When understanding the marketing system, we might as well break it down into two parts, namely the prize system and the activity system. In this article, the author has dismantled and sorted out these two systems, let's take a look.

10,000 words long article: the construction of the marketing campaign system and 18 kinds of activity play

In the existing marketing system, the more common form of marketing activities is that users participate in XX activities (complete XX tasks), and the system automatically or manually issues XX prizes. This is the activity in most people's cognitive habits, through the above sentence we can divide the marketing system into two parts: the prize system, the activity system.

The following is a brief introduction and dismantling of these two systems.

1. Prize system

The prize system is an important part of the entire marketing system (everyone in the industry is used to mixing these two systems together, and this article will call it the prize system for the sake of convenience).

The activity system can exist separately from the prize system, but most of the prize system depends on the marketing activity system or the user growth system.

The following is the more common prize system (of course, there are some more niche prize systems, which will not be discussed in this article), which is also suitable for the traditional offline physical industry.

1.1 Coupons

Before starting this section, let me ask a question: why don't you directly reduce the price of the product, but use a coupon to enjoy the discount?

This involves an important economic concept: differential pricing (also known as price discrimination), which is simply understood as customer ABC will buy the same product at different prices, so as to maximize the benefits of the merchant or platform.

For example, if a cup of milk tea costs 5 yuan, if 100 people will accept the price at 10 yuan, only 60 people will buy it at 15 yuan. The former profit is 100 * (10-5) = 500 yuan, and the latter is 60 * (15-5) = 600 yuan. So the question is: should the merchant price 10 yuan or 15 yuan, or between 10-15 yuan, 12 yuan, 14 yuan?

According to the above-mentioned differential pricing theory, merchants can price it at 15 yuan, and then issue 5 yuan coupons to the 40 customers with the highest willingness to pay 10 yuan, and the remaining 60 consumers do not issue coupons, so that differential pricing is achieved in disguise. At this time, the merchant's profit can be maximized: 60 * (15-5) + 40 * (15-5-5) = 800 yuan.

As for how to give out a 5 yuan coupon to 40 customers, and how not to be found by the other 60 customers to be treated differently, this is another big category, and it is not enough to expand here.

Summary: In essence, coupons are a kind of "price discrimination" strategy, which is a price differentiation carried out by merchants according to the needs of different consumers, and a reasonable pricing behavior for merchants to pursue profit maximization.

Coupons are divided into the following categories according to different classification dimensions and standards:

According to the preferential method, it can be divided into: full discount coupon (no threshold coupon can be regarded as full 0 yuan minus XX yuan), full discount coupon.
According to the preferential object, it can be divided into: single product coupons (only a specific SKU can be bought), brand coupons (all products under a certain brand such as Huawei and Xiaomi), and category coupons (such as only beef).
According to the issuing entity, it can be divided into: merchant coupons (such as coupons issued by JD Pinsheng flagship stores at their own expense, and can only purchase the corresponding goods of Pinsheng merchants), platform coupons (coupons issued by JD platform, coupons that can be used across stores).

Depending on the industry, the coupons vary greatly. For example, there is a big difference between our common e-commerce coupons and financial coupons for financial lending products.

The following figure shows the coupons of a financial product, which can be divided into 7 categories according to the use scenario and preferential method (different financial products and companies will have differences, for example, the Vipshop financial coupon is quite different from the financial coupon in the figure below).

Depending on the usage scenario of coupons, there are several types of special coupons:

Fission coupons: Some companies also call them inflated coupons, that is, the more people who share or invite, the higher the denomination or discount of the coupon, which is mainly used for attracting new users. The realization logic of the background is not that the customer gets a coupon A with a denomination of 10 yuan, and the denomination of this coupon is inflated to 20 yuan after sharing, but that the system revokes coupon A and reissues coupon B with a denomination of 20 yuan to him.
Universal coupon: also known as coupon code, simply put, ABC three users can get 1 coupon after entering the coupon code, so that 1 coupon code can correspond to thousands or even tens of thousands of coupons. Its background implementation logic is simply summarized that the discount code is the batch number or system ID or coupon ID of this batch of coupons, for example, the unique coupon ID of the 20 yuan new customer coupon is NEW666, and the new customer coupon of 20 yuan has created a total of 100 coupons, and the codes of these 100 coupons are NEW666-001, NEW666-002....NEW666-100. When the customer enters the coupon code NEW666, one of the coupons will be taken in order from the unissued coupons, such as NEW666-008, which will be sent to the user. This kind of coupon code is more suitable for offline promotion and activity coupons, and the coupon code is made into a QR code and printed on the roll-up banner or promotional DM sheet. Those who have registered a domain name on a website should have a deep impression of the GoDaddy coupon code, in fact, the principle is similar to this.
Free shipping coupons: The common form of coupons on e-commerce platforms, the essence of which is actually a full reduction coupon, the coupon is set up in the dimension of goods or merchants + customers, and after the actual shipping amount is calculated according to the delivery address, if the freight amount is less than or equal to the coupon face, you can enjoy free shipping. However, there are still some differences between the specific implementation logic and the ordinary commodity full discount coupons. But the feasibility of this kind of coupon in B-end e-commerce is relatively low, imagine that you buy 20 boxes of frozen fish weighing 200 kilograms, and ship them from Chengdu to Guangzhou, how much does the shipping cost.

As for the specific implementation logic and method of coupons, it can be described in a separate article, and it will not be expanded here. Finally, coupons actually have a psychological category in them, and what users need is not necessarily to take advantage, but to take advantage of the feeling.

1.2 Integral Classes

Before starting this section, there is still a question: why do products need points? What is the point of points? There are many companies or products that add points to the product system (or user system) without thinking through the above problem, and use the logic of "improving user activity and loyalty, enhancing user participation and sense of achievement" to explain the above problem. But does this logic work?

