In order for marketers to outperform and out-brand the competition, they need to engage with consumers throughout the customer life-cycle. Video is a medium that facilitates engaging experiences across channels and delivers impressive returns on investment. Despite once being an expensive medium with a lack of measurable results, today, marketers can create personalised video and distribute it at a larger scale. Not only is it now more cost efficient, it’s also easier to measure the value of video across the customer journey.
The power of personalisation
Personalised viewer content undoubtedly outperforms generalised content. Stories that are created based on a consumer’s profile, situational history and device can generate three to four per cent click-through rates (CTR) for pre-roll ads. According to SundaySky’s 2013 SmartVideo Index, display ads typically have a 0.1 per cent click-through rate, media rich ads have a 25 per cent CTR and video ads have a one per cent CTR. Regardless of the channel, personalised videos have the potential to consistently engage with viewers. Among viewers that were presented with a personalised video via mobile and email channels, 88 per cent pressed play, 80 per cent watched the video all the way through and 90 per cent of viewers rated their experiences as positive.
So how can you create an engaging video? Successful videos have messages, scenes, content and calls to action that are personalised and adapted to the individual viewer. To support this, each video has a balance of concise yet information-rich content. Opening scenes are strongly personalised for each viewer to capture and maintain their attention. The audio and visual are perfectly balanced so one does not overtake the other.
Monitor the metrics
The power of a video can be measured beyond its number of views and clicks. A successful video campaign is traditionally measured by specific key performance indicators (KPIs), which is why videos should be designed to drive, measure and optimise. For example, insurance providers welcome new policyholders with a personalised video that gives a complete overview of the policy and its offering. This helps reduce calls to the call center and improve the overall on-boarding customer experience. Further into the customer journey, when a claim is filed, a personalised video can assist in the multi-step process of appraisal method, education and payment status. By delivering videos at each step of this process for multi-touch customer engagement, an insurer can reduce the settlement time to process a claim and inbound claim-related calls while increasing self-service adoption and customer satisfaction.
Channel-agnostic content
Since consumers today are available through so many channels, it’s impractical for marketers to favour one over another. Creating channel-agnostic content engages consumers at any point in the customer life-cycle and helps marketers to distinguish themselves from the competition. Although email is still the primary channel for delivering marketing material, personalised videos delivered to mobile devices provide 30 per cent more engagement. Other emerging channels include SMS, which is becoming popular for engaging with those elusive consumers that haven’t provided valid email addresses. Additionally, interactive voice response (IVR) system and set top box (IPTV) are gaining traction with marketers.
In order to provide an engaging consumer experience throughout the life-cycle, marketers need to adopt a holistic approach. Campaigns should consciously be optimised and results should be measured to ensure that consumers are getting the most effective content possible. Marketers that have already adopted this approach have not only seen increased ROI, they have also noted increased customer engagement, experience and overall satisfaction.