RTBF

Success story: RTBF

How to personalize the relationship with your audience ? Keep it simple!

RTBF: more than a broadcasting service...

Today, RTBF successfully operates 5 television channels and 10 radio stations. It also has an essential online presence via multiple web series, applications, etc. as well as a strong presence on all social networks. The challenge for an operator such as RTBF is to consolidate its online and broadcasted presence and bring its content to life in a constantly changing digitalized world. To help RTBF overcome these challenges with success, Actito actively takes part in its marketing development projects, closely supporting RTBF data and marketing teams.

For Activation Day 2022, Pierre Dubois, CRM Manager at RTBF and Samuel Profumo, Chief Data Officer at RTBF tell the story of the collaboration between Actito and RTBF, which allowed them to "create a relationship" with their audience.

The context

The RTBF ecosystem is based on 3 important pillars:

1. Diversity and volume of content:

Today, the RTBF library includes 4 different types of content, all of substantial volumes:

• 80K articles;
• 105K videos;
• 25K of audio;
• 2K live;

2. Target audiences: The number of profiles that interact with the various RTBF content amounts to 4.3 million (in Single Authentication). Of these profiles, 60% are men and 40% are women.

3. The interactions generated by the audiences vis-à-vis the content: With such rich and diversified content and a large volume of registered profiles, the interactions generated are of a proportional order of magnitude. Indeed, video views are in hundreds of millions, and so is the consumption of articles. Furthermore, around 40 million e-mails from RTBF are opened every year.

The challenge

The collaboration between Actito and RTBF began more than 18 years ago.

In 2004, the company's objectives were to maintain a newsletter-sending rate (6 per year) and to increase its opening and click rates. With both strategic and operational support from Actito, RTBF deployed an "e-mail marketing" program in 2019 with the ambition of activating its data and succeeding in matching the right content to the right audience segment. However, RTBF remains an autonomous public enterprise that is obligated to honour its pledge to both the government and the users as an actor of the public sector: intelligibility towards users on the one hand and respectability of government measures on the other.

Hence the company's desire to "remain simple" in the construction of algorithms and deployment of segmentation and targeting actions.

Succeeding in the bet of simplicity and transparency while activating its data inevitably involves precise management of the available media. Moreover, RTBF takes on the challenge of pre-constructing advanced segments and well-thought-out personalization scenarios for each of its segments.

The solution

The e-mail marketing program set up in 2019 experienced a strong acceleration in 2020 with the health crisis and the surge in interest for RTBF's content.

Considering the circumstances, with the help of Actito, RTBF has implemented a strategic plan for analyzing and observing the behaviour of its users using trackers: sites consulted, texts consulted, frequency, etc.

This data was coupled with opening and click statistics from past email campaigns, as well as contest participation data (thanks to a key Actito partner: Qualifio).

This data is then automatically uploaded in Actito to grant the user an overall view of content consumption and buyer personas at the origin of interactions by content type.

The results

Since the start of the collaboration between Actito and RTBF, the latter has seen the performance of its marketing actions increase exponentially:

- 40 million emails opened each year;

- Open rates of more than between 35% and 40%;

- 500 million views on RTBF videos;

- More than 500 million readings of RTBF articles;

These figures are the ultimate proof that content is only suitable if it is intended for the right person, which is the key to successful personalization.

Découvrez leur Success Story en vidéo

Focus on the 2020 lockdown, from the RTBF's perspective

The international lockdown, for RTBF, had a huge impact on its communication strategies: questioning, reflection on best practices and user needs and expectations, etc. forged the 4-axis strategy established by RTBF to recover from this particular situation. The first axis, the information axis, was of essential importance in order to make it easier for the public to know where to go to find the information they needed. Then, the confinement situation had an impact on e-learning and youth-oriented entertainment, a branch of the audience that demands the media even more than in normal times. What RTBF also learned from this period is the importance of offering pleasure to its audience, of allowing them to have fun despite the difficult context, the uncertain and vague times. Finally, the imperative of unity, of solidarity, of creating a virtual social link gave RTBF the idea of ​​reviving strong moments, particularly related to the sports sector. The period, despite its uncertain health character, offered a lot of opportunity and allowed RTBF to show creativity and cleverness to offer relevant content to its diverse audiences.

WHAT'S NEXT?

And then what? Projects in collaboration with D-AIM and RTBF are underway and aim to be able to have better coverage of their database and content while limiting the pressure on readers. Content strategy, communication, use of Actito data and effectiveness of Actito's partnership with Qualifio, Pierre Dubois approaches with great enthusiasm the whole adventure of RTBF and its marketing activation. Discover the video in French to find out more or contact us to get more info.

Retour sur la gestion de la crise sanitaire par la RTBF

La crise sanitaire a eu un impact conséquent sur la stratégie de communication de la RTBF : remise en question, réflexion sur les bonnes pratiques ainsi que sur les besoins et les attentes de l'utilisateur, etc. Ce qui a permis à l'entreprise de forger une nouvelle  stratégie en 4 axes :

1. L'information, et l'importance de son accessibilité
2. L'e-learning et la nécessité d'offrir au jeune public un contenu qui lui soit adapté
3. Offrir du divertissement en ces temps difficiles, incertains et flous.
4. L'impératif d'unité, de solidarité, et de création du lien social virtuel.

Cette période de crise a tout de même permis à la RTBF de faire preuve de créativité et d'ingéniosité pour offrir du contenu pertinent à ses audiences diverses. 

Pierre Dubois aborde avec beaucoup d'enthousiasme toute l'aventure de la RTBF et son activation marketing lors de cette période. 

Découvrez la vidéo sans plus tarder !