Increase activity: I am active in Zhihu because I can increase my strange knowledge, because I have questions that need to be solved, because I want to build my personal brand and influence on Zhihu, not because I am willing to come to Zhihu because I have points. Although Baidu Tieba gave me double points, will I go to the above to solve my above problems?
Enhance the sense of achievement:I am a heavy user of station B and NetEase cloud music,I recognize and agree with the sense of identity and achievement that user levels such as LV6 bring to me,But this is a comprehensive evaluation of user growth value and activity value,Not all of them are brought by the so-called points。

There are many companies and products that tend to mix the two together when they do points and membership (level). After all, points and members often appear in pairs, causing everyone to think that they are the same thing, but they are not. Points are attached to members, and in addition to points, members also have subdivided areas such as levels, rights and interests, and growth achievements.

Points are a kind of virtual currency in the product, which can be obtained in various ways, and can also be consumed through various ways (such as deducting cash when consuming, or exchanging points for goods), it will be consumed, will involve costs, and is a debt of the company.
Membership (level) is a visual evaluation of the user's identity and value in the product, how can we objectively evaluate the loyalty and customer value of the three customers in the product? Membership levels may be a simple and intuitive way, and LV9 is likely to be more worthy of our efforts to do the hierarchical operation of users than LV1.

But in fact, many products are eaten with one fish and two fish, and points exist as virtual currency, which is used to deduct cash or exchange goods or participate in lucky draws, etc., and will automatically determine the membership level according to the value of the points, and enjoy different membership rights and interests according to different membership levels.

Back to the question at the beginning. Whether a product needs points needs to be analyzed according to the form of the product and the scale of users. For example, for an information product, I personally believe that it is more important to do a good job in user level than points, while e-commerce transaction products are more suitable for introducing points as a virtual currency.

As mentioned above, [what users need is not necessarily to take advantage, but to take advantage of the feeling of taking advantage], when the price of a product is the same as that of platform A and platform B, and the delivery time is the same, most of them will choose platform A with points (points can be used to redeem cash or exchange goods), after all, it can make users feel that they have taken advantage.

The entry threshold for points is not high, but the threshold for entry is very, very high. As mentioned above, points with consumption outlets (consumption deductions, points exchange) are debts, and not everyone can play them. In addition, the most difficult thing about integral is that the input-output ratio is not easy to measure, and the balance between integral output and consumption is not easy to control.

1.3 Cash Red Envelope

Before starting this section, there is also a question: why do you need cash red envelopes after you have coupons and points?

As mentioned above, coupons appear because of price discrimination and profit maximization, and points are mainly for user loyalty and participation.

As far as I know, cash red envelopes are mainly generated because of the operation and promotion of companies or products, especially the scenes where old people bring new ones to attract new customers. The attraction of real cash red envelope rewards to old customers or promoters or inviters is much higher than flashy coupons or points (in the eyes of most users, the value of cash red envelopes is higher than that of points and coupons).

Of course, points seem to be able to partially meet the above requirements to some extent, but some business rules and restrictions on red envelopes determine that if points are used as a substitute or equivalent for cash red envelopes, points need to be greatly modified.

For example, the cash red envelope needs to be real-named, the red envelope needs to be bound to a bank card for withdrawal, and there is a cash red envelope with a denomination of 30 yuan on April 23, which will take effect on May 1, and the red envelope needs to be restricted for withdrawal, and the red envelope needs to be transferred to the wallet first and then withdrawn from the wallet to the bank card, etc.

These limitations are theoretically feasible if they are based on an existing point system, but in practice they are not recommended for development and business architecture. Because the points of some products also carry the functions of user levels and rights and interests, the adaptive transformation of red envelopes based on this will make the points particularly bloated and the coupling degree will be particularly high, which is not conducive to the later expansion and maintenance.

Some companies have multiple products, and the points between the products can be exchanged for each other in proportion (for example, QQ Music 10 points are exchanged for QQ member 20 points), simply put, the functional attributes and usage scenarios of points and red envelopes determine whether they are independent or the most appropriate.

For these reasons, cash red envelopes came into being. The following figure is a brief introduction to the cash red envelope in the prize system of a financial product.

The cash red envelope is similar to the wallet balance of WeChat, which can be used for consumption (shopping) and withdrawal on the platform. The difference is that the cash red envelope can only be obtained through activities, and it does not support recharging to increase the balance of the cash red envelope.

1.4 Physical Products

As the name suggests, it is to give real items as prizes. For example, NetEase Snail Reading purchases annual members to give away a full set of physical books of "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty", such as the first prize of NetEase Mailbox Points Lottery is an iPhone.

The attractiveness of physical products is comparable to that of cash red envelopes, but customers need to fill in the delivery address, and the platform or operation needs to carry out logistics delivery.

For example, the interactive prizes of the Jingdong Spring Festival Gala shown in the picture below, nearly 400,000 physical prizes of roses and milk, in Jingdong's view, the difficulty coefficient is average, after all, express logistics is their core skill.

But if you change Alipay or WeChat to carry out this activity, the receipt information verification and delivery arrangements of these 400,000 winning users are a huge workload (you may also have to create a gift order for customers, and then associate the logistics and distribution information with the order), if Alipay or WeChat to do this activity, you may be more willing to send red envelopes.

1.5 Tripartite Rights

Other prize systems that cannot be summarized into the above 4 types will be called tripartite rights (as they are called in this article).

For example, KFC and McDonald's god cards and breakfast cards, Hema annual membership, Taobao's 88VIP.
For example, the coffee wallet of Luckin Coffee, and the milk card of New Hope GO are alive.
For example, telecom operators' phone bills and traffic packages, game coins or QQ coins of game companies or platforms, etc.
For example, products that meet the needs of users in eating, drinking, playing, eating, wearing, and traveling, such as monthly/quarterly/annual memberships of Ele.me, Aiyouteng, Didi, and Vipshop.
Third-party rights & points & coupons, such as iQiyi 100 points, Pinduoduo 20 off 5 yuan coupons, shopping installment interest-free coupons.

1.6 Bundles

Combine any of the above prizes 1-5 to form a new gift package, such as recharge 1999 yuan to give gift package A, recharge 5999 to give gift package B. In fact, the Taobao 88VIP pictured above is not a gift package prize.

