How does the membership system achieve "cross-border evolution"?
Text/Prince Wei @ Retail Wei Observation
For a membership system, the retention and repurchase of members is the most core indicator, but how to provide members with incentives and gamification experience is whether this membership system can get the winners and losers that members like. In this regard, the membership system has a very good teacher, that is, the game.
In fact, it seems strange to directly equate the membership system with the game.
Game designers combine behavioral science with a reward system to change player behavior, not only to attract them to open the game day after day, to ask friends to "open the black" together, and to spend money in the game without even blinking their eyes. Someone even said, "I haven't bought myself clothes in a long time, but I never hesitated to buy skins in the game."
In fact, according to App Annie, of the 218 billion app downloads in 2020, 80 billion are games, and users spend a total of $100 billion on games – a testament to the game's ability to make rich and retain.
So, if we can replace "game" with "brand", "retailer", and then "player" with "user", "member", then it is very interesting.
Let's take a look at what kind of experience the game can offer the membership system.
【I】What exactly does the game provide for players?
Just as membership systems provide additional services, benefits, and experiences, so do games. In general, games offer players two broad types of rewards:
The first category is consumables, through the payment to purchase game items, game currency, and then improve the player's ability, speed up the progress of the game, etc., to a certain extent, this is similar to the points in the membership system;
The second category is value items, from skins, wings, weapons to custom-made unique items, whose appearance symbolizes the player's status and distinctiveness. Many players will not only spend money for these "valuable products", but also spend a lot of time (commonly known as "liver"). If placed in the membership system, this may be some "black card privileges", early participation rights, etc.
The power of in-game rewards is that they combine low-value expendable rewards with high-value value rewards that make users willing to engage day in and day out.
Interestingly, if everything is bought, then the player will feel bored, and if the player can only get rewarded when buying something, then their reasons to insist between each purchase will be reduced - just a fever, a day or two without landing in the game, may break this formed game habit, and then "quit" the game.
Therefore, the game must allow the player to always invest "all-round" - time/energy investment, emotional investment, money investment, in order to maintain this player all the time. Unfortunately, most membership systems cannot do this, and this is also the part of the membership system that should "steal" from the game.
Seasonal Pass: Temporary level
Epic's game Fortnite is arguably one of the most influential in the last 10 years and the first to introduce a Season Pass.
Each season, players can purchase Fortnite's "Battle Pass": collect points by participating in the game, and the higher their points, the higher the level of the pass, which in turn unlocks more benefits and rewards.
Many games now introduce "passes" that allow players to get additional rewards and decorations while normally getting rewards (usually by completing a mission).
This pass is reset every season (the time may be 1 month, it may also be 90 days, depending on the game) is reset, and after each reset, a new set of rewards will be placed in front of the player, stimulating the player to continue the "kryptonite" game and continue the "liver" game.
In the membership system, some cyclical paid membership products are this logic. However, they do not need to be as complex as games, just need to ensure that within the cycle, members can enjoy the corresponding benefits and services.
In fact, most of the cyclical paid membership products will explicitly make consumers realize that "you only need to pay 5 yuan (the price of the paid membership product) to get a 5 yuan discount immediately, and enjoy X discount in the future X single", which is also a good and common logic.
McDonald's, KFC, luckin coffee's cyclical paid membership products are all leaders in this regard.
Cross-promotions and partner rewards: Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime itself is a large subscription service (Subscription), in addition to the first 2 days of free delivery, this service also includes music, cloud disk and other 33 services, is a huge ecological paid subscription project.
Since Amazon acquired the live streaming platform Twitch for $970 million in 2014, it has slowly integrated Twitch into the Amazon Prime ecosystem: users only need to connect amazon Prime accounts with Twitch.
Users who own Amazon Prime can get a range of rewards on Twitch, including consumables and value items (such as some character customization items) – these are directly available for free as long as they have an Amazon Prime subscription, which is also one of Prime's major benefits.
And Amazon also uses these freebies to attract players to try new games, which will also benefit game developers and make the ecology more closed-loop.
This type of free reward is essentially a distribution for Business Development (commonly known as BD). For the publishers of the membership system, it is actually zero (low) cost to build customer acquisition channels. For partners, this is the equivalent of a new advertising platform, a new traffic pool – a channel that can be used to reach old customers repeatedly, or to reach new customers.
This kind of cross-brand membership system cooperation and rewards are very valuable, and the relatively good ones are generally banks and other platforms with strong funds and rich resources, and the membership system created by top retailers such as Jingdong PLUS and 88VIP can also be seen in China.
In the future, in the metaverse ecology supported by blockchain technology, more such ecosystems should be seen: for example, the vegetables you buy in Yonghui Supermarket can obtain NFT-based seeds in the corresponding metaverse, you can grow your own vegetables and then sell the grown vegetables, or use them as a special prop in other metaversms (such as games, sports, etc.).
Daily Check-in Reward: Candy Crush
In order to allow users to open the APP every day, the daily check-in reward is basically a mandatory option for each APP, and its cycle is generally week or month.
In this regard, the well-known elimination game Candy Crush is worth learning.
The essence of elimination games is to break through, so players need all kinds of "rockets", "bombs" and other props to speed up the game process, quickly pass the level, and even some obviously more difficult levels rely on the need to use a large number of prop combinations to pass.
At this time, the props that the game gives away through daily free login have value for the player, and it is an immediate and immediate value.
In addition, the game usually has a daily mission: players only need to complete a few levels and use specific items a few times to get new items. This reinforces the value of the game's daily logins and daily mini-missions: for players, opening the game and playing on the subway for a while will get a lot of free items and features – here, some items can be accumulated, while others may be used for a limited time (for example, in the next 15 minutes, each level can be used for free).
Another point worth learning from Candy Crush's daily check-in is that in the reward page of daily login, there are not only player rewards for the day, past rewards, but also reward reminders for the next day, which strengthens the significance of login for players.
From a practical point of view, making a daily reward page does not have any technical difficulty, although the traditional membership system also has daily check-in, but usually give points, generally 1 point exchange 0.01-0.10 yuan, and need to accumulate a certain amount (such as 10 yuan) to use, this is a very dissuading way to play (of course, it must be admitted that the gross profit margin of the game is more than 80%, and the gross profit margin of retailers will basically not exceed 30%, which is a different industry).
So, here, it is more recommended to add some challenges - of course, consumer challenges are certainly the best for retailers, after all, there are transactions, but it is difficult - retailers can add more rewards, such as spending X pens this year, using X points this year, browsing X specific web pages this year, writing product reviews X times this year, etc., both instant rewards and cyclical rewards (the cycle includes 1 week, January, 1 quarter, specific festivals, etc.), the two are superimposed, Only in order to make the reward truly valuable.
In addition, these rewards are not necessarily all monetary, some services and offers obtained through business expansion, some retailer privileges (such as early purchases, XX meet-and-greets, etc.), and even donating points to charities, research institutions, specific groups of people can be considered.
The so-called innovation is not necessarily new, we can learn from other industries, such as how to make learning more interesting? Some learning apps will borrow from the skill tree and skill points in large games to make the game more interesting: you can only learn the next skill if you gain X experience points, and the next skill will bring great help to your level.
The same is true of the membership system, we can learn new lessons from the game, so that "Gamification" becomes an important part of the membership system.
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From a global perspective, "Retail Wei Observation" pays attention to the latest strategies, tactics and thinking in the field of new retail and new consumption, and has in-depth research on the super membership system and new retail cases at home and abroad. Platform founder Wang Ziwei, an independent retail analyst