Let's talk about Taobao's customer stratification 88VIP

How does Taobao's 88VIP membership system achieve the screening of high-net-worth users and improve their loyalty through customer stratification strategies? This article deeply analyzes the membership rights design of Taobao 88VIP and explores how it has become the key to platform growth. It also provides strategic inspiration for enterprises on customer stratification and private domain operations.

Recently, Taobao has been pushing 88VIP. This is Taobao's customer segmentation. In fact, Taobao launched 88VIP as early as 2018. It is divided according to the Taobao value.

• Naughty value < 1000, ordinary member
• Naughty value ≥ 1000, super member

Now, 88VIP is an upgrade of the original membership system. What are the conditions? Still the naughty points.

• Naughty value < 1000, 888 yuan to buy
• Naughty value ≥ 1000, 88 yuan to buy

This design is very professional, with naughty points and payment as double thresholds, to screen out better members from the original members (the wool party is screened out). There must be a threshold for high net worth users.

What are the benefits of 88VIP?

• Unlimited returns including shipping
• Mango Youku NetEase Cloud Music Ele.me Membership
• 5% off
• Unlimited automatic price guarantee
• …

The main purpose of these benefits is to dispel the concerns of high net worth groups about placing orders. The only purpose of membership benefits is to increase customer loyalty.

Why do we need to segment customers? It’s simple. One 88VIP member can replace many ordinary members.

Let's look at a data: Taobao has 32 million 88VIP members, with an average annual consumption of more than 50,000 yuan per person. These 32 million people alone have created a GMV of nearly 2 trillion yuan. What does that mean? It's almost the same as Douyin's annual GMV. 88VIP members generally have the characteristics of "three highs": high consumption, high repurchase rate, and high purchasing power. Under the stimulation of the layered rights and interests with thresholds and identity labels, as well as the platform's continuous operating strategies, the formation of platform dependence and consumption habits will greatly increase the retention rate of users. There is no doubt that this is Taobao's best and most important customer base. More importantly, this may be Taobao's next growth point.

Think about it, who are your best and most important customers? What rights do they have? What are the thresholds? In the end, with the trend of consumption downgrade, there are only two choices for all bosses: one is to increase traffic, and the other is to differentiate and segment customers, find high-net-worth people like 88VIP and focus on serving them. If you both want to make 1 million, do you sell to 1 million people and make 1 yuan per person, or sell to 10,000 people and make 100 yuan per person?

It doesn't matter whether it is right or wrong, but the lower the price, the greater the competition, the smaller the profit margin, and there will always be someone willing to compete with you at a loss, not to mention whether you can find 1 million users in this market.

Finally, I was impressed that Taobao, with such a large amount of traffic, knows how to segment customers and "cultivate carefully", while many companies' private domains are still stuck in the "simple and crude" way of sending mass messages to all employees. Taobao launched such a membership strategy, which is a win-win for all three parties, benefiting users, merchants, and the platform; while the private domains under the WeChat account of Qihoo only benefit themselves, with users being harassed and merchants being charged rent. Not empowering the ecosystem but only blocking it with rules is putting the cart before the horse.

Author: John Dajiangwu; Source public account: John Dajiangwu (ID: 833244)