Breaking the bottleneck of private domain marketing! An innovative way to manage private domain users of thousands of chain stores

As companies expand rapidly across the country, private domain user management has become a complex and urgent challenge. This article reveals how a chain store company successfully broke through the difficulty of private domain user management in the stock market through strategies such as layered operations, digital centers, and content middle platforms. Follow our sharing to learn how they established a private domain user base with a high retention rate in thousands of stores, laying a solid foundation for the company's sustainable growth.

Riding on a wave of momentum, the company has rapidly expanded its stores across the country by thousands, but this has also brought with it a large number of chain store management problems. In the current stock market, the growth and expansion of new channels is one of the main considerations for companies, but in comparison, back-end omni-channel management is more difficult than expanding new channels.

Not long ago, a group of Jianshi members visited this chain store company to carry out a study tour. Yang Xin, the group member director, mentioned that high-quality store traffic has brought them tens of millions of private domain users with a retention rate of more than 85%.

There are two important feelings behind this:

First, on a rational level, the design of a coordinated operation mechanism for thousands of stores. It took several months for the number of private domain users to increase from 0 to 1 million, but the time was shortened by half from 1 million to 5 million, which is inseparable from a complete operation mechanism design.

After clarifying the private domain strategy led by the top leader, the headquarters began to formulate a tiered operation mechanism for stores and franchisees, a global traffic management mechanism for the enterprise digital center, a content middle-office strategy, and an incentive mechanism.

Second, on the emotional level, the private domain has become the best place to establish close relationships with users and stores. Stores are not just warehouses for inventory, but key places to establish neighborhood relationships with surrounding residents. They can win the trust of most users around single stores. When single stores are connected into a network, the trust of users in a larger area is solved.

This article is a transcript of Yang Xin's sharing. The content mainly mentions how to position the private domain, how to activate stores and franchisees, and the four major elements of building private domain user assets. For various reasons, we have made this article anonymous, and have made appropriate deletions and rewrites without affecting the reading. Without further ado, let's go back to the sharing session with Jianshi and listen to her thoughts on private domain operations, as follows, Enjoy:

01 A market of tens of millions, with a retention rate of nearly 90%: How can private domains change from “quantitative change” to “qualitative change”?

After nearly a year of rapid growth, the company has accumulated more than 10 million private domain users, of which 80% come from offline stores.

Compared with online fission users with lower stickiness, community users from store channels have a higher sense of brand trust. Factors include a store at the entrance of a community, selling specific categories of goods, the perception of store display layout, and the service of store staff, etc. This is why, when we look at the private domain data this year, their user retention rate is as high as 87% , that is, the high-quality development of stores is the key to high retention in the private domain.

Based on this "tens of millions of market" and "nearly 90% retention rate", the company has officially entered the private domain 2.0 stage.

Last year, the group chat was mainly for various brands, and users joined the group chat just to get coupons. After the adjustment this year, the headquarters iterated the membership system, focusing on building neighborhood relationships among members .
Since the store is located in a residential area, consumers buy nearby, and the target audience is people living in the neighborhood. Therefore, it is most appropriate to build a group centered on the "neighborhood group". On the one hand, it ensures that customers know our store staff and stores; on the other hand, residents of the surrounding communities, store owners and store staff are all in the same community, which contains not only product information, but also community news, etc., to enhance customer stickiness.

For them, new and old stores have different strategies: new stores focus on brand penetration and community promotion; old stores focus on consolidating and expanding customer base. But compared with the community, 1v1 is the main battlefield of private domain, and the comprehensive efficiency of the latter is 5 times that of the former .

Of course, the private domain of an enterprise is not limited to users of WeChat ecosystems such as corporate WeChat, public accounts and video accounts, but also includes the user reach and unified management of public domain platforms and store channels. As mentioned at the beginning, no matter which channel, in the end, we still have to return to the overall business to look at the essence of high-quality growth of stores.

However, the game between franchisees and headquarters is always going on, and any additional store workload requires a lot of collaborative work to handle.

Yang Xin believes that the core strategy to solve this problem is to allow stores to immediately see performance growth or data improvement.

The company headquarters took three key actions:

First, face-to-face communication with front-line stores. Yang Xin and his team visited stores across the country, explained the value of information to them, demonstrated cases of incremental performance brought about by private domain online operations, highlighted the importance of doing a good job in online operations, and used practical actions to demonstrate the headquarters' position, that is, to create and share with franchisees, share costs, and share performance growth.

Second, continue to optimize and iterate the centralized traffic operation mechanism. Especially for franchise formats or chain brands, centralization is an inevitable trend.

