February 1, 2023

How TGV Cinemas increased customer lifetime value by closing the gap between data and customer experiences

7
minute read

TGV Cinemas was confronting key challenges with siloed and scattered customer profiles, along with a lack of transparency for real and potential value of an extensive customer loyalty program. Find out how TGV solved their data profiling and loyalty program challenges by implementing Lexer’s CDXP.

Determining and understanding who your high-value customers are and what makes them return to your brand time and again is the holy grail of entertainment retailers and subscription-based brands.

Without an intuitive, predictive, and unified Customer Data & Experience Platform in place to ensure that customer data is accurately collected, unified, and accessible for all appropriate teams, retail and entertainment-focused brands struggle to understand and implement programs to gain additional market share or retain high-value customers that are already loyal to the brand.

TGV Cinemas, the cinema destination of choice in Malaysia, offers its customers more than just a movie. The TGV mission is to provide the best entertainment experience, which extends much further than the movie experience itself.

Not only did TGV want to enhance the competitiveness and sustainability of their cinemas in 2022, but they also wanted to become the number one loyalty program in their category, stimulate repeat visitation through their loyalty program, and increase revenue overall. 

With 39 cinema locations, 310 screens, and over 50,000 seats, TGV Cinemas is uniquely positioned to dominate the entertainment market for moviegoers and cinema fans in Malaysia.

Lexer engaged with TGV to help them accomplish a few core objectives, including increasing market share, better utilization of data from their customer base, and increased recruitment and retention to the TGV loyalty program.

The problem: Customer data scattered & siloed

Although TGV Cinemas has seen its market share increase post-reopening – after pandemic-driven closures – there has been little to no alignment between sales performance and customer value key performance indicators. 

With more than 80% of TGV’s inventory of 55,000 seats purchased two hours prior to the show and turning over 6 times a day, a key part of their mission was to convert potential movie-goers relatively close to the start of the showtimes for which they showed interest. TGV could not act quickly enough to effectively employ customer data, which impacted visitation. Therefore their goal of creating personalized, relevant experiences for customers suffered.

After trying several different internal solutions to segment, streamline, and adequately utilize their customer data, the TGV team realized that the process of gaining customer insights linked to personalized customer experiences was still way too slow and laborious to serve their needs.

We have to better understand our segments in order to service them with diverse content. The challenge of connecting and personalizing communications means cultivating relevance through everything from thematic content to imagery. We know sensitivities can be different across these communities too. We did have a sense of these segments, but we have to personalize them in a more sophisticated way. - Mohit Bhargava, Chief Marketing Officer at TGV Cinemas.

The solution: Decision-making based on enriched customer insights, not opinions

The TGV Cinemas team desired a CDXP solution that utilized enriched, segmented customer insights yet still enabled their team to quickly and accurately make decisions for furthering their goals based on their high-volume, fast-paced business model.

The TGV team implemented Lexer’s CDXP, customized to meet their unique needs, including meeting a three-month live deadline while accomplishing the following goals:

  • Customer data housed in one simple, accessible interface for all teams - removing the IT bottleneck. Data is enriched with relevant attributes about customers, including days between cinema visits, preferred cinema location, and the language of the last film seen.
  • Transparency regarding customer motivations - to join member programs and sequential experiences that drive visitation for various segments.
  • Personalized and automated marketing campaigns - executed within 30 minutes, down from 2-4 days.
  • Business strategy enabled by KPIs - built around accessible data points and quality insights, rather than assumptions.

The results

Immediately post-implementation, TGV Cinemas was able to move away from opinion-based decision-making about who, what, how, and why their customers engage with and buy the TGV experience. Instead, the team at TGV began uncovering insights based on a unified customer view and rich data points from Lexer’s CDXP. 

  • Open rates increased – TGV has seen its email open rates double through the utilization of Lexer segmentation and personalization.
  • Improved NPS score – With real-time access to customer NPS data, TGV has lifted its customer NPS score by 34%
  • Doubled visits of loyalty members – With a better understanding of customer value and visitation patterns, TGV has grown its visitation-frequency loyalty program members to almost twice the number of visits versus non-members per quarter

The implementation of Lexer’s CDXP platform effectively helped TGV Cinemas evolve from a solely product-based company to a customer-focused entertainment enablement brand. Through gaining a sound understanding of its target audience's value, patterns, and interests with Lexer, TGV was able to achieve its goal of quickly converting customers and consistently bringing them back for more.

The CDP rollout was set to a 13-week timeframe from zero to go live. A few weeks on from achieving this initial milestone, Lexer provided TGV with a unified customer view in one platform across all performance and marketing data as well as CRM and guest experience.  - Mohit Bhargava, Chief Marketing Officer at TGV Cinemas.

About TGV Cinemas

TGV Cinemas is one of Malaysia’s premier film distribution & cinema companies, operating a total of 310 screens at 38 locations. Since first opening their doors in 1995, they've entertained countless moviegoers with memories of a special day out. Through world class service and immersive experiences, TGV helps create joyful moments and unforgettable memories for their customers.

Know your customer, grow your business 

Great brands are built on great customer experiences. Lexer is the CDXP of choice for over 150 leading brands and retailers, such as Sur La Table, Martha Stewart, Cotton On, John Varvatos and more. We transform disconnected data into actionable insights and provide the workflow tools to automate and optimize the customer experiences that drive sales.

Like TGV Cinemas, Lexer's CDXP can help your brand unify siloed, scattered, and speculative customer data into enriched and complete customer profiling, transforming your business to customer first.

Interested in learning more about how Lexer can help you improve customer engagement and maximize results? Book a demo with one of our retail experts today.

Speak with our retail experts

See how Lexer can help you know your customer and grow your business.
book a demo
Sara Rath
Digital Marketing Manager
As Lexer’s Digital Marketing Manager, Sara is passionate about finding new ways to drive business growth and raise brand awareness through innovative campaigns, initiatives, and lead gen strategies. Outside of work, she enjoys going to the beach, a good cup of coffee, travelling, staying active, and exploring outdoors.