It is common knowledge that not analyzing data for business benefits is leaving money on the table. Yet, most OTT companies are barely scratching the surface of what is possible in this regard.
Marketers using homegrown platforms who are looking to scale and optimize their subscriber retention and experience programs are usually challenged by:
Transforming customer data insights into multichannel campaigns
Providing personalized communications across channels, at scale
Implementing an automated decisioning framework that serves the next-best-action for each individual customer
Identifying the incremental uplift of campaigns, journeys, and plans
On the other hand, OTT platforms using smart relationship marketing platforms routinely find ways to increase subscriber loyalty, engagement, and revenues.
For example, a leading OTT provider with over 68 million subscribers, increased subscriber reactivation by 69%, and customer retention by 20% by properly using the Optimove platform.
So, how did they do it? By leveraging their data to generate insights that lead to more effective subscriber marketing – among the rest. And if it’s gamified, even better!
So, how can you increase renewal rates with gamified campaigns?
Many OTT platforms provide several subscription plans. Typical plans include 30-day, 90-day, and 1-year subscriptions. This flexibility helps platforms offer services to subscribers with different commitment preferences, enlarging the platforms’ total addressable market.
However, it also adds complexity in understanding subscriber behavior and maintaining a healthy marketing plan for each different plan.
Using Optimove, marketers at a particular OTT platform, revealed that their shorter plans had the highest retention rates.
More specifically, the 30-day subscription plan held a retention rate of 41%, their 180-day plan held a 25% retention rate, and their annual plan only had a 15% retention rate.
As seen in the chart below, for this platform’s 30-day-plan subscribers, the higher the number of subscription renewals, the more likely subscribers were to renew their subscription once again.
With
insights like this, marketers used Optimove to gamify renewal campaigns based
on each subscriber’s number of renewals. The team segmented their 30-day-plan
subscribers, based on the number of times they had renewed, and set up separate
campaigns for each group.
The
marketers divided their subscribers into three tiers, based on each one’s
number of renewals, and scheduled campaigns to be automatically sent to the
customers a few days before each one’s subscription expired.
Campaigns included incentives such as:
Number of Renewals
Offer level
Sample Campaign Incentive
1-2 renewals
High
Renew your subscription for a
chance to join a {{Favorite Actor}} movie premier
3-4 renewals
Medium
Renew two subscriptions and get
a third at 50% off!
5+ renewals
Low
Don’t miss another episode of {{Favorite
Series}}
This
specific example is but a small taste of how OTT platforms can leverage their
data to generate insights that lead to more effective subscriber marketing.
This can
really help your team continuously discover new ways to improve the viewer
experience, leading to increases in customer loyalty, engagement, and revenues.
Stay tuned for the final part of this series, where we’ll talk about how to identify ideal subscribers for new release marketing and reducing churn by targeting involuntary churners.
Your can download here the full OTT platform use cases. Stay tuned for part three.
Rony Vexelman is Optimove’s VP of Marketing. Rony leads Optimove’s marketing strategy across regions and industries. Previously, Rony was Optimove's Director of Product Marketing leading product releases, customer marketing efforts and analyst relations. Rony holds a BA in Business Administration and Sociology from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Dafna is a creative marketing content writer and editor who produces strategic content for various online industries. With over ten years of professional writing experience, she helps brands grow and increase profitability, efficiency, and online presence. Dafna holds a B.A. in Persuasive Communications from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya).
