Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Syncing showtimes across platforms

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Posted by Kira Goldfarb (Member # 10563) on 09-24-2018, 05:39 PM:

Hi all--new here! I'm the manager of an independent 2-screen cinema in upstate NY. Been here 12 years and basically run the place day-to-day/week-to-week (the owner is a great guy but is rarely around nowadays).

At the moment, I'm solely responsible for keeping our website, voicemail, Facebook page updated, as well as sending out our weekly showtimes e-mail. I've found a couple services out there that will sync a theatre's showtimes to their website/social media/phone recording/etc for them, so all you have to do is send out the e-mail each week and that's it. Just wondering if any of you have tried this type of service? I sent the into over to the owner but I don't think it's a high priority for him. But I don't like that I'm the only one at the place that knows how to manage these various updates (and I'm honestly getting a little burnt out from taking on more and more responsibility over the years). Would be great if we had a simpler system in place that was easier to teach additional staff how to manage.

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 09-26-2018, 08:27 AM:

Hi Kira, for what it's worth (though not really what you're asking), we ended up being guinea pigs all summer for "does a theatre still need a phone movie-line". Our drive-in's phone line got severed during construction in the spring and we haven't had it all year. Precisely one person has mentioned it and our attendance is up. I had noticed the past few years it was ringing less and less, to the point that even during our busiest summer weekends, only a half dozen people were calling. I assume they've found our various web listings.

Posted by Kira Goldfarb (Member # 10563) on 09-26-2018, 05:43 PM:

Thanks Dave! We definitely don't get many calls to our voicemail for the showtimes. We don't have a live phone line at our box office (at least not a public one) so customers have no way to actually call and talk to us, they can only call to hear a recording or leave a message for a callback. I'm not too concerned with the phone thing though, I think a higher priority would be finding an easy way to sync our showtimes e-mail with our website and social media. [Smile]

Speaking of outdated things, I need to revisit with my boss about considering not renewing our contract with the newspaper for twice weekly ads, and instead investing that money in Facebook ads instead. I think they would reach a wider audience (and to be honest, at least in my mind, newspapers nowaways are mostly read by older people, and at least in my experience here, older guests tend not to spend as much money as families/young adults/etc... I think Facebook ad targeting would result in a better conversion rate for us, but I'm just speculating... [Razz]

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-26-2018, 06:03 PM:

I'm sure that I've posted this story here before, but I'll tell you about my experience with newspaper advertising.

When I first opened my theatre I advertised the movies in the local newspaper. Of course. Because that's what you do, right. Advertise in the paper.

Then at the time the first Spider-man movie was the latest big thing (2002, I just looked it up) the paper screwed up my ad and put that Spider-man was playing one week before it was actually playing.

Well, damn. I braced myself for an onslaught of people saying, "What do you mean it's not playing this week; I drove 40 miles..." and so on.

And do you know how many people actually came here that week to watch Spider-man?

Zero.

Not a single one of that week's customers.

That showed me that exactly nobody was reading my ad in the paper so I've never advertised that way since.

These days my website is my primary advertising, and I also have an Android app that a lot of people seem to like (even though it's not that much different from the website).

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 09-28-2018, 08:23 AM:

Ditto to that Frank, we killed print advertising our first year or two as well. Everyone carries around all they need to figure it out in their pockets, when they're not holding them in front of their faces.