What’s with ‘personalization’ as the new buzzword in marketing?

The truth is, it’s not a new idea at all.

The bestselling author Dale Carnegie nearly 100 years ago wrote: “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

Personalized video marketing is literally based on this idea.

Now…

If you’re struggling to see how someone’s name connects to selling them products and services…

Consider this:

In a world of mass-marketing and mass-production, customers like to feel special.

They want unique experiences.

Find out how you can use personalized video marketing to drive leads, sales and loyalty for years to come.

Personalized video marketing is anything that uses tailored content for an individual viewer.

An example.

Imagine a SaaS vendor creates a 10-minute demo video and sends it to a specific company to win them as a client – that’s personalized video marketing.

Now, imagine the same SaaS vendor pushes out a YouTube video ad and the same potential client sees it – that is not personalized video marketing.

Both have pros and cons.

But personalized video marketing has the advantage of leveraging data-driven insights and context to resonate with the viewer on a deeper level.

Personalized video marketing enhances the viewer's experience – the end result is usually stronger relationships and higher sales and conversions.

Personalized Marketing first proved successful in the days of direct response marketing.

The copywriter Gary Halbert was one of the first to make use of it.

Here’s an extract from one of his marketing lessons:

“The next thing that occurred to me is I would not put a label on my carrier envelopes. Certainly not if my life depended on it. No. What I would do, instead is, type or handwrite my stranger's name and address on that envelope because I would want him to accept my letter as a personal communication.”

Gary Halbert later used these ideas to write what is considered the ‘greatest sales letter of all time’.

The letter sold personalized family crests to hundreds of thousands of people across America – and while mailing out millions of letters to different people based on their surnames, he inadvertently created an entire marketing philosophy that’s still only picking up steam today.

Personalized videos are better at catching attention.

Because of this, personalized video marketing tends to lead to better metrics like higher click-through rates, higher open rates, higher response rates, higher engagement, and so on.

Here are some important stats about personalized video marketing:

In all, personalized videos help to build better relationships.

If trust, loyalty and confidence are important for your customers then personalized video marketing should be important to you.

Personalized video marketing can be as simple as making a single video for a single customer.

But, applications are really broad.

Here’s some more of the most common kinds of data used to personalize video content:

Below, see an example of a travel website that shows a specific video on its homepage depending on the IP address and location of each visitor.

The company had data showing that Texans visit Wyoming primarily for ‘cowboy experiences’.

So, anytime someone visits with an IP address based in Texas, the website generates a video with text directing them towards booking an adventure tailored for their main interest.

They tailored video content like this for each state where they had traffic.

You’ll see some more examples like this further down!

Personalized videos are ultimately used to drive sales.

But that doesn’t mean you should only use a personalized video in your sales letters, product pages or service pages.

Here’s a few examples of what businesses are using personalized videos for:

You might not have thought about it like this, but Facebook became one of the world’s top advertising platforms capable of reaching over 2 billion people almost entirely thanks to personalization.

Consider this.

When you buy a TV ad spot you can’t control the people who watch your ad.

But when you launch on Facebook, you can set up targeting so your videos only reach cat owners, parents of young children, or people with specific interests.

In fact, Facebook has a success story of how Lyger Coffee started targeting people who regularly watched videos on both coffee and lifestyle topics – and it suddenly decreased their cost-per-15 second views by 68%.

A hyper-personalized video can be very simple – you just need a camera.

But depending on what you want to personalize and how you want to distribute your video marketing the production methods can go from low-budget to tens of thousands of dollars.

For example, if you want to create a video like the ICA supermarket example you’re going to need paid actors, a studio, advanced software and advanced distribution methods.

But what if you don’t have that kind of budget?

Or what if you want to test out personalized marketing before scaling?

We created the Voomly Cloud to help small businesses and bootstrapped entrepreneurs access the highest quality streaming (using the same content delivery networks as Amazon Prime) but at the lowest cost on the market.

You can get 250GB of cloud storage on the free version of Voomly Cloud.

Or, you can get 10TB of cloud storage on the Voomly Pro for free during your 14-day trial.

After uploading your personalized videos, you can embed them into emails and web pages and stream them without any buffering issues – or you can download them and upload them onto social media with captions added.

But Voomly Cloud also has a secret weapon: interactive video funnels.

Read on to find out more!

Interactive video funnels are a super easy way to create personalized videos.

They work like this:

Want to see an interactive video funnel in action?

See an interactive video used to promote the doodle software Doodly – this software is also included in a Voomly Cloud subscription and can be used to create interactive doodle video funnels.

Find 5 more examples of personalized video marketing below.

The video at the top of Voomly’s homepage is a great example of personalized video marketing.

The interactive video asks each to click on their top interest.

Based on the result, the next video is a personalized answer showing the viewer how Voomly can help them reach their goals.

The soccer club Manchester United used personalized video marketing to register fans with a local supporters club in Scandinavia.

The way they did this was unique.

The video included former soccer player Bryan Robson holding up a United shirt with the viewer’s surname on it and invited them to join the supporters club to get it.

Once registered, fans were asked to refer a friend – the campaign results show that 59% of viewers completed the referral form.

Last year, the content marketing specialist Chris von Wilpert wrote a social media post with a strategy to help brand-new writers make $10k per month using cold outreach.

Then, he decided to do the whole strategy himself using personalized videos for cold outreach.

Here’s how the strategy looked:

Here’s how the landing page looked without the personalization added:

In 2018, the team behind The GrowthHackers Conference decided to send personalized video invitations to subscribers.

The video personalizes the first name of each subscriber.

Below is a screenshot from the video for a follower named ‘Derek’.

For a few years Nike+ showed subscribers a personalized video review of the past year.

The video showed: 

Below see an example for a runner named ‘Carlo’.

Chances are, you’ve already done personalized video marketing before.

Maybe you’ve sent a video to a client or customer, perhaps you’ve used a screen-recording software platform, or you’ve created demonstration videos.

You’ve just never called it ‘personalized video marketing’.

So should you start doing more of it?

The answer depends on whether you’re looking to improve the following metrics:

Personalized video marketing will help you hit any one of the above goals.

Looking for the easiest way to get started?

Voomly Cloud offers a range of personalized video marketing tools which you use whether you have video creation experience or not.

Get started for free or try out a 14-day free trial on any advanced plan.