Churn might be a fact of life, but successful media and streaming companies have a laser-like focus on getting that number as low as possible. Research suggests it can cost up to $200 to acquire a new customer for these services, but that 46% of consumers had cut at least one provider within the previous six months. Whilst it may be hard to move that first number, there are steps you can take to ensure that the second impacts someone else—not you. 

It’s important to understand that churn must be prevented, rather than attempting to change a decision the consumer has already made. That means ensuring that each customer gets the absolute best from your service at all times—so the thought of leaving never enters their minds. The following approach might help.

• Learn and understand each individual consumer's viewing habits and preferences. Aggregate data from multiple channels, and in particular apps on TV, tablet, and phone—where content is typically consumed.
• Apply this learning to understand which new content your customers will like, or alternatively, when you have new content, find all the customers who may be interested. With simple logic (watched a previous series of the same show), or more complex queries (has a certain level of engagement with shows in a similar category, within certain recency and frequency constraints), build dynamic audiences for campaigns built around new content.
• Deliver multichannel campaigns via your marketing cloud, including the following:
  • In-app messages, delivered at an appropriate time, within both TV and mobile apps, promoting the new content.
  • Embedded experiences—such as the prominent featuring of the new content on home screens and menus.
  • Rich push notifications direct to the smartphone, including video previews and the ability to link straight to the new content in the app.
  • Email updates (either within a dynamically generated newsletter or stand-alone), delivered if the user has not responded to in-app or push calls to action. 
• Keep track of user behavior. If the customer stops watching during a series, for example, go back to step 3 and execute a similar campaign—whilst being aware that perhaps it simply wasn’t for them.
• Continue to execute multichannel campaigns as appropriate, ensuring that your customers are continually aware of new content and recommendations, and get maximum value from your service. Remember—the metric you are looking to drive is usage, which will in turn drive churn downwards.

Get more detailed use cases in our eBook: Driving Engagement and Reducing Churn in Digital Streaming. 

To Sum Up…

What each of these use cases shows is how critical mobile is to integrated, cross-channel marketing campaigns. Both as a source of data and as a channel for communication in a variety of formats.

And of course, these examples are merely the tip of the iceberg. The ongoing rise of mobile, and indeed of apps in channels beyond mobile such as SmartTV, means that mobile is no longer an option or a nice-to-have. There are thousands of ways in which mobile can add value and help drive loyalty, retention, engagement, and revenue for businesses of all types. 

Meaningful, native mobile experience must be part of the marketing mix.