Wen | Chen Chang, a weekly magazine of Finance and Economics
Editor| Yang Jie
Every Spring Festival, on WeChat, the annual "red envelope" activity between relatives, friends, colleagues and classmates has become popular.
This year's Spring Festival, major social media are occupied by a variety of red envelope covers. Correspondingly, the cover of the "crazy robbery" red envelope has also become a new trend this year.
"I spent the whole afternoon grabbing more than 20 red envelope covers, not far from the goal of collecting 100!" A post-00 boy Xiao Lei said. He claims to be a "big red envelope cover owner" and indulges in grabbing red envelope covers on his mobile phone every day. At the same time, he also laughed at himself to the "Finance and Economics" weekly: "I snatched so many red envelope covers, but think about it, how many red envelopes can I send out?" ”
Those who are keen to grab the cover of red envelopes are not only young people like Xiao Lei. Many users have participated in this special "Spring Festival ceremony", free to grab, then spend money to buy. Tencent officials have stressed that the cover of the red packet cannot be bought and sold. But now, among the producers, sellers and buyers of WeChat red envelope covers, a "gray industrial chain" has been formed. Among them, there is no shortage of people who make a lot of money.
Who earns the red envelope cover?
There are many ways to make money in the red envelope cover business.
From opening, production to sale, on many online platforms, a "one-stop" red envelope cover business has long been formed, and many of them also involve "gray areas".
According to Tencent's regulations, it is necessary to meet certain conditions for applying for the production of red envelope covers, such as enterprise users to apply for enterprise certification, while individual users can apply if they open a video number and the number of valid fans of the video number needs to reach 100 people, but the approval also needs to provide design copyright. WeChat charges 1 yuan for 1 yuan to the creator of the red envelope cover, and does not charge the user. That is, if the enterprise distributes 10,000 WeChat red envelope covers to netizens, it needs to pay a fee of 10,000 yuan, and netizens can receive and use them for free.
However, there are always people who "exploit loopholes", and merchants who do the "agency certification" business of red envelope covers have been born on the online platform. Individual users provide names, ID cards, email addresses, video numbers, etc. and pay for them, and these sellers promise to open "creator rights certification" for them within 48 hours.
For many enterprises or individual users, even if they have the right to apply for the production of red envelope covers, they lack the ability to design personalized red envelope covers. Therefore, on the e-commerce platform, many designers will provide them with "customized business" for red envelope covers. "Finance and Economics" Weekly found that there are sellers on Taobao to provide similar service processes, divided into sketches, line drafts, coloring, draft four steps, each service charge of 50 yuan, monthly sales of more than 700 pieces.
But these are just "drizzles", and the groups that make the most money from this type of business are the suppliers, wholesalers and distributors who sell red envelope covers.
In fact, the most profitable time for the red envelope cover business was last year (the Spring Festival in 2021). At that time, there were not many people doing it, the competition was small, and the small team I set up temporarily made 600,000 yuan in just one month. Zheng Yuan told Caijing Tianxia Weekly.
His team designed hundreds of red envelope covers, passed Tencent's review, spent 1 yuan / fee to buy it, and then started a wholesale red envelope business on their own. The price of the wholesale red envelope cover is from 2 yuan a piece, and the lowest profit earned is also doubled.
"The designers are my own, and there is no need to pay any fees to pass the approval, which means that the most I pay is actually the time cost, and the ability to make money is naturally considerable." Zheng Yuan said.
A team similar to Zheng Yuan is considered to be the upstream "supplier" of the red envelope cover business. The "wholesalers" who buy the red envelope covers in bulk from their hands, as well as the "distributors" downstream, will continue to increase the price of the red envelope covers, resell them twice or three times, and earn the difference.
Searching on the idle fish platform, sellers such as "8.8 yuan selling red envelope cover agent", "red envelope cover mall first-hand channel", "simple and rough mobile phone operation", "Spring Festival part-time money making good business opportunities" and other sellers have blossomed everywhere.
A seller told the "Finance and Economics" Weekly that he has hundreds of original red envelope covers in his hand, and will continue to put on the shelves of new models, buyers only need to pay 8.8 yuan agency fee, will receive a red envelope serial number generation entrance, automatic pickup, no need to hoard goods, but this 8.8 yuan is not refundable after payment.
Zheng Yuan said that this year, one of his customers, the front foot bought the cover from him, the back foot went to Pinduoduo to change hands, two days before the Spring Festival, the red envelope cover sales also ushered in a peak period, an average of 1500 orders sold every day, sales are still rising all the way. It is understood that the pricing of these covers is also different, according to the exquisiteness and popularity of the design, etc., the lowest price of each cover is less than 1 yuan, but the highest can reach more than 30 yuan. Zheng Yuan's customer, roughly calculated that the daily turnover can reach tens of thousands of yuan.
