What does building a relationship between a customer and a business really look like?
For the business, it often means recurring revenues, driven by customer data, profiles and strategies for cross-selling and upselling. But for the customer? If they’re lucky, they might get a loyalty discount (although tell that to the insurance industry) or an email with their name on it. In other words, most customer-brand relationships don’t feel like much of a relationship at all.
Customers have busy lives. They interact with tens, even hundreds, of different brands every day. Without a real reason to stick around, your brand can quickly get lost in the noise.That’s why the brands that stand out are the ones that go beyond the transaction.
In person, building relationships is easy. You can read body language, ask follow-up questions and offer help in the moment. But in today’s digital world, creating that same meaningful connection is a challenge. So how do you turn routine online interactions into long-term customer relationships?
Because having loyal customers means more than just repeat business. They become brand advocates, spreading your name by word-of-mouth and driving growth. But to get there, you need to go beyond surface-level customer interactions and be intentional about how you show up and communicate. Here’s how to do it.
1. Set Customers Up for Success
The first step to building a strong relationship is simple: Address the customer’s needs. Whether you’re here to eliminate a pain point or streamline a complicated process, that initial transaction is the foundation of your connection.
Of course, we’re not here to tell you how to do your job. You already know that your product or service needs to deliver. The thing is, you could have the perfect product that solves every customer concern, but if they don’t know how to use it, it won’t lead to a lasting relationship.
That’s why communication matters in that very first transaction. Onboarding is your chance to set your customers — and yourself — up for success.
We’re big fans of video tutorials for this step, and we’re not the only ones. When asked how they’d like to learn about a product or service, 78% of consumers said they’d most like to watch a short video. It’s a simple way to walk new customers through setup, answer common questions and highlight the value your product brings to their lives.
Want to go the extra mile? Take a cue from Rocket Mortgage. They created a personalized and interactive onboarding video that lets new customers jump to the sections most relevant to them.
Personalization ensured the details were specific to each viewer, while interactivity put them in control — both powerful ways to turn first-time users into satisfied customers.
2. Nail the Follow-Up
The initial interaction is just the start. If you want to build trust and extend the customer experience, don’t let the conversation end there.
Whether it’s asking for customer feedback, checking in with helpful tips or recapping the last interaction, a follow-up shows customers you’re paying attention. It’s a simple gesture that goes a long way in building a relationship.
Wells Fargo, for example, sent out Personalized Videos to recap customer meetings and keep communication open for next steps.
With today’s technology, follow-ups can even be in the form of Interactive Video surveys. People are far more likely to engage and share their thoughts when the message feels made just for them.
3. Be There for Support
Like any relationship, customers want to know they can depend on you. Every time your support team or resources solves a problem, it’s a positive touchpoint in the customer journey that builds trust.
Of course, the best customer support is the kind that prevents problems in the first place. Proactive communication can turn potential frustrations into moments of reassurance.
For instance, during the pandemic, Bupa sent personalized messages to customers ahead of their insurance renewals, addressing how the crisis might affect them.
Could the update have been an email? Sure — but using video added a human touch. The friendly tone of the speaker and helpful visuals provided more peace of mind and clarity than a formal email announcement would have alone.
4. Reward Loyalty (And Encourage Advocacy)
Another way to encourage customer loyalty? Recognize and reward it.
Loyalty programs are a great starting point, giving customers a reason to come back by offering them perks. But if you really want to build the kind of emotional connection that turns loyal customers into brand advocates, you’ve got to go a step further.
Go beyond transactional points and rewards. You want your customers to feel seen, appreciated and proud to be associated with your brand. Reinforce the relationship and make it easy for customers to show it off.
One great example comes from Delta Airlines, which used customer data to create thousands of individual videos about its loyalty club members’ flying habits.
These data-driven videos were also shareable, with members eager to post about how many countries they’d visited and how many miles they’d flown. All in all, the campaign drove more than 400,000 shares.
While creating thousands of videos is relatively small in the world of Personalized Videos (we regularly launch campaigns with millions of Personalized Videos), this campaign was a perfect example of a customer-centric approach that resonated on a personal level and turned loyalty into advocacy.
5. Remind Them of Your Value
Subscription brands have known how to do this forever, with recap messages like “You watched 15 videos this month” or “You read about skiing 12 times — want to see some more?” It’s a straightforward but powerful way to reinforce value and keep customers engaged.
But while this kind of ongoing reminder helps strengthen customer connections, it’s traditionally been tough to scale.
Luckily, recent advances in technology have made it possible for any company — large or small, digital or brick-and-mortar — to show customers just what the relationship with them means.
Idomoo’s Next Generation Video Platform makes it easy to create millions of dynamic Personalized Videos. It takes customer data and builds a showreel of their relationship with your brand. It’s 1:1 customer communication, but on a mass scale.
How does this work? Take, for example, Epic Games’ Fortnite. Already a hugely social game, users embrace any chance they get to humblebrag. Epic used Idomoo’s platform to create tens of millions of personalized showreels for their Fortnite players that could be shared on social media platforms.
The reels included player stats and other nuggets about their game activity, from the number of Battle Royale wins to challenges accepted. These customized videos weren’t just a chance for users to lord their successes over their co-players — they were a signal for players to get straight back online to beat the benchmark. That’s hard-core, no-nonsense engagement.
Connecting With Next Gen Video
The impact of Personalized Video is not just in the personalization, but also in the power of Next Gen technology.
In terms of increasing customer engagement, here’s the simple formula: Images improve upon text, videos improve upon images and Next Generation Video improves upon video alone. How? By going beyond passive viewing.
Next Gen Video is video that does more. It’s dynamic. It can be personalized for millions of individual viewers, made interactive and even generated by AI, all at scale.
To put that in perspective, creating a campaign such as Epic’s using legacy tech would have taken more than 40 years to render. Epic indeed. With our Next Generation Video Platform, tens of millions of Personalized Videos were rendered in under a day.
And it’s not just rendering that’s faster. The design and editing phase is evolving too, thanks to AI. Take this video generated by Lucas AI Video Creator. It was created in minutes, just by connecting Lucas to a document with the branded details.
Built for enterprise use, Lucas doesn’t pull from random external sources. Using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), he draws from your company’s approved content. The result? Accurate and brand-aligned content every time.
Time, cost, capability — these have all been valid reasons for non-digitally native companies to steer clear of Next Gen Video until now. But these are no longer barriers, and there is already a wealth of proof that Interactive Personalized Video delivers the emotional and human touch brands need to increase ROI and reduce churn.
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The data speaks for itself. Compared to generic video, Next Gen Video is:
- 4x more likely to make a customer feel valued by a brand
- 3x more likely to make a customer recommend a brand
- 3x more likely to build trust in the brand
- 3.5x more likely to convert or retain a customer
At a time where customers are constantly bombarded with content, Next Gen Video is one of the most effective ways to gain — and keep — your customers’ attention and loyalty.
Adding a Personal Touch
Building lasting customer relationships takes more than just a first-name greeting or basic loyalty program. It takes intentional, personalized experiences that speak directly to your audience.
Next Generation Video makes this possible. Whether you’re onboarding new users, following up post-purchase or simply reminding customers of the value you bring, it’s a powerful tool that turns everyday marketing strategies into moments that matter.
If you want to learn more about building personalization at scale in a way that is simple yet highly effective, get in touch below.