1.7 Comparison of prize systems

Second, the activity system

There are a lot of marketing campaigns on the market, and most of them can be used in different industries. For example, the lucky draw can be used in e-commerce products (such as JD Vipshop), travel products (such as Didi Chuxing and AutoNavi Map), information products (Toutiao and NetEase News), game products (such as Genshin Impact Egg Boy Party, etc.), and financial products (such as Anyihua 360 IOU).

However, the product form (such as e-commerce and reading information) and the industry to which it belongs (financial industry and catering industry) are different, and the applicable marketing activities will also be relatively different.

For example, information products such as WeChat Reading (or Toutiao) and e-commerce products such as Vipshop, the former's available marketing activities are subject to the product form, which is obviously much less, and the full reduction and seckill activities commonly used in e-commerce are not very suitable for information products.

E-commerce products should be an industry with relatively many marketing activities in the entire industry, and different marketing activities can be carried out according to different scenarios or life cycles of users or products.

The following is the marketing campaign gameplay that I sorted out when I was doing marketing campaign products in consumer finance in the early years, and I designed the corresponding marketing campaign gameplay according to the life cycle stage of the user.

How to play the marketing activities of financial products:

Let's briefly introduce the gameplay of 18 types of activities, which are not discussed in this article.

2.1 Coupon Collection Activities

In Chapter 1.1, there is a brief introduction to the prize system - coupons, assuming that my coupon prizes have been configured at this time, how to distribute them to users? In fact, there are many ways and methods.

Coupon delivery is automatic

The system will automatically issue coupons after the new user completes the registration in the product, of course, this registration event can also be adjusted according to the behavior or event that the platform or product wants the user to complete.

For example, real-name or card binding or credit or activating an account, or browsing the product list page for XX seconds or completing the first order payment or the first order to confirm the receipt, of course, you can also complete an action or trigger an event, the system will automatically send coupons. The following is a screenshot of the background activity configuration page.

Collect the voucher manually

Users need to manually claim coupons on the home page of the app or the coupon collection center, or the product list or product detail page or activity page, which mainly promotes the user's login and activity, after all, the user cannot see and receive the coupon without logging in to the product or entering the corresponding page.

2.2 Bringing the old with the new

The old and new activities can also be called MGM, that is, Member Get Member activities, which is a typical fission activity. Pinduoduo's "Get Cash Every Day" activity, WeChat Reading's "Daily Answer", and Hua Xiaozhu's "Million Cash Every Day" are all typical MGM activities. It can help the product quickly acquire traffic and user growth at a limited cost.

In fact, the old and new activities evolved from the early promoter system, which was almost the standard configuration of major terminal game manufacturers in the heyday of terminal games in 2005.

The method is also relatively simple, each promoter (that is, the inviter) has a unique identity ID or invitation code, and as long as the new user fills in the invitation code when registering in the game, the system will establish a binding relationship with the promoter.

For every new player invited by the promoter to register, reach the XX level, and recharge the full XX yuan, the corresponding rewards can be obtained. The reward is mainly based on the promotion commission, and the promoter commission can be withdrawn when it reaches a certain threshold. Of course, new players who fill in the invitation code will also receive additional rewards for gift packages, which are mainly in-game currency and item packages.

Later, this kind of play continued from the PC Internet era to the mobile Internet era, and it has a higher name called distribution fission. Of course, some companies will call it the old with the new, and some will call it the MGM system, but the essence is the same: that is, the old customers invite new customers.

Rewards will be given to new users according to different nodes in the product. Of course, this gameplay is constantly evolving with the times, constantly iterating and improving.

After listening to these introductions, many people may think that distribution fission should not be difficult, but in fact, it is not. It is relatively difficult to build a simple distribution fission system, and the following picture is the background configuration page of the simplified version of the distribution fission system made by our company recently, which does not seem to be very complicated. But if you want to make this set of gameplay to the extreme, it still takes a lot of thought and energy.

A few years ago, when I was working on the MGM system in consumer finance, there was a 6-person project team (development + product + operation + testing) to treat it as a long-term project. Facts have also proved that the customer acquisition cost of this game is extremely low and cost-effective. For the sake of confidentiality, I won't talk about the specific data here, I will only talk about the general gameplay. The following is a partial screenshot of the MGM event backend configuration page. Thereinto:

Roles: This system contains 2 roles, the inviter and the invitee. The inviter is further divided according to whether there is a loan contract or not, and the analogy to the e-commerce product can be whether there is a completed order, the user level of the inviter, the role identity, etc.
Events: The user chain of financial products is relatively long, and each node can set corresponding reward events for the main key nodes such as participation, sharing, binding, application, signing contracts, and successful loans. Analogous to e-commerce products can be multiple scenarios or nodes such as invitee registration, ordering, and store pick-up, and different rewards will be provided to the inviter and invitee according to different nodes.
Page: At the beginning, the inviter and the invitee saw the same set of front-end UI activity pages, and then we found that the data of several nodes converted by the funnel was particularly unsightly. After analyzing the reasons, we have designed the inviter page and the invitee page separately, that is, we will present the content that he is interested in or we expect it to see, and our internal names are M1 page and M2 page, which are for the inviter and the invitee respectively. Through dozens of iterations, the conversion rate of the entire page and the campaign is constantly improving towards our expectations.
Rules: Basically, according to the "inviter (role) - no contract (user type) - participation in activities (events) - event attributes (multiple tiers corresponding to different rewards) - reward strategy (up to 1 time or statistical interval to calculate) - reward items (corresponding to 6 types of prizes) - collection form (automatic issuance, manual collection) - activity mutual exclusion.

After more than 1 year of iteration, the MGM system has been modularized and visually configured, that is, after the UI has an event page picture, the operator can edit and generate an event URL link, and there is almost no need to write code for front-end and back-end development to realize the MGM function, and the overall data of MGM activities has been stable and rising.

For example, user A gets a 20 yuan coupon, A shares the coupon with BCD and all three people receive a 20 yuan coupon, at this time, A's coupon denomination will be fissioned to 80 yuan.

Regarding the design of MGM activities, it is estimated that an article of more than 6,000 words can be formed if it is fully expanded, so I will not expand it here. The following is a list of features of a certain iteration I made, just for the reader's reference.

