Affiliate Marketing Methodology

Not long ago, a friend of mine who works in the catering industry sent me a WeChat message to complain that it is too difficult to build a membership system nowadays. Some shopping malls give out gifts upon opening, some distribute flyers every day, and some use all kinds of marketing: "Internet celebrities" and "old stores" with a good reputation.

He tried them all, spending a lot of money, but with little effect. His subordinates secretly criticized Lao Chen for his useless work, and the boss asked about the results all day long. In recent days, he has been dreaming about the luxurious gift packages that will be given for becoming a member!

I can understand his distress very well. The market competition is fierce now, and every company and business is willing to spend money to come up with all kinds of tricks, each showing off their own unique skills.

But sometimes people fall into a vicious circle, that is, if they rush towards a goal for too long, they will forget why they set out.

Please think about it, why do you want to do membership marketing ?

Are you sitting tight? It's time to drive~

1. Why do membership marketing? The following four points are summarized

1. Lower costs

Generally speaking, the cost of maintaining an old customer is lower than the cost of developing a new customer, including economic cost, time cost and labor cost.

The cost of acquiring a new customer is 5-6 times the cost of maintaining an old customer.

2. More precise marketing

Use member information and consumption habits to classify members and provide differentiated services and precise marketing.

3. Higher contribution rate and sustainability

Generally, 80% of a store’s turnover is brought by 20% of loyal old customers. Old customers are the most important customer group. Only by cultivating a group of loyal “fans” can more sustainable income and traffic be brought in.

4. Better brand word-of-mouth publicity

Word-of-mouth recommendations from old customers are often more easily accepted by new customers than advertisements and activities organized by the company, and the effect of attracting new customers is far better than the promotion of the store itself. Every satisfied customer brings in eight potential new customers, at least one of whom will become a loyal customer.

Therefore, we need to sort out these four points and then divide membership marketing into three major sections:

1. Accurately target new members
2. Awakening dormant members
3. Efficient user conversion

2. Four steps to accurately target new members

1. User group positioning

Companies must first identify their own products, accurately position them, and segment their target user groups.

Currently, there are fewer and fewer products that can be launched to all users. The reason is that user needs are becoming more and more diverse, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet the needs of all users with one product.

Even for popular platforms like Didi, Ele.me, and Douyin, the target user groups they target at the beginning are sufficiently segmented.

2. Channel adaptation

After identifying the target user group, you need to find the right channels, which are mainly divided into online, offline and mobile.

There are too many channels to try and error out on all of them, so it is necessary to understand the characteristics of the channel’s own user base.

For example, the main user group of Airport is high-end business travelers, mostly business people; the main user group of Jimeng is young girls who like taking selfies.

There are also some tools that use cloud platforms, which have low costs, cover a wide range of people, and have direct effects. This is also the tool that SUBMAIL has been building.

3. Benchmarking analysis

Before determining the strategy for attracting new customers, there is another important step: benchmarking research.

Benchmark and study the new customer acquisition methods of industry leaders and competitors to understand the key actions and results they take during different stages of the product life cycle, such as the launch, growth, and maturity stages.

4. Develop new customer acquisition strategies

After completing the above work, you can formulate new customer acquisition strategies based on user group positioning and channel attributes, namely, delivery channels, delivery strategies, delivery timing, etc.

If the above work is well prepared, the new customer acquisition strategy will kill 60% of competitors in seconds!

3. Awakening dormant members step by step

From top to bottom, there are high-value members, active members, and the lowest level is dormant members .

There are two types of dormant members: one is a low-priced and low-frequency member, and the other is a dormant member.

Dormant members refer to members who have no consumption records within two months.

We have two operating strategies for dormant members:

1. Attract dormant customers to come back again through wake-up promotions;
2. Collect customer feedback through communication and exchange, and continuously improve and perfect our management and services.

At this point, some friends may have questions. Dormant users have not come to the store to consume for two months. Isn’t it much more difficult and costly for me to wake them up than active members?

It is true, but the operation of members is a funnel. We not only need to operate it through various activities, just like adding sand into the funnel, but we also need to find ways to plug the leak or even get back the sand that has already leaked out. In this way, the user system can grow healthily.

Dormant members are resources that have yet to be mined. We cannot stop operating dormant members simply because the operating costs are relatively high. This will cause the gap in the user funnel to become larger and larger, and ultimately seriously affect the operation of the membership system.

What's more, in addition to narrowing the gap in the user funnel, operating dormant members, we have countless data showing that the cost of retaining an old member is much lower than the cost of acquiring a new member.

Therefore, the operation of dormant members can not only help us retain users, but also help us increase active users.

1. How to wake up dormant members

We call members who have not made transactions for nearly 6 months dormant members. Some of them may have moved out of the business district, but most of them left due to customer complaints.

However, member development has costs. The development cost of each effective member is no less than 25 yuan. Moreover, an unsatisfied customer will tell many people about his feelings, which will affect our corporate image. Therefore, it is necessary to awaken these dormant members.

First, we need to conduct data analysis on existing members to classify them, and send SMS and email marketing to dormant members.

Corresponding promotional coupons are issued based on the dormant time. Generally, the longer the dormant time, the greater the discount of the promotional coupon. Finally, the participation rate of the event is counted.

For example, it can be divided into:

• 30-60 days of no consumption
• 60-90 days of no consumption membership
• Membership that has not been used for more than 90 days

Our biggest goal is to find out the reasons why members are dormant, improve our services and management, and identify marketing shortcomings. Only by finding the cause and solving the problem can we get rid of the root of the problem.

