A full-link analysis of Pinduoduo's New Year's Eve fission event

This article focuses on the disassembly of activity links, using links as clues to connect the overall page arrangement and interactive design of the activity, in an effort to restore the entire process of the activity. I hope it will bring you more inspiration and thinking.

For a long time, I have been very interested in Pinduoduo's new customer acquisition .

On the one hand, Pinduoduo's new customer acquisition activities often cause a lot of controversy due to their overly simple and crude activity design; on the other hand, behind these controversies, each of Pinduoduo's activities can achieve remarkable results. Judging from the new customer acquisition data, these activities are successful without exception.

Putting aside the controversial points, Pinduoduo's activities are indeed worthy of reference and learning for every operator.

However, due to the lack of suitable opportunities, I have not been able to personally conduct a detailed analysis of Pinduoduo's activities. However, on the last night of 2019, when all major platforms were broadcasting New Year’s Eve parties, Pinduoduo launched a low-key New Year’s Eve event.

The opportunity finally came.

Pinduoduo's New Year's Eve event was co-organized with Hunan Satellite TV's "New Year's Eve Concert" and the event lasted only about 6 hours. Although the event was short, the overall style and link logic of the event were still consistent with the previous ones, and because of micro-innovations in some aspects, this event actually had many highlights and was worth analyzing.

Okay, enough of the nonsense, let’s get into the main text.

For the disassembly of this event, I will focus on the disassembly of the activity links. Using the links as clues, I will connect the overall page arrangement and interactive design of the event, and strive to restore the entire process of the event. This article retains a large number of screenshots for every stage of the activity, so it is recommended that you save this article. If you need to do similar new customer acquisition activities in the future, this article can be kept as a reference.

The picture below is the main page of Pinduoduo's New Year's Eve event. According to the display on the main page, this New Year's Eve event can be divided into three special sessions:

• The first special event is an event where you can give away 100 yuan in cash, and this special event occupies the most prominent position on the page.
• The second special event is a flash sale with the theme of 9.9 yuan flash sale for New Year's Eve.
• The third special event is a special sale with the theme of New Year’s Eve Super Sale.

The first special event – ​​“Give away 100 yuan in cash”. In fact, it is roughly the same as Pinduoduo’s “Get Cash Every Day” event in November last year. This event also adds 4 new ways to get extra cash. These ways will be introduced in detail below.

The second special event is “New Year’s Eve 9.9 yuan flash sale”. This is a relatively novel activity. The general logic of the activity is that 2 items of the same type will be placed at 5 time points for users to buy in seconds. To be eligible for the flash sale, you need to invite 6 friends. For the first item sold out, 10 purchasing users will be randomly selected and each will receive 2,020 yuan in cash.

The third special event – ​​“New Year’s Eve Super Sale”. There are not many points that can be discussed about this event. This special event is just an aggregation of discounted promotional products. If the first two activities have incorporated a lot of fission gameplay with the purpose of attracting traffic to the activities, then the responsibility of the third special event is only to convert traffic.

This article will focus on analyzing the first two special events. The third special event is not the focus of this article.

Let’s take a look at the first special event:

Special event 1: "Send 100 yuan in cash"

From the perspective of links, the first special event can be divided into three links:

• The first link is the link where the APP guides the user into the activity, which I call the entry link;
• The second link is the link where the APP guides users to complete the sharing action, which I call the guidance link;
• The third link is the four ways of playing mentioned above that can earn extra cash. These four ways of playing do not belong to the key core links of the activity, so I call them secondary links.

The entry link, the guide link and the secondary link, these three links constitute the whole of this special event. Starting from these three links, we are able to completely disassemble this special event.

Link 1: Enter the link

Users come to the event main page through the entry link and then participate in the event. Therefore, a primary goal of designing the event entry link is to ensure the reach of the event to users. If this link causes a very high user churn rate, then this link is undoubtedly a failure.

