With over 7 million paying members and annual GMV exceeding 1 billion, how did Youjian open 1,500 stores in the private domain?

With the development of the appearance economy, the hairdressing industry has gradually ushered in a booming development, but the rapidly developing hairdressing industry has also exposed many problems. As a light and fashionable Internet hairdressing brand, how did Youjian go against the trend? This article disassembles its private domain operations, let's take a look.

In recent years, as people pay more and more attention to their personal image, the "appearance economy" has emerged, which has also led to the rapid development of many hairdressing companies.

Data shows that since 2017, the number of hairdressing-related companies in my country has continued to increase, and the growth rate has remained stable at more than 30%.

However, the rapidly developing hairdressing industry has also exposed many problems:

The industry has a low threshold and practitioners are mixed;

Frequent cases of fraudulent card applications and absconding with funds have reduced consumer trust;

The cost of acquiring customers for enterprises continues to rise, and the quality of users varies greatly.

In the first half of 2023, against the backdrop of a 15% decline in overall revenue in the national hairdressing industry, Youjian, as a light and fashionable Internet hairdressing brand, achieved a counter-trend growth.

With its outstanding private domain and digital marketing methods, Youjian now has nearly 1,500 stores across the country, serving a total of 8 million users, becoming a leading company in China's beauty industry.

So, what is the advantage of Youjian's private domain? How is it different from other hair salons? Below I will analyze it from five perspectives: customer acquisition, experience, activation, repeat purchase, and fission.

01 Customer acquisition channels

Different from the traditional barbershop community model, Youjian’s customer acquisition channel is mainly online.

When a new user follows the "Youjian" official account for the first time, a 5-yuan haircut coupon will automatically pop up.

After receiving the coupon, users can click on the link to enter the Youjian mini program, where the system will recommend the nearest store based on real-time location. After confirming the store, users can designate a hairstylist and make an appointment to place an order.

Through the "Mini Program Appointment", Youjian has built a two-way bridge between users and stores. While improving users' haircut experience, it also helps stores achieve efficient traffic diversion from online to offline.

In addition to mini programs, Youjian is also attracting traffic on multiple platforms including Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin.

Among them, Weibo and Xiaohongshu platforms mainly promote products and brands. However, the conversion paths of Douyin and Dianping are more direct, and users can directly buy coupons and place orders.

In order to dispel users' concerns about price opacity, Youjian adopts a unified pricing system set by the headquarters. The price of a single haircut is between 38 and 58 yuan. The price charged by the store manager is slightly higher than that of ordinary barbers. This price is competitive in the quick-cut market.

02 Haircut Experience

High-quality haircut experience has always been one of the biggest selling points of Youjian. According to the official 4th anniversary report, more than 50% of users will still choose Youjian after experiencing its haircut service once.

So, what is so good about the haircut experience provided by Youjian?

1. Focus on hair cutting, not over-selling

For a long time, the hairdressing industry has been a mixed bag due to low entry barriers and limited market supervision. There are hidden consumption, routine card application, and even running away with money and other chaos.

In response to this, Youjian did not offer stored-value cards, but encouraged users to make one-time purchases. It also stripped Tony of his sales attributes, allowing them to focus on haircuts.

In order to achieve this, Youjian has set a "satisfaction value" for hair stylists. This satisfaction value is derived from the user's evaluation of each haircut and is reflected in the user's appointment and ordering interface.

The level of satisfaction will not only affect the choice of new users when making appointments, but also affect the hairdresser's bonuses, promotions and other income. Because of this, Tony, the teacher of Youjian, is more pure and more attentive when providing service.

2. Manage users’ time well

In addition to the routine card application process, another area where consumers complain the most is the waste of waiting time in stores.

Traditional barbershops lack online technology support, so users can only know the queue situation after arriving at the store. If you are unlucky and meet a customer who is getting a hair perm or dyeing in front of you, it will be even more difficult to grasp the waiting time. If you leave in the middle of the process, you are afraid that someone will cut in line and you will have to start all over again when you come back.

As a result, it is very likely that the user will spend half an hour getting a haircut and an hour waiting. Such an inefficient arrangement will undoubtedly seriously damage the user's haircut experience.

In response to this, Youjian launched the "offline reservation" function to encourage users to place orders in advance on the mini program.

Just like people are used to waiting in line for meals, by making reservations through the mini program, users can accurately see their queue progress: including how many people are ahead, the estimated waiting time, etc. This way, they can arrange their itinerary reasonably and avoid wasting a lot of time.

