This is the second post in our Mastering cinema marketing campaigns blog series where I’ll cover a 5-point performance cycle that the best loyalty programmes follow, and show you the different ways you can go about getting the most out of your loyalty programme data with Movio Cinema.

I’d like to follow on from my first post, which spoke about how you can anticipate your customer needs and wants,  and expand on refining your targeting by talking about relevancy.  There are two types of relevancy that I’ll discuss over two blog posts: channel and message. This post will focus on ensuring relevancy  by channel.

The goal for most savvy database marketers is to ensure the right message is delivered to the right customer via the right channel.  With today’s changing communications landscape, considering the relevance of the channel for each customer is an increasingly important aspect of campaign management.  While email is still a highly effective communication method, mobile continues its rapid growth in importance.  At Movio, we are seeing that over 50% of campaigns sent to moviegoers are now opened on a mobile device.  The fact is, if you are not considering mobile as a lead part of your channel strategy, you are quickly risking become irrelevant to your customers.

Using the Movio Cinema marketing dashboard you can regularly check what channels and devices your customer base is engaged with. This will enable you to help optimise your campaign strategy on a per member or per segment basis.  So, whether it be email, SMS, push notifications or leveraging social media, you need to consider what channel is appropriate for both your campaign and for your target audience.

Another tip for ensuring channel relevancy is when you are capturing profile or enrolment data on your customers, consider asking them about which channel they’d prefer to be communicated with.  While this preference may change over time, having a preference centre on your website where customers can update this info will help you to take the guesswork out of targeting. Asking for a customer’s mobile number when signing up for a programme is commonplace these days, but actually asking whether your customer wants mobile communications over email is not something we ask very often; there is no reason why we shouldn’t let the customer be in control of this.

It’s important to also consider the expansion of new channels and ensuring your communication strategy evolves as communication channels do.  A good example of this is WeChat in China.  This new channel has taken over the Chinese market, and is the primary tool for communication people are using in this part of the world. I think it's a sign of what's to come in other markets so being able to pay attention to these new channels as they evolve, to ensure your communication strategy remains relevant in the future is really important.

Relevancy by channel can also be market specific. This is especially important to consider for cinema chains who operate in multiple territories.  A good example of this is looking at what is happening in Europe.  In some countries in Europe, SMS is the leading form of communication. One of Movio’s clients in Turkey has an SMS-lead communication strategy whereby email is used to reinforce an SMS message but SMS always is the primary channel with customers.

Example - Achieving high engagement and high open rates

I’d like to share an example of when SMS is most effective. For most cinema chains the best use of SMS is for campaigns that drive a sense of urgency or require an instantaneous response.

Obviously you're limited to a certain number of characters - 160 characters on SMS -  so messaging needs to be concise. For example, a last chance to see campaign or an announcement  that tickets for a high demand film have gone on sale. These types of campaigns can be communicated efficiently and effectively through SMS and can drive a sense of urgency to invoke immediate response from your audience base.

However, SMS capabilities can go beyond this; with Movio Cinema’s integration to cinema point-of-sale, you can also serve highly targeted 1:1 offers and recognitions to customers through mobile. As a result,  the opportunities with SMS are now quite extensive. If you are operating in a market such as Turkey, where SMS has strong customer engagement, or you have segments of customers who prefer SMS to email, strategies for leveraging this communication channel should be an important consideration in your efforts to maintain relevancy.

How to achieve this type of targeting with Movio Cinema

Step 1 - When you're creating your groups check SMS communications at the top to see how many people have opted in. Not all of your members may have, so it's good to double check what that number is.

Step 2 - Then when you're setting up your campaign, the drop down gives you the options for e-mail, SMS, e-mail and SMS, so you can just decide how you prefer to deploy that campaign.

Step 3 - Lastly, just as you would in a normal e-mail,  type in your message. You're limited to the 160 characters and you would test this like any other e-mail campaign. SMS is really that easy.

Again, it's a really turn-key communication channel for really last minute opportunities. It's even faster in many ways than developing an e-mail template. If there's something on a Friday afternoon that you have to get out to your loyalty members consider SMS as potentially the best channel for doing so.

Movio SMS complies with US legislation requirements and follows the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) best practices guidelines for sending SMS Handles the opt-in process with a 2-step process:Initial opt-in confirmation –  Automatically sends member updates back to your loyalty vendor. You can read more in our blog The importance of double opt-in for SMS marketing.

I’ll continue on this topic in the next post in the series where I’ll concentrate on relevancy by message. We’d love to hear how you keep your communications relevant for your customers in the comments below.