Despite the slow adoption of digital technologies, Sales is emerging as the leading adopter of generative AI. AI-backed tools and systems are on their way to becoming every sales professional’s digital assistants.

Today’s business landscape is customer-centric, and this makes customer engagement the cornerstone of success. Engaging potential customers with personalized experiences has become a selling practice that no salesperson can overlook. Generative AI, with its tectonic capabilities, promises to help sales professionals achieve their sales targets with remarkable productivity and success rates.

Sales is a highly variable and people-driven function that generates volumes of data from email trails, phone conversations, video interactions, etc. And this interactive and transactional nature of the function makes it well-suited for generative AI models to learn, connect, and create new opportunities in various permutations and combinations.

This blog explores the potential of generative AI to transform the future of sales engagement.

Enhancing sales content creation

Salespeople constantly strive to create content that can hook their prospects and keep them engaged with their products. Generative AI tools help them automate content creation for emails, contextual follow-ups, proposals, video scripts, sales pitches, FQAs, etc. Apart from this, it also aids in inspiring creativity and bringing fresh perspectives to their sales processes. With every passing day, we are witnessing amazing possibilities for content creation born from human creativity and AI assistance.

For instance, Hippo Video offers a number of video personalization capabilities that can transform your video creation journey. From tailored text overlays on video to generating sophisticated personalized videos, our AI capabilities help you deliver bespoke-like video content to a massive audience with minimal effort.

That said, these smart tools also help businesses cater to their global audience with localized content and expand their reach. By using specific AI models, businesses can generate localized versions of their content—at scale—and explore uncharted territories that were forbidden due to linguistic barriers.

Personalizing user interactions

Personalization has emerged as a fundamental pillar in any sales process, and generative AI acts as a catalyst in helping salespeople do it at scale with efficiency. Based on prospect preferences, past interactions, and user behavior, these AI models help salespeople create or curate user-specific experiences that can unlock maximum conversion potential and forge stronger relationships.

Systems powered by generative AI have strong lead scoring and prioritization capabilities. Therefore, based on buying behavior and engagement levels, salespeople can identify and categorize their high-intent prospects from the exhaustive list and focus their efforts on prospects that are most likely to convert. This data-driven approach helps them maximize conversion efficiency, sales outcomes, and productivity.

In the context of video selling, AI-powered video analytics tracks customer interactions with video content, providing valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences. This data enables sales teams to optimize their video content and sales strategies, delivering more engaging and impactful videos to potential customers.

Facilitating conversational selling

Conversational selling aims to build strong relationships with prospects by driving meaningful discussions, addressing their concerns, and moving them towards a buying decision. Generative AI plays a pivotal role in facilitating this method by empowering natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. Through AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants, prospects can engage in real-time conversations, receive prompt responses to their inquiries, and get guidance throughout the buying process.

These AI-led interactions are not only efficient but also highly personalized. The sales systems have the capacity to analyze the prospect’s communication style and customize their responses accordingly. These automated systems are available for prospects at the click of a button 24/7, which significantly enhances customer engagement, delivers immediate support, and accelerates the overall sales process.

Improving sales forecasting

Sales forecasting is crucial for businesses to make better-informed decisions, optimize operations, and stay ahead of the competition. Unlike traditional sales processes, modern sales cycles have many structured and unstructured datasets to be analyzed to arrive at accurate sales forecasts. Plus, the agility to adapt to changing market conditions makes sales forecasting all the more tedious.

But generative AI offers sophisticated and accurate forecasting capabilities that can understand and interpret existing patterns, generate new (relative) datasets, and model complex relations with precision. Also, its ability to learn the typical behavior of sales data and detect anomalies helps businesses respond to unexpected events quickly.

Is AI a productivity tool or a potential substitute for salespeople?

“There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.”

And this stands true for the way in which AI has changed the world at large. Generative AI is ushering in a new era of customer engagement in B2B businesses. 

By leveraging this innovative technology, companies can streamline content creation, deliver hyper-personalized experiences, foster meaningful conversations with prospects, and gain valuable insights for sales forecasting. If you’re looking for a cutting-edge AI-powered video platform that can level up your sales engagement, then talk to our experts to see how you can leverage this aspect of generative AI into your business growth.

The post The Rise of Generative AI in Sales: Transforming Customer Engagement appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

The decision-makers you are targeting as a sales rep are the same consumers who are conditioned to personalized products, services, or content. Gartner predicts that companies that incorporate personalization will outsell those that don’t by 20%. While face-to-face interaction was the gold standard in sales, using video as a medium of outreach took over in the last few years.

