“Personalisation” has become an inescapable marketing buzzword. It seems everywhere you turn someone is talking about “personalised experiences”, “personalised ads”, “personalised communications”, and so on.
Then there’s “Personalised Video”, which aims to combine 2 massive internet trends: Video & Personalisation.
Cutting-edge software now allows individuals of all professional backgrounds to create cinematic quality Personalised Videos at scale. This means that millions of videos can be created, with each one maintaining its uniquely “personalised” 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 personalisation using Idomoo’s Personalised 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 personalise video.
#1 Dynamic Scene Selection
“Personalisation” 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 recognising an existing customer’s loyalty.
- Don’t waste a viewer’s time by selling them on an additional service that they already have.
- Optimise 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 personalised to each and every viewer.
In the below examples you can see how American Airlines showed travelers clips from their top destination cities:
Our Personalised 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 personalising 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 personalised 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 personalisation, which greatly limits the ability to have truly organic cinematic quality in your text personalisation. 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 Personalised Video vendor, it is strongly recommended that you seek a vendor who enables personalised content that is native to the video itself.
#4 Voiceover
Personalisation does not stop at the visual. What we hear is every bit as important as what we see.
Top Personalised Video vendors routinely record hundreds or even thousands of personalised greetings – from “Hi, Adam” through “Hi, Zeke” – so that recipients hear their own unique name.
This is often where those new to Personalised 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 Personalised 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).
Personalised audio goes much deeper than just names. Numbers, messages, and anything that is spoken can be personalised 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 Personalised Video software enables the content creator to set placeholders that will be automatically filled with dynamic images.
#6 Video-in-Video
“Personalised Footage” is a means of personalising 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 Personalised Videos complete with video clips of themselves running the race.
Here you can see a side-by-side of Personalised 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 Personalised Video.
#7 Data Visualisation: Charts & Graphs
Data visualisation is an art. Those who truly understand the benefits of data visualisation 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 visualising data through charts and graphs.
Thanks to some of the incredible technology Idomoo has developed, we can personalise 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
“Internationalisation” is another growing online buzzword that simply means “making it work across nations & cultures”. Naturally, that means personalised 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 personalisation does not just impact the video, it also impacts the elements that make Personalised Video accessible for all. Therefore, it’s important to keep in mind that closed captioning, subtitles, and dynamic transcripts must be personalised in the same manner as the video itself.
Personalised transcript of a Personalised Video:
#10 Music
You can personalise the music within your videos to best reflect the tastes of your audience.
We respect that different people have unique musical tastes, and so personalised music and soundtracks enable us to make the experience as enjoyable as possible for all audiences.
The key to a successful Personalised Video campaign is placing the elements of personalisation 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 Personalised Video for your customer communications, we’re here to chat – contact us today!
