The advantage of interactivity and data for RTL Luxembourg’s digital strategy
With an average of 230,000 unique visitors per day, RTL.lu and its French-speaking website, RTL 5minutes, and English-speaking website, RTL Today, is Luxembourg’s leading online media. Three completely different target audiences that the media group must animate, retain, and get to know.
For more than five years now, the marketing team, the editorial team, and the advertising sales team have been working together to engage their daily visitors and users through interactivity and then to collect their first- and zero-party data. The contests and editorial surveys set up with the Qualifio Engage platform are their starting point for collecting valuable data, which they then enrich with the socio-demographic data collected via the advertising sales team’s surveys.
We spoke to Frédéric Mousset, marketing and communication manager, and Grégory Hoffmann, digital ad operations manager and data specialist, to find out more about the marketing and data collection strategy of Luxembourg’s leading media group, enjoy!
Engagement and loyalty with Frédéric Mousset
Frédéric Mousset, marketing and communication manager for all digital media, has been working at RTL Luxembourg for 20 years and defines himself as “Mr Qualifio” within the company.
“Before, we created all our contests in-house. But, as time went on and digital media developed, we had to look for a new, easy-to-use tool that would allow us to offer a wider variety of advertising formats.”
Frédéric Mousset, marketing and communication manager @ RTL Luxembourg
Interactivity: an added value for advertisers
In addition to classic display campaigns, RTL Luxembourg offers its advertisers more personalised and customised campaigns with the Qualifio platform.
For the 20th anniversary of a Luxembourg pastry chain, the marketing team proposed a set of 10 digital actions, including quizzes, photo contests and wheels of fortune. They also set up a store-to-web campaign via QR codes distributed after each purchase made in one of the chain’s pastry shops, allowing consumers to access an exclusive contest on the RTL.lu app.
The media group also works with the Kinépolis cinema group, notably for their Ciné Breakfast action, offering spectators a free breakfast and a choice of 5 different movies on Sundays.
“Our editorial calendar is punctuated by annual events, customer requests and requests from official organisations. We have to fulfil our public service role, not only in terms of reporting and photos but also in an interactive way to attract the public’s attention. Ideally, we would like to have up to three Qualifio campaigns per month.”
Frédéric Mousset, marketing and communication manager @ RTL Luxembourg
Interact to improve loyalty
Today, the number one priority for RTL Luxembourg is to focus on proximity and build audience loyalty. The use of interactivity in their content has increased the engagement rate, reaching an average participation rate per Qualifio contest of around 10% of the 230,000 daily visitors.
“You have to find the right way to build loyalty and create a feeling of closeness. Our engagement rate is always higher when using a photo contest or a survey. Gamification enables us to keep our audience engaged, which is essential in a world where digital media is constantly evolving.”
Frédéric Mousset, marketing and communication manager @ RTL Luxembourg
Currently, the media group is working on a customer club in which registered members could access exclusive contests and surveys, thanks to an integration with Gigya. The idea is to be able to send more personalised communications and foster a greater sense of proximity.
Data collection and segmentation with Grégory Hoffmann
Grégory Hoffmann is responsible for digital advertising and IP Select product manager at IP Luxembourg. He manages all digital advertising operations and everything related to data collection and segmentation.
“We collect data through the various actions carried out by the marketing team and the editorial team via the Qualifio tool. In addition to the interest or content affinity data we collect, we integrate user-oriented questions into the editorial contests and surveys to collect mainly socio-demographic data valuable to our advertisers. All this data is sent directly to our DMP.”
Grégory Hoffmann, digital ad operations manager and data specialist @ IP Luxembourg
Interactivity to collect zero-party data
According to Gregory, socio-demographic data, such as age, gender, marital status, etc., is complicated to collect from users, especially when they don’t have to identify themselves to participate in a game or take a survey. However, this is the data that advertisers are most interested in.
This is why, apart from the editorial section and the contests, for which the advertising sales team is dependent on what RTL is going to put in place, Grégory and his team have set up “The question of the day” on RTL Luxembourg’s digital media, which today represents the group’s leading source of socio-demographic data, with between 8,000 and 10,000 unique respondents per day. “The question of the day” is a simple question asked to users to learn more about them, e.g. “What is your favourite sport?”, to which users can also contribute with their own questions.
“We have set up an interface to allow our users to express themselves and suggest their own questions of the day. These questions are then selected, translated into three languages and published with their username. Thus, users are more inclined to answer the question when they know that another user has asked it and that they can, in turn, submit their own. This is a very enriching source for our DMP.”
Grégory Hoffmann, digital ad operations manager and data specialist @ IP Luxembourg
From data collection to segmentation
All the data collected through contests, polls and questions of the day are fed into RTL Luxembourg’s DMP. Grégory and his team then create audience segments pushed to their ad servers, allowing them to offer their advertisers the possibility to target an audience and not a location. They have over a hundred segments, ranging from the broadest to the most targeted.
“We have seen an increase in campaign performance. For example, we have a specific segment for the automotive sector, and we have seen an increase in click-through rates on display campaigns of up to 200%. This is a general trend, and it’s all thanks to the use of first- and zero-party data.”
Grégory Hoffmann, digital ad operations manager and data specialist @ IP Luxembourg
The end of third-party cookies: an opportunity to be seized
On the subject of the end of third-party cookies, Gregory tells us that he is serene and is even looking forward to it because they have strategically chosen to work with a DMP that does not use cookies for its targeting operations. For Gregory, their strength lies in using first- and zero-party data only, which they can extrapolate via the expansion of their audience. This means that via their DMP, they know where the data comes from, how it was collected and they can offer their advertisers the possibility to reach a target audience both on their website and in addition on other partner websites.
Therefore, the death of third-party cookies will have no impact on their data collection strategy and represents more possibilities for the future, as some of their advertisers are already coming back to them after several years of absence and testing programmatic advertising.
“All publishers have known this for many years: we must focus on first- and zero-party data because it is our data, the one we can really use. This unique data remains and will remain the priority for all publishers. It is our wealth, and thanks to this, we will be able to keep our costs per impression high.”
Grégory Hoffmann, digital ad operations manager and data specialist @ IP Luxembourg
You now know a little bit more about the marketing and data collection strategy of RTL Luxembourg. Want to read more success stories like this one? Discover how NGroup, Vocento, La Provence or Bonnier use interactive marketing within their digital strategy to engage their audiences and collect data.