Externally, the company is a platform and the "brain" of the enterprise. It has more than 10,000 stores and more than 10,000 store employees and store managers. The headquarters provides stores with a complete data dashboard that allows them to track the number, profile, preferences and potential value of customers, making store customer maintenance more automated and reducing the workload of stores as much as possible. Internally, this mechanism also helps to report upward and synchronize goals and progress with the organization, such as user inquiry frequency, contact frequency, exposure and performance growth, etc.

The entire operating mechanism has three key strategies:

First of all, everything is designed based on business realities. We conducted extensive branch and store surveys in advance to collect feedback and opinions, and established a set of "iron triangle" relationships: the headquarters provided content materials (such as posters, copywriting, pictures and video data), marketing tools, and expense subsidies.

Secondly, establish clear traffic attribution rules. The principle of centralized traffic management is that traffic attribution must be clear. On the one hand, no matter which channel a member is in, there is a unique ID number; on the other hand, it is also necessary to ensure the uniqueness of the store level, that is, the principle of "one store, one code", to ensure that customer orders are consistent with the corresponding community store. Finally, the operation strategy should not be adjusted too drastically or frequently.

Our experience is that, for example, coupon strategies are adjusted once a quarter. If the adjustments are targeted at stores, it is recommended that they do not exceed 30% per month, so that the stores will not be unable to withstand the changes too quickly. Small changes and tests are feasible, but large-scale changes, such as suddenly increasing the number of coupons from 5 to 8, are often difficult for stores to accept. Chain brands are best to limit the monthly strategy adjustments to 20% to 30% to ensure that stores can accept and effectively implement them.

Third, establish external cooperation with third-party platforms. You may ask, why should stores pay attention to the placement of external platforms? For example, Meituan, Ele.me, Douyin and WeChat Moments, although these placements may lead to losses, the instant feedback they provide is very powerful. Once connected, they can provide stores with real-time and efficient feedback. The digitalization process of stores sometimes requires not only building their own systems, but also learning to leverage the platform.
Regardless of the contact method, the importance of data is always emphasized during the operation process. Authorization to manage the community is based on data indicators such as contribution amount, retention rate and activity, rather than just the subjective statements of the operator.

02 Four elements of user asset construction: stratification + tools + content + incentives

It took several months to grow the number of private domain users from 0 to 1 million, but the time from 1 million to 5 million was shortened by half. This is inseparable from the systematic strategy design from store hierarchical management, digital tool upgrades, content strategy optimization and incentive mechanism design.

The classification of stores is particularly important for the franchise system.

During the opening of a new store, the new store account will be sent from the store to the branch, and then the branch will be unified and sent to the headquarters for account creation and built under the headquarters' architecture. All operational data, such as member operations or data middle platform, need to be managed at the headquarters and then passed to the store. The core role of the headquarters is strategy formulation and central thinking, while branches and stores are the key to execution and implementation.

Although some stores may have the ability to undertake traffic after optimizing strategies, they usually lack the skills to operate communities. For example, for A-level or S-level stores, although they have autonomous operation authority, they still hope that the headquarters can provide strategies so that they don’t have to worry about it.

Therefore, implementing support strategies for different levels of stores can ensure that basic customer service is maintained.

In the store classification, the highest level stores can operate almost completely independently, but the details of user management are still handled by the headquarters. After all, stores do not have a global perspective, such as distinguishing silent members and attracting them to repurchase by issuing coupons.

In addition, the Group has implemented regional divisions and store tiers, with each tier equipped with a strategy that matches its operational capabilities. The aim of this system is to improve efficiency and performance.
In short, the purpose of the private domain stratification strategy is to improve overall operational efficiency and prevent potential problems through refined management and differentiated support. This strategy ensures that every store can effectively participate in community operations within its capabilities.

Here is a question: When classifying stores, do you think it is based on the front-end operation data of the store, or is it more dependent on the user market data, such as transaction volume? The answer is the latter. That is, the headquarters pays attention to the activity of the market community, retention rate and user scale, and rarely refers to the operation data of the store.

So, the question is, how to motivate more stores to actively participate in self-management? The answer is the tools and content library provided by the headquarters, which are resources that all stores can use.

Some stores may not be willing to invest too much energy even if they are operating well, but this situation is relatively rare. We will communicate with these stores. If they do not want to operate the store themselves, they can choose to let the headquarters manage it. This is a two-way choice relationship.

After solving the store stratification mechanism, digital tools and content materials, the only thing left is the incentive issue.

The core of their incentives include marketing activities and financial subsidies. Money is the key in many aspects, and so is motivation. Of course, there are rewards and punishments. Some systems usually adjust the level of promotion or demotion every three months to adapt to the cycle of off-season and peak-season.

