P2P Platform Loves Viral Promotion

With the rapid development of Internet finance, the scarcity of "quality assets", coupled with the central bank's "double down" policy, makes the industry more competitive.

More and more P2P platforms are used by acquaintances to pull acquaintances.

According to the reporter's investigation, many platforms have launched many reward mechanisms, such as pulling friends back to cash, earning a certain income after a friend's investment.

In 2015, P2P investors understood that the P2P platform was mainly introduced by acquaintances, friends, and micro-blog and WeChat circles, accounting for 40.5% and 33.8% respectively. Newspapers and magazines and TV commercials were followed by 14% and 11.9% respectively.

Under the current situation of P2P network lending industry risk events, investors are more dependent on "acquaintances and friends".

The remittance world believes that the deeper reason is the absence of supervision in the P2P industry, and the lack of education for investors. Most of the investors' investment is based on experience accumulation and relies on word of mouth, but this is not the fundamental way to guard against the risk of net loan investment.

"This way of recommending family and friends is a common way of acquiring passengers in the P2P net loan industry and even the entire Internet industry, and will continue to exist for a long time."

CEO Huang Shi Qiao, a thrower, told this reporter.

This method is even accepted by the industry as the most effective way to get low cost and high conversion rate, but Lu Jin's chairman, Mr Kwai Kwai sang, said that eighty or ninety of the nearly $400 million of last year's losses were passenger costs and system inputs.

This has led more people to question this model.

What is even more worrying is that some lawyers believe that such abuse is a legal risk if they are abused.

No longer rely heavily on advertising campaigns.

platform

At present, the promotion of P2P platform is mainly based on four channels, one is website bidding ranking, the other is sponsorship forum, all kinds of awards, three is advertising promotion of various channels, and four is promotion of various festivals or cross-border cooperation.

"Many platforms are willing to pay for these marketing, but in fact the customer conversion rate is not high.

The acquaintance introduces the reward showcase, the cost is smaller than other marketing modes, and the customer conversion rate is still very high.

A P2P platform responsible person, according to reporters admitted.

A number of P2P platforms have been found in this newspaper. There are many ways to invite friends, such as rewarding friends, getting investment benefits from friends, and so on. The reward amount is mostly between 100 yuan and 500 yuan, and the percentage of investment gained from friends can not be calculated in detail.

Taking Lu Jin as an example, he launched a strong attack in March after launching a strong offensive in the Spring Festival.

According to the website friend invitation award column, from March 1, 2016 to March 31, 2016, if an investor invites a friend, he will get the corresponding reward. In the rule, a friend will invest 1 yuan -999 yuan in the 30 days after registration. The investor's reward is 20 yuan. The sum of the total investment is 1000 yuan -9999 yuan, the investor award is 60 yuan; the total investment is 10000 yuan to 49999 yuan, the reward is 150 yuan; the total investment amount is 50000 yuan to 99999 yuan, and the investor is 200 yuan.

A total investment of more than 100 thousand yuan will reward investors 300 yuan.

In addition, 0 to 30 days after registration, friends can invest in corresponding financial products, and users can get 0.1% of their investment.

If you recommend friends from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, you will get a bonus bonus. If you register your friends and complete the bank card authentication, you will reward 200 yuan in cash.

Not only that, in Lu Jin's recommendation of friend details, our reporter also saw that if the friend recommended by the investor is better, the reward he will enjoy will be higher.

Specifically, how many awards did not specify, but reporters in the Investment Promotion Award column that column, if recommended friends to invest in designated products, then will be in accordance with a certain proportion of investment to return to investors soliciting bonus.

According to the reporter's investigation, there are also platforms to launch VIP.

In the form of man, the asset manager can send his invitation code relative to his friend to register his investment. The investor gets a certain percentage of his friend's investment income every month.

"If the amount of investment is large, it will also be a great profit."

The investors told reporters.

The most economical way to get passengers

Or potential cost killer?

According to the reporter's interview, many people in charge of the platform think that the acquaintance is the most reliable and most economical way to attract customers, but whether it is true or not is still to be verified in the long run.

A person in charge of the platform, according to the reporter, "pulling friends back to the present is the current marketing method commonly used by the P2P platform. From the marketing point of view, the acquaintance marketing is much lower than the marketing cost of strangers, and the cost of the current industry is about 1000 yuan / person.

