Movio has the great advantage of having cinema expertise from around the globe. My personal experience comes from North America where I worked in the cinema industry for 15 years before moving to Europe last year. Now based in London, my role as Movio’s Strategic Partnerships Director for EMEA, and Movio Expert, has provided me with a tremendous opportunity to glean insights on the cinema industry in this part of the world.

While I would argue that many of the core drivers of moviegoing are consistent around the world, there are a few distinct features of the European market that are important to consider.

1. The importance of local content

While Hollywood-product certainly gets the bulk of media attention globally, it is actually the strength of local content that can determine whether European box office thrives in any given year.  European cinema contributes nearly 30% of the global box office.

Breaking it down it becomes apparent that a nation’s own unique film content is making a sizable contribution to total box office revenues.

2014 data showed that countries including Italy, Denmark, Spain, Sweden and Finland saw over 25% of annual admissions coming from domestic film product.  In France, this percentage was 44%, and most notably in Turkey local content represented an incredible 58.4% of admissions.  From a marketing perspective, this presents a unique set of both challenges and opportunities for cinema chains.

Delivering highly personalised and relevant communications to consumers is a well- established best practice in e-CRM.  For many cinema chains in Europe, this is not only a best practice through; it is an essential component in how customer relationships are managed.  From an insights and analytics perspective, European cinema chains, in particular, are faced with understanding the various diverse segments of their audiences’ film-viewing patterns.

Local content may not always have the weight of Hollywood-style marketing budgets behind them. Therefore, a targeted, data-driven communications strategy can prove to be a cost-efficient and highly effective way to increase awareness and visitation for these films.

With 27 languages and a diverse slate of regional film product in Europe, cinema chains who have the ability to effectively manage their customer’s preferences and film-watching behaviours, and who can target offers and film recommendations accordingly, have the potential to drive incremental value from their customer base.

2. Differing communication channels

Equally as important in delivering a well-targeted, relevant message to customers, is the need to deliver these messages via the right communication channel.  In Europe, there are nuances with respect to electronic communication channels, which impact how cinema chains deliver that right message to the right customer.

Even though email is still a dominant form of e-communication and is still highly effective, mobile and instant messaging apps are increasingly important channels in this market.  SMS in a market such as Turkey has become the primary way that brands are communicating with customers.  This market has a mobile-first orientation, meaning that while email is still used, it serves a different purpose and essentially reinforces SMS. Consumers in Turkey rely on SMS as their main form of communication and are checking their email inboxes less and less frequently.

Instant Messaging apps are also rising in popularity in many European markets in comparison to North America.  Potentially due to the fact that SMS is still less affordable in some countries (Turkey is clearly not included in this list), Instant Messaging apps such as WhatsApp have become replacements to SMS in certain markets. In countries such as Spain and Italy, where the average cost per SMS is still over 50% higher than in North America. WhatsApp has hit consumer penetration levels of over 90% in Europe. When comparing that to their 8% penetration in the USA, one can see how significant these communication channels are becoming.

The impact on how customers are consuming their digital content has an immense impact on how business-to-consumer communication strategies are developed.  From a cinema marketing perspective specifically, mobile channels like SMS, push or instant messaging apps, require a complementary communications strategy to that for email.  The opportunity to instantaneously engage a customer, albeit in fewer words and without images, can help to create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate action, or provide value through snippets of content and relevant news.  In Europe, cinema marketers are increasingly challenged to lead with this approach and put mobile at the forefront of their customer communications matrix.

3. The prevalence of subscription-based loyalty schemes

The cinema loyalty landscape in Europe is also quite unique.  The prevalent form of customer loyalty schemes in markets such as the UK, France, and The Netherlands, are subscription based; customers pay a monthly or annual fee to enjoy as many films as they can watch.  While these models of consumer loyalty have certainly been explored in other territories, in Europe this model has been well established and in many cases, is the primary mechanism for capturing customer data from cinemagoers.

From a database marketing perspective, this approach requires the cinema chain to place even more focus on increasing basket-size or concession spend. This may be potentially an even higher priority than increasing the attendance frequency of their member base. I would hypothesise that if a customer is paying, in some cases, hundreds of Pounds or Euros to participate in the subscriber scheme, that they are more likely to be a high frequenting cinemagoer to begin with. I would suggest that cinema chains with such subscription-based programmes place emphasis on extracting more value from their members while they are in the cinema – be it through incentivising a greater concession stand purchase or potentially upgrading the member to a premium experience.

These loyalty schemes also present an opportunity for cinema chains to identify and understand who their best subscribers are and to then use this data as a proxy for prospecting new subscribers.  Moving customers up the loyalty ladder from being non-members to high-value members is a strategy that can be applied universally. However, for those cinema chains in Europe that have well established subscriber schemes, this migration of customers can potentially mean hundreds of Pounds or Euros in annual membership fees if managed properly.