03 User activation

Many barbershops are not good at user management, and many new customers will not contact them again after coming once.

Especially for male users, their "loyalty" to a certain hairstylist is not that high, and whether he will come next time is completely up to fate.

Moreover, many users do not remember when they last had a haircut, and most of them only get their hair cut when they feel it is time to do so.

Therefore, Youjian did a very detailed action: reminding people to get a haircut.

Generally speaking, the haircut cycle for male users is about 20 days. When 20 days have passed since the customer last placed an order on the mini program, the Youjian system will remind you through a template message on the official account to remind you that it is time for a haircut! For female customers, this cycle is 2-3 months.

Compared with 1V1 private chat, template message reminders will not make customers feel disturbed. By reminding users at the right time, users can be further stimulated to repurchase.

Not only that, Youjian also regularly releases promotional activities, product information and other content on its official account and corporate WeChat Moments.

Through continuous exposure and reaching users, Youjian continues to strengthen its image in the minds of users, cultivate trust, and allow users with needs to easily find itself and realize their purchase needs.

04 User repurchase

For the beauty industry, customer sources are very important, and members are even more important. According to the 80/20 principle, 80% of a merchant's profits are contributed by 20% of core customers.

Therefore, by maintaining existing customers well, beauty industry merchants can turn individual customers into members, and members into loyal members, thereby driving revenue growth through "repeat purchases from old customers."

According to statistics, Youjian achieved a 40% business growth in 2020, and the customer repurchase rate within 90 days reached 80%.

Youjian has also spent a lot of effort on building membership. Unlike other hair salons that charge thousands of yuan for membership cards, Youjian has launched a paid membership for 19.9 yuan per year, a price that most users will obviously accept, and a few orders will pay for it.

On the one hand, low-priced membership can lower the user's decision-making threshold and increase the user's consumption frequency; on the other hand, it can help users bind Youjian's standardized services and brands and enhance user identification.

Next, I will disassemble Youjian’s membership system and see how Youjian uses the membership system to increase repeat purchases.

1. Paid Membership

Price: 19.9 yuan/year

Benefits: 10 yuan off for the first order, 15% off on all items, 15% off on Youyue Mall, double points for purchases, 30% off haircut coupons for birthdays, privilege experience cards (can be given to friends)

2. Points system

Currently, Youjian allows users to accumulate points in four ways: getting a haircut, purchasing merchandise, inviting friends, and completing information.

Among them, the speed at which non-member users and paid members earn points is different. Taking haircut as an example, non-member users get 0.5 points for every 1 yuan actually paid. Paid members get 1 point for every 1 yuan actually paid, which is twice as much as non-member users.

Currently, points can be exchanged for goods/merchandise coupons in the points mall, and merchandise coupons can be used to deduct discounts when purchasing physical goods through online mini-programs.

Taking a certain shampoo as an example, the original price on Taobao is 38 yuan, but in the points mall you need 100 points + 10.8 yuan, and there are also free products. This shows that Youjian’s points are not "useless" but still have practical value.

05 Social fission

Nowadays, fission has become an important means for enterprises to attract new customers. Compared with advertising, fission users are more accurate and of higher quality.

In order to attract new users based on old users, "Youjian" has designed two social fission paths to improve the efficiency of WeChat customer acquisition.

1. Coupons

When old users invite new users, both parties can receive a 10-yuan coupon. The coupon collection page and the reservation page are located in the same mini program. New users can use the coupon immediately after receiving it, which greatly shortens the consumption path and improves the conversion rate of new users.

2. Gift Cards

Youjian also provides a gift card service in its mini program. The card has a specially designed cartoon character on it, and the gifts include hair styling services of different levels. Friends can redeem the card and pay for it in the store.

The process of radiating new users through old users and new users becoming old users through repeated cycles has brought "Youjian" a group of accurate users with high retention rate and strong conversion rate, and the number of users is also growing continuously.

This is the secret of Youjian, which has rapidly expanded its user base to over 8 million in just a few years.

Final Thoughts

In fact, the essence of private domain is to manage the relationships between people.

Therefore, this requires companies to always adhere to the "customer-centric" approach, starting from customer needs and improving services, so as to establish a long-term trust relationship with customers.

Author: Yan Tao, WeChat public account: Yan Tao Sanshou