Business idea and its implementation
Our client Miloan is one of the largest online microcredit services in Ukraine.
The initial challenge from the client was as follows: «Since the product is hot, we need hot gifts too! We want to move away from buy and sometime later maybe you will get something, to the instant action with prizes here and now». That is, from a list of prizes (the prize pool), the client should be able to get one prize on the fact of performing a targeted action, and it's all random.
This task required a fairly quick solution, because it was intended for a specific, already planned in the marketing activities of the client action.
The main requirements that the client and I formed for the new system as a result of the discussion were as follows:
- Flexible prize fund management - in the lottery process, the number of prizes can be supplemented by new items
- Reliability of integration - the main project should work consistently, regardless of the efficiency of the promo project
- Visual attraction - it was very important to make the draw interesting for the audience.
In addition, it was announced that it would be nice to be able to re-use the developed functional in the future. We took this into account when designing the architecture of the project, it was prepared for scaling.
The pilot project was implemented and launched within 3 weeks and received the positive feedback from the audience. Over 22,000 prizes were drawn as a result of the first promotion in a month. The system worked steadily and perfectly coped with the load.
Next steps
After the successful completion of the first promotion, we offered the client to start developing a full-fledged platform for flexible customization of any drawings for different promotional activities of the company. The platform was planned to be developed on the basis of the fdForge platform, on the basis of which the main Miloan.ua service had already been created.
So, a few more than 2 months were designed and launched a separate service promo.miloan.ua, which is currently the single platform for all online promotions of the company.
The project was much larger and more extensive than the original task, but the correct architecture allowed to implement all the planned features without loss of time.
Project mechanics
Constructor of targeted actions and promotional campaigns
To better understand the essence of the project and the mechanics of its work, we should first take a brief look at the definition of the terms used.
Event means a specific action performed by a user on the Miloan.ua side. In fact, events will be a source of data when configuring the target actions in the promotion system. An important point in the work of the project is that the system records ALL the events provided, regardless of whether they are involved in any current promotion or not. This gives extended opportunities to work with the analytics of users' actions in the main project.
As part of the case study, the events may be as follows:
- Taking a loan
- Authorization in personal cabinet
- Repayment of the loan (full or partial)
- Longation (extension of credit for a specified period)
- Acceptance of a counteroffer
Target action - is an event with certain rules (conditions) on the fulfillment of which depends the user's ability to participate in a particular action. Reaching a target action - the moment when the target action, which is specified in any of the currently active promotions, is fulfilled.
The system implements the possibility of creating multiple promotional campaigns, which can be carried out sequentially or in parallel independently of each other. The main parameters that determine the features of this or that promotion are the following:
- Target action - the action which must be performed by client in order to take part in the promo action
- Prize fund - setting up the list of prizes, attaching their photos and descriptions.
Once the system records an event that has been used to create a target action in one of the promotions currently in effect, and if the prize pool for that promotion is still available, a so-called "voucher" will be created. It is the voucher that gives the customer the right to "play roulette" and get a prize here and now. Prizes are determined randomly, but it is possible for the organizer of the promotion to set the distribution of variation on a timeline, so that the most valuable prizes will not be drawn on the same day.
Scheme of the voucher creation process:
Since the target action for participation in the action can be not only a specific event (such as registration, loan repayment, a longing, etc.), and a combination of these events, their number (taking 5 credits) or a set of conditions, then to manage such target actions developed a designer of target actions, which when creating a target action is possible to specify a list of its parameters.
User registration and authorization process in the system
To begin with, it should be noted that all users of the promotional resource are already active clients of Miloan.ua. That means that the data collection and registration for the user takes place on the side of Miloan.ua. To comply with all the user agreements promo.miloan.ua system should not know the details of the user, and work completely anonymously, providing only the service of drawing prizes.
With regards to the above-mentioned restriction on receiving user data we made a simple s2s (server-to-server) registration service with data transfer of all user activity on the main platform into the promo system and further drawing and distribution of prizes on the basis of the received information.
On the site promo.miloan.ua user can get in 2 cases:
- After performing the target action
- After clicking on “My actions” button in the personal cabinet of Miloan.ua
With any of these transitions from Miloan.ua in the API-request a certain set of authorization data is transmitted:
- UserData - minimum set of parameters (name, surname and id user)
- Promo ID - share ID in the system
- Action ID - target action ID
This data is sufficient for the system promo.miloan.ua to determine the further flow of the user and direct it to the desired landing page.
The mechanics of user authorization after performing a target action:
The user authorization mechanics after the button is clicked “My promotions” in personal user account:
Landing pages for promotions
Since any promotional activity of the company requires advertising, to communicate with users and attract the attention of customers most often need separate landing pages for a particular promotion.
In order to be able to create and run a new promotion as efficiently as possible the management of both the functionality of the promotion and the creation of its landing page is implemented in one system - promo.miloan.ua.
It means that advertising campaigns managers can build a landing page with the help of html-editor or upload a ready-made template. In this case, all campaign analytics will be accumulated in one place.
Multisite
Another key feature of the implemented system of promotions for the microcredit service is its multisite nature. This means that it can be used for various projects of the company, not only for Miloan.ua.
That means, it is a SaaS solution that can work with any data transferred to it without disrupting the overall mechanics of the platform.
The big advantage of this solution is saving time and money on the development of a promotional platform for each of the existing or future projects of the company.
Results
Since the system promo.miloan.ua has been successfully operating for more than a year, we can safely summarize some of the results and form a list of interesting facts and key achievements as the implemented platform, and the team that supports the viability of the project:
- Only 3 weeks passed before the launch of the MVP project
- During the first promotion, 22,000 prizes were offered.
- promo.miloan.ua became a single platform for all the company's online promotions
- As a result of all the work done promo.miloan.ua can be used as a full-fledged SaaS solution
- The system is verified by high load and large amounts of data
- Provides high level security of customer data, operating only with ID
- In just the first year of the system, there were 7 drawings
- Due to the through analytics on promotions, it is possible to monitor the success of a particular campaign and take it into account in future marketing activities
These results were achieved thanks to two key points: the high level of engagement (interest) of the development team and the customer's great confidence in our ideas and proposals. This tandem always helps to implement the set objectives and achieve the best results, and in this case even more – to transform a one-time solution for a particular task into an effective working tool that can be used in the future for all the tasks of this type and get the required results.
We've built up over the years experience in implementing all kinds of solutions for promotional campaigns. We're always happy to apply our knowledge when creating new projects or evolving existing ones, because we believe that every win for our customers is also a win for us and an extra boost for our development.
