Taobao launches paid Pro membership, and membership functions change three times a year. Are new opportunities coming for merchants?

Taobao has launched paid membership, and the move by big companies is undoubtedly representative of the trend. So for ordinary small businesses, what does this mean and how to build a membership system? Let's take a look.

Recently, I saw that Taobao's merchant stores have launched their own paid membership (pro membership) model (see the picture below). Obviously, this is another major upgrade on the "0 yuan membership" membership function of the Taobao platform, giving merchants a paid membership system.

From ordinary members to paid membership system, Taobao is determined to bet on the "membership model", which not only helps merchants to manage their membership business and increase sales, but also helps them retain high-net-worth users. Membership can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

Of course, I am not only saying this when looking at this change, but also because Taobao has been making frequent adjustments to its membership policies in the past two years.

Before 2023: The "0 yuan membership" on the Taobao platform is only open to some high-quality Taobao merchants, and the places are strictly screened.

March 2023: For merchants who join for free, Taobao will begin to allow stores to set member prices and fan prices, which was not available before. In this way, members can enjoy member prices on top of the low prices during the big promotion, so the actual price will be lower.

July 2023: Taobao has opened the "0-yuan membership function" to all merchants. There is no need for screening. Once you sign up, it is open with zero threshold.

Now, merchants can also launch their own paid membership system, which is also provided by the Taobao platform.

From ordinary users, to membership functions, and then to paid membership system, the purpose is obvious. It is necessary to screen high-value users layer by layer and retain them.

Because the contribution of a high-value user is equivalent to the consumption of 10 or even 100 new customers.

I have mentioned this point in my book "Super Users". The spending power of super users is 5-10 times that of ordinary users. Public data also shows that the annual spending of JD.com's Plus paid members is 9 times that of ordinary users.

Therefore, in today's fierce competition, if we want to achieve sustainable growth and increase GMV, we must pay attention to our members.

The end of the private domain is membership, and the end of membership is super users . This is the fact today.

Not to mention the e-commerce industry, some industries that seemed traditional in the past are also evolving rapidly. The pioneers in the industry also attach great importance to membership operations.

Some time ago, I even saw a chain brand in the hairdressing industry - Youjian. It was established 7 years ago and launched paid membership very early. Now it has 1,500 stores across the country and has accumulated 8 million members.

Therefore, public domain-private domain-members-super users have become the best closed loop for user operations today.

From this perspective, Taobao seems to be one step ahead in allowing its merchants to use the "advanced" weapon of paid membership, but whether the merchants can use it well is another matter.

Taobao merchants need to seize the dividends of this wave of membership trends on the platform and grab the resources provided by the platform to achieve twice the result with half the effort. However, after the dividends are over, they still need to compete on the ability to operate memberships, from team building, membership system, operation methods and software tools, all of which will affect the final result.

Paid membership does not mean that once you have the tools and offer a benefit, users will pay for it and you can build user loyalty. Sometimes, if you think too simply and don’t lay a good foundation, and you rush to launch paid membership, it will backfire and kill the quality members.

Therefore, based on my past consulting experience in helping companies build membership and super user systems, I would like to give some suggestions and thoughts to merchants who are preparing to become members (paid members), so that they can consider in advance and help them avoid pitfalls.

1. Thinking and cognition

We need to establish membership thinking based on traffic thinking. The former is a spending thinking. It is about how to increase sales quickly and easily. In short, just spend money.

Membership thinking is different. It requires nurturing users and changing the mindset from spending money to "spending time and effort". Money can buy traffic immediately, but it cannot buy trust and loyalty. The inertia of thinking is the key to hindering merchants from doing a good job in membership management.

2. Omni-channel membership operation

For large brand merchants, to do a good job in member management, they must unify online (Taobao) members and offline members (stores), unify identities, data, rights and interests, experience, and operations.

This will lead to a consistent experience, improved efficiency and reduced costs. This involves organizational structure, operational division of labor, technical tools, etc., to create excellent companies like Kids King and Baiguoyuan.

3. Membership operation capabilities

For any merchant, it is useless to have a large number of members but not member operation tools. The merchant must also have member operation capabilities, which means that the member can buy more in your hands.

Therefore, membership operation capability = membership system + membership model + membership strategy.

It doesn’t mean that having members and tools will enable you to operate members well. Many Taobao merchants have a large number of users, but why is the repurchase rate so low and the loss so high? They have to pay money to the platform every year to grow. It is because those users are “dormant” members and they lack effective operation capabilities.

4. Build membership operation systems and tools

Today, each platform has its own interests and rules, and members are assets of the merchants, but platforms often do not communicate with each other, resulting in isolated islands of member information.

For example, if the same user is called Zhang San on JD.com and Li Si on Taobao, how to identify and mark them will greatly affect the merchant's precision marketing and dimensional strength for this user. Therefore, merchants may face the problem of how to build an integrated membership system, build their own CRM+CDP, and connect membership data from different platforms.

5. Doing a good job in private domain traffic operation is a prerequisite

I always say that the end of private domain is membership, and the changes in Taobao further prove this statement. Whoever does private domain but not membership is giving up competition. If the private domain is not done well, the membership will probably not be done well either. Because the essence of both is the management of user relationships.

Private domain is the first station for members. For those who can do well in membership, it is easy to do private domain. On the contrary, for those who do well in private domain, it is not difficult to become a member. However, those merchants who have not done well in private domain may lose at the starting line again this time.

“It is never too late to mend.”

The business of an enterprise must be sustainable and its growth must be long-term. No matter whether your private domain and members are doing well or not, you should pay attention to it now and invest manpower, financial resources and energy to make it better.

The best time is now, immediately, right away.

Of course, everyone’s current situation and problems are different, some are complex, some are simple; everyone’s expectations for doing a good job in private domains and members are also different, some hope to do it in 6 months, some hope to see results in 3 months.

Some people may have tried for a long time, formed a team, invested resources and funds, but are still troubled by some problems and cannot solve them.

Author: Yan Tao

WeChat public account: Yan Tao Sanshou (ID: yantao-219)