企微封杀 RPA，是私域 3.0 的前奏

这一场封杀就像亚马逊森林中的一场火灾，然而亚马逊森林并不在乎一场火灾，更不在意某一颗植物的死活，因为新的植物总会生长出来。只要这有阳光，有雨水。

企微会在今年4月份左右猛打 RPA，这是我去年 11 月份就预测了的。现在果不其然，这次打击比以往任何时候来得都厉害，斩草除根，赶尽杀绝，现在一些大的 RPA 服务公司已经只有退费一条路可以走了。

翻译：

Enterprise micro blocking RPA is a prelude to private Domain 3.0

This closure is like a fire in the Amazon forest, but the Amazon forest does not care about a fire, much less the death of a plant, because new plants will always grow. As long as there’s sun and rain.

Enterprises will hit RPA around April this year, which is what I predicted in November last year. Now, sure enough, the crackdown is more severe than ever, eliminating the root, and now some of the big RPA service companies have only a way to return the fee.

First, the beginning and end of the contradiction

The blow of enterprise micro is one month later than I predicted, some people say that I predicted accurately, in fact, I am logical reasoning out. The reason is simple – this time last year, wechat began to collect seat fees, and now, the first batch of seat fees have been due.

The relationship between enterprise wechat and brand parties is different from that of Douyin. Tiktok account is free, the fee is advertising fee, you give me money, I give you exposure, it is over, one thing is clear. And the relationship between the enterprise wechat and the brand is a service relationship, people paid the seat fee today, tomorrow because of RPA was blocked, people’s brand said that it does not play, and then the legal department came to the door, said that the seat fee you did not perform the agreement, you breached the contract, how do enterprises micro?

Now RPA plays the most ferocious, the biggest damage to the micro ecology of enterprises, and it is precisely that the gang of unscrupulous large enterprises after paying the seat fee. Enterprise micro certainly did not want to endure, next year can still play so? If rules are to be established, they must be established before they are renewed, and some things must be made clear – seat fees are not equal to protection money, and they do not mean that you can act recklessly.

And can you call these big businesses hateful? Well, not exactly.

When there was no seat fee, the cost of private domain was not so high, so the private domain team did not lose money. And when there is a seat fee, 1 million private domain annual light seat fee of 100,000 yuan, since the money has been paid, it is necessary to find a way to make money, but most companies can think of more ways to make money, is to multiple messages, multiple messages with the help of RPA, forming a “high one foot the devil is high” opposition situation.

In this article, I want to talk to you deeply about where the private domain industry will go in the future, and what we should do in advance.

Second, double-edged sword RPA past and present life

RPA, full name Robotic Process Automation, that is, robotic process automation. Through computer control of mobile phones, simulate real action, to achieve one-to-one accurate private marketing.

Part1: First show of force

The company I worked for was probably the best and earliest RPA player in the entire online education industry. Because our growth was very strong, traffic often grew by hundreds of thousands of people per week, but this led to a problem: there was no enterprise wechat at that time, only a micro. So many people add up, just through the friend requests, send each other a greeting and other mindless manual operations, require a lot of manpower – obviously, this is not realistic for a company in Beijing, labor costs are extremely high.

So we developed a set of tools. Using a computer to connect dozens of mobile phones, similar to the picture below, but our scale is much larger than the picture below, so large that half a floor is full of such mobile phones, the electricity bill is very high.

But in this way, we free up enormous human power:

Friends add, the robot automatically through the friend request, and send a few paragraphs of welcome;

Friends scan the code into the group, the robot welcomes each other in the group, and sends our activity rules.

Even, we can automatically identify competing products, and competitors will be kicked out of the group by the robot.

Even, the user’s screenshot proves that he has helped us share the circle of friends, and the robot can automatically review this picture to determine whether the user’s sharing meets the requirements.

With this model, we managed millions of private users and hundreds of thousands of wechat groups with just over 100 people – all on personal wechat. It can be said that without RPA, there would be no healthy listing of our company.

It can be said that: before the emergence of RPA, wechat marketing (then not called private domain) was just a joke for enterprises, too inefficient and uncontrollable; The emergence of RPA has changed the cost structure, making wechat marketing a thing worthy of attention by enterprises.

To be more assertive: without RPA, there would be no private domain prosperity today.

Part2: Uncontrolled development and the emergence of micro-enterprises

Wechat began to crack down on RPA probably in 2017, this time RPA has been mastered by more companies, and there are service providers – some only provide account hosting tools, and some provide accounts together.

So things got out of hand. One thing that happened that year was that this technology was mastered by people who were doing ash production, and they built a group of 40 people, 39 of whom were the hosts of the robot, and 1 real user. Yes, this is not a joke, but a real case. This directly led to wechat’s attention to RPA reaching an unprecedented height, the largest RPA supplier in the industry was liquidated in an instant, and we were also shut down a lot of accounts.