In this blog, we will explore the significance and benefits of contextual video in the world of sales.

What is contextual personalization?

Contextual video is a type of video content that is tailored to the interests of a specific audience. It is dynamically created based on user data, such as interests, behavior, demographics, location, and browsing history. Essentially, contextual video is the art of delivering the right video to the right person at the right time and in the right context. This allows businesses to deliver highly targeted messages that are more likely to resonate with the viewer and result in a higher engagement rate.

Why is contextual personalization effective in sales videos?

While you may already know the power of video as an effective sales tool, contextual video used at the right time during the sales process has the most impact on your prospect. In essence, a contextual video is meant to deliver a message to your prospect that is relevant to their position in the sales cycle. Every video that is made and sent to the prospect needs to get the context right for it to deliver the desired result. Here is why contextual videos work so effectively:

a. Contextual personalization convert better

As mentioned above, contextual videos have relevant information that helps prospects on their journey through the funnel. Videos that are perfectly aligned with the prospect’s interest at each stage of the funnel will hit the mark better than ones that lack context.

For example, during the prospecting stage of the sales cycle, the goal of the video is to grab the prospect’s attention and establish credibility while laying the foundation for relationship building. A quick 90-second video of you with the video background of their website and dropping pointers on what you think can be improved, along with a CTA, is a good start. If the prospect finds your findings to be valid and connects with you to move to the next stage, it’s a win. On the other hand, dropping a content-heavy video describing your product at the prospecting stage can be a surefire way to the recycle bin.

b. Contextual personalization helps in rightly timed videos

Contextual videos have a greater impact on viewers because they are sent out after analyzing previous video email data and based on specific viewer actions. This targeted approach ensures that the video content is relevant to the individual viewer and is more likely to generate a genuine connection. As a result, viewers are more likely to engage with the videos and form a stronger connection with the sender.

When can you use contextual personalization in sales videos?

The essence of contextual video is sending the right message at the right time. Therefore, as long as you’re getting the proper message across, you can use videos at various stages, as follows.

a. Videos for the prospecting and introduction phase

Prospecting is when you are just reaching out to a new person, and the most important task in the beginning is standing out from the cacophony of sales emails. Once you have your prospect’s attention, you can start working on building value. Here are four types of videos you can send in the prospecting stage: 

• Video for standing out in the prospect’s inbox

Consider these staggering statistics for a moment: the click-through rates for emails with video content are 300% higher. At a time when video outreach is still considered a little unusual, sending a video email will definitely earn you the spotlight in their inbox. To make it more compelling, you need to include a strong subject line and an eye-catching thumbnail that gives a good idea about your personality and hints at your intent.

• The value proposition video

This is your first shot at making an impression. A good value proposition video is crisp and short. You have to quickly deliver the value of your product and add a compelling CTA to entice the prospect. A screen share video is a great video to send on your very first touch by giving a quick brief on your product and how it can improve their business.

With the screen share shot, you highlight the value proposition while still remaining on screen in a small window to build familiarity. Unlike cold calls to prospects, which might disrupt their day, a video can be watched at their leisure. To build credibility, include your prospect’s LinkedIn profile, the website of the company, and your own sales deck as the video background.

• Follow up response video based on analytics

Perfectly timed follow-up videos are essential to building on the interest you have already generated in the prospect. Waiting for them to get back to you might never happen in this age of options and busy schedules. Having a video tool that is designed for sales analytics is the trick to sending the right contextual video on cue.

While email tracking only notifies you when your email is opened, the video tools give you real-time analytics on when your prospect opened the video, how long they watched it, and what parts were replayed. Time your follow-up call immediately after they watch your video to have a good connection rate and make a proposition to lead based on the parts that they found interesting.

b. Videos for the selling phase

Now that you have built familiarity with your prospect, it’s time to take them further down the funnel using videos until the point of hand-off to the account executive (AE). Here are some of the videos you could use at the selling stage:

• Reminder videos before the scheduled call

Sales reps often experience no-shows at calls and meetings, especially when the prospect is not too enthusiastic about moving down the funnel. Sending a reminder video before the scheduled call helps minimize no-show rates, as you have an opportunity to reiterate why they were interested in the first place.

Refresh their memory about the upcoming call so they know you are waiting enthusiastically for the presentation. Reminder videos also make the prospects feel guilty if they already have a plan to bail on the call. The result would be that they would either attend the call, where you have a chance to change their mind, or reschedule, where you get a chance to refine your approach.

• Thank you video after the call

Thank-you videos have a warm appeal after a call. It shows the prospects you appreciate their effort and builds a positive connection that makes them more likely to engage with you or your brand. It also showcases your organizational culture and establishes your company as someone they can have good ties with.

