How a Six-Person Team Built a Multi-Million Membership Business from Scratch

01 Product Shape: What Kind of Membership?

Cool Home (Kujiale) is a SaaS provider that historically focused little on the consumer side. Since the C‑end membership launched in 2018, a six‑person team has generated tens of millions in revenue with high growth despite limited resources.

The team took over the membership in early 2019 and defined a stage‑wise growth strategy: product shape, lifecycle, and data growth.

Business goals : profit is a goal but not the only one; the membership also aims to retain individual designers not covered by the enterprise version.

User research shows the target users are young freelancers with short work experience who aspire to be more efficient, wealthier, and more influential. The product can give them higher permissions for learning, designing, and acquiring customers.

The staged value proposition is to build an ecosystem of learning, design, and marketing rights.

We divided the product into four nodes—rights, reach, conversion, and usage—to improve availability, attractiveness, cost‑effectiveness, and satisfaction.

Rights expansion : Brainstorming sessions generated a two‑year iteration plan, evaluated by breadth, frequency, and intensity.

User reach : Visual redesign introduced a colorful gradient for C‑end members and a metallic tone for SaaS members. A navigation entry test increased purchase conversion by 115.4%.

Path optimization added exposure entry points, reduced conversion steps, and tailored value expression for different user states (prospective, active, about‑to‑expire, churned) and events (e.g., free points for members who pay with points).

User conversion : A value‑delivery system (money, time, order rate) and an upgraded marketing page boosted conversion by 17% and 121% respectively.

Usage experience : The membership center was rebuilt to show levels, assets, and activities. Growth tasks and a tier system were added, raising renewal rates by 55.1% YoY.

02 Lifecycle: Mastering the User Journey

Based on user stages—prospective, active, and churned—we created a lifecycle model that tags users with different data logic and defines service standards.

Automated marketing : Different push messages are sent at each lifecycle node to maintain acquisition, renewal, and upsell.

Activity operation : Seasonal campaigns offset revenue dips (e.g., summer slump, Chinese New Year). Christmas promotions targeted users near churn, pushing season or half‑year cards to extend subscriptions beyond the holiday.

03 Data Growth: An Efficient Growth Engine

Data‑driven A/B testing permeated every iteration. Key experiments included:

Card order test : Ordering cards as month → half‑year → quarter yielded the highest revenue; the conventional month → quarter → half‑year order performed poorly.

Privilege expression test : Directly stating key privileges increased conversion compared to grouped categories.

Payment popup column test : A single‑column layout outperformed a two‑column layout, which reduced revenue by about 10%.

Discount thresholds: Discounts deeper than 20% (i.e., below 80% of price) harmed revenue.

Copy testing: Highlighting saved money generated higher click‑through rates.

Additional tests covered monthly‑card cancellation, price‑sensitivity segmentation, churn‑prediction scoring, and more, providing valuable insights for both membership and other business lines.

Summary

The C‑end membership, though a peripheral revenue stream, achieved a 287% month‑over‑month revenue surge after the team took over, maintaining roughly 20% semi‑annual growth thereafter. Design played a crucial role throughout, driving product iterations, user experience, and trust within the business team.