In 2018, wechat hit RPA, personal wechat has almost no room for development, and in the same year, wechat launched enterprise wechat, people were surprised to find that some of the RPA functions that were originally paid to use, such as automatic through friends, automatic group building, etc., enterprise wechat can be used for free, and in the past, personal wechat can only add 50 people a day. And enterprise wechat can add 500 people a day. As a result, no one felt sorry for the dead service providers, and everyone began to pour into corporate wechat.

For rule-abiding enterprises, they only improve operational efficiency through RPA, and enterprise wechat is a very useful tool for them; The unruly enterprises, such as those engaged in junk violence marketing, are also controlled in this form – in the past, only one account is blocked, and now the main body is directly blocked.

God only creates rules and does not interfere with individual development. If wechat is a small world, then Zhang Xiaolong is the god of this world, and the enterprise wechat is the rules created by Zhang Xiaolong: stay by the rules, I help you reduce the cost, you can live better; The unruly will naturally become an isolated minority, and will naturally be hit by greater pressure.

Enterprise wechat is definitely a trick:

It diverts the behavior of commercial operation originally through personal number and protects the clean environment of personal number.

It reduces the operating cost of wechat for enterprises, and enterprises can serve users through wechat with a lower threshold;

It provides a solution for very large enterprises, so that these enterprises with more than 100 million users embrace wechat to become a reality;

Wechat can also take the opportunity to obtain more user consumption behavior preferences and accumulate more big data assets.

But now there are also many new problems, such as:

Enterprise wechat also has the functions of OA (internal office collaboration tool) and SCRM (customer information management and contact tool), but there are contradictions between the two, because the customer information is miscellaneous, but it reduces the efficiency of internal communication and cooperation of employees, and causes inconvenience and even the risk of information management. So I have seen some private domain play well enterprises, but will not use enterprise micro OA, with flying books or nails.

Enterprise wechat, as a “garbage station”, accommodates most of the marketing information that originally existed in the personal account end, making a micro more refreshing, and was originally a champion of wechat ecology. However, from the point of view of the actions of enterprises, wechat internal seems not satisfied with this, just like complaining about too much garbage in the “garbage station”, which is very absurd. Enterprise micro is also trying to solve this problem, but a small effort will make internal dissatisfaction, and a large effort may let the “garbage” return to a micro, which also deviates from the purpose of its own existence.

Part3: Problems with RPA today

Today, RPA has evolved into two completely different uses.

One is to take a refined operational route, able to operate around the user’s life cycle. Take the tea selling project I am incubating as an example. After users add friends, I will push different messages to users every day through the form of RPA to dig out preferences and educational needs. And if the user buys a certain product, I can also push the logistics progress to the user through RPA, ask for satisfaction and so on. In this way, I reduce the reach of ineffective marketing messages to users, and users have a stronger feeling of being served and a stronger trust in us.

Obviously, this is a very healthy, win-win model for all three parties. Enterprise wechat has also opened a lot of green lights for enterprises with such practices, such as more interface functions. Enterprise wechat service providers are also trying to promote this form, made into a program, we call MA (automated marketing), but MA can only be sent to each user 1 times a day, although unlike RPA can be sent countless times, but this is enough for the normal business customer relationship enterprises to a certain extent.

The other is the brute force touch route, using RPA capabilities to send more spam messages to users. For example, an e-commerce platform is also in the private domain, they in the 618 period, the average every 10 minutes to the group to send 2-3 product promotion information, regardless of whether the user needs. It’s no less than kicking in your door and then blasting flyers in your face and putting little ads on your fridge. However, this kind of enterprise is also the biggest share of enterprise wechat revenue, which is their most headache.

In my opinion, some companies have really gone too far in the past. In their eyes, the private domain business is like this: since I have spent the seat fee, since I have spent the cost of drainage to add users to it, then I have to consider the return of the cost, can return the cost of 3 months never consider 6 months. So what they do is very radical – crazy messages, either you delete me or I turn you.

In this environment, users have become very resistant to adding enterprise wechat, resulting in a reduction in the industry-wide micro conversion rate and an increase in micro costs: from 2 yuan four years ago to nearly 20 yuan now.

And this way of playing is aggressive and assimilative – their approach makes it impossible for companies that originally intended to seriously manage customer relationships to operate, and they can only join and start frantically grabbing, thus further driving up the cost of the entire industry.

Part4: The Philosophy of natural selection in tropical rainforests

We compare wechat ecology to a tropical rainforest, and the latter this aggressive approach, in the past to seize resources, at the cost of harming the environment and other plants to obtain their own development, will eventually lead to the occupation of the entire rainforest, and the rainforest is therefore dead.

