Cinergy: Bringing Customers Back to the Cinema with a Rewards Program Moviegoers Want

Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Carrie Cohen, Marketing Loyalty & Analytics Manager at Cinergy, about how the Cinergy Elite loyalty plan works, incentivizing certain behaviors, and getting people back to the movies.  

Transcript

Intro

Mark Johnson 0:05

Good afternoon , good morning . This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360 . If everyone's happy , safe and well , I want to welcome you back to another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series . In this series , we have the privilege of speaking with leading brands about what they are seeing and hearing on the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty . Today , we have the pleasure to speak with Carrie Cohen . She's a marketing loyalty and analytics manager at Cinergy . How are you today ?

Carrie Cohen 0:28

I'm good . How

Tell us more about you

Carrie Cohen 0:29

are you ?

Mark Johnson 0:29

I'm doing well , thank you . First off , we'd like to start these on a more personal level . We'd like to know the individual or individuals we were speaking with , kind of a little bit about their work , history and a little bit about themselves . So we'd love to know a little bit more about you , your history and kind of everything you do at Cinergy .

Carrie Cohen 0:46

Yeah , so I've been here like three and a half years and I manage the loyalty program and do emails and strategy for our elite members , and then , outside of work , I have a farm and a band .

Mark Johnson 1:05

A farm and a band , you say .

Carrie Cohen 1:07

Band .

Mark Johnson 1:09

Oh , band there , Okay Interesting .

Carrie Cohen 1:11 Mark Johnson 1:11

What instrument do you play ?

Carrie Cohen 1:13

Bass .

Mark Johnson 1:14

Bass . Okay , that's even good . That's good to know . So I guess if I ask a fun fact about you , it would be something you enjoyed doing outside of work . It would be either farming and or playing bass .

Carrie Cohen 1:26

Yeah , for sure .

Tell us more about Cinergy

Mark Johnson 1:28

Okay , Great For those who don't know Cinergy . Can you tell everyone kind of what Cinergy is , what you guys do , how you do it ?

Carrie Cohen 1:36

Yeah , Cinergy is a chain of luxury dine in movie theaters and family entertainment centers , so we try to have the whole experience under one roof . We have arcades , bowling, axe throwing, escape rooms , movies , restaurant , full bar , anything you would want to do .

Mark Johnson 1:56

Okay , good , you are located mostly , primarily , in the Southwest .

Carrie Cohen 2:01

Yeah , we're in Texas , Oklahoma , North Carolina and Illinois .

Mark Johnson 2:06

Okay , great , your loyalty program , Cinergy Elite . Can you give us a brief overview of the program , how it works , the benefits and how you keep the program up to date ?

Carrie Cohen 2:16

Yeah , it's free to join . You just sign up with your name and phone number and guests earn points for every purchase they make and there's different points for different activities . So higher margin activities like bowling , food earn more points and movies only get two points per ticket . So we're trying to incentivize certain behaviors .

Mark Johnson 2:38

Okay .

Carrie Cohen 2:39

We also get free tickets on their birthday and we do a lot of events throughout the year . So we'll do free screenings for elite members , box office binge day , where they pay one fee and they see all the movies they want and all the popcorn they want all day long . So we do a lot of stuff like that throughout the year . Try to make it really .

How does Cinergy appeal to customers emotions

Mark Johnson 2:59

Excellent . So the entertainment industry appeals to customers' emotions through movies , bowling , laser tag , their interests . You can create personalized experiences with your brand . How does Cinergy appeal to the customers' emotions and provide them with positive experiences which help to build such a successful loyalty program ?

Carrie Cohen 3:22

We like to personalize all of our communication to guests , so every email is tailored using our AI email program Specifically for that guest . It only shows them things that they want to see , so that helps make it feel like it's really personal . We also give them birthday movie tickets every year and we create a lot of family events . So we'll do breakfast events for families and kids and we try to make everything about it very fun and good memories and people feel warm and fuzzy when they think about Cinergy .

Challenges in creating emotional loyalty

Mark Johnson 3:56

Okay , and what are some of the challenges that you have at Cinergy of creating emotional loyalty with your customers ?

Carrie Cohen 4:03

Um , it can be difficult to keep everything consistent throughout all of the locations , from everything that we do at home office and ideas we have to roll out for the loyalty program , down to training every single team member in store . Okay , we have a great team and everyone does a great job , but it's definitely Making sure every touch point with the guest is Up to par okay , synergy , you offer a number of exclusives to your loyalty program members free popcorn , birthday movie tickets .

