The 3 Components & 4 Best Practices to Creating Personalized Video [Examples]

Every experienced marketer knows that video is one of the top advertising methods to master today. Take it a step further and add personalization into the mix, and you’ve got yourself one unbeatable combination that will have your competitors wondering where they went wrong.

Video increases conversions and personalization increases conversions:

So why not pair the two together to create an ever more powerful strategy — video personalization:

What is video personalization?

Video personalization uses customer data (name, email, location, images, etc.) from your CRM to create exceptional video experiences that engage more users, and consequently, produce higher ROI.

Unlike traditional video, personalized video is tailored to the viewer, and is therefore unique to each person watching.

What components make up the best video personalization?

An individualized experience

As video marketing matures, personalization helps keep it fresh and distinctive, allowing marketers to deliver memorable, unique experiences for audiences. Without a personalized touch, it’s increasingly difficult for brands to differentiate themselves using similar video marketing strategies.

According to Business Insider, video personalization actually eliminates the “disconnect between the growth in digital video ad budgets and the dearth of attention paid by consumers to these ads.”

This means that instead of wasting advertising budget on unpersonalized videos that may only be watched for a few seconds before viewers lose interest, personalized videos are sure to captivate their attention for longer because of the specific personal details they include.

Close personal relationships

In addition to being unique, personalized video content should closely mimic a real conversation. If you’re not building trustworthy relationships with viewers, then your level of personalization isn’t matching their expectations.

Yaron Kalish, CEO of video personalization platform Idomoo explains:

It’s only when it feels like you’re communicating one-to-one with your audience, as you can through personalized video, that they will form an emotional connection and relationship with your brand. Both video and personalization are effective ways to create connections in your marketing at scale, and leveraging both at once only quickens the relationship building process.

In a sector like the real estate industry, for example — where customers are putting a lot on the line — it’s critical to build trust. Here’s an example of real estate video personalization that uses a potential client’s name, image, and geographic location to build trust and strengthen the relationship:

Which leads to the last major component of personalized video…

Consumer data

It’s impossible to personalize video content without consumer data.

The best and easiest part of creating a personalized video, though, is that you can utilize all of the data you’ve collected on leads and customers throughout the sales process. So as the relationship progresses, and you collect more data from new sources, you can continuously personalize your video content.

Consider the short personalized videos that Facebook creates for users to celebrate special occasions, for example. These are curated from tagged Facebook photos and events, yet people share them constantly because they’re relevant and personal.

It’s the same concept with personalized video advertising. You must leverage your collected user data to customize and improve experiences.

How to create a video personalization strategy

1. Promote existing content

If you already have a great white paper or report as part of your content marketing strategy, why not create a personalized video to promote it? You can also gate it with a post-click landing page to generate more conversions.

The video could briefly explain what prospects will learn from the resource and could be personalized with the viewer’s name at the top: “This report is the property of [name]” or “Prepared especially for [name].”

Even this small nod to the viewer can create an instant connection and is ideal for all stages of the customer journey for advertisers to get the most return for their content marketing budget.

2. Invite to events

Whether you’re a retailer having a semi-annual sale, or a marketing agency hosting an annual conference, including a personalized video with your invitations can help boost attendance.

Create a video telling viewers why they shouldn’t miss the event, and personalize it to each one:

• Include a discount coupon or admissions ticket with their name on the front
• Show a custom shopping bag or swag bag with their name on it
• Create personalized conference badges with names and photos from social media profiles

3. Announce a new feature, product, or service

Customers love to feel that you’re acknowledging and addressing their specific needs. When you release a new service, product, or product feature, do it with a video that’s personalized to them.

For example, “[Name], you made it clear that you were looking for [product, service, or feature that you’re announcing]. Here it is!”

4. Show customers you care

Personalized video isn’t only great for making announcements. It’s great throughout the entire year to show appreciation for customers or let them know you care. You can even use video personalization to show gratitude to users to retain them as loyal customers.

Consider Nike’s 2014 “Your Year with Nike+” video campaign. The brand employed user data from their fitness app (weather, activity, location, etc.) to create highly-personalized animated video content for around 100,000 app users. The videos told individual stories of fitness goals achieved by the viewers in the previous year, encouraging and inspiring them to continue engagement with the app in the following year:

These are just a few of the ways to implement video personalization. For more details how to personalize your advertising campaign at every funnel stage, download the Instapage Digital Personalization guide.

Once you’ve created your video, the next step is to get it in front of your audience.

Delivering your personalized video

This depends on the channel — or combination of channels — where your customer spends most of their time. In today’s marketing landscape, email and social media are two of your best bets for delivering personalized video:

• Videos in email can increase sharing and forwarding by 50%, and adding personalization to those emails can deliver 6x higher transaction rates
• Personalized videos on social media raise awareness, increase engagement, and strengthen relationships

Here’s an example from Breast Cancer Now on Twitter to show their gratitude to donors. They targeted people who used #wearitpink or mentioned the brand in their posts. By employing names, profile pictures, and photos from the fundraising event, they were able to execute a highly personalized campaign for individual users:

Almost 80% of viewers “liked” their personalized video, and nearly half retweeted it. The videos reached a total of about 77,000 users on social media.

Don’t forget about the post-click landing page

It’s important to send all of your traffic (email, social media, or otherwise) to a personalized post-click landing page.

If you include a video’s thumbnail image in your content, be sure to send traffic to a dedicated landing page to watch the video, rather than YouTube or another video hosting service. Wideo increased conversions by 106% by adding a personalized video to one of their landing pages.

If you include the video directly in your content, add a CTA to the end that directs viewers to a landing page optimized for conversions.

Engage viewers better with video personalization

Using video personalization in key moments throughout the buyer’s journey allows you to capture your prospects’ attention and build lasting, quality relationships with them. This, in turn, can lead to an exponential increase in customer acquisition, retention, and overall conversions.

From the top of the funnel to closing the deal and ever afterward, it pays to give consumers the exact experience they want.

See how Instapage personalization enables you to provide personalized post-click landing pages for each target segment you select. Request a demo today and see what your campaigns are missing.