Data Driven Marketing 2023 CineEurope Presentation

As a company who works with clients to help them to identify trends, uncover opportunities and implement strategic marketing plans, we had the opportunity to present some insights at the UNIC marketing meet-up at CineEurope last week. Below are some of the observations we shared along with a couple of real life case studies and ways that other circuits can leverage their own data to drive uplift in admissions, revenues and market share.

Circuits are harnessing more data than ever about their customers

With all the digital tools now available, cinema operators have surpassed even the streaming giants and are capturing more valuable data on their customers than ever before.

While our historical data is still a valuable benchmark, we now have enough data post-Covid to analyse and be able to take actions to help us drive success. In addition to the data collected about members of your Loyalty programme, we can also gather valuable information about both your Identifiable Customers (those who have either made an idetifiable transaction or signed up to be included on your mailing list) and most importantly your Marketable customers (the total number of your Identifable customer base who you can send marketing communications to. Only those who have explicity opted-in to receive communications are included).

Some current observations 2023 year to date

• Marketable customers are worth significantly more than non-marketable ones, on average >40%

• Loyalty customers are valuable but often there are not enough of them, on average accounting for <50% admissions

• Most new customers come for the first time to see blockbusters and often take a long time to return, with 65% coming back >180 days later

• Most cinema goers are low frequency, with 70% coming 1x to 3x per annum, the majority only 1 x per annum

• A significant proportion of the Marketable customer base is anactive, on average circa 50% - whether they are part of a Loyalty programme or not

Case Study 1 - Increase Marketable Customers

Below is a high level case study of a mid-sized circuit whom we worked with on a specific campaign to increase their Marketable customers number.

On analysis of their existing customer base using Showtime’s Customer Analytics RFM tool, we could see that for every 10k new marketabe customers they could drive €150k per annum additional revenue.

With a limited budget, we undertook a Lead Generation Campaign via the Showtime Engage integration with Facebook and Instagram. Targeting existing Identifiable but Non-Marketable customers in their base, as well as new customers using look-a-like audiences, we used a combination of fun film quizzes, surveys and competitions behind lead generation forms, with the sole purpose of growing the number of customers who opted in to receive marketing communications.

In just 8 weeks this circuit’s active Marketable customer base grew by 20%, translating into €102k expected revenue uplift in 12 months, and delivering a 32x ROI on campaign investment.

Case Study 2 - Increase Market Share

In this next case study, we worked with another mid-sized circuit who had a goal of increasing their local market share by 10% over that of 2022.

In addition to implementing a similar campaign to first grow their Marketable customer numbers, we followed up with a series of strategic marketing activities including:

Bounce Back Campaigns

Film Discovery & Engagement Marketing

‘Don’t Miss’ Messaging

Strategic Paid & Organic Social

With these simple steps the circuit exceeded their local market share growth target achieving an increase of 10.2% and driving an additional 125k admissions in 5 months.

In Summary

• On average, only 45% of the identifiable customer base per circuit is Marketable

• External marketing spend focused on increasing marketable customer base is more quantifiable and offers more value in the long term

• Blockbusters are good to bring existing customers back and new customers in. Effective marketing ensures they all return.

The Showtime suite of Marketing and Customer Analytics tools including Engage, Sentiment and RFM give you the power to harness all the customer data you collect and turn it into incremental revenue. To learn more about our solutions or for help with designing and implementing a marketing strategy get in touch with our cinema marketing experts today.