Financial acquisition is moving towards a new cycle…
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat official account “Yiben Finance” (ID: yibencaijing), the author made a building block.
In the past year, the cost of financial flows has skyrocketed.
“In the past, the cost of acquiring a loan was only tens of yuan per person, but now it needs thousands of yuan, which has skyrocketed by 30 times.” Wang Xu, the market leader of a lending platform, revealed.
At the same time, the major traffic giants are distributing less and less traffic to the financial sector, and compliance controls are getting stricter.
“It is conservatively estimated that the flow of Guangdiantong to finance has been reduced by 25%.” Wang Xu judged.
Online traffic has skyrocketed, but profits have been continuously compressed, and some platforms have begun to look offline again.
Beginning in the second half of this year, many leading financial platforms began to form offline departments, with thousands of people at every turn.
And their job is to get customers offline: setting up stalls, sweeping buildings and streets, and visiting strangers.
Will returning to offline become the trend of financial customer acquisition in the future?
01 Online skyrocketing
“Online traffic really doesn’t have to be done.” This is Wang Xu’s feeling in the past year.
First of all, the traffic allocated to the financial industry by various traffic giants is shrinking.
Wang Xu found that the advertising space on Guangdiantong has decreased significantly this year. “It is conservatively estimated that the traffic allocated to finance has been reduced by 25%.”
The strategy adopted by Douyin is “7+3”.
“Only 10 loan super platforms are allowed to go online, of which 7 are fixed, and the other 3 are floating.” In order to grab the index, Wang Xu had to sign a year frame agreement with Douyin, “Whoever sets the price more High, the probability of squeezing in is greater.”
Everything started to become a familiar bidding game.
On the other hand, another traffic platform even advertises that it prohibits opening financial accounts.
Wang Xu estimates that the overall online financial flow has “dropped by more than 50%,” and the market has seen too much money, and prices have naturally started to rise.
Secondly, traffic giants are increasingly demanding compliance.
“Now, a compliance commitment letter is a must. In addition, traffic parties have more and more requirements, for example, you have to have Net Security for the record, you have to have it on the complaint platform such as the Account number and so on.” Wang Xu felt that to get an account online, he needed to pass the test.
There are still many limitations that Wang Xu can’t overcome.
For example, now the traffic partners will also send emails to the financial platforms they are cooperating with, asking them to confirm that they have indeed cooperated with Wang Xu.
“The financial platform is not obliged to manage this, it is difficult to communicate.”
Various compliance requirements are constantly increasing the company’s costs.
For example, in order to protect users’ privacy and information security, contracts need to be signed electronically, “The cost of a registered user increases by several cents.”
There are a total of 60 people in the marketing department of a financial platform, of which 45 are technology. Their job is to help the platform comply with the process.
Wang Xu’s department, in order to comply with regulations, has to add millions of additional costs every month.
On the one hand, the market supply chain is shrinking, and on the other hand, compliance costs are rising. The online customer acquisition costs of financial institutions are rising.
“In general, the cost of a registered user of a loan is now more than 100 yuan; when it was the lowest in the past, it was only a few yuan, which is really a 30-fold increase.” Wang Xu said.
He took a look at the industry data. If the risk control of a platform is tight, the customer acquisition cost of a lending user is directly thousands.
In the past, the lowest cost was only a few dozen yuan.
“Different products have a relatively large gap in customer acquisition costs, ranging from hundreds to thousands. For example, the cost of loan users for mortgage loans has risen to more than 2,000.” The person in charge of traffic on another platform revealed.
Online financial products are constantly increasing in cost, but profits are constantly being compressed.
Faced with such a dilemma, some platforms have begun to focus on offline…
02 Breakthrough offline
“We started to form an offline team three months ago.” said Zhang Min, an offline person in charge of 360 Digital.
He is the general manager of a city. Currently, his team has more than 20 people and the monthly loan amount is about 15 million.
“Our average items are about 40,000, and the number of lenders per month is about 400 people.” Zhang Min revealed.
How high is the customer acquisition cost for a user?
“More than 20 people, with a monthly salary of more than 10,000, plus the officeThe fixed cost is less than 400,000 at most. “Zhang Min calculated that the customer acquisition cost of a single user is less than 1,000.
Calculated based on this data, offline customer acquisition costs are indeed lower than online.
“I think that the offline team of 360 Mathematics in the country should have hundreds of people now, and it is still expanding.” Zhang Min inferred.
