How Does Disney Keep Viewers Streaming? By Using These Customer Engagement Best Practices

In today's highly competitive streaming landscape, Disney stands out as one of the major success stories. During a session at FORGE 2022, our annual customer engagement conference, we spoke with Miraj Barodia, Manager, Product Marketing Operations at Disney, who leads the cross-brand marketing operations for mobile experience for Disney+, ESPN+, and Star+, to see how effective customer engagement has helped Disney expand their streaming services and how Braze and other technologies played a role in fueling this growth.

5 Customer Engagement Tactics That Have Helped Disney Dominate the Streaming Services Category

#1: Recognizing the value of data

Data should be the driving force guiding any marketing strategy for any brand, says Miraj.

“Customer and user behavior tells you pretty much everything you need to know,” Miraj adds.

Focus on all of your different customer engagement touchpoints—pinpointing what your customers are doing, how they’re doing it, and when they’re doing it—and use these insights to meet them where they are.

“There’s a plethora of data that you can analyze and any winner in this space is going to be elite at that level,” says Miraj.

#2: Using these two key metrics to measure success

Disney focuses on two customer engagement KPIs: Direct open rates and conversion events. Miraj developed a methodology across all three brands—Disney+, ESPN+, and Star+—called “influenced streams,” which evaluates whether a particular campaign increases a customer’s likelihood of streaming content.

#3: Testing, iterating, and optimizing campaigns at the local level

Disney uses Canvas Flow for experimentation and orchestrating journeys across email, mobile, and push, making adjustments based on the direct open rates and conversion events the team sees.

Given the many brands within the broader Disney family and Disney’s vast global reach, the company focuses in particular on adapting their efforts to meet the needs of each unique audience and region.

“What works for ESPN+ in North America, might not work for Disney+ in the LATAM region,” says Miraj. “Testing different templates for engagement was key in implementing different best practices across all of our regions.”

#4: Encouraging engaged users to check out related content

Retargeting viewers who have engaged with select Disney content and encouraging them to check out related content that matches their interests and is aligned to their viewing behavior is an essential part of Disney’s broader customer retention strategy.

#5: Leveraging the right tools and collaborating across teams

Working with cross-functional teams and utilizing the Braze customer engagement platform along with business intelligence tools has been key to Disney’s success.

“I’ve been a big Braze proponent,” says Miraj. “Honestly it’s one of the best customer engagement tools out there. You can really unlock your true potential when you’re utilizing a tool like Braze.”

Want to learn more on how to develop relevant, personalized customer journeys? Check out the Modern Orchestration Guide.