Mark Johnson 4:39

you talked about exclusive content , obviously an attempt to increase personalization , personalization , engagement with the program . Now , how do you feel these offers , these benefits , these incentives have enhanced your customer loyalty efforts .

Carrie Cohen 4:54

So the free popcorn when you sign up definitely helps us get sign ups . It's really easy . It takes two seconds to sign up , it's free and you get a popcorn . So that's awesome to get people in the door . And then everything else we do really keeps our members engaged and they are very engaged . We have really high email engagement and social engagement and in store engagement with all of our loyalty members . They're all very interested in all of these promotions .

Voice of Customer Feedback

Mark Johnson 5:22

Okay , and how does your brand incorporate voice to the customer , the feedback that you receive from them , requests that you may receive from them , into your customer experience and customer loyalty strategy ? Because this can be a big challenge for many brands . You know they , they ask questions , they ask for feedback , that's for insight , and they don't necessarily action on all time , which can create a little bit of , you know , dissonance between them and the customers . But Cinergy seems to do it quite well .

Carrie Cohen 5:47

We're always listening to our guests , so we do periodically , will have a survey and just ask them questions like what features do you want to see more in loyalty , what would you like to get out of it ? We'll also ask them what attractions they want to see in store or what foods might sound fun , and we always monitor social media and all of our responses and we go through those constantly , try to make sure if we see anything recurring we can either fix it or implement if they're suggesting things .

Economic Uncertainty

Mark Johnson 6:19

Okay , obviously , 2023 . A little bit of economic uncertainty . You know inflation is going down but still pretty high job jobs are still seem to be pretty solid on low unemployment rate . So a little bit of uncertainty when you look at that . Can a loyalty program , the engagement you create , the ability to have personalized offers , incentives and rewards , create some hedge against some of that uncertainty ?

Carrie Cohen 6:48

Yeah , I think definitely creating the emotional relationship with all of our members makes it easier . We also offer a lot of freebies and discounts for members . That makes it more accessible for families to come have these experiences .

How customers have changed since COVID

Mark Johnson 7:12

Okay , great when you look at your customers . There's been a great deal of discussion within our membership . We actually have meetings on it as well . When they look at the customers , you know how they've changed . There were some changes going into COVID , changes going through COVID and now changes coming out of COVID . You know how have your customers changed and how are you adapting and responding to that change .

Carrie Cohen 7:38

Yeah , so everyone knows . I mean COVID hit everyone hard , but especially our industry was basically essentially closed for a while . So coming out of it we're getting pretty close to normal . But guests are definitely more price conscious than they were before Um between the economic situation and the COVID situation . So we're able to combat that a little bit with things like Discount Tuesday and free movies , and joining our free program gives them a lot of savings and a lot of free things so that they can come have fun for sometimes nothing , but a lot of it also is about getting people back in the habit of going to the movies , Cause after a couple of years of streaming everything and watching movies at home , no one's in the routine of going to sit in a theater with their friends and seeing it on the big screen . It's very like wait till it streams . So it's about breaking that habit .

What loyalty program do you admire

Mark Johnson 8:38

Okay , and when you look at other customer loyalty programs out there , are there certain programs that you respect , that you admire , that you feel are doing a great job of creating customer loyalty with you .

Carrie Cohen 8:51

My favorite is American Airlines Advantage . I love the tiers . It makes it like a game very competitive and that they partner with credit cards and hotels and airlines yeah , and other airlines . So I like that and that's hopefully one day when we move into partnerships and stuff . That's a strategy I like .

Mark Johnson 9:11

Okay , that's awesome . And last question I have for you , tracy what can loyalty 360 do to help you and your team with your customer loyalty program , your customer loyalty efforts ?

Carrie Cohen 9:21

At some point in the maybe not too long future , we'd love to start looking for strategic partners and you could be helpful in connecting us

Outro

Carrie Cohen 9:29

.

Mark Johnson 9:29

Okay for sure . Well , thank you very much , Kerry , for taking the time to talk with us today . It was great learning more about you and the fact that you have a farm and you played bass . That's a first one we've had so far and looking forward to hearing more about Cinergy and your efforts in customer loyalty going forward .

Carrie Cohen 9:48

Thank you .

Mark Johnson 9:49

Great . Thank you everyone for taking the time to listen today . Make sure you join us back for another edition of our Looters and Customer Loyalty Series team . Have a wonderful day , thank you .