Award-winning Email Marketing Campaigns for the SonyLIV Scam 1992 Web Series
About SonyLIV:
SonyLIV is the first premium Video on Demand (VOD) service by Sony Pictures Networks India Private Limited (SPN), providing multi-screen engagement to users on all devices. Launched in January 2013, it enables users to discover 20 years of rich content from the network channels of Sony Pictures Networks India Private Limited.
SonyLIV also provides a rich array of Movies, a strong line-up of events across all sports, TV Shows and Music, LIV Kids, LIV FIT and more. With over 100 million+ app downloads, SonyLIV is amongst the Top OTT platforms in India.
About Scam 1992 Show:
In the Pandemic era the OTT platforms were rising rapidly. Being a known entertainment destination with thousands of shows from various genres , LIV has its own set of target audiences from across different demographics and age groups. The focus was to attract young to the platform because with relatable content. SonyLIV aimed to offer unique and original shows on it’s very own platform to engage and retain the users.
Launched in October 2020, Scam 1992 a SonyLIV Original, set in the 1980’s to 90’s Bombay follows the life of Harshad Mehta, a stockbroker who took the stock market to dizzying heights and his catastrophic downfall.
About the Campaign:
Having a huge user-base across the world, and with a 360 Degree Marketing and Communication Campaign for Scam 1992, one of the relevance of Email marketing was even higher to target the most appropriate segments of subscribers basis their viewing habits to nudge them to watch the show.
With an end-to-end email marketing campaign management need, the objective was to reach out to a large audience base and increase the email open rate while maintaining the email quality and deliverability. Thus increasing higher recall of the show and overall viewership.
Marketing Challenges:
Email marketing challenges faced by Team Kenscio are as below:
- Ensuring quality and creativity was the most significant challenge that the team went through as the show name itself has the word – ‘SCAM’, it took a lot of creative effort to construct an appropriate subject line that won’t affect the deliverability or sender reputation.
- City-based targeting – Targeting the right customers based on a city-based user list was very crucial in the case of Scam 1992.
- Ensuring Email Deliverability– The overall task was not to just send out emails but also to ensure the Inbox placement of emails and avoiding SPAM filters with the show name itself have a “Scam 1992” 4. Improve Open Rates – Being able to gather good open rates will automatically deliver good viewership and CTR to the brand
Key Objectives:
Having a widespread customer base, the client relied heavily on email to communicate with their customers, be it reaching out to new customers or maintaining a dialogue with the existing ones.
The Objective was to enable promoting offers, building brand affinity with the users, increasing subscribers, retaining existing users etc.
Some of the campaign objectives were as follows:
- Improve deliverability and overall inbox placement to 90%+
- Enhance lead generation by increasing open rates and CTR
- Improve user experience in terms of email communication which was in sync with the parallel 360-degree campaign for the show
- Plan a targeting based on city, age groups mapped against Active viewership data
- Monitoring the Open, Click and Bounce rate of emails
- Constantly monitoring Email Inbox placement and prevent triggering the spam filter, improving open rate and click-through-rate, and thus reaching above 90% inbox placement
The Solution:
Innovation & Strategy:
With a diversified user base, the client wanted to scale up their email marketing spend while improving Email Deliverability, increasing their percentage of Open Rate. We developed an email marketing strategy that helps our client solve the challenges of high email deliverability and zero wastage of revenue.
Our Action plan included 3 main criteria’s from the Kenscio Email Platforms:
- Choosing the best Subject Lines using our Subject Line Prediction Tool
- Choosing the best Keywords using the Keyword Sentiment Engine
- Email Campaign monitoring using the Inbox Tracker tool
We monitored inbox placement using our Subject Line Prediction Tool and targeted most of the campaigns to land in “Updates” tab for getting the highest possible Open-rate.
Execution:
A comprehensive email deliverability audit was conducted to ensure 90% and above Email inboxing
- With the best-in-class email deliverability intelligence tools and with our team of inboxing experts we were able to deliver the objective
Segmented Targeting of Email campaign
- Active audiences were created based on the recency of subscriptions
- The active audiences were then segmented into logical groups and campaigns were executed as per the warmup plan
- Created sub-segments based on timeframe, email category, ISP, geography, and device-type
- A/B testing of email subject lines and content was undertaken to ensure precise INBOX placement
Top 10 Performing Subject lines are:
- The #1 Show of 2020
- Risk Hai Toh Ishq Hai
- Story of Harshad Mehta
- Stream The IMDB Rated 9.6 Show !!!
- Harshad Mehta story only on LIV
- Story of a̶s̶c̶a̶m̶m̶e̶r̶Harshad mehta
- What happened to the infamous Harshad Mehta? Watch Now!
- Series such as this UNPUTDOWNABLE!
- Untold Story of Indian Stock Market
- Is SCAM on your binge watch list?
Outcome:
How Email Open Rate & Engagement Improved
- Increased readability, appearance and impressions
- Overall INBOX placement increased up to 98% (Gmail placement)
- Open rate becomes as high as 41% while projected reach was above 16.27% of the total send-out volume.
- Reduced spam & bounce rate
- Overall Engagement rate was increased thus achieving the Key objective of SCAM 1992 to be able to gather the highest viewership
How Overall Brand Engagement Improved
- A significant rise was shown in subscriptions which was 2388+ from email campaigns
- Website Traffic was increased by 103.36 % since the campaign started in Oct 2020
- App and website activity got improved while the most active users are the young generation
- Scam 1992 proved to be a gamechanger for SonyLIV. And above all the show received a stunning 9.6 rating on IMDb
