Sold 20 million in more than a year: Good repurchase in the pet private domain depends on these 4 insights

In the context of the rapid growth of the pet market, pet private domain operations have become a key strategy to increase repurchase rates and sales. Wang Bingbing, senior user manager of Hangzhou Chuhu (formerly Hangzhou Yipet), shared how to successfully achieve an annual private domain sales growth of more than 20 million by deeply understanding user needs. This article will detail his team's "150 repurchase model" and how to increase user repurchase rates through four key insights.

The case in this article is a review by Wang Bingbing, senior user manager of Hangzhou Chuhu (formerly Hangzhou Yichong). She and her team used a repurchase model to achieve an annual sales growth of more than 20 million in the private domain.

In Wang Bingbing's review, Jianshi found that all the operations of this team were "based on user needs", and they tried their best to explore and meet user needs, while ensuring that the final results led to business growth. If you also agree with the "user-centric" operating principle and hope to achieve growth while serving users well, this case will definitely inspire you.

Our company (Hangzhou Chuhu) mainly deals in imported cat food and dog food, and ranks among the top three on Tmall International. Cat food and dog food are essential products as pet staple foods, and have strong repurchase properties. This also determines that our primary goal in the private domain is to attract more repurchases from users, which is what we often say to get users to "buy more and buy longer."

In the in-depth contact with users, we found many potential needs of users. Obviously, if we can solve these needs, we can retain users. Therefore, we have precipitated a set of "150 repurchase models" based on various needs of users, including "07-day joint purchase", "60-90-day food shortage reminder", and "150-day promotion marketing" combined operation strategies. At the same time, we also created a membership day around private domain IP - Wednesday Bear Day, to continue to strengthen users' regular purchase mentality.

After building this "150 repurchase system", compared with the previous year, each user bought an average of 0.2 more items, the average order value increased by more than RMB 70, and the annual sales increased by more than RMB 20 million.

We believe that taking user needs as the starting point and in the process of satisfying user needs, as long as we can serve users well and bring real value to users, making money is just a by-product.

Hangzhou Chuhu's "150 repurchase model"

Next, let’s talk about how we discovered user needs and how we developed a repurchase strategy:

The first insight: Users may not necessarily recognize brand consultants, but they recognize the “same cat slave identity”.

When a user just joins the community, our first communication with the user usually starts with a self-introduction, such as "Who am I, what can I bring to you, how to bind an order", etc. However, we found that after such messages are sent out, the user response rate is often very low.

In fact, it is not difficult to understand if we put ourselves in their shoes. When there is no problem, no one is willing to consult a consultant, and few people want to chat with a consultant. On the other hand, although our private domain partners are positioned as consultants, it is easy for enterprise WeChat users to label these consultants as "customer service" in their minds.

Later, we reviewed a lot of chats between our partners and users and found that if our partners were willing to post photos of their pets first, many users would immediately join the chat and even reply with some pet photos. With the common identity of "cat slaves", users' trust in us was rapidly increasing. Therefore, one of the hard requirements in our community consultant recruitment requirements is "to have a pet."

Dada Bear's daily chat with users

Here is our complete reception SOP for the first 7 days:

On the first day, we will have our first interaction, mainly introducing ourselves;

On the 3rd day, there will be a return visit and pet photos will be sent;

Then within 7 days, users will be notified of the Bear Day every Wednesday, telling them that there will be discounts if they place orders every Wednesday.

We hope to establish initial trust with users through multiple interactions within 7 days, and will also recommend related products after users place an order.

In addition to our main products, cat food and dog food, we also have non-essential products such as canned food and freeze-dried food. In the private domain, we achieve cross-selling by bundling these peripheral products, which is another important indicator of our private domain.

Last year, we achieved additional sales of more than 4,000 units through cross-selling, and we also achieved sales of more than 5 million by upgrading from "buy one pack to buy two packs."

The second insight: It takes an average of 87 days for a cat to finish a bag of cat food, so the “out of food reminder” is the best time to repurchase.

Based on our experience, we found that it takes about three months for a cat to finish a bag of food. To verify this observation, we further conducted user research for auxiliary verification and determined that it takes an average of 87 days for a cat to finish a bag of cat food.

Cat owners must restock their cat food before it runs out.

Then, we only need to proactively provide services before the cat food is finished, and we can accurately match the user's repurchase needs.

Therefore, our operating strategy was adjusted to conduct active repurchase marketing between the 60th and 90th days after the user’s purchase.

Why 60 days? Because during this time, users can see that their cat food bags are deflated, and the anxiety of running out of food has already emerged, and the desire to repurchase is relatively strong. We call this repurchase marketing "out of food reminder".