Only by solving the reasons why dormant members fall asleep can we achieve the most efficient awakening rate. Dormant users will not fall asleep again after being awakened, and active users will not easily become dormant members. Only then can the entire membership system grow truly and healthily.

2. Low-price and low-frequency membership operation mode

Their characteristic is that they will come if there are marketing activities giving away gifts, and will not come if there are no marketing activities giving away gifts.

For this group of users. It is recommended that the system screens and identifies a list of users who are not the key activity marketing users.

We often find that some customers only have one membership transaction and never come to our store again. Among these customers, some happened to pass by our store during our promotional activities and applied for membership cards on the spur of the moment when they saw the shopping discounts; some applied for membership cards repeatedly in order to get more gifts for becoming a member; and still others forgot they had already joined our membership.

Therefore, we need to send text messages or emails to new members who joined the previous month on the 1st of each month. "Thank you for joining XX store and becoming our member. We would like to remind you that you will enjoy the following membership benefits... With this message, you can get an instant discount of 5 yuan in cash when shopping in the store."

Birthday/holiday greetings: On the 1st of each month, we will export the information of members who are about to have birthdays that month, send them messages and tell them that they have privileges or can receive gifts.

Exchange points for gratitude and feedback: Each company has its own redemption rules in the member points management system. It is recommended to exchange points at a fixed time every month and send timely SMS reminders.

4. Four powerful tools to efficiently convert users

*Simple, efficient, emotional and expressive*

1. Simple

1) Keep it simple and clear. First, consider subtraction and cut out unnecessary barriers and links.

For example, for some cash loan products, the personal information page of the main process requires filling in a lot of information. Are commonly used email addresses and company names required to be filled in the main process? If it is not in the main process and is not absolutely necessary, cut it if possible.

2) If it cannot be removed, see how to simplify the existing operations to make the user operation path as short as possible.

For example, when applying for membership or receiving gift packages, the operations should be as simple and clear as possible.

Whenever possible, reduce user input and simplify the user operation process, do not bother the user and let the user perform the simplest operation.

3) Make it simple for users, with low cost of understanding and unified cognition

The copy is concise and powerful, with low understanding cost, and can also make users feel that your product is simple and uncomplicated.

2. Benefits, interests, and profit-driven

Rewards for users can be simply divided into three categories:

1. One is a real preferential reward
2. One is the virtual reward of status enhancement to satisfy vanity
3. One is that not doing so will cause you losses

We can provide targeted incentives for these three types of rewards to improve conversions.

1) Preferential rewards

2) Virtual identity or status privileges

For example, regarding user classification, users of different levels have different membership levels and privileges.

3) Tell users what they will lose if they don’t do this

Compared to "telling users what benefits will come from doing this", "telling users what disadvantages will come from not doing this" will bring better promotion effects. 360 Safe Browser achieves very good promotion effect by telling users that if they do not install 360 Safe Browser, they may enter unsafe websites or phishing websites when visiting websites or shopping, which may cause losses. It also provides statistics on "how many people suffer how much loss in a day".

3. Emotion, emotional experience

Greetings for holidays, birthdays, etc. are essential, but the content and form should be more vivid, otherwise it will lack feeling, especially to emphasize the sense of privilege on the birthday. Let users truly feel that the purpose is not to market them, but to truly treat them as VIPs.

For example, use SMS/email mass sending services and send them in the form of variables.

4. Reach users

Reach out to users, tell them the current status and next steps, directly and effectively.

Common ways to reach users are text messages, emails, WeChat public account template messages, etc.

It is best to have a two-way communication so that users’ feedback and opinions can be received in a timely manner.

5. What are the advantages of SMS cloud service? How can I help you?

1. Accuracy

The sending of text messages is different from phone calls. Customers must answer the phone to know our main purpose. However, text messages only need to be sent and customers will receive them, and the reading rate will also increase.

Text messages will not affect each other's normal life, and we can send text messages to each other at any time. Even if the phone is turned off, the text messages will be temporarily stored on the telecom server and the other party will be able to see them when the phone is turned on.

2. Affordability

It costs tens of thousands to place an advertisement of a few seconds on TV, and some people rarely watch TV, but now almost everyone has a mobile phone!

In addition, the reading rate of SMS and emails is higher, which improves the effectiveness of marketing. Achieve quick and accurate delivery of your product information to target customers’ mobile phones.

The most important thing is that the cost is very low.

3. Real-time

It only takes a few simple steps to use SUBMAIL SMS cloud service. The fast transmission of 800 messages per second, three-second delivery and ten-minute access make the transmission of corporate texts more valuable.

4. Flexibility

The timing of SMS and email marketing is extremely flexible, and companies or businesses can choose the time and content of advertising based on product characteristics. Any time, any place, any form of marketing content, just post it whenever you want!

You can use it flexibly in any form in any industry, whether it is notification, marketing, or verification code.

5. Stable and reliable

The SMS cloud service has a delivery rate of up to 99.9%.

6. Easy to operate

SMS cloud service does not need to be sent one by one using mobile phones, but only requires simple operation on the computer, but its functions are very comprehensive and powerful, bringing a more efficient membership system to the company while saving the labor of a team.

For a business that is just starting out, this is a very good way to get the greatest benefits and results in the shortest time and cost! Let users understand the company's products and constantly awaken and convert users! Therefore, it can better help you with membership marketing.

After Lao Chen’s free trial, the number of new members increased by 120% that month and the conversion rate increased by 300! Form a dimensionality reduction attack on other competitors in the mall!

In this era of product oversupply and rapid change, your own efforts and strength are important, but you also have to find ways to achieve twice the result with half the effort!

Author: Cloud spectator

Source: Cloud spectators