“Personalization” has become an inescapable marketing buzzword. It seems everywhere you turn someone is talking about “personalized experiences”, “personalized ads”, “personalized communications”, and so on.
Then there’s “Personalized Video”, which aims to combine 2 massive internet trends: Video & Personalization.
Cutting-edge software now allows individuals of all professional backgrounds to create cinematic quality Personalized Videos at scale. This means that millions of videos can be created, with each one maintaining its uniquely “personalized” quality… and it can all be automated.
Top brands (like Chase, Google, Facebook, and adidas) are already combining the impact of video with the power of personalization using Idomoo’s Personalized Video platform. Let’s take a look at what has made their campaigns so successful with our recommendations for the top 10 ways to effectively personalize video.
#1 Dynamic Scene Selection
“Personalization” means messaging should never be one-size-fits all. Messaging should always be relevant. That means showing different people different scenes so each viewer sees what is best suited for them – and nothing else.
- Show different versions of the video based on the viewer’s age, location, demographics, device type, or any other available data point.
- Welcome new customers, while recognizing an existing customer’s loyalty.
- Don’t waste a viewer’s time by selling them on an additional service that they already have.
- Optimize their information, guidance and next steps based on their past behavior and CRM data.
These are just some of the countless ways that the scenes shown within the video can be personalized to each and every viewer.
In the below examples you can see how American Airlines showed travelers clips from their top destination cities:
Our Personalized Video software is programmed so it knows to show only relevant scenes to each viewer.
Viewers never get just a video. They get their video.
#2 Interactivity
What if you don’t have the data? If you don’t know what to show the user – ask them. Interactivity gamifies the experience and puts the user in control, letting them tell you what they want to see.
In real time you can ask the user what they like to see, and let them choose their own adventure:
Users can also be given menus to skip between scenes.
Additionally, you can add links that let a viewer journey beyond the video. A viewer can add items to their cart, visit other websites, or be taken wherever suits them best – all delivered via the entertaining engagement of a video.
#3 Text
Text is often the simplest means of personalizing video, as well as being one of the most effective. Customers can get their data, their numbers, their dates, and all of their info personally populated.
Furthermore, they can truly feel the personalized touch by seeing their name appear in fun and often unexpected places – like in the below example from Disney Vacation Club, where the name appears on a magical invitation that flies throughout the video.
It’s worth noting that some companies use only basic HTML overlays in their personalization, which greatly limits the ability to have truly organic cinematic quality in your text personalization. HTML overlays can also leave you vulnerable from a security standpoint, potentially enabling a malicious person to make edits to a video. When looking for a Personalized Video vendor, it is strongly recommended that you seek a vendor who enables personalized content that is native to the video itself.
#4 Voiceover
Personalization does not stop at the visual. What we hear is every bit as important as what we see.
Top Personalized Video vendors routinely record hundreds or even thousands of personalized greetings – from “Hi, Adam” through “Hi, Zeke” – so that recipients hear their own unique name.
This is often where those new to Personalized Video get concerned that recording all those names requires too much work. In reality, it’s only about 2-3 hours of recording time. Furthermore, the Personalized Video company will often do it for you or provide pre-recorded files. These recordings are done by a real human being (not a text-to-speech robot) so it truly feels human and natural.
For those outlier names that do not get recorded, the viewer will still see their name while hearing a generic fallback line (this is generally less than 15% of the audience).
Personalized audio goes much deeper than just names. Numbers, messages, and anything that is spoken can be personalized to each unique audience and/or individual.
#5 Images
Images within a video can also be data-driven. Perhaps you want to show each customer their type of credit card; this can be done with data-driven images. If you want to show a postcard from the recipient’s future vacation destination – or even include a viewer’s own photos – the most efficient way to do so is with data-driven images.
Our Personalized Video software enables the content creator to set placeholders that will be automatically filled with dynamic images.
#6 Video-in-Video
“Personalized Footage” is a means of personalizing video clips within the video clips.
For example, gamers can be shown clips from their top-played games:
Or you can share unique live footage, like when adidas delivered all 30,000 Boston Marathon runners Personalized Videos complete with video clips of themselves running the race.
Here you can see a side-by-side of Personalized Videos from two different runners, complete with unique footage of themselves running the race:
For this campaign, adidas used RFID chips in each runner’s numbered bib to generate every runner’s uniquely Personalized Video.
#7 Data Visualization: Charts & Graphs
Data visualization is an art. Those who truly understand the benefits of data visualization know it doesn’t just show numbers, but that data can be used to tell a story.
We don’t want to leave audiences guessing, “what does it all mean”; rather, we want them to instantly “get it.” That means presenting an audience with data in a format that is easily digestible. One key means of effectively sharing digestible data is by visualizing data through charts and graphs.
Thanks to some of the incredible technology Idomoo has developed, we can personalize those charts and graphs with each user’s unique data.
The below examples show different versions of the same chart, each tailored to the data of an individual user:
#8 Languages
“Internationalization” is another growing online buzzword that simply means “making it work across nations & cultures”. Naturally, that means personalized video must support multiple languages.
This includes:
- Supporting an array of different alphabets, accented letters, and corresponding fonts, including Unicode.
- Supporting left-to-right as well as right-to-left text designs.
- Supporting multiple language caption options.
#9 Accessibility
The ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) and similar efforts in the EU have made making the web accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities, a high priority. Therefore, it’s become increasingly non-negotiable for major brands to follow the WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).
This means that personalization does not just impact the video, it also impacts the elements that make Personalized Video accessible for all. Therefore, it’s important to keep in mind that closed captioning, subtitles, and dynamic transcripts must be personalized in the same manner as the video itself.
Personalized transcript of a Personalized Video:
#10 Music
You can personalize the music within your videos to best reflect the tastes of your audience.
We respect that different people have unique musical tastes, and so personalized music and soundtracks enable us to make the experience as enjoyable as possible for all audiences.
The key to a successful Personalized Video campaign is placing the elements of personalization in each video where they will have the most impact. Strategic placement of the ten elements we outlined above has led to some impressive success for Idomoo’s clients, including:
- adidas: Product sales went up an astonishing 1,189%
- Cisco: 92% increase in NPS
- Orange Theory Fitness: Record high 97% attendance rate
If you have questions regarding implementing Personalized Video for your customer communications, we’re here to chat – contact us today!
