Email Marketing from a Cinema Chain Done Right

Was clearing out old emails & came across this marketing email from MBO Cinemas, a malaysian cinema chain. I do catch a movie or two when leaving the country to have haircuts from traditional barbers - Chop Passport to Cut Hair blogpost.

The email is something done right in the sense that it offer something for free with no strings attached. You can redeem the medium sized popcorn without watching a movie but the cinema chain already bet that most would naturally buy a movie ticket.

Title of the email is: Enjoy a complimentary popcorn on us!‏

Top of email also display my loyalty reward points. - Nice touch of personalization.

Unfortunately it disappeared when i reopened the email 2+ months later.

With no strings/ gimmick attached, it breaks the cycle of the promotional emails being deleted without being read. Many times i delete emails from eBay, Aliexpress, Qoo10 without opening to read. Why? Because their emails are focused on selling more stuff to the reader. As time goes on, the reader is 'conditioned' to ignore these 'selling emails' - thus delete without opening to read.

Another issue is frequency. I find the promotional emails from MBO Cinemas is like fortnightly to once a month so i don't find it irritating. Coupled with its freebie email thrown in to break the vicious cycle, i would commend on the current MBO email marketing team on a job well done.

Not too many & not too frequent. Freebie thrown in once in a while to 'train' people to open their emails. They got the right mix for the formula, something which unfortunately is lost among many companies.

A few pennies on free popcorn to keep customers to continue opening to read their emails. A cheap investment considering the dreadful scenario of customers being trained to 'no need read their stream of selling emails; just delete'.