Have young people fallen in love with bank apps to "pull wool"?, Can save hundreds of yuan per month for users | banks | apps

When ordering takeout at noon, Wang Xin, who works in Jinhua city after 95, will open a bank APP and receive two coupons. When she needed a taxi, she opened another bank APP and got a taxi ticket.

Nowadays, there are many young people like Wang Xin who can save money. In the past, they used to love to "grab wool" on e-commerce platforms, but at some point, they have turned to bank apps again.

Screenshot of Xiaohongshu

Many users share their experience of "pulling wool" on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Tiktok, and hand in hand teach how to receive bank APP discounts.

With major banks embarking on retail transformation, mobile banking is becoming one of the important channels for banks to carry out marketing activities, and the ways to compete for users are also becoming increasingly popular. Can bank welfare really increase activity? How can traffic be converted into retention?

You can save hundreds of yuan per month by going to the bank app to "collect wool"

"Today's happiness comes from XX Bank." Recently, Wang Xin shared on social media the benefits she had snatched on a certain bank app: she only spent 7.17 yuan to grab a small cake from a certain brand bakery that was originally priced at 68 yuan, and also spent 1.7 yuan to grab a 20 yuan voucher from a popular online milk tea shop.

Many netizens followed up on the post, some of whom said they had also obtained it, and many others begged for the strategy.

Wang Xin told the Chao News reporter that she discovered at the end of last year that there were many promotional activities on the bank's app, so she gradually installed more than 10 bank apps on her phone, covering six major banks, joint-stock banks, and some city commercial banks.

In the past six months, she has been happily collecting money on various banking apps, including paying off deposits, recharging phone bills with full discounts, taxi coupons, monthly video website cards, gas cards with full discounts, and exchanging 1 cent for purchases.

"Not long after starting work, I have a tight budget. If I can save, I can save a little." Wang Xin said, "Every month, I receive preferential subsidies through a bank app, and I have everything I need, including clothing, food, housing, and transportation, which can save me hundreds of yuan.".

There are many people like Wang Xin who can save money and control themselves. There are many posts sharing the experience of "pulling wool" in bank APP on social media such as Tiktok and Xiaohongshu, and the introduction is very detailed.

"I have sorted out the recent 'wool' of some bank apps. New users can receive takeout red envelopes when registering for coupons, 10 yuan off for movie tickets over 30 yuan, and 50% off for food on Wednesdays." "To summarize the daily 'wool' of bank apps, investing less than 3 minutes a day can earn over 500 yuan per year."

An active blogger on Xiaohongshu told a trendy news reporter that in the past, there were more activities for bank credit cards, and in the past two years, they are no longer limited to credit cards. Various bank apps have launched a variety of popular activities and coupons.

In her view, "wool harvesting" not only saves money, but also serves as a small form of life's "happiness", sharing and exchanging experiences has even become a social way for young people.

Chao News reporters have found that more and more banks are attracting young people to open apps by setting up usage scenarios.

Many banks have turned their promotional activities into fixed brands and set up "daily discounts" scenarios. Some promotional activities have also extended to townships. Some are deeply rooted in the local area, offering discounts on water and electricity fees, a 62% discount on parking fees, a reduction of 100 yuan from property fees over 500 yuan, a 1 yuan registration fee, and 1 cent bus ride.

In addition to directly distributing coupons or discounts, some banks also use interactive active tasks as a point item to improve user levels, and members of different levels can enjoy different benefit packages.

Screenshot of a certain bank's APP

Why do banks launch various promotional activities?

Nowadays, with major banks embarking on retail transformation, mobile banking is becoming an important channel for banks to interact with customers.

Most bank apps have a "life services" section, and various preferential subsidy activities can be described as diverse.

"Only with channels can there be traffic and customers," Huang Zhe, director of the Finance Teaching and Research Office at Zhejiang College of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told Chao News reporters that the main purpose of banks distributing benefits through apps is to obtain channels.

In his view, the retail finance sector is repeating the path taken by the consumer goods sector. As competition intensifies, channels become increasingly important. Whoever has a channel closer to users holds the core power of the industry chain. In recent years, some strong banks have made efforts to build a diversified channel system and strive to build their own APP ecosystem with me as the main focus. And welfare is one of the most direct and effective ways to attract customers.

Among them, young people have become the targets of competition among major banks.

Zhang Hao, Senior Manager of the Network Finance Department of Jinhua Bank, explained to Chao News that young people belong to the "long tail customers" in the financial field. Compared to the customer group with high net worth wealth, their financial asset size is relatively small, and the net value of individual customers is low. However, their quantity is large, and their demand is increasingly showing a trend of personalization and diversification. In the past, "long tail customers" were in a state of ineffective maintenance or even unmanned maintenance for a long time due to limitations such as cost and technology.

In recent years, with the rapid development of Internet finance and the fierce competition among the head customers in the banking industry, all major commercial banks have seen the huge potential of the development of "long tail customers" resources and have turned their eyes to these customer groups.

"Taxi, takeout, and offline catering supermarkets are all high-frequency consumption scenarios. The 'wool picking' style discount activities can attract young users, and then attract users to understand and use more financial services such as deposits, financial investments, credit cards, loans, etc., driving user activity, financial transformation, and business growth." Yang Kangjie, the "CCB Life" Operations Manager of the Jinhua Branch of China Construction Bank, told reporters that using the "CCB Life" APP as an example, the platform attracts customers with various denomination takeout coupons in the Jinhua area every month, generating orders of 3 to 4 million yuan.

Can "traffic" be converted into "retention"?

Various preferences and subsidies seem to be a panacea for the Internet economy. From shared bicycles to ride hailing services, to community group buying and fresh food e-commerce, every time a new product or trend appears, it will trigger a subsidy war. It seems that as long as subsidies are provided, users will flock to it.

In Huang Zhe's view, various preferential subsidies for bank apps, relying on points, discounts, and scene penetration to compete for users, are essentially a price war.

"On the one hand, burning money subsidies is the most direct way to gain users and expand the scale of the competition in a short period of time. However, on the other hand, users who compete through subsidies generally have low loyalty to the platform, and they are only attracted by price and convenience. Once subsidies are stopped or other people offer more discounts, they may leave."

Therefore, he believes that relying solely on subsidies is not enough. While gaining traffic, the value of the product should be realized.

"After obtaining customers through subsidies, the key is to convey the core value of the product to users, and through differentiated high-quality services, let them experience it. Even without subsidies, they are willing to continue using it," said Huang Zhe.

However, in the eyes of many industry insiders, differentiated services and experiences are currently the shortcomings of banks.

An industry insider revealed that the homogenized competition among major banks has resulted in bank cards having categories but no brands. "When it comes to credit cards, which bank do you think of? Most people don't have a clear 'king' in their minds yet. The choice of card to apply for depends on the gift package, and the choice of card to use depends on points and subsidies."

"Nowadays, the promotion of bank APP channels can no longer follow the old path of credit card promotion." This industry insider believes that in the end, banks should still refine basic financial services based on the products and functions of finance itself, and provide users with good wealth management and value-added services. At the same time, in addition to the standard configuration, bank apps should provide differentiated and personalized services for different user groups, personally improving the user experience, which is the "retention" password.