In addition to 360 Mathematics, many leading financial technology platforms have begun to focus on offline traffic.
“We now have a team of thousands of people.” Feng Yiyong, the offline person in charge of a leading lending platform, revealed.
How does offline customer acquisition work?
Currently, offline Guests should be concentrated in third- and fourth-tier cities.
“In first- and second-tier cities, the offline model is unworkable.” Wang Xu once tried. Most users in first- and second-tier cities are online users, and labor costs are too high, “income is basically difficult to cover costs.” .
Feng Yiyong’s target users are mainly blue-collar customers. They will go to some factories to set up stalls, and the average items are about 5,000 yuan.
And Zhang Min’s target audience is more high-end.
“We just visit strangers, we don’t sweep the streets, and we don’t set up stalls.” Zhang Min said that their main goal is to find those street vendors.
“We require Sesame Credit must be 600 points or more.” Zhang Min said, this is the most basic Threshold, and then enter the pieces, through the layers of risk control in the background.
He said: “Our payment rate is about 65%On the right, the pieces are about 40,000. “
There are also some platforms that are more demanding and specifically select white-collar customers.
Chen Jun, the relevant person in charge of a licensed consumer finance company, revealed that they are vigorously promoting offline white-collar loans.
“The model is very simple, that is, sweeping buildings, and specifically selecting state-owned and central enterprises in various regions.” Chen Jun revealed.
Relatively speaking, these customer groups are extremely high-quality.
“First of all, they work in the company, and their position information is true, and the risks are better controlled.” Chen Jun revealed. In addition, central enterprises and state-owned enterprises are “iron rice bowls” and their positions are relatively stable.
“There are hundreds of people across the country, and each piece is more than 200,000.” Chen Jun said, in fact, their target is “WhiteJun’s data is more beautiful.
“Our bad debts are only 1%, and our profitability is good.” Chen Jun said.
Therefore, Feng Yiyong’s point of view is that offline customers cannot target too low-end customers. At present, they are improving the model to target higher-end customer groups.
03 Reincarnation
At present, the way to acquire customers offline is not new.
It’s nothing more than the three oldest: Mobai, setting up stalls and sweeping buildings and streets.
These methods were once the most traditional offline financial customer acquisition methods.
Before the rise of financial technology, these methods were extremely popular.
At that time, credit card processing often used the method of sweeping the building.
Later, online finance began to attract customers with high efficiency and low cost, which once crushed offline methods.
Now, as if it has gone through a cycle, financial customer acquisition has begun to look back again and begin to pay attention to offline.
“In the short term, there are still some price advantages offline.” Feng Yiyong said, and now, offline customer acquisition costs are basically the same as online, “but the quality of offline users is indeed higher than online. “.
For example, there are problems with fake traffic, fake users and fleece parties online; but offline, these problems are not difficult to avoid.
He inferred that offline customers may be will be on fire for a period of time.
However, there are three problems in offline mode.
First, the problem of risk control.
“Loan officers collude with borrowers, and there are many cases of defrauding loans together.” Feng Yiyong said that the interests of loan officers are directly linked to performance, so it is easy to collude inside and outside.
He believes that internal control is extremely important.
Second, the issue of loan renewal.
Online, the revenue of financial institutions basically relies on loan renewal, butFor offline customers, renewing loans is relatively difficult.
Feng Yiyong said that they require loan officers to download their APP, but the re-activation rate after the loan is not very high, “only about 10%.”
Third, the model is too heavy and the personnel cost is too high.
“We dig people everywhere, and we have to train our own team crazy.” Feng Yiyong believes that the characteristics of this model make it difficult to expand and replicate.
In the industry, digging and robbing each other is also common.
Zhang Min also revealed: “We are digging people from Lexin.”
Of course, not all financial institutions will participate in the mining of offline traffic. After all, this is hard work.
“There are some platforms, deep cultivation, and online traffic still has advantages.” Wang Xu said.
There are also some platforms, in order to avoid a surge in the number of employees, they have begun to adopt cooperation and agency methods.
According to an insider, “Ctrip is cooperating with some offline agents. For example, users in Changsha are allocated to agents in Changsha to get customers. The charge is about 3% to 5% of the loan amount. “
When will traffic come back online?
Feng Yiyong believes that when the financial environment relaxes and online finance recovers again, traffic will migrate online again.
“Finance is cyclical, with a cycle of three years.” Feng Yiyong believes that 2020 is probably the last year of tightening.
*The interviewee in the text is a pseudonym.