are some screenshots of morning reading so you can get a feel for the style:

You may ask, in this fragmented era, who has the energy and time to read such an article?

You don't have to worry about this.

The monitor will then read the article to everyone, extracting the essence of the article one by one. If you don’t have time to read the entire article, just read the excerpts directly. This will ensure that all group members will receive the information conveyed by the article to the greatest extent.

After users finish reading the article, they will be guided to express their thoughts on the morning reading. Layer upon layer of morning reading thoughts create a strong learning atmosphere within the group.

In addition to morning reading, there is also an evening sharing session every day. At 8 o'clock every evening, the class monitor will share texts in the group around a certain topic on time.

The content shared in the evening is roughly the same as the morning reading article. It first tells users some practical tips on financial management, and finally emphasizes the importance of financial management.

Morning reading and evening sharing are two of the methods used by Changtou Academy to educate users. Of course, there are some other methods, but due to the length of the article, we will not elaborate on them here.

In short, in this stage, Changtou Academy did not sell courses to users, but has been educating users and "building momentum".

Step 3: Facilitating the transaction

The third step is to facilitate user transactions. If the first two steps go smoothly, the users at this point have been educated almost completely. They have not only experienced the course, but have also received enough positive information about the institution's brand and course products.

In a word, before the formal user conversion, these users have accumulated enough "potential energy", and what is lacking at this time is some operational actions to release this "potential energy".

The result of releasing "potential energy" is buying courses.

These operational actions often include: limited-time discounts, gifts for course purchases, flash sales, lecture conversions, etc.

In this regard, Changtou Academy used a limited-time discount strategy. By formulating limited discount policies for high-priced courses, we can quickly facilitate user transactions.

The training camp of Changtou Academy lasts about 14 days. Around the 8th day, the class leader will announce preferential plans for high-priced courses in the group to conduct direct user conversion, as shown in the figure below.

From then on, when the class monitor announced the morning reading and evening sharing information every day, he would also include the discount plans for high-priced courses to ensure that this information could be seen by everyone.

At the last moment when the course discount is about to expire, the class monitor will continue to emphasize the discount countdown in the group to further enhance the user's sense of urgency.

At the same time, the class monitor will also invite outstanding students from the past to give an online lecture to everyone in the group. Through students’ personal testimonials, we can further dispel users’ doubts and improve conversion efficiency.

I have taken a few screenshots of outstanding students sharing in the group, you can take a look.

The above is roughly the strategy for facilitating transactions at Changtou Academy. In short, Changtou Academy actually only used two strategies: limited-time discounts and lecture conversions. At the same time, these two strategies are also the most commonly used strategies by most training camps on the market.

There's no need to use too many tricks in this part. As long as you can successfully deliver the course and gain the user's trust in the first stage, and successfully complete user education and whet the user's appetite in the second stage.

So, this link is just a by-product. It only releases the "potential energy" accumulated by users in the first two links, nothing more.

What you need to focus on is how to complete the accumulation of this "potential energy" in the first two links. This is the fundamental thing.

3. Conclusion

Finally, let’s summarize the core points of the article:

1. Training camp is a commonly used operational tool in the education industry. In essence, training camp is an iterative upgrade in the packaging of trial classes. The core of its product is the trial class, and the ultimate goal is to attract traffic to high-priced courses.
2. When users consume a training camp product, they will inevitably go through three nodes: traffic channels, WeChat communities and high-priced courses. These three nodes constitute two stages: "traffic channel-WeChat community" and "WeChat community-high-priced courses".
3. Phase 1: The essence of "traffic channel-WeChat community" is a link, which involves three key nodes: official accounts, WeChat private accounts, and WeChat communities. Through this link, users come to the WeChat community of the training camp from external channels.
4. Phase 2: The essence of "WeChat community-high-priced courses" is routines, which can be summarized into three links: course delivery, user education and transaction facilitation. These three links are the underlying logic and framework for training camp products to convert users.

Author: Su Tanbin

Source: Su Tanbin