As TV has expanded to streaming on-demand platforms, TV marketers suddenly find themselves having to become digital marketers. And that’s forced them to acquire a whole new bag of tricks, tools and talents.

”In this world, we’re talking about cost per subscriber. As a marketer, there’s an entirely different level of scrutiny on every dollar you spend. The ongoing investment and engagement in a streaming service is really key,” said Sabrina Caluori, senior VP, digital media and marketing, HBO, at PromaxBDA: The Conference 2016 in New York on Wednesday.

Caluori and Gwen Throckmorton, head of industry, US entertainment, global sales, Facebook, specifically discussed HBO’s marketing tactics for its subscription video on demand service, HBO Now, which HBO launched 14 months ago. The service allows non-cable subscribers to have access to HBO’s entire library on demand on any device for $15 a month.

“We’ve built an entire practice around the true CRM to keep that person engaged every single month,” Caluori said. “The churn is a lot higher on a streaming platform than it is on a linear business. By nature, it’s much easier to cancel. It takes more work on our side to think about how we keep people engaged and watching and opening an app every single day. We’re essentially driving app downloads and app engagement. We literally have an always on strategy versus a 12-week strategy.”

It’s also forced HBO to stop thinking like traditional TV marketers – or even premium-cable marketers – and adopt totally different tactics and strategies, such as flighting, sampling and a great deal of testing.

With on-demand services, it’s important to remember that consumers can constantly be finding new content, so the linear premiere is less crucial than it once was.

“That first premiere is still important but so are the first two months,” says Caluori. “People continue to consume stuff after it’s out. If you get a lot of word of mouth, you still need to have gasoline to pour on that word of mouth.”

It’s also important to give people many opportunities to sample a show on different platforms, making it available wherever potential viewers may be.

Moving to digital from linear has required HBO to shift its thinking into more of a direct-to-consumer marketing mindset. It also forced HBO to dive deep into the reams of data that are generated on digital platforms. While that data can be enormously helpful, it also requires specific expertise in order to sort it out properly.

“We had to get true data-driven marketers into our business and into our marketing team. We had to invest in data scientists and real partnerships with our research teams,” said Caluori. “With traditional linear TV advertisers, you don’t need a really robust marketing technology stack behind that. When you start to do the type of analysis that we need to do – the acquisition-to-retention efforts, the way you pass consumers through all your efforts, through the new fragmented marketing funnel, it takes a real technology infrastructure to make sense of all that.”

HBO also has learned to continually test its digital and mobile marketing creative, setting up control pieces and then constantly tweaking the copy, the art, the call-to-action, to find which ones were truly the most effective in getting consumers to accept a free trial to HBO Now and then convert them into paying customers.

Even while it’s entering the brave new world of digital marketing, HBO works hard to remain true to its brand promise.

“A great example for us of something that’s near and dear to this relationship is the opening credits for Game of Thrones. We were able to do that in 360 in partnership with Facebook and it’s become the most successful 360 video on Facebook’s platform to date. We weren’t to do that the first by any means.”

In fact, that video grabbed 12 million viewers in 24 hours, noted Throckmorton.

“The checklist we’ve given the team as we think about these opportunities is: are we doing this in a way that’s giving our brand meaning? Is it premium? Is it high quality? Are we telling good stories? If we are doing that and we happen to be first, that’s great,” said Caluori.

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