"It's just the data for one of his stores. General agents will distribute and sell through multiple channels at the same time, including Taobao, Pinduoduo, Douyin, WeChat, or WeChat groups. Zheng Yuan said.
(The daily sales of a red envelope cover store, image source: courtesy of the interviewee)
In a merchant's micro-mall, thousands of red envelope covers are displayed by style, including anime IP series, glory of the king series, fireworks series, beauty series, national tide series, couple series and so on. "Finance and Economics" weekly saw that there are nearly 150 models with cumulative sales of more than 1,000 pieces, and most of the covers are priced at 3.99 yuan, 4.99 yuan, 6 yuan and so on. The store also put on the current hot "blind box" concept, launched a blind box cover with a price range of 1-5 yuan, and sales have reached 1000+.
(The sale of goods on a red envelope cover mall, image source: screenshot of the micro store)
Because the validity period of the red envelope cover is only three months, these stores that sell the red envelope cover have hung a prompt, "No after-sales, no refund is supported after expiration".
Tencent officials have already issued regulations that do not allow the sale and purchase of red envelope covers, and "shall not charge any fees in any form to end users or any other entity because of the WeChat red envelope covers".
Douyin also officially released the "WeChat Red Packet Cover Special Governance Announcement" to merchants on January 14, 2022, prohibiting the sale of "WeChat Red Packet Cover" products, merchants are not allowed to buy, sell or give away "WeChat Red Packet Cover" products, once found, the platform will take the strictest measures to clear and return stores.
In order to circumvent these prohibitions, merchants have come up with the idea of "selling emojis to send covers" or "selling wallpapers to send covers". For example, the anime self-media Tangyuan Sauce on Douyin created the IP image of "Tangyuan Sauce", and its store once said that users buying emojis and wallpapers can give away WeChat red envelope cover serial numbers. That is to say, in order to circumvent the platform regulations, the store sells memes and wallpapers, and the red envelope cover is given away. But at present, the notice posted in its store shows that the purchase of tiger wallpapers for free to send the cover of the New Year series has been suspended by the platform.
The allure of the red envelope cover
"Last year, we designed several funny style covers that quickly became blockbusters, selling hundreds of them a day. This year, the 'fireworks' design is more popular. Zheng Yuan said. In a Taobao store, this year's hottest Disney fireworks red envelope cover price sold to 12.8 yuan, and the monthly sales have exceeded 60,000 pieces.
This year, young people do not have a few new and interesting red envelope covers, and it seems that they are not allotted red envelopes. In the red envelope cover market, there are many people who are willing to spend money for it. In the user portraits made by Zheng Yuan himself, male consumers account for 80%.
In addition to Xiao Lei, high school sophomore Lin Gang is also a member of the cover collection army.
"The red envelope cover business is precisely aimed at 'collecting fetish' users like me." I feel that collecting it is a bit like an evolved version of the previous collection of game skins. Lin Gang said.
In a 200-person red envelope WeChat group where Lin Gang is located, the daily life of the group friends is to grab the cover of the red envelope through various enterprise WeChat, Weibo and other channels, and then send the link to the group to share. "Grabbed the dynamic map that can be shown off to people, like Ultraman, the Siberian Tiger, and the red envelope cover of KFC, which are the objects of everyone's show off."
"Girls will also like the cover of the red packet, this year's Lingna Belle cover, many people have not grabbed." A female office worker in Beijing said that in her view, personalized red envelope covers are a recognition and expression of users' favorite products and IPs.
However, the cover of the red envelope sent by the brand is too difficult to grab, and consumers have to turn to other platforms to buy their favorite covers. "A young lady next to me just spent 6 yuan to buy a red envelope cover for a luxury item in Idle Fish." The above-mentioned female users said.
The brand promotion and drainage effect on the user group has also attracted brands to go down and pay money on the cover of the red envelope to "compete for glory".
Tencent officials said in the WeChat red envelope cover platform that the capabilities that can be provided for customizers include: a stronger sense of brand, an exclusive cover story to build brand charm, and better reach users.
(Source: Screenshot of WeChat red envelope cover platform)
It can be seen from the platform that the enterprises of customized red envelopes have covered travel, Internet, education, financial real estate, beauty, digital home appliances and other fields, and even local tourist attractions.
"Finance and Economics" Weekly downloaded a red envelope cover, when the red envelope is distributed in the WeChat group, the other party opens, the cover pop-up window can display animation promotion, click on the link, you can also directly enter the producer's mini program or video number. This is a display of the company's brand information, products and channels.