2.3 Sweepstakes

As the name suggests, users can get the chips of the draw after completing certain events or actions, and then qualify for the lottery by consuming the chips. In the early days, the lottery page was basically a big turntable, and later derived a nine-square grid, slot machines, scratch tickets and other bells and whistles, but its essence was a lottery.

The following is a screenshot of the background configuration page of the lottery when I was doing B2B e-commerce for alcohol, the lottery qualification here is issued through the order amount and number of transactions, and the prizes of the lottery are all kinds of coupons and cash red envelopes that have been configured in advance.

The prizes of the lottery will be linked to the prize system mentioned above, that is, the prize distribution interface will be called when the lottery is drawn.
For example, in the form of a big turntable, the sum of the winning probability of the first, second and third prizes and the encouragement prize (not winning) should be 100%.
You can set the scope of participants in the lucky draw, for example, only users in the XX region are eligible for the lottery if the user level meets certain conditions.

2.4 Collection Activities

The most common collection activity is Alipay's annual collection of five blessings, and at the same time, some novel gameplay has also been derived, such as collecting dragon-shaped fragments in the Year of the Dragon, and then putting together a picture of a Chinese dragon. Users who complete the collection will share the prize pool or be eligible to participate in the lucky draw.

The layman looks at the bustle, and the insider looks at the doorway. The product managers will first analyze what the business flow of the Jifu activity is, analyze the overall business process, and then disassemble what functional modules and function points are in the front and back end, and how many corresponding pages there are. Aside from the other branch processes, we can think about how the core business processes of the entire activity should or can be implemented in the back-end system.

Fortune process

The process of collecting patriotic blessings is essentially a lottery activity, that is, one card is drawn from the five blessing cards, dipping cards, universal cards, and brand cards (such as cards provided by brands such as Li Ning and Ping An) according to the probability.
The path to participate in the event, such as AR Scan, Ant Forest, etc., are the carriers or entrances of the front-end lottery activities, which may correspond to two lottery activities or the same lottery activity.

Synthesis process

Specifically, I have 1 Patriotic Blessing, 1 Prosperity Blessing, 1 Harmony Blessing, Friendship Blessing and 1 Dedication Blessing, and all 5 Blessings will be cancelled from the kernel of my card pack when I redeem them.
At the same time as the verification is synthesized, the system will issue me another "five blessings" blessing, which can actually be understood as the issuance of a lottery voucher or qualification.

Lottery process

For example, Alipay has set up a total prize pool of 5 small goals, and this prize pool may be split into first prize, second prize, etc., and each prize corresponds to a fixed denomination, such as 5,000 red envelopes of 188.88 yuan, 20,000 red envelopes of 168.88 yuan....... 1 million red envelopes of 1.88 yuan, such as a total of 2 million places.
Before the Spring Festival Gala lottery, for example, 1.8 million users Jiwufu successfully qualified for the lottery, and the lottery moment was actually the 2 million prizes distributed to 1.8 million users, and the system automatically recycled the excess prizes after they expired. As for whether this lottery has calculated the prize you will win in advance when you are qualified for the lottery, or whether it is the moment of the lottery and then the lottery according to the probability, this cannot be verified.

Alipay's Jiwufu activities should be much more grand than I described, such as the brand's card management and UI elements, such as lottery and synthesized-related animations, such as red envelope settings and fund distribution, as well as corresponding data statistics, risk control management and underlying architecture, etc.

Small companies really don't recommend engaging in such high-input and low-output activities. If a small company has to engage in this kind of collection activity, I think the collection and synthesis process is essential, but the synthesis process and the lottery process seem to be integrated, eliminating the step of issuing lottery qualifications, that is, collecting 5 cards and immediately giving other prizes that are fixed in a unified manner, such as 8.88 yuan cash red envelopes.

2.5 Answering activities

The earliest quiz activities are a common way to play in online games, such as opening a quiz activity at regular intervals every day, and players can participate in answering questions when they enter the event, and they can get rewards after answering XX questions correctly or clearing the customs.

The main purpose of this activity is to attract players to go online and promote activity, and secondly, many players will offer rewards or search the XX game answer activity question bank on the Internet in order to get high scores, so as to increase the search heat and exposure of the game, which may also be unexpected by the game event designer.

Later, the activity was transplanted to many products, such as WeChat reading, and at the same time, the gameplay was upgraded to PK between users, and with the answer ranking, it can greatly arouse the user's competitiveness, satisfy their vanity, and promote activity.

In fact, the quiz with a prize can also be regarded as an advanced way to play the quiz activity, and users can "test" the relevant results. Then, through personalized content, users are attracted to forward to the circle of friends, or even swiping the screen, thereby promoting the exposure and dissemination of the product.

Question bank design: You need to prepare all kinds of question banks in advance to import them into the system, or allow all kinds of questions to be entered in the management background.
Activity reward: If you answer XX questions correctly within the specified time, you can get a fixed reward, or you can get N lottery qualifications, and then participate in another lottery event. Of course, the prizes and winning probabilities of this event are configured in advance.
Advanced gameplay: Several props can be designed during the answering process, such as question change cards, resurrection cards, etc., to increase the fun and participation of the gameplay.

2.6 Check-in

You can get rewards for clocking in and out every day, and you will get more rewards for clocking in and out continuously, which can be medals or points or other prizes. This kind of gameplay is more suitable for improving user activity and increasing user stickiness. It is usually found in apps such as fitness, reading, shopping, etc.

The event will also be linked to the prizes set in the prize system.
Check-in activity is an important way to promote product activity, but some have a low threshold and only need to click to punch in, while others need to meet certain conditions, such as WeChat reading needs to read the book content for more than 10 seconds to be considered a successful check-in; Some games, such as Weile Dou Landlord, need to be shared.
Some check-in events allow users to re-sign if they forget to clock in on a certain day, while others do not. There are pros and cons to both, and product managers can use A/B testing to evaluate which works well when designing.

2.7 Full Discount, Full Discount, Full Gift

These three activities are the most common forms of activities within e-commerce products, and there is no one.