However, it is also difficult to distinguish this plant, such as a few times a day is normal, more than a few times is harmful to the environment, it is difficult to define, and it also costs to define. Especially when 95% of the whole ecology belongs to the latter, there is no need to define. So the best thing to do is burn it all down, start over, and modify the soil so that the plant can’t come back. Even if some positive plants are burned, this is a small price to pay.

The Amazon forest does not care about a fire, because as long as there is sunshine and rain, new plants are bound to grow. As long as people are still using wechat, there must be business opportunities, enterprises must serve consumers through wechat, consumers also need to be served by enterprises. So cracking down on RPA won’t be the destruction of the private domain, just the survival of the fittest that happens every few years.

It doesn’t take long for the forest to become lush again. And without the fire, those small but good plants would not have had a chance to survive. Disaster is God’s mercy to the world.

Third, where the forest will go after the fire

I am glad to see that Qiwei has made this choice. For enterprises that have not yet done private domain, or have not done crazy push through RPA, this wave is bound to be good, although there will be pain, but it will bring a lot of new opportunities – the cost of adding users across the industry will be reduced, and the deletion rate of users will be reduced. In addition, there will inevitably be more benign private domain enterprises to emerge, creating more good stories for everyone to learn to imitate.

And here I dare to make a prediction for the future: micro enterprises will charge for mass distribution.

The reason is also mentioned in the previous article, today’s contradiction between enterprises and enterprises is that: the seat fee is charged, so that the fixed cost of the enterprise private domain increases, even if it is only to hold users, do not do action, the cost is also placed there, which forces enterprises to do some actions, even if it is just to issue advertising.

The seat fee is to stimulate the evil of enterprises, and make this evil become natural.

Now in the wechat ecosystem, 90% of the noise is generated in this way: anyway, send a message without money, even if the harassment of 100,000 users only earn 100 yuan, this 100 is also my income, as for harassment, what does it have to do with me. The original sin is that “harassment costs nothing and profits go into your pocket.”

The “harassment without cost” is built on the basis of RPA, which is the core reason why enterprises are cracking down on RPA.

And eliminating RPA, which was originally cost-free to reach, now has to be manually achieved by employees, employees have costs, and the cost is high, which will naturally eliminate most marketing harassment, but the problem is: it makes those otherwise healthy businesses can not do it.

Is there a way to clearly and simply tell the difference between the two? Yes, the answer is “hit production value”.

Healthy operation of the enterprise because more love users, reluctant to hurt harassment, so each time they touch the user, can create a high income; The advertising party does not care about the user, the user is also numb by harassment, so each time it reaches the user, the revenue created is very low.

If we can tell, is there a way to kill the former and keep the latter? Of course, the answer is “cost of reach.”

There are people who kill heads. There are no people who lose money. If each touch has a cost, the cost is higher than the latter’s income and lower than the former’s income, it will naturally choke the latter, and even educate the latter to call the former and learn to respect users. This cost, we can call “touch cost”.

And now the enterprise micro choice is to kill RPA, so that the original machine to complete the action needs to be manually completed, which raises the “touch cost” to too high, the two will be killed at the same time, the enterprise micro also did not earn any money, and may not even receive the original seat fee.

If enterprises and micro officials charge for access, it will become such a situation:

Since you have paid the seat fee, then I guarantee you a certain number of free mass distribution, normal operation is enough

On this basis, if you want to reach more, then you weigh whether to make money, if it is profitable, it means that your users recognize you, you are bold, and I share a little; If you don’t make money, then you should reflect on whether you should send.

Moreover, instead of charging a fixed fee for one mass delivery, the fee is charged according to the number of people reached. For example, the form of X yuan per 1000 contacts, which is very common in the advertising industry, is called the cost of 1,000 contacts (CPM). This also makes enterprises think about which users are to be reached, which are not necessary to reach, increasing costs and increasing harassment. Therefore, this also forces enterprises to do a fine operation, fine hierarchical work, such enterprises will gain greater advantages, become a new market benchmark, so that more enterprises to follow.

I am the first private domain industry to publicly put forward the concept of “single/thousand touch cost” and “single/thousand touch output value”, and this concept will inevitably become the most important keyword of private domain in the next two years. Wait and see.

ps: In fact, in October last year, I already raised it in private on some occasions, but not publicly, so you can consider it as I just mentioned it today.

Charging for access is a win-win situation for all three parties. The greatest beauty of economics is that it regulates markets by an invisible hand, rather than by a series of fancy maneuvers.

In the next 2 years, what are the responsibilities of enterprises and micro-enterprises for the industry

Companies that do private domain today can be divided into three categories according to their size.

One is the head of large enterprises.

