Face the Ugly Truth in Client Acquisition- a PayPal Story

面對行銷活動的獲客真相 － PayPal 案例分享

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What Happened to PayPal

The stock of PayPal, the major player in the payment sector, took a deep dive this week (down by more than 25% on Feb 2, 2022) after the company reported worse than expected Q1 2022 EPS guidance of $0.87 v.s. $1.16 and lagging business growth in its Q4 2021 earning call.

What happened was that PayPal announced that it would shift business focus from aggressive client acquisition to deepening customer engagement and hence slow down the growth in net new active customers. As a result, there’s a massive gap between the 15~20 million 2022 full-year estimations v.s. the 53 million street consensus, no wonder investors are panicking.

PayPal acknowledged that 4.5 million (~1%) of its portfolio accounts were illegitimately created by some bots to take advantage of its acquisition campaigns. Therefore, the company made the call to spend more marketing dollars on its existing customer pool instead of heavily investing in acquiring new clients from 2022 onwards.

I find this strategy change a rather bold move and believe it will lead the business in the right direction for the long run if executed correctly.

The Ugly Truth in Client Acquisition

I had firsthand experience regarding such ugly truth in client acquisition, and it made me realize how important it is to spend the money on the right target groups, a lesson learned from a Facebook lucky draw campaign I conducted a few years ago. The campaign structure was simple, participants who share our branding video on their walls and tag their friends can win a spot in the lucky draw.

During the fulfillment phase, I was surprised that many players are actually “professional campaign participants,” meaning they make money by reposting mass campaign messages every day and profit if they win the prize. There are even dedicated FB fan pages sharing all kinds of campaigns information that members can repost and tag each other.

What’s more, some of the accounts seemed to be created solely to win those campaign incentives. Naturally, media exposures (or impressions as we say in marketing) from such sources can hardly generate substantial business growth, as these digital campaign participants and viewers are less likely to be converted into effective “leads.” They have no loyalty to the product or the company conducting the campaigns, nor would they generate any word-of-mouth effect afterward.

Lately, I also witnessed something similar when crypto enthusiasts eager to share Discord links of NFT projects in every channel possible so that they can get a “whitelist” (an NFT term of the right to mint an NFT in the primary market). When the whitelist criteria include successfully inviting 25 people to the Discord group and sending as many chat messages as possible, the product(NFT)’s real value may be less appreciated. Whitelist pursuers aim for a quick buck to resell the NFTs after minting, they may even deploy a chat bot to do the job.

What’s the Right Metric When Evaluating Marketing Campaigns

In my opinion, when designing the goal of a marketing campaign for client acquisition, one must consider the “customer lifetime value (CLV)” so that your new customers won’t become dormant accounts after 3 months. And campaign planners should calculate CLV of these various-sourced new accounts based on their respective metrics, such as sales volume of a single deal, pricing, product holding,attrition rate, etc.

As of PayPal’s case, I admire the company’s courageous move to reveal the ugly truth behind their seemly stunning acquisition number. I look forward to seeing how PayPal would monetize and maximize the value of existing customers. The chances are that its new super app launched in Sep 2021 will be their secret weapon in the post-pandemic era and hopefully will create some synergy with its peer-to-peer payment app Venmo.

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PayPal 發生了什麼事？

支付龍頭之一的 PayPal 在這星期 2021 Q4 財報開出後股價重挫 (2022/2/2 這天單日跌幅高達 25%)，主因是公司公布 2022 年 Q1 每股獲利預估僅 $0.87 ，跟華爾街預估的每股 $1.12 相去甚遠，另外業務成長也預計將大幅減緩。

PayPal 在財報會議中宣布 2022 年的業務重心將從新客戶成長轉為深耕既有客戶，因此公司預估 2022 全年淨全新活躍客戶數約為 1500~2000 萬，這和原先市場預期的 5300 萬客戶數相比直接腰斬還打折，怪不得嚇跑許多投資人。

財報會議當天也揭露一個驚人數字，PayPal 坦承帳上客戶中有超過 1% (約為 450 萬戶) 經查證後實為假帳戶，多是機器人創建用來拿 PayPal 的開戶獎勵，也因此公司決定從 2022 年起新策略將不再把行銷資源大筆花在獲取新客戶上，而會更重視和現有客戶的互動。

在我看來這個業務方向的調整其實是大膽的一手，若執行得當，長期來看將公司導向正確的方向，後面的成長不容小覷。

藏在獲客活動中的魔鬼

對於藏在獲客活動中的魔鬼我倒是有過一次震撼教育，事情發生在多年前我執行的一個臉書抽獎活動，讓我從此體悟到將資源留給對的目標客群有多麼重要。那次的活動設計很間單，只要分享公司的品牌影片在自己的臉書上並標註朋友就有抽獎資格。

在後續處理抽獎的過程中，我很驚訝地發現有不少參加者竟然是職業抽獎人，他們靠每天轉發大量的抽獎訊息，並轉賣抽到的禮品來賺錢，甚至還有專門的臉書社團分享你可以想像到的各種公司行號抽獎活動資訊，社團成員每天轉貼並互相標註其他成員就有機會得到產品。更誇張的是，有不少帳號似乎是專門被創建來抽獎的。

可以想見，這種活動得到的媒體曝光比較難帶來顯著的業務成長，因為這些線上活動參與者根本很難被轉化成有效的客戶名單；他們對商品本身或舉辦行銷活動的公司毫無忠誠度，當然也不可能在事後帶來任何口耳相傳的效果。

最近，我也在 NFT 領域觀察到類似的情形。不少幣圈玩家積極地在每個頻道分享 NFT 項目的Discord 連結，目的是為了拿到「白名單」(NFT 術語，白名單類似可以在一級市場鑄造 NFT 的入場券)。這些白名單的獲得條件可能是成功邀情 25 個朋友加入該 Discord 頻道，加上在群組裡盡可能發送越多聊天訊息來幫自己「升等」，產品 (NFT) 的真正價值反而不這麼被重視了，汲汲營營取得白名單的玩家很可能只是想趕快轉賣 NFT 大賺一筆，有時他們甚至會用聊天機器人來達成任務。

評估行銷活動的正確指標

我認為在設計獲客導向的行銷活動時，必須要考量的重點就是「顧客終身價值」(CLV, Customer Lifetime Value)，避免你辛苦找進來的新客戶 3 個月以後就變成無效的靜止帳戶了。而活動設計者在評估來自不同管道的客戶時，也應依照其分別的屬性套用不同的顧客終身價值計算指標，如單一訂單的銷售額、產品定價、擁有產品數、帳戶流失率等等。

回到 PayPal 的例子，我很欣賞公司勇於揭露自己看似亮眼的獲客數真相，期待看到他們後續針對既有客戶進行變現並提高單一客戶收益。目前想到的方式有可能是 2021 年 9 月上線的超級錢包 (super app) 會在後疫情時代變成 PayPal 的秘密武器，或許還能跟旗下的 P2P 支付 appVenmo 創造出一些綜效 (synergy)。

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