A thank-you video can be as simple as a 60-second webcam video thanking them for their time or a 30-second selfie video snippet showing your appreciation. Thank-you videos can be sent at all stages of the sales cycle and incorporate a quick summary, reminder, or CTA. The key to making the strongest impression with a thank-you video is to personalize it to a great degree. 

• Post-sale follow-up video

All companies experience some ghosting by leads during the hand-off phase to the account executive (AE) or the customer success manager (CSM). They usually lose interest, become confused, or get uncomfortable with having to talk to someone completely new. To continue the rapport and familiarity you have built with the prospects, it’s a good idea to familiarize them with the new person they’ll be interacting with. To make it personal, you can always make a short video with the AE or CSM in the picture to explain the change and what is to be expected in the future.

c. Videos for lead nurturing

There are times when you already know your leads, so there’s no need to introduce yourself all over again. However, the lead hasn’t panned out in a long time, or they have gone cold. In such cases, it’s essential to take a different approach such as contextual personalization to nurture the leads and nudge them to purchase.

• Video messages for prospects who know you

When you already know the client, you can skip the formalities and adopt a different approach, such as sharing marketing content, keeping them updated on the latest trends, or showing a comparison video of how their competitors are performing with your product. Always be approachable and open to dialogue, and make their interactions hyperpersonal. Maintain logs on previous interactions with these prospects and adapt your approach accordingly to entice them.

• Video messages for prospects who have gone dark

Sales reps would always have a closet full of leads that had gone dark at an earlier time. Video messaging, with its human approach, has a good chance of reviving interest in your product or offering. The approach incorporates most elements as with the unresponsive leads mentioned above, except you show greater contextual personalization in the videos.

Maybe they went cold because of a better product, or maybe they disappeared because your offer was too high. Make a note of historical interactions and send fresh videos with a different approach. Always answer their question faster and personalize the video to have a strong emotional appeal.

Closing Thoughts

To make winning contextual personalization in your sales videos, you need to create content that is relevant to prospects at the stage of the sales cycle they are in. Have a script or playbook for video creation, and don’t be afraid to deviate a little from the norm to stand out. When done correctly, contextual videos build relationships, nudge prospects down the sales funnel, and convert them into long-term customers.

To learn how to create winning sales videos at scale, check out Hippo Video today!

The post The Power of Contextual Video in the Era of Personalization appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

So this holiday season, throw out the “bring home the bacon” mindset and build a deeper connection with your prospects and customers on an emotional level using personalized video greetings.

As Dale Carnegie said it best: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you”. 

After all, New year is all about giving without a thought of getting, isn’t it? 

To win the hearts of your customers and prospects this New year season, we have curated an authentic and genuine way to stand out from the sea of ‘inbox’ messages – four video greeting templates you can steal. 

Sounds interesting? Well, let us explain how you can create these truly memorable holiday videos with Hippo Video.

Create stunning video greetings

Step 1: Visit our homepage – Visit the hippovideo.io homepage and click on the New year banner to ‘Try Now’ our video greeting for FREE with no sign-up required.

Step 2: Start creating your video greeting – The page will open up to a brand new visual. Enjoy it for a while… Ok, let’s move on. Now click on the tab ‘Send Video Greetings’ to continue.

Step 3: Pick your theme – This New Year, we’ve spoiled you for choices with four stunning greeting templates that will knock your socks off. Pick your favorite ‘New Year’ theme (the struggle is real, isn’t it?).

Step 4: Record a video or import a video – Now is the time to spread some holiday cheer. Record a personal video or import one from your library to create your unique holiday message. Also, we’ve gone that extra mile and created an intro and outro for all your videos. Sweet, isn’t it? 

Step 5: Add your custom message – Craft a personal message to go along with your video greeting. Also, to make your video stand out from the crowd, don’t forget to add in audio from the drop-down menu found under the ‘Background music’ tab. 

Step 6:  Share your video – It’s time to share your unique video greeting with your family, friends, and colleagues! All you have to do is copy the thumbnail and paste it into your desired platform – from emails to social media, you can do it all. 

Personalized video greeting templates for every occasion

We know that the holidays are extra busy (and a little different this year). There is a whole suite of video templates for every occasion – be it for a family member, a colleague, a prospect, or a customer.

From holiday-friendly imagery, fonts, animations, and music – we have it all. So here is a little tip on which template you can use based on the scenario. 

Palm Springs

For businesses, the bold and eye-catching design, along with your personalized video is sure to click with your audience without seeming pushy. Just edit the text to suit your sales campaign, add in your logo – it’s as easy as that.