In the past, there is a big misunderstanding in the private domain industry, thinking that to learn from the head enterprise, but in fact, these enterprises because of the existence of brand awareness, where to sell goods can be sold, so they only need to put extensive concessions, RPA is the most effective for them, but it is the least technical content.

These enterprises have the largest private domain size and the largest sound volume. Their seat fee is also the main revenue of micro enterprises, and it is also the most concerned about wechat enterprises in the past few years. But because the head of the enterprise only these, the pay has been paid, so by this year, this part is just the stock market, has been saturated, if next year the enterprise micro revenue also want to increase several times, the core battlefield must not be here.

The second category is waist enterprises.

Due to the selection of the head by the official and media in the past, these companies are also following the head, but because of the wide audience, their own visibility, product premium ability, and insufficient scale, even if they imitate the head playing method, their private domain team does not make money, just to make a living. Ultimately, the cause is blindness, not truth.

I have used such a sentence to ridicule: “The wood chopping followed the cattle lying to play all day, other people’s cows are full, your wood?” Obviously, they need to be realistic and develop their own style of play rather than imitate the head. In short, in the face of these enterprises, I think micro enterprises and some vertical media should reduce the publicity of head brands, so as not to mislead them. At the same time, pay more attention to discover and support more excellent private domain cases of waist enterprises, so that these enterprises can find a new way out.

For this kind of enterprise, I have a “private domain strategy course”, focusing on a realistic, around your business type to develop a private domain strategy. Excellent reputation, to the end of the article, interested can sign up for learning.

The third category is small businesses.

For example, there are more than ten chain stores, or e-commerce enterprises with annual revenue of not more than 100 million, or knowledge IP with certain influence.

This kind of enterprise is divided into two categories, one is already done before the private domain, one is not yet started to do.

The former has a 90% failure rate due to high base costs.

Do e-commerce, first buy a X praise, do knowledge pay, first buy a small X pass, 10,000 a year out…

Buy an SCRM tool, 10,000 a year and go out again…

Buy a seat fee, first buy 50,000 people is not a large scale? Five thousand a year and out again…

Buy AI outbound calls and SMS channels, tens of thousands of dollars went out again…

Enterprise micro certification, public number certification, open platform certification, video number certification, 1200 yuan out, once a year…

Buy 10 mobile phones, Red rice note10 can not be lower, 10,000 and go out…

If you give up doing it yourself, find a generation operation to run with, 30,000 a month is not expensive…

He did not toss the result, reported a line class, the boss with a private domain responsible person, a study, 20,000 dollars and went out…

If you are determined to do it seriously, but also consider the interface between several tools to open up, 2 people do not understand for 3 months, and 100,000 wages went out again.

This does not include recruitment, basic staff training management, station fees, five insurance and one fund. If you do not understand, dissolution, demobilization is also the cost.

Therefore, no matter what enterprise, if you do private domain, at least prepare 30~50W, half a year. So now looking for me to run with the enterprise, I will calculate the above account to the other party, can not take out this budget, I do not have the heart to charge you this money.

Money is not good, the boss can not give up, because there are natural contradictions between the private domain team and the offline team, the e-commerce team, and from time to time, the boss needs to come out to make a decision, or how there are always people who say that the private domain is a leader project.

But this scale of enterprises, they are still on the line of life and death, the boss calculates the New Year, a year can have hundreds of thousands of good, so dare to try the private domain, either did not understand the cost at the beginning, or is a real warrior.

There are circles between small bosses, those who have not yet done private domain, will stare at the enterprise that is doing private domain observation, and the result is a look at a silent voice, and they will give up the idea.

However, these small and medium-sized enterprises are precisely the main force in China’s private economy, and I believe that the certification fees of these enterprises are also a part of the main income of enterprises and micro-enterprises this year. If the enterprise micro also wants to achieve 10 times revenue growth, the core market can only be here. Even if not from the perspective of revenue, but to consider the ecology, enterprises also need to find ways to reduce their private domain costs, introduce more players, because these small businesses are really the users as people.

For example:

Launched 1000 year micro mall and online classroom, enterprises spend 10,000 less, enterprises earn 1,000 more. As long as the basic functions can be, personalized functions to the service provider to do.

Launched a special customer service, a customer service staff through the official customer service interface, a computer can undertake more users, rather than have to hold a dozen mobile phones to switch back and forth. Save money on SAAS, save money on mobile, improve customer/sales ratio, and improve response speed.

Launch the official version of MA, optimize label management and other functions, so that more companies can experience the positive feedback brought by fine operation.

This must have hurt the interests of many service providers, but as I said before, there are eggs under the nest? Keeping a high profit margin, no customers, and ultimately the profit margin can only be eaten by the high cost of sales, can you not die? There are many ways to charge service providers, and the most important thing is to share the money earned by the enterprise, which is the return of value, please recognize the reality.