De Mol is one of Belgium’s most popular reality TV shows, with 1.2 million viewers during its finale. With Marigold, SBS was able to transform viewer excitement into a more interactive, dynamic experience.
"The result we achieved with this project shows the power of optimizing customer relationships with technology. We are happy to have used the strength of the collaboration between Emakina and Selligent to stretch the limits of the tool and reach new heights. The process was intensive, but the result was a most exciting project for the team to work on."
SBS wanted to create a more personalized, interactive experience for one of Belgium’s most popular reality TV shows, De Mol, by revamping its voting system.
SBS created a new voting system powered by Selligent that used dynamic pages, personalized, automated emails, and a real-time dashboard where viewers tracked results after the show.
With Selligent by Marigold, De Mol's viewer engagement skyrocketed, with 206K+ emails delivered and a 53% click-to-open rate.
De Mol is a hit TV show airing since 2016 on SBS’ VIER (Play4), Belgium’s second-largest commercial channel. As one of the most-watched reality game shows in Flanders, and one of the region’s most popular TV shows in decades, it reaches more than 1.2 million viewers with its yearly finale. Contestants on the show must work together to earn money for a pot, with one of them secretly trying to sabotage the game as “the Mole.” One contestant is eliminated every week, culminating in a dramatic grand finale when the ‘mole’ is revealed.
De Mol has added a more interactive element in recent seasons, with viewers voting on a second screen for who they think is the mole. For the 2020 series, SBS wanted to revamp the online voting platform to provide a better, more seamless, and personalized user experience, including:
SBS also wanted to encourage participation and build loyalty through a personalized email flow including invitations and confirmations, and easily track votes in real time, to make results available to participants.
To meet this challenge, SBS worked with digital agency Emakina and relied on Selligent’s innovative marketing automation platform. Selligent’s key functionalities were used to set up the voting system, ensuring that all users, known and unknown (existing and new customers), were authenticated and fully integrated within marketing flows in the platform, to receive the right emails.
The new voting system was built within Selligent using dynamic pages, with different landing pages created and seen based on when a viewer would visit (before, during, or after an episode). Automated emails were sent throughout the seven voting weeks, personalized with profile data and different dynamic blocks, depending on the moments and the user flow each viewer was in. Emails were sent right after the show aired on Sundays to those who voted in the previous week(s). Confirmation emails were also sent immediately after a participant voted. These were set up as journeys in Selligent.
A real-time dashboard was also created, loaded with data from Selligent and displayed during the popular Mol after-show, “Café De Mol,” allowing viewers to track results in real time.
Thanks to Emakina and Selligent, SBS was able to set up a new, more seamless voting platform and provide a highly improved experience for customers. Personalized journeys were perfectly integrated with existing VIER/Play4 tech architecture, making it easy for viewers to log in with existing credentials, while new users could simply create a new account in the moment.
Selligent handled massive amounts of data calls per minute, varying between 16,200–20,500 votes per episode (2,000 data calls per minute). SBS exceeded expectations for this campaign across all metrics. Key results included:
“The collaboration with Emakina was intensive and also exciting. Registering and voting for ‘De Mol’ had to go smoothly and without errors. The results also had to be available immediately, with the dropout being adjusted on all pages directly, making it even more challenging. In addition, the team made excellent use of the possibilities of Selligent as a tool.”
— Jelle D’Hondt, Online Editor for GoPlay.be (formerly VIER.be)
Maarten De Neve, Marketing Automation Practice Lead at Emakina, echoed those sentiments:
“We strongly believe the set-up of this voting system can easily be reused next year, as well as for other campaigns for other SBS brands. We strongly advise them to reuse this platform.”
Emakina is a digital agency with headquarters in Belgium, founded in 2001. As a member of an independent group of communication agencies in Europe, Emakina crafts user experiences, with a team of professionals who are experts at reaching and appealing to users and activating communities. As user advocates, their experts work tirelessly on their behalf, knowing that every interaction a user has with a brand impacts the value they attach to it. It is the timing, relevance, and quality of the experience that gives it a competitive advantage.
Selligent by Marigold transforms customer data and preferences into actionable insights that brands can use throughout every stage of the marketing process.
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