Ideal for: Showcasing New year offers.

The Reindeer

New Year is all about sending personal seasonal greetings, which is why we’ve created this classic template to help you spread festive cheer, even from afar. This super fun template is a great way to lift the spirits of your loved ones.

Ideal for: Spreading happiness among your friends and family.

Winter Lit

This year instead of meeting in high-rise conference rooms, businesses are logging into meetings online.

Therefore it’s time to get creative and replace emails and letters with this perfect template to appear authentic and personal to your team.

By using personalized video greetings you build trust among your employees showing that you care for them.

Ideal for: CEO’s message for employees and colleagues. Sharing seasons greetings among team members.

The Wishing Spree

The easiest thing a business can do on a new year is to wish their clients/customers ‘Happy Holidays’. It’s straightforward and simple, but is it enough?

Add a twist to your greeting this year with a beautiful video template like ‘The Wishing Spree’. Send this personalized video greeting, and witness an outpouring of love from your clients.

Ideal for: Wishing prospects, customers and clients season’s greetings. From ad agencies to E-commerce sites to sales, everyone can use it. 

Conclusion

2020 has humanized businesses in an entirely new way, which means it is not the year for random greeting cards flicked from popular e-greeting sites and sending it across to your loved ones, clients, employees, etc.

It is all about showing your gratitude and focusing on building a more personal connection between you and the recipients.

Moreover, this helps improve the overall customer experience, which in turn converts your customers into loyal ambassadors.

With a platform like Hippo Video, you have no more excuses to avoid sending across a personalized video greeting, as it is simple and takes only a matter of seconds to create.

These templates are free, they are catchy and oh so perfect for the holiday season. 

If you are looking forward to tracking how your recipients are engaging with your video, you will need to sign-up to see your watch percentage.

So go on and spread the joy this holiday season using Hippo Video’s personalized video greeting templates. 

Happy holidays!

Which is your favourite template? Tell us in the comments below. 

The post 4 Personalized Video Greetings Template You Can Steal appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

Sure, you have a great product, carefully crafted to perfection after days and months of iterations. But, here’s what really makes the difference – communicating it right to your customers. 

Of all the channels you have at your disposal, email is an evergreen one. And why shouldn’t it be? Studies reveal that email marketers boast a high click-through and buyer retention rate.

Do bear in mind that a robotic and lifeless email can turn into sheer disappointment for your customers. Having said that, it is impossible to hand-craft every email you send to every prospect across the customer pool. So, what do you? You use the customer data you have to carefully draft email templates that carry a personalized message for the target audience group. 

Sounds difficult? 

It really is not. 

Keep reading to learn how to get the word out and convert prospects effectively.

Do Not Write Email Templates Without Asking and Answering these 4 Questions

1. Is My Offer Clear?

Brass tacks! Stay far away from vague subject lines and message bodies. Give your unsuspecting customers the gift of clarity. Also, a fair idea of what’s to come if they read your email works better than a click-bait subject line, which often ends up getting marked as spam.

Cutting down on vagueness does not mean that you have to give out your entire message in the subject line. It means you have to build curiosity by revealing just the right amount. 

Try These

• • “Can We Talk About <Insert Topic>?”
  • “Hi <Insert Name>, Can I help You With <Specify Goal>?”
  • “Hi <Insert Name>, You Missed It!”
  • “You Need to Know This [Better/ Faster] Way to Reach <Specific Goal>.”
  • “Hi <Insert Name>! Free to Get in Touch on < Date/Time>?”

Do Not Try These

• “Quick Question”
• “URGENT”
• “Are You Busy?”
• “Get 50% Off the Whole Store… Just Kidding!”
• “Open Me”

2. Is My Message Well-timed?

No matter how great a deal you are offering, if the timing is off, it just won’t do it for you. A big part of personalizing emails is timing. Conveying the right message alone is never enough, but conveying the right message at an opportune time is what converts leads. Sometimes you could send a video, instead of lengthier texts. 

Say, you are a B2B marketer with a great software pitch and a killer email marketing strategy. However, your potential client has already exhausted its annual budget. Here, your personalized emails will likely fall on deaf ears. 

3. Is My Email Creating a Sense of Urgency?

Again, your subject line is responsible for creating a sense of urgency. Consider this. You notice that your subject lines are somewhat intriguing, so readers do not delete your emails. They simply keep them and think of coming back when they have time. 

But, “the return” rarely ever takes place! This scenario is almost equivalent to customers marking your email as spam. So, what you have to do is write a subject line that actually makes the reader open the email instantly. The story doesn’t end here though. Your urgent subject line should be backed with an equally compelling message body. The right CTAs and quick loading landing pages are also part of the package.