Full Reduction Event

It is common to purchase XX pieces or XX yuan, and the total order price is reduced to XX yuan, or the total order price is reduced to XX yuan. Reductions are more common, and reductions are less common (some are similar to Taobao's shopping cart price changes, but the system automatically reduces them to save manual price changes.)

It's also a bit like a combination product sold at a reduced price, but it saves the trouble of configuring N multiple combination products). Of course, there will be two subdivision modes of full reduction and full reduction of ladders.

Full Discount Event

It is common to purchase XX pieces of goods or XX yuan, and the total price of the order is discounted by XX. In order to avoid too high marketing discounts, the upper limit of the discount amount is generally set when setting up the event.

For example, if the maximum discount is 1,200 yuan for a full 10,000 yuan, the customer's actual payment amount should be 8,800 yuan instead of 8,000 yuan. To use an inappropriate but easy-to-understand analogy, it is a foodie and fun-loving, and wants to engage in activities but is reluctant to give profits to customers.

Full Gift Event

It is common to buy XX pieces of goods or XX yuan to give away XX pieces of a certain product, or to give XX pieces of goods A and B each. Later, a more flexible gameplay was derived, and the gift pool of the gift of goods has M kinds of gifts, and users can choose any N kinds (N<=M), and the gift M here can also be coupons or three-party rights.

For example, when the organizer sorted out the warehouse or inventory in the warehouse, he found 4 kinds of sluggish commodities that were about to expire, specifically 400 packs of ham sausages, 800 packs of instant noodles, 600 packs of snail noodles and 1200 braised eggs.

At this time, if you choose 3 of the 4 gifts, you can configure 1,000 gifts, and the beneficiaries of the event can be expanded while the sluggish products can be dealt with to a greater extent.

Of course, there are still loopholes in the above example that can be exploited, because the actual price of each of the 4 kinds of giveaways cannot be guaranteed to be completely consistent, and customers will choose the product with the highest price when they have difficulty in choosing, such as choosing ham sausages all, which is unfair and unattractive to customers who participate in subsequent activities.

At this time, you can add another layer of restrictions, that is, a maximum of X samples for each of the 4 products. That is, the ABCD of 4 kinds of gifts can only be selected at most 3 pieces to control the total quantity, and the gift ABCD is set separately to set a limited quantity, such as a maximum of 2 pieces of AC and a maximum of 1 piece of BD. Of course, the corresponding trade-off is that the backend configuration and development implementation will be more complex.

The first two types of activities involve the difference between the amount payable and the amount paid, and the discount amount needs to be prorated among the participating products. For the full giveaway event, the value of the giveaway needs to be allocated to the corresponding product.

2.8 Restricted Purchases

A purchase restriction is when one or more SKUs limit the number or quantities of purchases a user can make within a certain period of time. But some readers may ask, as a seller or a platform, shouldn't the more you sell, the better? Why do you need to limit purchases?

In fact, if you think about it carefully, it is not difficult to find that there are real scenarios for purchase restrictions. For example, now that iPhone16 is released on JD.com, if you don't limit the purchase, it may lead to a limited number of buyers or scalpers snatching up limited goods, and users who really need it may not be able to buy new products, affecting the user experience.

To put it simply, the platform or seller hopes that this relatively scarce or attractive product can be bought by 100 customers each, so that the traffic of the product or platform will be more, rather than being bought by a local tyrant or scalper 100.

In addition to the traditional restrictions on the number of user purchases and the number of purchases, the purchase restriction activity should also have a risk control dimension, which basically involves risk control models, big data and algorithms. For example, the delivery address dimension, the mobile phone device IEME, the delivery mobile phone number dimension, etc.

Many of the iPhones in Pinduoduo's tens of billions of subsidies are earned when they are bought, so many users will go to the wool, but Pinduoduo's risk control mechanism will screen out "speculative" users and automatically cancel orders.

2.9 Lightning Deals

Some readers may ask, purchase restriction and flash sale are both limited to the number of purchases and purchases of customers during the event time, and it feels like the two are the same activity, why do some platforms engage in two forms of activities?

In fact, there are still some differences between the two, as follows:

The duration of the Lightning Deal is shorter than that of the Restricted Purchase Event, and the activity may be more vigorous. For example, the iPhone15 mobile phone priced at 4998 on the official website, the purchase limit activity is 4688 yuan, the activity time is 5000 items in 1 month, and the spike activity time may be limited to 300 units from 12 o'clock every Friday, and the price is 4588 yuan. Flash sales are more scarce and more attractive to customers, which can give customers a sense of urgency and prompt some customers in need to place orders as soon as possible.
The flash sale event will have a preview before the event starts, a countdown to the end after the event starts, and a real-time display of the inventory balance of the event products. On the contrary, the purchase restriction will not have this information, it will only show the product limit on the product detail page or shopping cart XX pieces.
Some platforms will allow flash deals to be purchased together with regular-priced products, but the products in the purchase restriction event cannot be settled with the regular-priced products in the shopping cart at one time (you can only buy regular-priced products when you buy them again after participating in the purchase restriction event).
Purchase restriction activities are generally done as long-term curing activities, and the biggest feature of seckill activities is that the activity time is short.

Merchants launch limited-time low-cost flash sale products to attract customers to the store, quickly clear the event products, and at the same time, they can attract traffic and increase exposure for other products. When planning and designing activities, the platform can determine whether it is necessary to do both flash sales and purchase restriction activities according to the characteristics of the platform and the industry.

2.10 Group Activities

To put it simply, when the number of purchasers is 1, 3, and 5 people, you can enjoy different prices.

Pinduoduo is a typical case of making group activities to the extreme. Group activities are very suitable for communities, communities, and social e-commerce, and in addition to the activities that can directly participate in the group, there are also new person groups, help bargaining groups and other forms, which are very suitable for communication.

