A question for readers.
How many of you feel that TV companies are only concerned about profit?
Do HBO, Fox, Showtime and FX really try to create an emotional/intellectual connection?
You might feel that there is some sort of personal involvement and current marketing seems to be aimed at enforcing, continuing and encouraging your loyalty to TV shows which is great…until the series ends.
A major example of this is AMC that has released shows such as The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Two of those shows have now ended and AMC has not been able to capitalise on high viewership numbers for those programmes and integrate them into their recent and struggling TVshows e.g. Humans and Preacher.
This means that networks gain the attention of millions to watch popular shows, but cannot retain viewers for less popular or new releases?
Perhaps HBO, Netflix, Comedy Central and some others can “get away with it” because they are more prolific and have people’s attention.
Companies, and their brands need to encourage Consumer-relationship Marketing and build a constant long-term bond with viewers ; once a customer has been attracted for one show the hook-up should be maintained.
As Bai et al.(2007) say “acquiring customers is more expensive than retaining them”.
As such there are 4 potential perks :
- Customers engaged through relationship marketing buy more frequently.
- Overall marketing costs are reduced as there is no need to attract people a second time.
- Consumers are less price sensitive both because they are emotionally committed – either with the shows they loved, the TV network or future releases.
- They refer to others via word of mouth or online.
Guo supports this by stating that the current Marketing trend is to:
- Establish a connection
- Maintain said connection
- Enhance and solidify the connection
Figures further prove this with 16% of the Fortune 500 having a blog (Guo 2015).
The paper further states that consumers encourage this relationship with 93% of consumers wanting networks to be present on social media and 85% wanting customer-company interatction.
Customers are now being considered as life-time value sales rather than a collection of individual sale opportunities that have have to be constantly renewed.
The question is how to create a loyal fan-base? The Internet and e-mail marketing can be the solution.
Recently, e-mail marketing has lost some of its importance. For example Dma statistics show that only 9% of marketers think that all e-mails are relevant, despite 95% of them also believe e-mails are an important platform.. Additionally, there is lack of strategy on how to analyse, test and gather info regarding the database of clients.This is also demonstrated with the 2016 average ROI of £30.01.
Let’s imagine that big brands such as HBO, Netflix and others – also including smaller, lesser known TV networks – set up a quick and simple e-mail marketing system.
The database must be up-to-date ; according to Hubspot e-mails degrade annually by 22.5% this can be due to new email addresses or the decision to opt out of future e-mails. However, database can be renewed with an opt-in email campaign.
Next, e-mail signups must be encouraged. Websites such as Hubspot, Econsultancy and DMA provide valuable insight into email marketing best practices and promotion.
A sign-up box (not a link) should be provided ; doing this Orbit Media increased sign-ups by over 1400%.
To increase sign-ups numerous platforms could be offered e.g.Facebook, Youtube and Pinterest. Some networks already follow this strategy
There is now a ready to be engaged database of e-mails, not an easy feat considering 49% of consumers receive 1 to 10 brand e-mails.
Econsultancy states that people sign-up mostly for sales (61%) and discounts (59%) but much less for TV networks (unless its a sale of TV boxsets or product memorabilia).
To create interest the focus should be on content e.g. online contests, behind the scene information, announcements etc..
Q&A livestreams on Youtube, an online contest promotion and a link on an online store could all be within the email.
Imagine an interesting Netflix e-mail that has behind the scene footage, memorabilia sales, upcoming shows and livestream announcements ? It would be a great way to keep people engaged and wanting more.
The last step to encourage more signups would be WOM with users sharing content on social media and keeping customer interest.
To implement this, TV brands would have to invest some time and effort to reap the best benefits. But in the long run it would be a useful and important method to create customer loyalty both to the company and brand ; it would not be TV show specific and enable promotion of other content.
Furthermore, opt-in options regarding e-mail preferences and how often content is e-mailed could also be analysed.
The potential drawback could be that people are not interested in what the TV networks have to offer but rather focus only on the TV shows. Additionally since TV shows are a highly visual form of entertainment, and as a result video marketing is very successful, e-mail marketing might not be the best approach. But there is lacking evidence to prove this.
I look at and follow many different TV networks/shows and feel there is untapped potential from for this type of promotion.