The Cinematic Power of Great Digital Transformations

Jeff Rosenfeld, SVP Digital and Customer Experience, Cinemark Theaters

Since the dawn of the digital age, marketing and technology departments have become more intertwined, evolving processes and communicating in order to deepen customer relationships. Step by step, change by change, companies have undergone digital transformations, executing strategy and utilizing new technology to collect and apply customer data in the most efficient and impactful way.

Over the past five years, Cinemark has undergone its own digital transformation. While necessary, a complete digital overhaul is not an easy process, and it takes strategic coordination amongst multiple teams to successfully adapt operations to the digital world. For Cinemark, this meant strategically designing not only an engaging customer-facing online experience, but also changing how internal teams utilize consumer data gathered to continually evolve and create the best value for both the customers and the company.

Bringing Moviegoing to the Digital Realm

Technology has greatly changed the in-theater movie experience, and the same can be said for digital advancements outside of our auditoriums. In order to better connect with our moviegoers, Cinemark has focused on creating a frictionless e-commerce experience for customers while simultaneously increasing revenue for the company. This has included meaningful changes in strategy across key areas such as media, website and app, email, data analytics and more.

At the beginning of this transformation, Cinemark was focused on more traditional channels for reaching potential moviegoers, including newspaper ads, direct mailers and limited email communications. These types of marketing messages also pushed many people to purchase their tickets in person at the box office of the theater. As other companies were making it increasingly easy for consumers to purchase goods and services directly online, we saw both an opportunity and consumer preference toward online ticket purchases that could be easily obtained with a few simple clicks. But to be successful in shifting long-standing consumer behavior, such as the way in which moviegoers obtain tickets for a film they want to see, Cinemark had to create a memorable brand experience for customers across all digital channels through strategic use of technology and information.

A key focus of the overall transformation was developing an engaging and intuitive website and app, which would make the ticket purchase process a positive, and frictionless experience for our consumers. Every step, including movie and location selection, to seat selection and checkout process has been designed by the technology and marketing teams to maximize conversion while also building brand loyalty. In addition, we have dedicated more resources on targeted paid media, reaching potential and returning customers in multiple digital spaces, including social media, programmatic display, connected TVs and general search. This, in conjunction with our strong loyalty program, and completely revamped and robust email and push communications has all helped drive more traffic to the updated website and app, and ultimately driven more online ticket purchases. All these updated strategies, along with the expanding and deepening of our digital talent pool, have been instrumental in meaningfully increasing Cinemark’s digital penetration over just a few short years.

Turning Customer Data into Measurable Results

With this digital upgrade, came not only an improved customer experience but also an influx of customer data. Being able to properly digest and deploy data collected from interactions with consumers is a vital component of a digital transformation and brings marketing and analytics groups even closer together. Cinemark is continually looking at the insights gleaned from customer data, and translating them into actionable items and deploying different tests to better understand what our consumers prefer. Through strategic A/B testing, we have been able to continually update various features across multiple platforms and form IT enhancement priority lists that directly address the customer feedback. This ensures that every experience our guests have with our company is unique, compelling, and exactly what they are looking for Our website and app feature personalized information for each moviegoer including location preferences, watch lists, and even past concession purchases to make it easy for them to reorder their favorite moviegoing snacks. This dynamic content helps us to continually learn more information about our moviegoers, and in turn, allows us to continue to provide them with a highly individualized experience. This has increased the efficacy of our proactive and reactive customer communication across paid, email and social to the point that ticket purchases on our owned channels now far surpasses those purchases on third party sites.

"A key focus of the overall transformation was developing an engaging and intuitive website and app, which would make the ticket purchase process a positive and frictionless experience for our consumers "

All this attention to detail and data has been instrumental in the development and maintenance of our paid loyalty program, Cinemark Movie Club. The program was created based on extensive feedback from customers, ensuring the subscription model and perks were exactly what our customers wanted. Since launching in December 2017, we have continued to evolve the program according to customer insights, and routinely receive guest satisfaction scores in excess of 90 percent. The ability to both successfully engage our members across multiple digital channels, and incorporate feedback in real time, has been key.

The cinematic universe has come a long way from movie lovers seeking showtimes in their local paper to Cinemark delivering them the information we know they want, where they want it. By listening to the audience and meeting them where technology has taken them, companies can create a digital brand experience that keeps consumers coming back and ultimately drives more revenue for the company.