结算越好利润才越高 “结算率”成为达人带货新“斩杀线”

This article highlights that e-commerce has entered an era of intensive operation. Many influencers now face the problem of growing GMV but shrinking profit margins, a trend that can be traced back to their neglect of settlement rate, a core indicator that directly impacts profitability. This article also shares actionable strategies to improve settlement rate.

1. Core value of settlement rate: As a metric based on settled GMV, settlement rate reflects true operational performance more accurately than payment GMV, as it excludes the impact of refunds, brush orders and other fake transactions. A high settlement rate not only directly increases net profit, but also helps influencers unlock more organic platform traffic and secure more resource support from brands, forming a long-term positive cycle.

2. Actionable strategies to improve settlement rate: The article outlines five actionable approaches, including scientific product selection, consistent personal branding, guiding users to make rational purchase decisions, solid private domain operations for existing followers, and data-driven advertising. Each approach is paired with real-world cases from top influencers that general practitioners can directly replicate.

The e-commerce industry has entered a new phase of intensive operation, and platform assessment has shifted from focusing on GMV scale to prioritizing high-quality genuine transactions. Settlement rate has become a core performance indicator for influencer marketing, which can help brands adjust their marketing and collaboration strategies to adapt to the new environment.

1. Optimization for influencer collaborations: Brands should prioritize collaborating with influencers with high settlement rates. These influencers enjoy higher user trust, deliver more stable genuine transaction profits for brands, and offer a better ROI than influencers who boast high GMV but low settlement rates. Long-term collaboration with this type of influencer can form a positive business cycle.

2. Optimization for product and marketing: Brands can develop products that align with influencer positioning, build scene-complementary product assortments, and support influencers to present products authentically to lower user return expectations. Brands can also offer after-sales support to help influencers reduce refund rates, jointly boosting settlement rate and achieving a win-win outcome.

3. Shift in consumer trends: Today’s consumers respond better to authentic influencer marketing; overhyped promotions tend to drive up return rates. Brands need to adjust their marketing and collaboration logic to adapt to this trend.

Douyin E-commerce has rolled out a high-quality operation reform that takes settlement rate as a core performance assessment, bringing new rule changes, opportunities and risks for sellers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Rule changes and opportunities: The platform has introduced policy support for high-settlement operation and published the *Influencer Guide to High-Settlement Operation*, offering more organic traffic to high-settlement-rate influencers. Sellers can prioritize partnering with these high-quality influencers to gain more exposure and reduce profit erosion caused by returns.

2. Actionable optimization measures: Sellers can build scene-complementary product assortments on the product selection end to drive cross-sales while lowering return rates, work with influencers to present authentic product information, and proactively deliver reliable after-sales service to reduce the likelihood of user refunds.

3. Risk warning: Sellers should not chase GMV alone at the cost of neglecting settlement rate. Even with high GMV, low settlement rate makes long-term profitability and platform traffic support unattainable. Sellers need to adjust their collaboration strategy in time and focus on profit growth from genuine transactions.

As the e-commerce industry enters an era of intensive operation, settlement rate has become a core performance indicator for influencer marketing, bringing new demand and opportunities for factories in product design, production and business development. Key insights are as follows:

1. Changing demand for product design and production: Consumers today are increasingly demanding product authenticity and quality. Mismatched product descriptions and poor quality directly drive up return rates and drag down settlement rate. Therefore, factories need to focus on improving product quality to meet the demand for authentic presentation by influencers, and reduce returns caused by quality issues.

2. New business opportunities: Influencers are now actively searching for high-quality inventory that supports high settlement rates. Factories can directly partner with top influencers, provide high-quality source goods to help influencers optimize their product mix, secure stable long-term collaboration orders, and open up a direct-to-consumer sales channel.

3. Implications for digital transformation: Factories can keep up with changes in the e-commerce ecosystem, adapt to the platform’s new operation standards, adjust production based on demand from influencers and end consumers, and build stable sales volume through the high-settlement system to advance the digital transformation of their e-commerce channel.

The e-commerce industry has shifted from the early phase of rapid expansion to the current era of intensive operation, reshaping core industry logic and opening up new development directions for service providers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trend: The entire industry has shifted its focus from chasing GMV scale to pursuing genuine profitability. Settlement rate has become a core indicator that both influencers and brands prioritize, and operational services focused on improving settlement rate have emerged as a new core industry demand.

2. Core pain points of clients: Many influencers struggle with shrinking profit margins despite growing GMV, while brands face the challenges of high return rates and volatile profits. The core issue behind both problems is low settlement rate, paired with a lack of systematic strategies to improve the metric.

3. Direction for solution development: Service providers can develop supporting operational tools, training courses and other service products around Douyin E-commerce’s five-dimensional improvement framework covering product selection, positioning, live streaming, follower operations and advertising. These offerings can help influencers and brands optimize operational processes, boost settlement rate in a targeted way, meet clients’ profitability needs, and open up new business growth points.

Douyin E-commerce has taken the lead in launching high-quality operation reform, positioning settlement rate as a core guidance indicator. Its approach offers valuable references for operation and merchant recruitment for all types of platform marketplaces. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core demand from merchants and influencers: After the industry entered the intensive operation era, influencers and merchants no longer prioritize traffic scale alone. Instead, they expect platforms to guide high-quality operation, provide supporting tools and policy support, and help them boost genuine profitability.

2. Referenceable latest operation practices: Douyin launched an official guide to high-settlement operation, added "high settlement rate, high commission preferred" sections on its product selection platform to make product sourcing easier for influencers, and granted extra traffic to high-settlement-rate influencers to guide the industry toward a healthy operation ecosystem.

3. Operation management and risk mitigation: Platforms can use indicator-based guidance to eliminate fake and low-quality orders, and improve the overall platform ecosystem. They can also adjust their recruitment system around settlement rate to attract more influencers and merchants that focus on long-term operation, and avoid the industry risk of vanity metrics without genuine transaction value.

China’s e-commerce industry has entered a new development stage, and this article discloses the latest industry trends and changes, offering high reference value for industrial research. Key insights are as follows:

1. New industrial trends: The e-commerce industry has fully transitioned from the early expansion phase focused on GMV scale to an intensive, high-quality development phase centered on genuine profitability. The core operational metric has shifted from payment GMV to settled GMV, and settlement rate has become the core indicator determining whether e-commerce players can survive industry cycles and achieve long-term profitability.

2. New industry problems: The early scale-oriented development model left behind problems such as inflated GMV, high return rates and shrinking profit margins. A large number of industry players have been misled by false scale and trapped in the predicament of growth without profit, undermining the healthy development of the entire industry.

3. New exploration of business models: Douyin E-commerce launched a five-dimensional improvement framework covering product selection, positioning, live streaming, follower operations and advertising. It guides the whole industry to improve settlement rate through traffic incentives and tool support, and builds a positive ecosystem of "high settlement rate → high traffic → more collaboration → higher profit". This model offers a referenceable new path for the high-quality transformation of the e-commerce industry, and opens up a new direction for industrial research.