Regal Cinemas launched its Crown Club loyalty program in 2001 and, while it recorded reasonable growth during the ensuing years, it remained passive and did not fully engage customers. The brand challenge became how to drive attendance, box office, and market share.
Ken Thewes, Chief Marketing Officer of Regal Entertainment Group, talked about this theme and more during his session, “How to Connect Customers to Your Brand,” on Tuesday at the 9th Annual Loyalty Expo, presented by Loyalty360 – The Association for Customer Loyalty. Loyalty Expo is slated for May 24-26, 2016, at the DoubleTree Universal in Orlando, Florida.
Consistently delivering a best-in-class experience, while rewarding its most loyal customers became the goal for Regal Cinemas and, notably, its Crown Club loyalty program. Based in Knoxville, TN, Regal Cinemas has more than 25,000 employees, 567 theaters, more than 219 million annual attendees, and earns more than 20% of the North American box office.
Growth in the Crown Club loyalty program was stagnant, around 20% annually, between 2010-2012. Free soda, free popcorn, and free movie tickets were enticing rewards, but not engaging enough to spark greater involvement in the program.
At that juncture, Thewes told attendees that company officials recognized an opportunity to integrate new technology that could improve the way customer data and customer insights were being leveraged and yield a better understanding of customers. The result was a program refresh that, ultimately, connects customers to what they really want.
The challenge for the program, Thewes explained, was a lack of differentiation among its competitors. Members could only earn 20 credits per day and there was a lack of choice of rewards.
“You don’t want to penalize customers when they spend more,” Thewes said.
Regal Cinemas made a commitment to creating emotional bonds with customers and has focused on personalization of rewards, communications, and promotions to engage with customers both inside and outside of theaters. For example, rather than offering the same rewards to all customers, Regal saw an opportunity to offer personalized rewards based on movie ticket purchases. For Regal Cinemas, the Crown Club program is one of many important tactics in play to build customer loyalty.
After changes were implemented, membership growth jumped to 73% annually from 2012-2014.
Thewes said the Crown Club program’s official relaunch was at the start of this year, and included more rewards (including movie T-shirts and hats) and unlimited credits (100 points for every $1 spent).
“The majority of what we do is bringing relevant information to customers,” Thewes said. “We also remind them when they are almost there as far as earning bonus points.”
With three to five new movies opening each week, Regal Cinemas officials always have something to talk to customers about and promote.
“We talk to them about movie openings and swag that is available from our movie rewards store,” Thewes said. “We send custom content all about a particular movie for customers prone to see it. We are also constantly doing sweepstakes. We follow up with customers within 24 hours after they’ve seen a movie.”
Thewes noted a remarkable statistic: Regal Cinemas now has an 80% open rate on the transactional emails sent.
Of the various tactics attempted to drive increased attendance, Thewes said that, by far, recliner seats have sparked the biggest rise: About 60% rise in attendance at theaters equipped with recliner seats.
For Regal’s fiscal first quarter this year, Thewes was “ecstatic” with the results.
Here are some highlights:
-Loyal spend outpaced average spend by 91%
-Website traffic rose 63%
-The number of mobile app sessions jumped 219%
“We’re taking a mobile-first approach because that is where people are going to,” Thewes said.
What’s more, Thewes said company costs are down. Looking ahead, Thewes wants to grow social engagement.
“We’re trying to drive social engagement and social activation, where we’re trying to get brand advocates,” he explained. “We also want to offer social rewards for something like watching the trailer for a movie.”
Connecting and engaging with customers was the key goal for Regal Cinemas when it relaunched its Crown Club loyalty program, and, judging by the results, it has certainly accomplished that.