The ordinary group type of group type is that any user can initiate and participate, while the old and new group can only be initiated by old customers and new customers can participate.
In order to encourage or mobilize the enthusiasm of the group, the price of the group leader can be set at a lower price than the price of the group participants. Of course, for the sake of simplicity, it can also be set to consistency.
If you want to focus on attracting new users, you can try to bring old users to join a group, so that old users can share and spread, and attract new people into a group.
In order to improve the probability of forming a group, you can set the old customer group price and the new customer group price on the old with the new group, and the judgment criteria and logic of the new and old customers can be determined according to the nature of the platform and the industry.
The number of people in the group is inversely proportional to the success rate of the group, and positively correlated with the scale of diffusion. In order to give users a stronger motivation to actively spread and pull more ginseng groups, multiple ladders can be set up, and the more people in the group, the lower the price.
In order to increase the probability of forming a group, you can set up a virtual group to simulate the number of buyers to fill up.

2.11 Package Fixed Price

That is, XX yuan optional M piece activity. NetEase Koala is a case of taking the N-yuan optional activity to the extreme. The unit price of snacks is low, SKU is scattered, if you don't do a full reduction, it is also a better way to promote N yuan optionally, and Jingdong Book Channel often engages in similar XX yuan N activities.

The advantages of packing a fixed price or XX yuan N pieces activity are obvious, which can be summarized as follows:

Promote customers to buy: package purchases are more favorable, and customers can't help but buy and buy in order to make up the order. Give customers more choices, customers are free to choose activity products, and purchase them according to their preferences to meet their personalized needs.
Solve the backlog of inventory: clearance sales, new goods with old goods, and inventory pressure can be relieved in a short time.
Create a promotional atmosphere: new store openings, festivals, and "fixed price" discounts to attract customers' attention and create a promotional atmosphere.

2.12 Pre-Sale Events

Pre-sale activities are generally for customers to pay a deposit in advance, and then pay the balance after reaching the event node. The most common pre-sale event is the pre-sale activity of Tmall and JD.com Double 11, so the question is, why is there such an activity as a pre-sale event?

New product listing: For example, some time ago, coriander hot pot was very popular, and White Elephant Instant Noodles grasped the hot spots and developed White Elephant Coriander Instant Noodles. But the question is, can customers accept this product, and is the data of market research and user research consistent with actual user feedback? Is it able to achieve the expected sales effect? White elephant manufacturers may not have a score themselves. So the white elephant manufacturer took the opportunity of 618 to launch a pre-sale activity to see how many customers who voted online would pay for real money. In this way, merchants can understand consumer needs in advance, allocate supply or adjust sales strategies offline in a timely manner, and even adjust production plans to avoid product inventory backlogs and market shortages.
Promotions: Regular marketing activities for existing products, the most typical is the Double 11 event. White elephant manufacturers are not sure how many customers will place orders and stock up during the Double 11 period, and it is very difficult to evaluate production plans. In order to minimize inventory sluggishness and improve the turnover rate, White Elephant launched a pre-sale event for Double 11. Through pre-sale, you can find out which type of product is in greater demand, and if the stock is insufficient, you can let the workshop increase the output and increase the stocking, so as to ensure that the promotional activities achieve greater results.
Improve turnover: The biggest ideal of white elephant manufacturers may be to load and transport instant noodles immediately after they get off the production line, minus the cost of product transfer storage and storage within the factory, and reduce the turnover days of inventory (the ideal state is 0 days, that is, immediately loaded off the production line), after all, internal storage has management costs and capital occupation costs.

But pre-sale events are typically a double-edged sword.

From the consumer's point of view, the pre-sale will wear down the patience of the consumer, making the customer abandon the product and choose another product, resulting in customer churn. On the other hand, if the seller's product has its uniqueness and irreplaceability, then the pre-sale can play a good role in cultivating customer loyalty.
From the merchant's point of view, pre-sale can effectively predict sales volume and set production, without worrying about overstocking inventory, which greatly improves inventory turnover. Although it will cause the loss of orders to a certain extent, it will also save the cost and inventory risk.

There may be the following pitfalls in the planning and design of pre-sale activities:

A certain production capacity may exist at the same time as normal sales and pre-sale, and the order and ERP and WMS should be differentiated and adapted accordingly.
If there is a design such as a white bar or quota on the platform, there will be a large time difference between the repayment date of the deposit and the repayment date of the final payment, which will be slightly troublesome to handle.
Pre-sale products may be deposited and paid twice for the final payment, and there may also be cases where the full payment is paid in one lump sum.
When the customer pays the deposit, there is a high probability that the coupon will be used, and the coupon should be restricted when paying the balance (otherwise the platform is easy to lose money).

2.13 Recurring Purchases

For industries or products such as low-temperature fresh milk, drinking water, and flowers with the attributes of the same city, customers will often place orders to buy the product, but the frequent order experience is not good for users, and customers will face the situation of being unable to use it if they forget to place an order. "The buyer pays once, and the merchant ships multiple times" is an extremely important consumption scenario for these products.

Huaxi Fresh Go Milk Ordering Mini Program has launched a cycle purchase model, and Youzan New Retail also has a similar "order as you like" function. Customers buy a one-time supply of 1-12 months, such as 30 cartons to 360 cartons of milk, and the delivery staff delivers the milk to the home according to the delivery mode specified by the customer, which greatly optimizes the user experience.

Compared with other "periodic purchase" tools on the market, Suixin not only helps merchants manage periodic delivery of goods more conveniently, but also optimizes the experience of consumers when placing orders, which can more effectively reduce user churn and increase user LTV.

The periodic purchase model is suitable for all industries that sell goods in cycles: such as fresh milk, flowers and plants, fresh fruits, drinking water, grain, oil, rice and noodles, nourishing health care, etc. It has the following advantages:

Greatly improve the user's consumption experience. Compared with the traditional frequent purchase model, periodic purchase can meet the actual use scenarios of customers ordering multiple deliveries at one time. When placing an order, customers can customize the delivery period, quantity, and time period to generate a unique delivery plan. At the same time, it can also modify the delivery plan and stop the delivery according to the customer's schedule changes (such as a May Day outing, summer vacation home).
Periodic purchases can help merchants improve the efficiency of digital operations. Help merchants quickly lock in users, reduce promotion costs, quickly return funds, improve the value of single customers, and improve user stickiness. While improving customer experience and stickiness, it also reduces the amount of after-sales consultation for merchants.
In terms of order management, orders from recurring purchases are split between orders and delivery orders, and delivery plans support return, change, and stop operations. Refund is for the undelivered milk, change that is, modify the delivery plan from daily delivery to next day delivery (you can also change the quantity), change that is, modify the delivery of products (convenient for launching new products), stop and suspend delivery.
In terms of user management, merchants can check the order expiration time of each user through periodic purchases, and support users to repurchase with one click, helping merchants lock in high-net-worth users in advance.

