How Village Cinemas used Lexer’s CDXP to engage customers and drive gift voucher sales

Before deploying Lexer’s Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP), Village Cinemas struggled to reengage their lapsed customers. With Lexer in place, they were able to increase their active membership by 18% and increase gift voucher sales 56% YoY.

Reengaging lapsed customers is a recurring challenge for brands.

While reengagement campaigns provide greater immediate value compared to acquisition campaigns, pushing these lapsed customers to convert again is no easy feat.

So, how do you capture the attention of customers who have lapsed from your business without losing them for good? How can a brand launch an aggressive reengagement campaign without exhausting customers with the same messaging and offers? Australian cinema brand Village Cinemas faced these same challenges before implementing Lexer’s Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP).

With a majority of their locations in Victoria, Village Cinemas experienced some of the harshest lockdowns in the country. As a result of both lockdowns and the persistent pandemic, they struggled to get viewers back into theaters.

Using Lexer, Village Cinemas’ marketing team was able to understand their customers, enabling them to create personal and relevant messaging for each customer at each touchpoint.

The Problem: Reengaging lapsed movie-goers

During the pandemic, Victoria experienced extensive lockdowns, and as a result, Village Cinemas struggled to bring viewers into their theaters. Even after closures were lifted, revitalizing attendance was a struggle. And with interruptions in film production, Village Cinemas couldn’t rely on new content to restart customer attendance.

On top of closures and stalled blockbuster releases, approximately $50M Village Cinemas gift vouchers were extended throughout the closure period, meaning that the majority of those vouchers were still in market in the lead up to the Christmas holiday.  While vouchers were key to driving viewers back to the big screen and account for 40% of their top-tier admissions, Village Cinemas faced a significant hurdle in driving both purchases and traffic during the holiday season.

Vrewards, Village Cinemas’ loyalty rewards program also saw engagement drop by 65% in the first 12 months of the pandemic. With theaters operational again, Village Cinemas needed to repopulate their loyalty program.

In a post-pandemic world, Village Cinemas faced multiple challenges: reengaging customers, revitalizing loyalty rewards program membership, and driving foot traffic back into theaters.

The Solution: Drive gifting revenue with detailed customer segmentation

The Village Cinemas marketing team started working towards the launch of a 10-week holiday campaign, with goals of driving $15 million in gifting revenue and growing Vrewards members by the end of the holiday season.

Now, 10 weeks of constant marketing could result in customer fatigue and lackluster results. And reengaging lapsed customers with aggressive discounts might cannibalize profits from their high-value customer base.

With the marketing team working in the CDXP, Village Cinemas was able to segment their customers and create relevant marketing campaigns to avoid fatigue.

With a deep understanding of which customers were back in theaters and which customers were still at home, Village Cinemas created unique offers designed to drive engagement for each segment.

From those two core groups came 24 unique customer segments based on previous purchases, channel engagement, web behavior, and more. This meant Village Cinemas could deliver hyper-targeted promotions and messaging to drive the right behavior across disparate groups without sacrificing profit.

The Results: 56% increase in gift voucher sales and 18% increase in active membership over the campaign period

After the holiday campaign ended, the teams’ efforts were met with stellar results:

• 56% increase in gift voucher sales YoY
• 75% increase in online gift voucher sales YoY
• 18% increase in Vrewards active membership, surpassing the target of 500K active members
• 65% of revenue over the period driven by tactical offers

Village Cinemas utilized deep customer knowledge to engage with their audience on an individual level. By dividing their customers into unique segments, they were able to craft direct and impactful messaging that resulted in returns that far outpaced their initial goals. And with the growth of their Vrewards loyalty program, Village Cinemas was able to drive more viewers to theaters and retain them after the campaign was over.

Know your customer, grow your business

Like Village Cinemas, you can utilize Lexer’s CDXP to understand who your customers are and grow your business. Lexer is the CDXP of choice for over 150 leading brands including Zimmerman, Kathmandu, Supergoop!, Sur La Table, and The Iconic. We transform disconnected data into actionable insights, and provide the workflow tools to automate and optimize the customer experiences that drive sales.

To learn more about how you can grow your business with Lexer, schedule a demo using the calendar below