Cable TV gets personal and wins

by Barbara Goutelon

For several months now, my husband and I have been trying to decide if we’re ready to cut the cord on our cable TV subscription. We keep asking ourselves, do we really need a three-digit cable bill? He swears that he can live without the sports coverage, and I think I can survive without another “House Hunters” marathon.

But then, we caught the “Homeland” addiction. After watching a few episodes on DVD, we decided to just bite the bullet and sign up for Showtime. This meant that we could watch the whole series on-demand, and do it within a matter of days! (Gosh, that sounds a little sad. But have you seen “Homeland”? It really is that good.)

However, the really surprising thing is how quickly Time Warner Cable responded with a brilliant piece of marketing. Almost immediately after our addition of Showtime, we received a personalized “thank you” card in the mail with a promotional offer of two free on-demand movies. It’s just one of the ways they are fighting back against cord cutting. So, why did this feel so brilliant?

We received actual, honest-to-goodness mail.

In the midst of our usual bills and junk mail, we received a bright yellow, Hallmark-style envelope. And even though I should know better since I work in marketing, I was excited to see who had mailed me! The return address was from somewhere in California—the name Time Warner was nowhere to be found. And they successfully tricked me with their scripted font.

Everyone likes to be appreciated.

The message inside the personalized card, said, “Barbara, We appreciate your loyalty. And to show you how much, we want to thank you with two Movies On Demand—on us!” The conversational tone felt genuine—and I loved that it was short and to the point.

The card included an offer we would care about.

Although I felt a little duped into opening a piece of mail from a corporate giant, they made a great move by rewarding our loyalty with the right targeted offer. We’re really interested in checking out a couple of free movies. And even if we don’t decide to buy more movies in the future, the marketing move has kept us as subscribers for at least awhile longer.