Let’s take a look at how Pinduoduo’s activity entry link is designed.

During the event, when users open the Pinduoduo APP, the first thing that catches their eye is an extremely eye-catching red envelope pop-up window, which strongly guides users to click, which ensures that this event can reach all users to the greatest extent.

The user clicks on the red envelope pop-up window and then enters the main page of the New Year's Eve event, as shown below:

Judging from the main page, the first special event is undoubtedly the highlight of this New Year's Eve event. Because we will find that the special event of "Get a 100 yuan red envelope" occupies a strong position on the first screen. Among them, the disc button "Receive" is located in the center of the page, strongly guiding users to click, which also connects perfectly with the red envelope pop-up window in the previous link.

When the user clicks the disc button "Receive", a red envelope pop-up window will appear again, as shown below:

Everyone, pay attention, does this red envelope pop-up window look familiar to you?

That’s right, the style of this pop-up window is modeled after WeChat red envelopes. I believe everyone is familiar with WeChat red envelopes. By utilizing the familiar WeChat red envelope style, this pop-up window brings a natural sense of user trust, making users instinctively want to click on it as soon as they see the red envelope pop-up window.

The pop-up text also reiterated that the minimum red envelope amount is 50 yuan. By enhancing the attractiveness of the bait, users are further driven to click on the pop-up window.

When the user clicks on the red envelope pop-up window, he/she will come to the red envelope collection details page, as shown below. The “Withdraw Now” button is the focus of this page, and it is obvious that the design of this page is once again modeled after the details page of WeChat red envelopes.

At the beginning of the activity, the user was given a relatively large initial amount of 89.01 yuan. In terms of the details of the activity, the user himself was also arranged to have the "best luck", which further stimulated the user to click the withdrawal button.

When the user clicks "Withdraw Now", he will officially enter the main page of the special event.

As shown on the page, users will clearly see the cumulative amount of cash they have received. In addition, the lower part of the page also provides four ways to receive additional cash - click to receive cash, grab millions of red envelopes, scan the code face to face, and send group assistants.

These four ways of playing will not be expanded in this section, but will be broken down in detail in the subsequent secondary links of activities.

So, the above is the complete entry link disassembly of the activity. Let’s make a summary first:

The schematic diagram of this link is as follows:

This link consists of 5 steps, involving 3 pages and 2 red envelope pop-up windows. If you only look at the number, you may think that entering the activity requires 5 steps, which is a bit too long. However, after actually experiencing it, you will find that these links are closely linked and the details are exquisite.

In particular, the interactive style of red envelope pop-up is used, allowing users to enter the next link of the chain by opening the red envelope. This to some extent enhances the sense of ritual of users' participation in the event and increases the sense of value of this event in the minds of users.

Another point is that in terms of interaction, this link actually uses a large number of dynamic buttons, such as the "Invite Friends to Help" button and the "Open Red Envelope" button, which are all dynamic, which will undoubtedly further enhance the click rate of these buttons.

But having only this one entry link is definitely far from enough.

Therefore, in addition to this link, Pinduoduo also designed another link for this event, namely, the guiding link of the event. Next, let’s take a look at how the activity’s guide link is designed.

Link 2: Guide Link

The main purpose of this event of Pinduoduo is to attract new users. If you want to attract new users, you have to encourage users to share.

Therefore, "user sharing" is equivalent to a key behavior of users for this activity. Each link of the activity is ultimately designed around the key behavior of "user sharing".

If Pinduoduo has maximized the reach of this event through a series of interlocking entry links, then the guidance link to be discussed next has ensured the occurrence of the key behavior of "user sharing" to the greatest extent.

So, let’s take a look at how this guidance link ensures that the key behavior of “user sharing” occurs.

First, the user is guided through the entry link and arrives at the main page of the activity, as shown below:

We can see that the focus of this main page is the golden button that guides users to share. And to attract attention, this button is actually dynamic.

