Over a year ago, we enhanced our email capabilities with Dynamic Content to drive rapid 1:1, hyper-personalised communication with your moviegoers. Movie recommendations are generated by our Propensity Algorithm, which assigns the ideal next movie choice for each moviegoer based on their prior movie viewing and the viewership of people like them. 

Curzon Cinemas, one of Europe’s leading independent exhibitors, have previously seen great success with Dynamic Content in email. After performing an experiment, the results overwhelmingly proved that Movio’s Dynamic Content provided superior results: an 18% uplift in clicks and 28% uplift in revenue compared to the like-for-like editorialised version. As Duncan Carson, Marketing Manager at Curzon, concluded at the time,

“Simply put, people were more likely to engage and, crucially, more likely to buy when they saw the film that most reflected their tastes served to them highest.”

We took Duncan’s conclusion on board, and over the past year we made our recommendations more relevant, thereby allowing our exhibition clients to engage with their moviegoers in an even more compelling way. To that end, we are delighted to announce a new Dynamic Duo: Dynamic Subject Lines and Preheaders, and a Showtimes Integration with movie recommendations. 

Dynamic Subject Lines and Preheader

In Seven, Brad Pitt infamously screamed, ‘What’s in the box?!’ While that ended badly for him (not to mention Gwyneth Paltrow), when it comes to email marketing, knowing that the content within the email itself is personalised and relevant generally leads to better results. 

Over time, exhibitors who use Dynamic Content, as well as loyalty marketing best practices in partnership with Movio’s experts, do establish credibility with recipients. We see this in the rising unique open rates achieved by Curzon and others. However, because subject lines and preheaders have previously been generic and couldn’t be customised to tell each recipient ‘what’s in the box’, it did rely on that trust being built up over time.

Movio has now addressed this by adding the ability to surface dynamic movie content in subject lines and preheaders. This means different messages can be created for each promoted movie and therefore recipients will automatically be presented with a subject line and preheader specifically referring to the movie for which they have the highest propensity to watch.

This innovation joins the ability to use markers, which already allows exhibitors to address recipients by name in subject lines and preheaders. For example ‘Matthew, Tenet is going to blow your mind!’. Emojis can also be included, although we do recommend sparing use! To close out my analogy, it’s as if the box in Seven now had a label on the outside reading ‘Brad, it’s Gwyneth’s head. 📦  This way up.”

Showtimes Integration

Movio has also increased its level of collaboration with Vista Cinema by integrating with their MovieXchange offering. This enables even smarter movie recommendations where available showtimes can be considered when our algorithm calculates movie propensity. With this integration, exhibitors can feel assured to promote titles that a recipient can actually see at their most frequented cinema location.

We believe the inclusion of Showtimes should radically change the workflow of most movie marketers. Today, we observe many marketers preparing single movie – or solus – emails to promote each week’s new releases or most popular holdovers. Generally, after creating emails for three movies, marketers often run out of time to prepare further solus emails and so then prepare a newsletter as a catch-all to everyone else in their database. From a personalised marketing approach, the newsletter is the poor cousin to the solus emails.

Dynamic movie recommendations that consider showtimes turns this traditional approach on its head:

• Every recipient is presented with their ideal movie/movies in the body of the email which turns newsletters to their primary weekly email
• Marketers can choose the number of movies to promote in a newsletter. For example, promoting the top four movies for each recipient, with the top recommendation showcased in a landscape marquee at the top
• Exhibitors can now promote any movie in theatres or with tickets on sale with confidence that a movie will be recommended if a recipient can actually see it
• The inclusion of Showtimes means that exhibitors can confidently promote movies and capture box office right to the end of the long tail. Think of the benefit: even if just 100 people across an entire cinema circuit still have the highest propensity to see The Invisible Man in Week 6 over newer titles, it’s still worth promoting since for those 100 people it is the movie most likely to get them off the couch and into a cinema
• Dynamic movie recommendations can also be used to insert non-movie content. For example, everyone who has The New Mutants as their top choice will also be promoted the collectable The New Mutants popcorn container and soda cup
• With newsletters as the primary weekly email, marketers have to prepare fewer campaigns, freeing them up to undertake other task

A personal invitation to return to the cinema

Now more than ever, it is essential that exhibitors tell each and every guest exactly why they should return to their theatres and revitalise their moviegoing. 

By adding dynamic movie content in subject lines and preheaders, and Showtimes Integration in movie recommendations, Movio has ensured that each one of your guests receives a unique, highly personal and entirely relevant communication. Giving you the best possible chance to welcome them back.

This enhancement is part of Movio’s Innovation Agreement. Contact your Movio Account Manager to explore how your marketing activities can benefit from these new features.