2.14 Markup

Upselling is a commercial sales strategy, also known as "add-on purchases" or "add-on purchases." It is a marketing ploy that increases the total price of an item that consumers would otherwise intend to buy by offering additional products or services. This strategy is widely used in retail, services, and e-commerce.

For example, the basic version of an iPhone 15 is priced at 6199 yuan, but consumers can choose to buy a one-year extended warranty at an additional cost of 649 yuan. In addition, you can also choose to purchase the included 1-year replacement service of 119 yuan. This up-price buying strategy can increase consumers' perception of the value of the product and bring additional profits to the merchant.

Consumer psychology: Buying at a higher price may make consumers feel more choice, but it can also cause confusion or anxiety in purchasing decisions.
Price transparency: Merchants need to ensure that their price structure is clear and straightforward so that consumers don't feel misled or fraudulent.
Brand trust: The success of a markup strategy often depends on consumer trust and loyalty to the brand.

In the above example, the value-added service products purchased at a higher price are strongly related to the iPhone product itself, and some products, such as the hairy belly and yellow throat of the food ingredients, may not have a strong value-added product for the increase purchase, at this time, you can set up some weakly related products, such as the same type of ingredients such as shrimp and fish balls, and dinner plates and tableware that hold the ingredients, etc.

Buying at a higher price is also a double-edged sword, because it is mostly displayed on the order submission page, while increasing sales, it may also interrupt the customer's purchase path, making some customers who are willing to buy a product jump out of the page after buying the product at a random price, and then resulting in loss.

2.15 Secondary Marketing

Remarketing, also known as customer management, is a strategy that targets the different needs of the same customers at different times and in different locations. The core of this marketing method is to use existing customer resources to promote repeat consumption or cross-selling of customers through different strategies and means.

For example, it's easy to understand the concept quickly.

After the platform finishes the 618 promotion activity, sellers can seize this opportunity to do a wave of secondary marketing. Some customers who add to their shopping cart but do not pay, and some customers who do not pay after placing an order, actually have a great willingness to buy, and they can be converted, and a wave of return promotions can be made for them. Of course, customers who have already made a purchase can lead them to repeat purchases.

There are two important nodes in secondary marketing, namely list screening and activity configuration.

List screening: Screening rules and screening scoring models are formulated through customer characteristic information, behavior records, and internal and external credit performance characteristic variables. Filter from the stock users, carry out secondary marketing, go through different states, and finally return to the stock list screening pool.

Activity configuration: The activity system configures dynamic and static activity parameters according to the invitation plan; The whitelist is filtered in real time, and the invitation is executed at the point. There are several types of invitations.

2.16 Cross-Selling

Cross-selling is the process by which an enterprise sells other types of products or services to customers who have already purchased products or services to meet the diverse needs of customers. For example, when a customer buys an apple, the seller recommends bananas to the customer.

Some readers may wonder, this cross-selling feels very similar to mark-up buying, is it necessary to engage in 2 forms of activities? Not really.

Upselling is the recommendation of other related goods or services in customer decision-making and purchase, and cross-selling is the recommendation of other products and services to customers who have already closed the transaction.
Cross-selling is more based on existing order data and customer data, selecting products and customers with high conversion potential, and then configuring corresponding activities. For example, there are 200 customers who have purchased an iPhone 15, some of whom are potential customers of iPad products and some of them are potential customers of Macbooks.

If you're trying to introduce a new service to an existing customer, we call this type of extended cross-selling. It is common for Apple to launch AirPod products, and recommending AirPod products to customers who already have iPhones is extended cross-selling.
If you introduce an existing service or product to another member of the customer's organization (a different region or different department of the existing customer, for example, Group A's business unit A is an existing customer of the intelligent customer service, and we recommend the product to the BCD division of the group that is independent of A), we call this type of extended cross-selling.

The concept of multi-faceted cross-selling is more obscure and will not be expanded on here.

2.17 Precision Marketing

Precision marketing is about targeting existing customers to inspire brand loyalty and buying behavior. Precision marketing relies less on creating persuasive ads and more on creating deals, offers, and gimmicks to attract existing customers.

The core idea of precision marketing is accurate, precise and measurable, precision marketing through quantifiable and accurate market positioning technology, advanced database technology, network communication technology and modern logistics and other means to ensure the long-term personalized communication of enterprises and customers, so that marketing can be measured, controllable and other precise requirements.

In order to do this, precision marketing relies heavily on market segmentation: a technique that segments the market into smaller, more specific, and unique segments of customers.

As shown in the figure below, for example, with a total of 200,000 existing users, we can identify maternal and infant users by subdivided industries, and then push maternal and infant products and activities to them.

E-commerce products can divide users into 8 user value groups according to user value RFM, i.e., Recency, Frequency, and Monetary. It can also be divided into 5 stages or groups according to the division dimension of the user life cycle, and the specific methods and strategies need to be formulated according to the characteristics of the industry and products.

Customers at different stages of the life cycle have different choke points, and the operation strategy is to sort out the choke points at each stage, and then formulate corresponding and accurate marketing campaign strategies. In this way, limited resources can be used to a greater extent, rather than the sun shining on the dragonflies and scattering resources aimlessly.

The extreme precision marketing has given rise to a new concept: real-time (intelligent) marketing. For example, on April 23, you searched for air tickets from Chengdu to Beijing in the travel app, browsed the parent-child rooms of hotels near the Bird's Nest in Beijing, and then closed the app and put down your mobile phone.

