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The Case For Personalized Video

Forbes Agency Council

Matthew is Founder and CEO of The DVI Group, a strategic communications agency that reimagines business video for brands around the world.

Hey you. Yeah, you. Are you paying attention to this article?

If I’d used your name in the sentence above, you’d probably be paying even closer attention. Personalization catches our eyes, elicits emotion and even strokes our egos. Marketers look for ways to personalize many types of content these days, and human resources professionals use a host of personalized portals and training modules to tailor experiences to each employee. If we’re so fascinated with personalized experiences elsewhere, why not in our videos?

The Basic Gist

Personalized video describes any video that uses data to incorporate the viewer’s own name, tastes or other personal information. And the personalization aspects aren’t limited to visuals either — some videos include personalized audio bytes seamlessly woven into the final piece.

An example we’re all familiar with: Facebook memories and life event videos. They include our names, selected photos and past text posts, all integrated into a cute, animated world.

The best version of this personalization is native to the video itself. It’s created on-demand and can be used to great effect in marketing pieces, onboarding projects, ongoing employee education, benefits adjustments or policy changes — incorporating data points like hire dates, financial milestones and training achievements.

The Many Benefits

In marketing, personalization converts 202% better than non-personalized media and offers 20x the ROI of non-personalized media. It can also increase customer loyalty and satisfaction at the same time. And combined with video’s dominance as the #1 form of media used today, it’s easy to see why personalized video can capture and keep an audience’s attention.

Best of all, personalized video represents an untapped world of analytics. Depending on the deployment platform, personalized video can report on viewers’ watch time, engagement and preferences. This data is more than just a short-term advantage: touchpoints like pause buttons and post-video contact forms can offer valuable insights to use for the next outreach project or marketing campaign.   

The Cautionary Tale

Done well, personalized video offers an entirely secure interface. Video clients can easily keep their customers’ or employees’ data safe while using personalized video to provide a better experience.

However, be careful with personal details. While 90% of customers say they’ll hand over personal data if they receive value in return, an increasingly smaller subset of customers prefer privacy over personalization. Additionally, some viewers may use a name that’s different from their legal name — in which case, an incorrect video callout can be jarring. Invest in accurate data sets, periodically taking time to scrub them to avoid delivering inaccurate information. Most importantly: know your audience well.

The Creation Process

Some creative agencies offer out-of-the-box personalization solutions like we do with personalized video at The DVI Group. Clients identify a use case, and the agency handles video creation from start to finish. This type of offering includes creative work, filming, animation, editing and native personalization that’s customized to specific data sets. All the client has to do is specify their goals and audience needs.

If you choose to go personalized, keep one creative tip in mind: make sure it’s not an afterthought or it might fall flat. Personalization works best when it’s deeply ingrained in the project.

The Vision Connection

Besides the hard numbers and the obvious analytic insights, why pursue personalized video? There’s one more answer for agency professionals to consider.

In today’s world, authenticity is important. Personalization ties back to that ever-present value — what’s more authentic than releasing an onboarding video that actually includes a new employee’s name, start date and job title?

Moments like these add a human touch to balance out the coldness of the technological age. They make moments personal, rich and alive with emotion.

The Wrap-Up

Most importantly, always consider the human being on the other side of the screen — the best marketing, onboarding and training come from agencies fully invested in the human experience. Personalized video allows you to truly invest in that experience. It helps you call a viewer’s name, acknowledge their experiences and engage with their unique qualities. 

In the larger scheme of agency work, every insight helps fill in the puzzle of perfect audience engagement. And with personalized video, I think we just may have found a missing piece.


Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?


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