Why Filmmakers Should Go for Email Marketing

What are the Benefits of Email Marketing for Filmmakers?

There are a few questions filmmakers need to answer before marketing - who is the film’s audience? How big are they? How do you effectively target that audience and get maximum leverage at minimal cost? 

Apart from this, marketing must be thought of right after the conceptualization and cast finalization and not when it’s ready for a release. This can help raise funding and make the film a more inviting proposition for investors. Even if a movie looks great, without a proper cost-effective marketing campaign, it won’t reach success in a competitive and crowded market.

These are just some of the fundamental questions, and with it, you’ll be able to derive the benefits of filmmaking:

• It’s super cost-effective. As a producer, you’re already bombing your budget on paid promotions and campaigns for your film to create a buzz in the market. And, it’s likely that you wouldn’t want to add on to your already-long expenses - the good news? You won’t! 

• You don’t need to spend millions on sending and conceptualizing an email campaign. All you’ve to do is choose an email service provider that allows you to send mails out to customers at almost minimal costs. You can nurture your customer base with a set of emails, and it won’t cost you more than a few hundred to thousand dollars at the most. 

• The most significant advantage is you only need to pay for those emails which land at the receiver’s end, allowing you to generate more income from the same email without having to double down on the effort. You can add as much content as you’d like, and it’ll get the job done.

• All your own work: Email campaigns allow you to run large-scale out and out mailers without depending on any intermediary players. You can take the entire responsibility right from the first stage, and as you keep nurturing your audience, they’ll keep growing. You can provide them with great insights about the film’s progression, incredible giveaways, and other excellent assets, all of your own accord. Further, email marketing can open doors to create an entire list of audience members before the release. If you begin the nurturing process around 6 months before release, the audience is ready to catch any messaging you put out for them.

• Test the audience: You can also effectively test your campaigns with some smart email marketing solution. As you try various approaches, you’ll begin to find out the one that works best for you. Once that happens, it becomes an easy sell towards the latter half of the marketing campaigns. You know exactly what your audience expects from you, and in the process, you’re able to give them movies with plots that they want to see. Email marketing allows you to segment audiences and provides them different content based on their likes. Once that happens, you’re smartly getting them pumped for your movie with great content which resonates individually for them.

We bet email marketing hasn’t looked that great of investment earlier! So, before you’re off to create some fantastic email campaigns for your movie lovers, we thought these five tips could come in handy for your email marketing process:

Understanding the Marketplace

The market you’re catering to for your emails depends on the genre/production cost of the movie you’re creating. This film package and the looks that the customer desires should be in sync, with which you can identify the potential market for your film. 

To take inspiration, look at the promo, where Batman V Superman’s makers created an emailer that worked perfectly for their audience base. To give them the chance to enter the sweepstakes, they used a large image of the logo to create the necessary branding that helped capture their fan’s attention to that email and successfully remember the movie. 

Design Customer-Centric Marketing

You need to select the customer who can profit from these campaigns, and you’ve smartly targeted and isolated the audience. Further, positioning the film to attract this audience by showing why you’re different needs to come out in the campaigns. Start by showing how you can serve a definite solid value proposition that you can deliver to satisfy your audience’s experiential needs. Look at how Vimeo does it!

Vimeo does an excellent job of creating emails that are customer-centric. They’ve given a slew of different actions that viewers can take to select their content. The newsletter advertises but does so in a super smart way that’s organized and easy to consume.

Superior value

The customer’s perceived value of the movie can have a big difference in how the release will turn out. You also need to craft your emails around the customer’s satisfaction, which is the perceived performance that is relative based on the customer’s expectations. Marketing is how you manage the film’s perceived value. Not sure how to do this? Check out Film Society Lincoln Center’s emails. 

The Film Society Lincoln Center showcases reviews along with the movie they’re featuring to add more value. This makes it more enticing for a customer to click and know the details. 

Creating Customer Delight

This is maintaining and building customer relationships by effectively delivering satisfaction and superior value for the customer. It can deal with the various aspects of keeping, acquiring, and growing the base. Best example of this is Stubs. 

Stubs did an excellent portrayal of Oscar weekend by showcasing an ad for people to view movies on their platform. The invite featured the official logos and allowed customers to vote for their favorite movies. 

Getting Value from the Customers

Last on our list, but definitely not the least! Customers purchase the ability with which they can view the products via the channel they desire. Most often, when the movie is a hit with the audience, it results in word-of-mouth marketing and allows more people to go forth and watch the film as well.

With these tips, you can start creating your email campaigns the way you see fit. Once you begin seeing the profit you can make from it, you’ll understand the importance. Getting the right email service provider (ESP) is important, and you can get started almost immediately for any movie. And, while we are discussing ESPs, don’t forget to check SendX out!

Our software can help you create emails that can cater to multiple target audiences, use key design elements that are consistent throughout a campaign, and view real-time performances of how your campaigns are performing. With SendX, you can access a host of wonderful features that start at just $7.49 onwards!

Get started with an email campaign today!