When the user clicks this button, a pop-up window will appear to show the withdrawal progress to the user. The focus of the pop-up window is still the share button, as shown below:

At this point, some people may have questions: Since the user has already clicked the share button, why should we give the user a pop-up window asking him to click the share button again? Why not just let users share?

Please note that showing the withdrawal progress to users is not redundant. On the contrary, this step is actually very important.

This step presents the key information of withdrawal progress directly to the user through a pop-up window. The display of withdrawal progress will make users subconsciously feel that they are very close to withdrawing money, thereby unconsciously increasing their motivation to share.

This kind of optimization and attention to details is worthy of learning and reference for each of our operators.

As an aside, for a full-link fission activity , the optimization and polishing of details are often the key to success. In terms of the overall design of the link, to a certain extent, all companies are similar, and it is the optimization of details that can reflect the true concept and level of an operator.

Back to the main text, when the user clicks the share button again, he/she will enter the regular WeChat sharing link, that is, guiding the user to copy the password and share it with WeChat friends.

When the user has finished sharing on WeChat and returns to the activity page from WeChat, a red envelope pop-up window will appear.

Then, when the user opens the red envelope, he or she will receive a pop-up reminder that he or she has received 2.71 yuan in cash.

At this point, the link of user sharing and getting cash has ended.

In this link, the threshold for obtaining cash is quite low. Regardless of whether the user actually shares the activity, as long as the sharing action is completed, the cash can be obtained immediately.

Users may still have some doubts about this event at the beginning, but after this link is completed, I believe this mentality will be largely dispelled.

Therefore, the copy at the bottom of the pop-up window guides users to share two more group chats to receive cash again.

The link design after this is the same as before. After the user clicks the "Share Group Chat" button, he/she enters the WeChat sharing link again. When the user shares two group chats in a row, he/she can successfully receive the cash.

The above is a complete breakdown of this guidance link.

If the user clicks the "Invite Friends to Help Get Cash" button again at this time, he will still enter the WeChat sharing link. The difference is that when the user returns to the activity page again, a text reminder will pop up on the page instead of the previous red envelope pop-up window, as shown below:

In other words, at this time, if users want to continue to earn cash, they can only continue to invite friends to help.

At this point, the user has officially entered the core process of this activity.

Let us summarize this activity guidance link again.

In general, users completed three sharing behaviors through the guidance of this link, once sharing to friends and twice sharing to group chats.

Why is such a link designed separately? What is the significance of this link in the activity?

My personal opinion:

First, by completing this link, the cumulative amount I received increased from 89.01 yuan at the beginning to 92.98 yuan, and only 7.02 yuan was left for withdrawal.

Loss aversion will make me reluctant to leave the event, as leaving will mean wasting these quotas, so I will try my best to continue inviting friends to help until the withdrawal quota of 100 yuan is reached.

Second, it is very easy for users to get cash in this link, because the sharing link in this link is actually in name only. As long as the WeChat sharing interface is called up, it will be recorded as sharing and users can get cash.

This makes users feel that reaching a withdrawal amount of 100 yuan is possible, easy, and within reach (although in the end users will find that the gap created by the 7.02 yuan will be the farthest distance in the world).

Both of these points pave the way for users to engage in this key behavior of sharing.

The entry link and guide link of the activity are the two most critical and important links of this activity. To some extent, they ensure that users have sufficient motivation before officially sharing.

At the same time, this is also one of the reasons why many institutions learn from Pinduoduo but ultimately fail to achieve real results.

It's very simple. After users have completed these two links, they will enter the core link of "share with friends - friends help - get cash" until the withdrawal standard of 100 yuan is reached.

Many institutions only see this core link and ignore the series of preparations made by Pinduoduo before this. Without analyzing Pinduoduo's activities from a holistic and global perspective, we will never be able to learn the key and essence of Pinduoduo's fission activities.