Read more on email outreach personalization tips to increase response rates here.

4. Does It Contain Personalization Basics?

Before moving on to hyper-personalization, it is critical to master a few primary personalization techniques. Things are as simple as inserting the recipient’s name in the subject line or message body along with a few other necessary details tailored for a specific customer segment.   

Pro Tip – Keep your subject line below 60 characters and under ten words in total, and your email copy length strictly between 50 to 125 words. Anything longer and you are far too likely to lose your reader.

6 Personalized Email Templates Bound to Generate Responses

Learn from these ideas illustrated below. A little inspiration never hurt anyone.

1. Airbnb 

Subject Line:

Source – www.sendgrid.com

This email brings personalization to the subject line with not only the customer’s name, but also where they live, and where they can go for the weekend. The reader can see, right off the bat, that this email contains tailored information and will want to open it. Depending on the message inside, which in this case, is crisply laid out, the lead will likely convert. 

Here, Airbnb has used customer data to create a win-win situation for both parties. Now, the same model can be applied for all leads that live in Denver. Dynamic email templating will involve changing the name and the weekend getaway locations depending on a prospect’s city.

2. Adidas

Source – Instapage

Another great use of dynamic email content is gender-based product personalization, as shown in this Adidas campaign. If a woman opens their email, she sees the left image, and a male prospect sees the right image. This campaign works because of high-quality imagery and minimal content.

3. Mint

Source – Sendgrid 

A leading finance app from Inuit, Mint offers easy budgeting and payments from the comfort of your home. This advert works for several reasons. Firstly, credit is a scary topic, and the title in this ad evokes a sense of urgency. Even if you do not download the app, you are highly likely to read this content for free, and possibly engage with the brand. Furthermore, even though this message is serious, it does not overwhelm the reader, instead encourages them to understand the content that follows.

Lastly, the user interface of this page is both clean and on-brand. With the use of dynamic templating, the Mint team can swiftly add more variables, fine-tune pictures, or alter the content depending on your geography, age and gender. For instance, if they wish to market this ad in Europe, they can change the images with US Dollar bills to Euros, through dynamic templating. This campaign works as it unselfishly delivers value to the reader.

4. Medium

Source – Sendgrid

Medium.com is an online publishing platform offering articles ranging from sports, satire, personal finance, and much more. You will hardly find a topic that does not have a mention on this portal. Medium’s dynamic email template works well as it uses your geographic information and tweaks content accordingly.

When you receive an email from Medium, you can read a trending story, mentioned right at the top, and also included in the email subject line.

With Medium, readers get a heads up about the duration of every story they read. You may indeed have ten minutes to spare, but if you don’t know how long an article is, you will likely not open it.

The brand also offers articles that are entirely unrelated to the featured story, so that readers who are not interested in reading about, say insurance, can scroll down to another category mentioned within the same template. Medium.com has been garnering tons of subscribers with the help of a well-designed and dynamic email template. 

5. Yelp

Source – Sendgrid

Yelp, a leading customer review portal, offers personalized content based on your location and keeps it to the point. No up-selling, no cross-selling, it does what it says, which is to offer reviews of restaurants you may be craving for with witty alliterations and mouth-watering images. 

Their dynamic template offers the right ratio of content and imagery. If Yelp starts using too many images, chances of them getting marked as spam go up, and if they introduce too much content, you stand to lose interest. Therefore, this dynamic, creative, yet concise email communication offers a balanced approach to online marketing.

6. Birchbox

Source – Sendgrid

Birchbox is a service that sends its subscribers handpicked beauty products at their doorstep each month. If you subscribe to this service, this particular advert is telling you about customizations for the month of April by showcasing specific samples.

Now imagine this email dropping in your inbox in the middle of the day, offering you a colorful break from your busy schedule. 

Not only the products, but the layout of this promotional piece is very skimmable. The header includes a customized and valuable call to action buttons.

This yellow catches your eye, whereas the limited use of text makes it easy to read. Birchbox here has broken content down into three sections, through which you can interpret the goal of this email almost instantly.   

Read more on cold email templates to fetch you 3x response rates here

Parting Thoughts

So, what are you waiting for? Gather your best team to churn a knock-out email marketing campaign. Brief them on providing simple, clean, and gripping messages with the utmost attention on personalization. But, before all that, equip your brainstorming squad with high-quality customer data.

You can also put some email marketing alternative tools to good use here. Doing this will help them segment potentials and accurately craft templates. Do not shy away from looking around and seeing what your competitors are up to. 