Now that we understand the needs of users, how can we cover more users and reach them more accurately?

Here I want to mention a marketing strategy, which I define as "precision marketing", which is to establish a communication and service system with customers through various means of contact. After this set of actions, the investment-output ratio was improved through refined stratification and precise contact, and the repurchase rate was also increased from 40%+ to 60%+.

In terms of communication rhythm, we should give priority to using free and low-cost means of contact to complete the first wave of sales. The order we often use is: the store’s exclusive customer service - text message - AI phone call.

Among them, the store’s exclusive customer service messages are free and have a better return on investment, which is often the first contact method we use;

The investment in SMS is relatively low, but fortunately the cost is also low and the coverage is the widest, so we usually adopt it in the second round; AI phone calls are measures in the third round.

Finally, we will conduct a wave of 1V1 outreach on WeChat, mainly to accurately reach pre-sale and non-purchasing users, which is a precise supplement to the above three outreach methods.

Reference for "Daily Reach Rating" of Hangzhou Chuhu users

The third insight: Necessary products are most popular during promotions.

Pet food is a rigidly needed product, and users come to buy it almost every day, but they are usually worried that the daily price of the flagship store is too much higher than the big sale price. The bad side is that this will trigger users to search and compare prices, resulting in a higher churn rate; the good side is that it also makes the industry's big sale stockpiling mentality very strong, which has become a breakthrough for us to increase repeat purchases.

The most common way to increase repeat purchases is to simply and crudely guide users to buy at fixed nodes (such as festivals) through discounts and benefits. However, if you have coupons for purchases above a certain amount, your competitors also have them; if you have gifts, your competitors also have them; if you have private domains, your competitors also have them...

It seems that the rights and gameplay of all companies are similar. If you want to grab the attention of users, you need differentiated gameplay. At the same time, pet food has a certain exclusivity, which also determines the importance of competing for user attention.

The solution we found is to differentiate ourselves from competitors through "content-based gameplay". We planned "Bear Day every Wednesday" based on the private domain IP, so that users can think of Wednesday activities and Wednesday is more cost-effective when they need to buy food, thereby reducing the search and price comparison and reducing user churn.

All our accounts are called "XX Bear", such as "Fishing Bear", "Paving Bear", "Socially Phobic Bear", etc. In this way, users can directly find various "Bears" when they need to make purchases on Wednesday, which will further increase users' recognition and resonance.

Can a single theme increase user repurchase? Yes, but it is not enough.

Our further strategy is to lock in customers in advance and lock in the purchasing needs of users who are interested in purchasing before the big promotion. In this way, during the big promotion, we can carry out targeted marketing to users who are not clear about their purchasing intentions.

During this period, we must prepare the best benefits for old customers during the entire promotion period. As the promotion progresses, the interest points should be lower and lower to ensure the maximum benefits of old customers. Our pre-sale lock-in customer ratio during the 618 period in 2023 was 47%, and the pre-sale lock-in customer ratio during the Double 11 period in the same year was 63%.

User asks Pig Bear about "Wednesday Bear Day"

The fourth insight: Compared with the layers of benefits, users also like "fun" and "sense of ritual".

In our daily interactions with users, in addition to discounts and benefits, we find that users are particularly interested in "new and unique" products, and will even actively recommend interesting new products to us. At the same time, "new and unique" products always attract more users to participate in discussions in WeChat groups.

In addition, we found that humans' sense of ritual for festivals can be replicated on pets and can quickly resonate with users. Pets' festivals have not always been a necessity, so many owners do not prepare holiday gifts for their pets in advance, but we found that if pet-specific gifts appear in the form of gifts, they will still resonate with the owners immediately.

Indeed, if the private domain only adds discounts and benefits, users may also feel tired. Therefore, we combine "novelty + sense of ritual + recent hot topics + gift resources" together, and plan theme activities around "interesting, stalking, nonsense, and sense of ritual" and continue to optimize and implement them.

During the Double 11 period of a certain year, we planned an event combining the two nearby festivals of Double 11 and Halloween. The event gifts, "Lollipop" and "Magic Hat", were customized gifts for pets in conjunction with the festival. Nearly 10,000 users participated in the event, which brought a 40% year-on-year sales growth.

During the Double 11 event in Hangzhou Chuhu in the past two years, we achieved a nearly 7-fold increase in sales through promotional activities, and maintained a sustained growth trend.

This verifies that our user-demand-oriented operating model - from identifying and meeting user needs to continuously optimizing standard operating procedures (SOPs) - has achieved substantial results.

This not only points us to the path of future development, but also provides information for our continued innovation and service improvement.