Every public broadcaster has to deal with a diverse constituency, consisting of viewers, listeners, studio audiences, online consumers, readers, members, and so on. To develop a more intense connection with these groups, BNNVARA developed a connected-reach strategy that focuses on the interests and needs of the individual.
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The media landscape is changing and that brings opportunities and threats for public broadcasting. Whereas in the past compartmentalization determined which broadcaster you became a member of, today this membership is not at all self-evident. Nevertheless, the Media Authority wants to receive a membership count from the public broadcasters every five years. After all, this is the basis for determining how much broadcasting time each broadcaster gets. Five years ago, the rules on this were changed. It is no longer allowed to "buy" members by, for example, addressing them on the street and offering them a nice gift in exchange for a membership of 5.72 euros per year. Broadcasters therefore have to work much harder to recruit members.
In addition, public broadcasting has to deal with the increasing popularity of subscription models, declining STER revenues and decreasing own income (such as ads in the VARAgids). The most important development, of course, is that online media consumption is increasing and linear viewing is decreasing. However, the Media Act does not allow public broadcasters to make money from content created for third-party platforms, such as YouTube.
Pietje Bell en de rode haan
For any public broadcaster, it is a complicated issue of how to respond properly to all these changes. BNNVARA had the added challenge of the fact that two broadcasters that at first glance do not have that much in common have merged since the last membership census, says Niels Kleverlaan, BNNVARA's Marketing Operations Manager. "The red rooster and Pietje Bell - that doesn't fit at first glance. To fit the puzzle pieces together properly, we did the merger in three phases. On January 1, 2014, the BNNVARA association was created. In August 2017, BNNVARA became the media brand under which the separate broadcasters BNN and VARA fell. Since September 2018, that distinction is no longer there and we are one broadcaster, BNNVARA. We are still working on defining our mission, but we stand for an open, just and equal society."
Achterban better utilized
How can you retain media consumers against this background? BNNVARA realized that they were not making sufficient use of the entire constituency - which of course consists not only of members, but also of viewers, forum users (the forum of Vroege Vogels has 109,000 users, that of Kassa 74,000) and newsletter subscribers. These people's information was put into different cubicles instead of combining the data into a single profile to encourage connected use.
Those cubicles made the recruitment funnel obsolete. Interaction with supporters was seen as one-way traffic, phases following one another until a purchase followed. In reality, according to Kleverlaan, BNNVARA is dealing with the loyalty loop: people watch a TV show, subscribe to a newsletter, post a comment on a forum. "You first see them visit a number of times and then you have to offer a throbbing customer experience. That way they keep coming and are willing to proceed to conversion, such as creating the profile or becoming a member. So it's all about building a relationship. We do that in three phases. In the first phase, we establish the connection. For example, if someone has visited DWDD's site several times, we ask if they might want to subscribe to that program's newsletter. The KPI is the percentage of visitors we make a connection with."
The second phase is all about relationships. Visitors are asked to enrich their user profile with preferences and interests or get that information from their click behavior. The KPI of this phase is how many profiles are enriched. The third phase is about perpetuating the relationship and converting to membership. The KPI is how many profiles are actively used.
System landscape had to change
In order to facilitate this loyalty loop, a major shake-up of the systems BNNVARA was using proved necessary. The first step toward renewal was therefore to see which solutions would be retained and which needed to be updated, replaced or purchased. "We had an old CRM environment to which it was difficult to connect other data sources. The marketing automation solution we were using worked well but required a lot of maintenance. Furthermore, we had a log-in tool, Gigya, that was not properly set up. The log-ins were in separate trays, which meant that someone who had registered at Early Birds could not leave a comment at Kassa with the same login credentials."
Medio 2017 work began on setting up the new IT architecture. The CRM migration in particular was a huge job, as a lot of data had to be transferred. "We started working with Gigya again and replaced old log-ins with new ones," Kleverlaan says. "For marketing automation, we work with Ternair. That tool was initially still linked to the old CRM system and later to the new one. That may be unusual but had the advantage that the marketers achieved success very quickly. Instead of spending a year working on an IT project and only then being able to get started, it was very quickly clear what the system could do. That increases the acceptance of such a change."
"Instead of spending a year on an IT project and only then being able to get started, it was very quickly clear what the system could do. That increases support for such a change."
The three applications form the basis of the new style of member recruitment and retention. The CRM combined with Gigya ensures that visitors can log in to all BNNVARA environments and manage their data. In Ternair, all customer view information is collected and used in communications. And BNNVARA itself has built an application to let the three solutions talk to each other.
The big advantage, according to Kleverlaan, is that it allows BNNVARA to better identify where opportunities lie. "For example, the website lagarde.nl discusses series on Netflix, among other things. It has the same function as the VARA Guide, but online and for a younger audience. If this grows, they will be interesting candidates for membership. But also consider, for example, the users of the Vroege Vogels forum. A small proportion of them are BNNVARA members but they do have a connection with the broadcaster. We are not going to mail those people per se, but we can add information about membership in logical places on the forum."
"In Ternair, all information about the customer view is collected and used in communication."