Author Bio 

This is a guest post by Rohan Mendiratta. He helps marketers with building an engaged audience and increasing their sales via  SendX: Email Marketing Software.

The post 6 Personalized Dynamic Email Examples To Steal appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

Brand personalization is all about making EVERY customer feel like they are the star of a show and not just another customer. 

It may sound daunting and even impractical to scale this. 

But it is possible to customize brand experiences as per the needs and preferences of customers by following the principles of personalized marketing.

A study by Infosys found that:

• 86% of consumers acknowledged the contribution of personalization to their purchase decisions.
• 25% firmly believed that personalization significantly affects their purchase decision.

The best part about personalized marketing is that – you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on AI marketing tools. 

By involving your audience in the marketing process, companies can not only talk to their leads personally but also gather highly-relevant data for future marketing purposes.

Let’s take a short example: 

Luxury car companies can deliver personalized experiences through Golf courses where most of their wealthy audience typically hang out.

Golf courses give them an opportunity to:

• Figure out what their target audience doesn’t like about the current solution.
• How they prefer to consume information. 
• Extract brand personalization strategies from this exercise 

 These insights will help them personalize their experiences which, in turn, help generate a preference for their brand among their audience. 

4 steps to personalize a brand and secure customer loyalty

Mass marketing doesn’t make a distinction between individual customers. The whole marketing strategy hinges on what are the traits of customer segments. 

And most brands do this!

Brand personalization involves collecting and analyzing the data and extract insights that help create a unique experience for each individual. 

They help hyperfocus your marketing strategy on customers and transform the mass marketing approach into a “one-on-one marketing strategy”.

And because you are doing things differently than most brands, there’s a huge competitive advantage in personalizing the marketing strategy.

Let’s look at some basic steps to create this one-on-one marketing strategy:

1. Ask the customers to connect with their social logins

This opens the door to more data that you can use for personalized website experiences.

ASOS.com does it brilliantly on their sign up screen where, in addition to showing options for social sign up, they market this option with a little bit of extra text – to communicate the benefits of social login.

2. Remember customers preferences

If the product is not available in their size, show them this message the first time – so they don’t get disappointed after selecting it for purchase.

Derive other such preferences by locating patterns of usage in detailed attributes of the already-ordered products

3. Let them customize your products

Customers may have to compromise on the design and style of the products when they don’t find something that exactly matches their personal tastes.

Remove this uncertainty and let them design their own products. 

We have seen Nike implement this personalized marketing strategy.

If you don’t have the resources for this, create a separate section on your customer screen that lets people share their preferences and personalize product recommendations accordingly. Invite your customers to fill in this section in exchange for a reward.

Exact matches may not be possible, but take inspiration from Netflix. It shows a numerical percentage of how close a title is to a viewer’s personal tastes. 

If I watched an action movie on Netflix, I will start getting recommendations for similar action movies – each of them with a match percentage of 80% and above displayed right above the episodes list. Likewise, the suggestions for romantic comedies on Netflix will drop to the relevance of 60% and below.

Based on what you gather about the user through a detailed preferences survey, you can create a  personalization engine on your website.

4. Share customer profile across the various providers in the brand experience ecosystem

From start to finish, the customer is interacting with an entire ecosystem of non-homogenous touchpoints. Sharing data among these touchpoints integrates them into a single coherent experience. 

Thus, the customer doesn’t have to bother about keeping each touchpoint informed of their movements.

The example in this image demonstrates the cross-touch-point collaboration perfectly.

(Source: McKinsey.com)

4 reasons why Personalization is important

All purchases have an emotional reason (the problem that’s bothering your prospect) behind it. The reasons they give may seem logical but behind that logic, there is a painful emotion that has driven them to seek out a solution.

Without personalization, brands can’t help customers realize how pressing it is for them to resolve this painful emotion.

1. People (prospects, leads, and customers) expect it

Customers have gotten so used to getting personalized recommendations that they have come to expect it at every stage of their customer journey. 

Source: Accenture Pulse Survey

A Salesforce Research survey of 7,000 business and consumer brands concluded that over half the customers are willing to share personal data in exchange of:

• personalized offers and discounts (57%)
• personalized recommendations (52%)
• personalized shopping experiences (53%)

Another study by Marketing Dive found out that if an unknown brand’s ad is personalized, consumers are 2x as likely to click it.

 All this evidence points to one fact: 

All brands – B2B or B2C, small, medium, or large – must actively engage their marketers to come up with brand personalization strategies.

2. Personalization helps generate trust with your leads

According to Salesforce Research, 90% of companies will only buy from companies they trust.