In addition, it can also improve customer stickiness and maintain self growth, so all platforms will be widely adopted.

"Each platform has different backgrounds and objectives, and the proportion of acquaintance recommendation varies greatly.

Under normal circumstances, the proportion of recommended friends is less than 5%. However, some platforms offer high returns to users and encourage users to recommend their friends and relatives to invest. This ratio is easily over 10% or even 20%.

In contrast, recommending buddies under normal circumstances is a low cost way to get customers, but if the use of high rebates to stimulate users to develop "offline", the majority of "wool party" will greatly increase the operation cost of the platform, which is not conducive to the stable development of the platform.

Huang Shi Qiao said according to the reporter.

Now, does the cost of such a reward increase the cost of operation of the platform? Many platforms do not publish specific data without verification, but the data released by Lu Jin seem to show some doubts.

Earlier media reports said that Lu Jin lost 415 million dollars in 2015, or nearly 3 billion yuan.

In this regard, Lu Jin, chairman of the Kwai Kwai sang, said at the time that the loss last year was definitely less than US $400 million, but the specific amount could not be disclosed.

He believes that the reason and composition of losses are even more important than the amount of losses.

Eighty or ninety of Lu Jin's loss is the cost of obtaining customers and the input of the system. At the same time, the influence of Ping An Pu Hui on Lu Jin's accounting in 2015 is also very great.

Shortly after the loss of news, Lu Jin was stripped of the P2P business to the Pratt & Whitney finance department, which caused widespread concern in the industry.

Bian Xiaoyu, a financial industry researcher at CIC, told reporters: "it is not a long-term solution for the platform to get rewards and rewards such as royalties and friends.

First of all, this kind of showcase is a disguised subsidy in essence. When more and more platforms take this way, the rewards will not only decrease but also increase the cost of attracting customers.

"The key to this way of attracting customers is after the activity period, in addition to the" wool party ", the platform how to pform the user, improve user stickiness, realize the flow, after all, activities are not necessarily attracted by customers who have loan needs, but more are based on Arbitrage Behavior.

Zhang Yexia, senior researcher of Ying can consulting, also said there was concern.

A lawyer said

Or existence

Song Qinghui, a famous economist, admitted by reporters: "from the economic point of view, the downward trend of macro economy, from large enterprises, small and medium enterprises, to self-employed households, has obviously affected the wishes of personal consumption. For example, the current cycle of credit cards is decreasing, indicating that consumers are unwilling to make overdraft consumption.

In this case, the Internet financial platform should pay more attention to the assets side.

He also believes that "Internet financial platform to take friends to gain investment or reward, the theory is to face a specific public, there is no problem.

If a friend is rewarded, the middleman has a layer of commission. In fact, this is the same as the nature of pyramid schemes, hidden huge risks.

Nothing is wrong, the Internet financial platform can also positively publicize, and what happened is illegal fund-raising behavior.

Internet banking generally calls this kind of customer acquisition mode called viral pmission.

"This method is one of the ways to get passengers on the P2P platform, but it is necessary to maintain a rational attitude and moderate marketing so as to maintain the stable development of the platform.

Some platforms are too aggressive for short-term interests, or even violate the red line of the law.

So is there any legal risk for the P2P platform to pull the acquaintances to give benefits or rewards?

Director of the China Economic Restructuring Research Council, a lawyer from the valley, told reporters: "such means of taking passengers are of great legal risk.

It is easy for investors to compete for promises of generous remuneration, which will lead to higher operating costs and lower operating profits, which will not leave much of the bad assets and bad debts for the P2P platform itself.

He also believes that "first, the interest or reward paid in advance can not be protected by the contract law.

Two, the responsible person may face the risk of criminal liability.

It is committed to repay the principal and interest in the form of money, physical property and equity in a certain period of time, or to commit crimes such as illegal absorption of public deposits, fund-raising fraud and other illegal fund-raising activities.

But there are also lawyers who have different views. The famous lawyer in the Internet financial industry told this reporter: "I do not think there is a greater risk. There are two exceptions to the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits. The key is whether to absorb deposits from the public. The public here refers to the unspecified majority of the society.

If the circle of acquaintances is fixed, and not for this industry, the individual thinks that the risk of criminal law is small. "