If the store data fails to meet the standards, it may be downgraded from S to A, or from A to B.

In general, the purpose of the entire mechanism is to establish user data assets based on a private domain system . If we cannot clearly see the data of each user and each store, it will be difficult to formulate effective strategies and operational measures.

In this process, on the one hand, provinces and branches play an important role. They are not only responsible for local operations, such as attracting new customers and diverting traffic, but also responsible for strategic training and supervision. In terms of financial costs, they should also communicate with stores in advance about the distribution of benefits and cost burden, so as to avoid explaining these issues after the fact.

On the other hand, standardization is the core of the headquarters' work, otherwise human costs will become a weakness of the enterprise. It is necessary to avoid allocating resources based on personal relationships, which is not only unfair but also hinders the standardization of business. If we cannot clearly formulate rules and declare them in advance, we will have trouble in dealing with interpersonal relationships.

03 Activating stores and franchisees: Enterprise WeChat applications become the company's strategic direction

The franchise system is more complicated than the direct sales or brand-owned private domain system, involving different roles and personnel levels. Therefore, all things need to be standardized, goals and incentives need to be unified, and there needs to be a common understanding of things in order to avoid the phenomenon of "going it alone".

For these thousands of stores, the headquarters has designed a hierarchical management strategy:

First, we operate in layers according to geographical location. People, goods and places are only part of the business. We should not ignore "time" and "geographic location". We should formulate marketing and management strategies according to time and location. Due to the differences in the opening time, target user groups and geographical location of each store, the headquarters divides the stores into five levels, covering provincial capital cities, county-level cities, prefecture-level cities and township stores.

Currently, the township stores located in fourth- and fifth-tier cities can usually cover the entire town because the local population is relatively fixed and they have close social ties with each other.

Unlike first-tier cities, third- and fourth-tier cities have less population mobility. Penetration is carried out around the local population, so the future user growth space is relatively limited, but it cannot be completely abandoned. Moreover, for third- and fourth-tier city stores, concepts must be explained in simple language - using "performance" instead of "GMV" or using "annual consumption" to explain "LTV". They may not understand complex terms.

Secondly, stores are divided into mature and growing categories according to their maturity . The core of the classification is whether the user volume can reach the annual or monthly turnover income standard. Different operation strategies are formulated for different types of stores:

First, for mature stores, more emphasis is placed on refined operational strategies, such as attracting new users, recalling customers, and repeat purchases; second, for growing stores, user repeat purchases may be adopted to expand user base by providing membership benefits and using social friend circles.

Although these methods can improve user growth and volume, the ultimate core is still how to build good operational traffic. Top students have outstanding performance in community building and other aspects, and store managers will pay close attention to the dynamics of these excellent stores and imitate their strategies.

There are two key actions in this process:

First, two key roles were set up: strategy experts and training instructors. The strategy experts were responsible for developing store growth strategies, while the training instructors were responsible for deepening the training content, motivating participants, and ensuring that the training content was fully understood and applied. The cooperation between these two roles played an important role in improving store performance.

Second, design three task levels: S, A, and B. Set up a store task push mechanism, requiring stores to complete specified tasks within a specific time and give corresponding incentives. Establish an infrastructure task system to ensure that stores can perform specific tasks as required. This grading system is divided into regular incentives and challenge incentives. Regular incentives are continuous and regularly iterated, while challenge incentives are targeted at specific goals. After completion, stores can see their own rankings and receive rewards, thereby further improving performance.

In 2023, the headquarters began a comprehensive reform.

On the one hand, the focus is on how to communicate sincerely with users. A small detail is that they decided to abandon the use of emoticons and adopt more sincere and straightforward vernacular to communicate with users. The purpose is to make users feel that the store is like their neighbors and friends, not just a cold robot sending messages.

On the other hand, we connected the global data and built our own data center, including replacing the original third-party company's POS registration membership system with a resource system. The headquarters can see the business consumption situation in each channel, which also helps the headquarters to better formulate membership stratification strategies and related actions.

This is a matter of infrastructure construction. Many brands may pay attention to concepts such as CDP or CMA, but the core is to understand what you need. The things you need and the goals will be different at different stages. While gradually advancing, you also need to consider whether the execution can keep up.

In Yang Xin's view, the essence of private domain lies in establishing mindset through touchpoints and information transmission, which has extremely low cost and huge marginal effect. This can not only drive performance growth, but also enhance the company's industry potential and brand influence. It is a universal tool for corporate digital transformation.

Author: Tang Luyao and Xie Meng

Source: WeChat public account "Jianshi"