Simply put, if your sales process and agents don’t personalize their approach, it’s hard to gain the trust of your prospective customer. 

And without trust, your sales department can’t tap into word-of-mouth marketing and referrals.

Brands must use personalization to generate trust in your prospects’ minds and encourage them to become your brand advocates. 

3. Personalization is equally important for B2B brands

Just because B2B buyers are not buying for themselves does not mean they forget that they’re humans – and neither should marketers who target them.

A decision-maker (or a panel of multiple decision-makers) will still respond positively or negatively to personalized marketing.

According to a Salesforce Research study, a whopping 84% of customers say that to win their business, it’s important to treat them like a person (and not just a number!)

Source: Salesforce Research

The same study also shares more stats to back the need for personalization for B2B vendors up.

Source: Salesforce Research

4. Personalization leads to better return-on-investment (ROI) from marketing efforts 

Personalization essentially means optimizing your marketing strategy to focus on:

• Finding and closing the highest-value leads
• Finding and leveraging the highest-converting channels 
• Delivering highly optimized marketing messages
• Real-time communication

Having such a focused approach leads to more high-value leads becoming customers. It eventually generates more revenue and higher return-on-investment.for the B2B brands. 

4 harmful types of over-personalization – How much is too much?

There is a fine line between meaningful personalization and being creepy.

Personalization, by definition, ALSO includes the time factor. If you send emails at night when the leads might be sleeping, or send the same message repeatedly for several months, it gets annoying. 

Not only people, but brands can become needy and annoy their customers if they don’t put checks and balances on their personalization strategy.

According to an InMoment study, a whopping 75% of consumers think most forms of personalization are “somewhat creepy”.

As a result of the creepiness of your brand personalization experience:

• 20% of customers will leave
• 22% of customers will start shopping around for an alternative solution
• 31% of customers will participate in negative word-of-mouth marketing 

All of this directly or indirectly contributes to your company’s bottom line.

So, how does one decide how much personalization is too much? 

Fortunately, McKinsey shares an indicative personalization formula.

A personalization formula that covers different aspects of personalization and their relation to each other (Source: McKinsey.com)

This is more of a representation of the relationship between these factors and less of an actual mathematical equation.

The customer derives value from the level of relevance of the content and how well-timed is their experience. 

And if they trust your brand, the value multiplies that many times.

It’s the denominator of this equation that many brands tend to unknowingly (or carelessly) double-down on.

So, what changed?

The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal has had the same effect on people’s concerns about data privacy as 9/11 had on global air travel security.

A fantastic study by Jebbit acknowledges the changing marketing landscape, the new expectations of customers in the face of it, and how brands can move forward by building transparency and trust. 

Source: Jebbit.com

And that’s why it’s important to understand the different types of harmful personalization strategies that we advise brands not to use.

1. Aggressive personalization 

Stop showing ads to a user who has unsubscribed from your list. A barrage of retargeting ads to an opted-out user will annoy them and push them away from your brand.

2. Unauthorized personalization 

This happens when the user has not consented to receive personalized marketing messages from you. 

Often, brands buy an email list or borrow it from some other brand (where the user agreed to give their email address). That kind of personalization will certainly draw ire from the users; your unsolicited emails will quickly erase the trust and ruin all the hard work your marketing team puts in to create those amazing emails. 

3. Insensitive personalization 

Certain types of information (for example, detailed history of a user’s health issues) coming from a brand the user has never heard about (and therefore has no trust over) is definitely creepy.

While customers also want to be understood well, they do NOT want to be spied on.

Such insensitive personalization will, in most cases, invite public backlash for the company and reduce the brand value for not just that one user, but everyone else in their immediate network.

4. Inaccurate personalization 

If your customer data is not current, your brand runs the risk of inaccurate personalization. 

Ensure that the data that empowers your brand personalization strategy is current and not outdated. Otherwise, your brand may lose its hard-earned positioning and trust among customers.

5 ways to use videos for B2B Sales Personalization

Personalized videos capture attention and help build trust by making it easy for customers to relate to your product.

With tools like Hippo Video, you can create template-based personalized video marketing campaigns with a few clicks. This enables you to leverage the power automation and target each of your contacts individually. 

Here are 6 powerful use cases to leverage video personalization.

1. Send ABM campaigns with personalized videos, images, and text 

You can save time by recording personalized demos and provide the same, consistent value to all the most important leads.

Then use these demos in emails or on landing pages.

2. Send hyper-personalized video email campaigns 

Personalize every video with texts, logos, thumbnails, and more by creating video templates for use in mass email marketing.

You can also use mass video-marketing email campaigns for prospecting and webinar (or event) invites.