Guess what's going to happen? The system combines your historical orders and travel data, as well as your behavior data, to comprehensively determine that you may have plans to travel to Beijing with your family during the May Day holiday, so the system pushes a ticket coupon with a denomination of XX yuan, a parent-child room in the hotel where you are doing activities, and a destination suitable for children within XX kilometers near the hotel. This push may be an APP push or a short message.

In just a few minutes, the system analyzes your historical consumption data and operational behavior, and suggests a campaign marketing strategy that is more suitable for your needs, stimulating or attracting you to make purchase conversions. It is possible that when you open the homepage of the app again, the information flow has been matched with the relevant guides, itineraries and notes of the destination Beijing.

Traditional precision marketing has a certain lag, and most of these activity marketing strategies related to you are operated manually or reached by the system after N hours, and the timeliness can be improved. The real-time intelligent marketing in the above example is obviously much more advanced than traditional precision marketing.

But the fact is that many companies or products have not even done the most basic precision marketing. The biggest difficulty and opportunity to do precision marketing lies in the customer data management platform CDP, which can be understood by yourself if you are interested, and will not be expanded in this article.

2.18 Bargaining assistance

The essence of the bargaining activity is to invite friends to participate in the activity, quickly acquire new customers, and improve customer activity. Old customers can also participate in the help, but the effect of bargaining is obviously not as good as that of new customers. The common one is Pinduoduo's cash red envelope booster activity, which may only require about 5 new customers to withdraw 200 yuan, but old customers need 15 or more (the data is a rough estimate, not a real calculation data).

Bargaining activity: Consumers actively send a link to an event or product to a friend and invite them to help bargain, and the more people who participate, the lower the price. This activity method can help merchants quickly disseminate product information, let more consumers participate, and quickly fission online customers. To put it simply, the price is getting lower and lower.

Helping activities: Essentially similar to bargaining activities, consumers take the initiative to send the activity link to their friends and invite them to help, the more people participate, the smaller the gap between consumers and the goal, such as Pinduoduo's assistance activities, the initial red envelope amount is 198 yuan, and the red envelope can only be withdrawn if it is over 200 yuan, and the more people invited, the smaller the difference in withdrawal.

Let's take price haggling as an example to talk about the admin background or specific implementation of the event. It is known that the original price of a commodity is 100 yuan, and the lowest price that can be cut is 60 yuan (financial accounting is required and will not lose money). I've been looking online for a long time but I haven't found anyone related to Pinduoduo to come out and say it, and many e-commerce products are also based on the implementation process of the front-end presentation.

The commonalities of these approaches are:

Number of bargainers: that is, how many people can participate in bargaining, and whether consumers can cut themselves.
Commodity floor price: that is, how many yuan the minimum price of the commodity can be cut, which determines whether the commodity will lose money.
Bargaining validity period: that is, the time from the initiation of bargaining to the end of bargaining, which is different from the activity time. For example, the event time is 5/1-5/7, but the bargaining validity period may only be 3 hours, and consumers are encouraged to invite more friends to share through the urgency of time.

Whether each bargain is a fixed amount or a random amount, the former is simple to implement but will make customers feel that the activity is not authentic, and the latter will generally set a random amount range. Assuming that 10 people can participate in the bargaining, the total amount that can be cut is 40 yuan, and the average person can randomly cut 4 yuan, so how is this amount random?

Here are a few common implementation logics:

The amount of each random amount is purely random in the range of 4 yuan ± 20%, but the biggest disadvantage is that it may be +X% every time, and the final random amount may exceed 40 yuan, which has a certain risk.
Set the maximum and minimum value of the random amount of the first knife, for example, the interval range is [4,13], then the interval of the remaining 9 knives should be 27-36 yuan, corresponding to the average random amount range of each knife is 3-4 yuan, and the maximum value of the range that can be cut per person per knife is not more than 4, and the minimum value > 0.01 yuan. If you want to be attractive, the minimum value can be set higher, such as 3 yuan or 3.5 yuan, or even higher.
Scheme 2 has been subsequently improved, that is, the first knife is not set but the first 1-5 knives are 2-6 yuan each time, and the last 6-10 knives are 1-2 yuan each time. In this way, the first 5 friends can cut 10-30 yuan, and the last 5 customers can cut 5-10 yuan. The amount cut in the first half will be larger, and the customer's willingness to share will be stronger, which will reduce the customer's fear of difficulties. That's what we did at the time.

In fact, there is still room for optimization in scheme 3, for example, the total amount of bargaining is 100 yuan, and the total number of people is 100 people, and the amount can be distributed before and after, such as 80 yuan and 20 yuan, and the number of people is divided into 40 and 60 people. That is, 40 people in the front cut 80 yuan, and 60 people in the back cut 20 yuan. Through my previous unsuccessful Pinduoduo cash red envelope withdrawal campaigns, I once suspected that they might have a similar design idea.

Digression: If there are many users participating in the bargaining or assistance activities, it may not be very appropriate to calculate the random amount in real time, perhaps according to the bargaining amount and the number of people to calculate in advance, and then store the calculated amount, and then read the corresponding amount when there are users to bargain.

Of course, there will be other logics in the middle, such as setting the difficulty coefficient according to the historical success of bargaining customers or the degree of new and old customers, the difficulty coefficient of pure new customers is 1, the coefficient of old customers who have not participated is 2, the difficulty coefficient of successful participation is 3, and so on. Of course, the difficulty coefficient here should not increase linearly, but may increase logarithmically or exponentially.

Pinduoduo's back-end logic and underlying algorithms for bargaining and power-up activities should be much more complex and complete than the above, and also consider strategies and model algorithms such as risk control. However, most small platforms or products should be able to meet business needs by using solution 2 or 3.

brief summary

This article is just a brief introduction to the above 18 ways to play the marketing campaign system, and each of them can be developed in detail separately for in-depth analysis. These activities are not always better, and each company or product can choose the most suitable form of activity for you.

This article was originally published by @詹老师 on Everyone is a Product Manager and is not allowed to be reproduced without permission

The title image is from Unsplash and is licensed under CC0

The views in this article only represent the author's own, everyone is a product manager, and the platform only provides information storage space services.

10,000 words long article: the construction of the marketing campaign system and 18 kinds of activity play