The exposure of the red envelope cover promotion is cyclical. In the public impression, it is generally the most popular during the Spring Festival. "In the first few days until the Chinese New Year's Eve of the year, sales reached the peak, and after the first one, the heat directly disappeared, and sales plummeted." Zheng Yuan said. However, when Internet traffic tends to peak, marketing costs, customer acquisition costs are becoming more and more expensive, for enterprises, spending 1 yuan / price to buy a red envelope cover, you can do a wave of marketing and get exposure, it is a good deal of business.
In order to make more merchants benefit, Tencent is also constantly increasing the number of traffic entrances. WeChat's circle of friends ads, as well as shake a shake, search a search, video number and other entrances, can be issued red envelope covers.
According to the official data of WeChat Search Assistant, from December 24 to 27, 17 brands issued a total of 2.26 million red envelope covers through Search, driving a total of about 18 million searches. During the campaign period, the average daily brand traffic increased by 188 times week-on-week, with an average daily search volume of 328,000 per participating brand. Seven days after the end of the event, the average daily traffic increased by 26 times, and the maximum increase was 205 times, and the traffic effect continued for a long time.
In the 8 days of the activity, the search volume of a large-name cosmetics was 1.7 million, the Mini Program added 300,000 UV, and the number of payers in the Mini Program increased by 50% month-on-month, which well realized the promotion of new vitality and retention conversion.
In addition, because the red envelope cover is embedded in the WeChat ecology, many enterprise media or self-media WeChat public accounts have also set up "reply keywords to get the cover" in the background this year to absorb powder, and some accounts will also push the drainage pictures of the enterprise WeChat QR code at the same time.
A person in charge of the public account told the "Finance and Economics World" weekly that he spent 6,000 yuan to customize 6,000 red envelopes early, shared and received in the fan community, and the company's logo was placed at the top of the red envelope cover, "even if you can't smoke much powder, you can also play an advertisement."
WeChat's "selfishness"
WeChat also paid considerable attention to the cover of the red packet.
At the recent WeChat Open Class PRO Conference, WeChat released the exclusive red envelope cover of the WeChat Open Class that was collected for a limited time, and the seconds were snatched up. When the WeChat video account joined hands with Mayday to hold the New Year's Eve concert, a customized version of the red envelope cover was set up in the official area of Sosou and the live broadcast room of the concert to provide to fans. Fission tasks are also set up on the live broadcast page, and fans can also receive red envelope covers by forwarding live content.
In these two eye-catching events, Tencent also vigorously pushed the cover of the red envelope, which undoubtedly attaches great importance to it.
In the Spring Festival red envelope cover activities, WeChat also set up a "New Year red envelope cover" special session, netizens can view the brand customized red envelope cover style in advance, click to collect according to the distribution time, WeChat also intimately offered users a red envelope cover alarm clock and collection strategy.
In addition to being able to collect fees from merchants, in the eyes of many people, WeChat's greater "selfishness" is to use the cover of red envelopes to promote their own products.
Looking back at the development history of red envelope covers, in January 2019, the "Enterprise Customized Red Envelope Cover" was launched, which was only open to some certified enterprise WeChat users at that time, and members can use it when sending red envelopes on enterprise WeChat after receiving them. At the same time, "Emoji Red Packet" and "New Year's Greeting Red Packet" appeared.
In January 2020, the red envelope cover was launched on the platform, and a new "red envelope cover story" was added, and users can add 5 pictures/videos to display. At that time, many of Tencent's business lines such as Tencent Cloud released their own red envelope covers. On July 7 of the same year, the cover of the red envelope can be jumped to the public account or mini program, and this change has allowed many merchants to smell business opportunities.
In December 2020, the scope of red envelope cover application authority was expanded, and eligible individual users can also apply for red envelope covers. This also brought about the popularity of the red envelope cover that year. In 2021, the application authority of the red envelope cover is further liberalized, and the form of the red envelope cover at this time is also upgraded, and the video number is opened, and the cover story can choose the video number content.
"From the enterprise WeChat to The WeChat, from the enterprise to the individual, we can see the importance and strength of Tencent's red envelope cover." An Internet observer said, "A feature of this year's red envelope cover is that in addition to the application user to have the video number function, the bottom of each red packet cover is directly connected to the video number, which shows Tencent's strong willingness to use the red envelope cover to vigorously promote the video number." ”
(At the bottom of each red envelope cover, the user video number is uniformly jumped to, and the screenshot of Caijing Tianxia Weekly)
However, with the popularity of red envelope covers, more and more merchants doing red envelope cover business have also followed, which has also spawned a large number of gray business areas.
In the view of many merchants, the governance of the platform will inevitably be gradually strengthened. "This business is definitely getting harder and harder, and probably its peak profitability is in 2020." Zheng Yuan said.
(At the request of the interviewees, Xiao Lei, Zheng Yuan, and Lin Gang are pseudonyms)
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.