Despite this, Pinduoduo is clearly not satisfied with just these two links. Since it wants to play with fission growth, it will play with fission growth to the extreme. So in addition to these two links, Pinduoduo has designed four other ways to earn extra cash. I classify these four ways as secondary links.

Link 3: Secondary Link

Next, let’s break down these four ways of playing:

As shown in the figure below, when the user returns to the main page of the event, he will see 4 buttons at the bottom of the page. These 4 buttons correspond to 4 ways to get extra cash, namely: grab cash at the hour, million red envelope rain, face-to-face code scanning, and group assistant.

The first way to play is to grab cash at the hour.

The logic of the gameplay is actually very simple. At every hour, the button text will change from "Get cash at the hour" to "Click to get cash". Users can receive a certain amount of cash by clicking, and they need to complete the sharing action to receive the cash.

The entire link process is as follows:

The second way to play is a rain of millions of red envelopes.

The gameplay is also very simple. A series of time periods will be opened, and cash will be given to users in the form of red envelope rain. Each user can only grab 5 red envelopes each time there is a red envelope rain. There are two types of red envelopes: one is a gold red envelope with a larger amount, which requires sharing to be received; the other is an ordinary red envelope with a smaller amount, which can be received without sharing.

The link flow chart is as follows:

The third and fourth ways of playing are fundamentally different from the first two. These two ways of playing are more like a guide to activities than a way of playing.

Face-to-face scanning of the QR code actually allows the user to invite his friends to help him by scanning the QR code through WeChat. The link flow is shown below.

The group messaging assistant simply and crudely guides users to use the built-in group messaging assistant in WeChat to send out activities in groups. Let’s take a look at the activity pop-up window that appears when you click the button. It is simply a user guide for the WeChat group messaging assistant.

Obviously, these four ways of playing provide users with four channels to earn extra cash.

We can imagine that when the user enters the main process of the activity, he or she will increase his or her cash balance by constantly inviting friends. If a user still cannot meet the withdrawal criteria after inviting multiple friends, then the user is likely to choose to give up, thus causing a certain amount of user loss to the activity.

Then, these four ways of playing, especially the first two, can bring these users back and stimulate their enthusiasm to participate in the activities again by distributing fixed-point red envelopes to users.

Therefore, from the overall perspective of the event, these four ways of playing are equivalent to a user recall strategy. When users are unable to reach the withdrawal standards by inviting friends, the event will also distribute additional fixed-point red envelopes. Just come to the event page at the hour to receive them. The amount is random. What if you get a big red envelope?

And based on personal experience, every time when the red envelopes are available, the activity page will often freeze and crash due to excessive traffic, which shows that the effect of this gameplay is quite good.

The above is the analysis of the first special event of Pinduoduo’s New Year’s Eve event.

This activity is actually not unfamiliar. As early as November last year, Pinduoduo held an activity called "Get Cash Every Day", and the activity design was basically the same as this one. This part breaks down and analyzes the event from the perspective of activity links. I hope that after reading it, you will have some new inspiration and thoughts.

Special Event 2: "New Year's Eve 9.9 Yuan Flash Sale"

The format of the second special event is relatively novel. Overall, this event is still a flash sale event, but it incorporates many interesting points.

The general format of this event is as follows:

1. If users want to be eligible for flash sales, they need to invite 6 friends.
2. Users can participate in up to five flash sales, and the time points of these five flash sales are 20:15, 21:15, 22:05, and 23:05.
3. In every flash sale, the official will provide 2 similar products for users to purchase. For example, the products provided at the 20:15 session are iPad and Switch, while the products provided at the 22:05 session are Wuliangye and Feitian Moutai.
4. Since Pinduoduo is the title sponsor of Hunan Satellite TV's New Year's Eve concert, in the packaging of the event, the two items in each flash sale correspond to two flash sale teams: the Happy Team and the Tiantian Team, led by He Jiong and Wang Han respectively.
5. This event also incorporates the element of competition. In each flash sale, the official will randomly select 10 users who purchased the products that are sold out first and give them 2,020 yuan in cash.

