IFFR, turned context into relevance

After having launched an app for 2014 and 2015, the festival abandoned that idea and skipped the app for the 2016 and 2017 edition. But in 2018, since the mobile channel could no longer be ignored in the visitors’ journey, the festival wanted to come back with a first-class solution for their visitors. They wanted an app to be useful throughout the festival, relevant on the spot and at the right time, an app that would surprise and encourage visitors to explore the festival off the beaten track. For the 2018 edition of IFFR, providing a high-level service to the visitors of the festival was very important and with Notificare's help, they were able to introduce a cost-effective mobile solution in order to expand on that service.

As it turned out, the Notificare platform was the perfect tool for IFFR. The idea was powerful in its simplicity: to bring the right functionality to the user in the right context. The IFFR app uses some important features of the Notificare platform: Segmentation, by which different target groups can be easily reached with tailored content and personalized messaging and Geo-Fencing, which enabled venues to present visitors with highly relevant content. This new app also harnesses the power of rich and interactive notifications to provide a world-class experience to every single user.

The initial campaign Time to start planning - check out the full program! - draw the attention of the public to the festival program - was uniquely opened by 54% of the targeted audience. An extra 5% was generated by the inbox functionality that allows a user to always find a (dis)missed message.

By putting audience segmentation to good use, both messaging and app content can become personal and increasingly relevant. Within the Notificare platform, it is easy to categorize users and group them into a certain segment. Without adding levels of complexity, a distinction was made between the professionals and the general public. These two target groups blend during festival but are treated differently in the app. The festival team then took that idea even further and is now also categorizing by favorite movies, film directors, recommendations and other categories used by their CRM system to enable highly personalized campaigns.

Of course, the various locations where the film screenings take place are very important for the IFFR. There are seven main screening venues, but there are also many side events. To literally support the visitors in their journey and to tempt them to go to other locations, location-based messaging was used. For users that allowed the festival to track their location, visitors received messages that matched their interest. The festival's highly engaged audience generated open rates up to 56%!

The app fully employed Notificare's Storage add-on. With this functionality, it is possible to create content for different categories of users and streamline its distribution within the app. This content was linked to user segmentation, location and campaign's outcome. The result: every target group got a different personal experience in the app. Due to its easy-to-manage nature, during the busy days of the festival, the IFFR team was still able to manage it all without any app updates and within the team's capacity.

First of all, by using Notificare, an excellent and highly personal experience was accomplished for both general public and professionals with an extremely efficient app. This solution achieved both high download rates as well as great conversion rates for things like the number of times the app was used, notifications were opened or venues were visited. Secondly, and as the IFFR team highlighted to us in post-festival meetings, our team was able to help create an affordable mobile solution, set up highly engaging campaigns and guide the IFFR staff in how to use the platform. All this contributed to the app's success and confidence that the mobile channel will continuously grow in future editions.