The link for this event is also relatively simple. First, the user goes to the main page of the New Year's Eve event through the guidance link and finds the module of this special event, as shown below:

When the user clicks on this activity module, he will come to the main page of this special event.

Next, when the user clicks the Invite Friends button, he or she will enter the regular WeChat sharing link and complete a series of actions to invite friends, thereby ultimately obtaining the qualification for the flash sale.

When the flash sale ends, the page will change to show which team wins, that is, which product is sold out first, and the list of winners will be announced as follows.

Personally, I think this event has two highlights in its design, which are worth learning from:

1. Flash sales are integrated into fission, that is, to qualify for flash sales, you need to invite 6 friends

Since there is no need to pay, the threshold for friends to accept invitations is not high, and it is easy for users to complete the invitation task. On the one hand, this expands traffic through fission. On the other hand, users pay the sunk cost of inviting friends, which will also make users cherish this flash sale more.

2. Integrate flash sales into competitions

Each flash sale will provide 2 similar products for users to buy. For the products that are sold out first, 10 users will be selected to receive 2,020 yuan in cash. With the endorsement of Wang Han and He Jiong, and the cooperation with the hosts of Hunan Satellite TV's New Year's Eve concert to promote Pinduoduo's flash sales, the products are almost sold out in an instant every time a flash sale starts.

Conclusion

At the end of the article, let me briefly talk about my personal understanding of "link marketing".

A few days ago, I read an article called "The End of Integrated Marketing, The End of the Link Era"

The article puts forward a point of view:

In the past, integrated marketing aimed to occupy consumers' minds by integrating various channels. However, it is becoming increasingly ineffective in today's highly fragmented era. While integrating marketing, brands today should pay more attention to how to use links to drive consumers to generate consumption behaviors.

Of course, this view is not new. In addition to putting forward this view, the author also provides a lot of valuable content about "link marketing". This article has a high reading volume and is considered to be a good article full of sincerity and quite inspiring.

This group of sinking market applications represented by Pinduoduo and Qutoutiao are the epitome of the "link marketing" proposed in the article. These applications do not pay much attention to user experience, but set up certain interests as bait, and then drive users to quickly complete the core operations of the product through interlocking link design.

This "link marketing" concept that does not waste a single drop of traffic is fundamentally different from the traditional concept that emphasizes "user experience first" and "restrained minimalism".

At a time when user dividends are disappearing, this concept is being applied by more and more products. Pinduoduo's New Year's Eve event was also created against the background of this concept. This article gives some of my thoughts from the perspective of link design, hoping to help everyone form a preliminary understanding of this concept.

Finally, let’s summarize the three key points that this event should focus on:

1. The link design of this event is very exciting

After the user enters the activity, one link after another, from the red envelope pop-up window at the beginning to the user sharing the activity at the end, each step in between is very well connected. Moreover, Pinduoduo has also polished the details of the link design carefully enough.

2. The completeness of this event is quite high

Taking the first special event as an example, the entire event has both a guiding link to increase the reach of the event and a guiding link to pave the way for subsequent sharing and fission of users; finally, there are 4 ways to play to further reduce the user churn rate. It can be said that although the sparrow is small, it has all the necessary organs.

3. Pay attention to the details of the event

There are many highlights in the optimization of details in this Pinduoduo event, but due to the length of the article, some of them are not discussed in detail.

For example, the design of the retention pop-up window is very thoughtful. When a user wants to exit the activity, Pinduoduo will show the user multiple retention pop-up windows with different copywriting, and sometimes even give the user cash directly to prevent user loss. These optimizations and attention to some details are worthy of learning for us operators.

Author: Su Tanbin

Source public account: Su Tanbin