3. Create personalized sales pages instantly

A hyper-personalized sales page is a great way to engage with prospects and build instant trust with them. It breaks through any cluttered inbox of templated text emails.

By using a video carousel, you can attach video testimonials, product demos, or even after-sales documents on the same personalized sales page.

4. Accelerate your sales cycle

The traditional sales pipeline takes time because agents must go through a detailed intro call. 

By creating personalized demo videos for anonymous prospects, sales agents: 

• Move more leads to the buying stage quickly, thereby shortening the sales cycle. 
• Get an idea of what the lead is looking for even before the first contact by using the analytics of these personalized videos.
• Get a higher-quality of qualified prospects

With such personalized sales videos, agents can easily convert activated demand into sales. 

5. Reduce execution time for your sales contracts

Personalized images, texts, sales quotes, and calls-to-action – all these elements enable faster contract execution. With smart video sales contracts, your leads retain more of your sales message.

Better experience for leads translates into better customer relationships right from the start of the contract period.

3 ways to make extreme personalization work for your brand

In the retail/B2C arena, personalization isn’t as pervasive as it should be despite increasing demand for personalized engagement from the customers. 

B2B brands can learn lessons from these B2C brands and extrapolate them into a solution for themselves.

Let’s look at some of those lessons as reported by ImpactBnd in their comprehensive infographic:

• 32% of brands cite lack of relevant technology makes personalization difficult for them. So, the retirement of legacy technology is the need of the hour.
• 46% of brands say that legacy technology greatly hinders their personalization efforts. The induction of relevant personalization technology can make the job easier.
• 35% of B2C marketers in the US reported that one of their biggest challenges was building a single, comprehensive customer view across sales and marketing channels. The addition of multi-channel capability for customer behavior analysis can help B2B brands usher in a new age of personalization for their prospects.

So, what is Extreme Personalization (EP) and how does it fit in this context?

EP prescribes personalization across context, content, and behavioral data. This means offering engagement:

• At the right moment of time
• On the right device
• With the right message

EP also includes a fully-integrated cross-channel experience.

Here are some modern marketing strategies fueled by extreme personalization:

1. Engage with an audience of one and understand individual preferences. 

This requires a shift in how marketers think of segmentation i.e. move away from the batch-and-blast model of sharing marketing messages.

2. Use AI-based marketing automation tools to extract insights for cross-channel engagement.

3. Use AI-based marketing automation technology to A/B test variations based on extracted customer insights. This enables B2B marketers to stave off assumptions and implement data-based marketing strategies.

Concluding thoughts

Personalization is the need of the hour to improve customer experiences and business revenue. It provides universal value for all types of brands: B2B, B2B, large, medium-sized, or small!

But before brands embark on this seemingly profitable journey, there are pitfalls to know, understand, and avoid. The core principle is that people want brands to understand them, not spy on them. 

B2B brands have numerous video personalization options to enhance their marketing and sales effort.

There’s no question about it: B2B brands must invest in the modernization of their sales process through personalized sales videos.

The post 4 Steps To Personalize a Brand and Secure Customer Loyalty appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

You wake up on a Monday morning, open your computer, and log in to your email. And what do you see…another chaotic jumble of templated emails trying to sell you something or asking you for “A few minutes of your time”.

The worst part about this is then having to sort through them only to find a handful of legitimate emails that requires a response.

To some degree, this might happen every day of your week. Doesn’t feel too great, does it?

On the flip side, your sales organization may be prospecting in a way where they might not think it’s spammy, but the recipients have a similar experience.

What are you doing to make your prospects, leads, and customers feel like they aren’t the victim of another automated sales sequence?

Here are 15 ways to enhance your sales strategy with personalization

1. Respond with personalized videos from sales reps

With modern video recording technology, filming a personalized response video is now just as easy as drafting up a response email. The biggest barrier to overcome is stage-fright. However, if reps are accustomed to cold calling hundreds of contacts per week, it should be in their nature to record a video response. Videos are the most engaging form of content and they certainly will catch eyes in the inbox. And the best part is you can use a catchy subject line or preview text to hint that you embedded a personalized video in the email for your prospect or lead.

2. Use the recipient’s name in the preview text of an email

If you are working out of a sales automation platform, you will have the option (in most cases) to use personalization tokens. These are simply a way to fill in fields from the contact’s profile, to make the messaging seem more personable. If you aren’t seeing the open rates you’d like, try including the name of the contact in the preview text. For a cold email, something like, “We would hate for you to miss out on this, Daniel.” And in a follow-up, you could say something like, “Really enjoyed our conversation, Daniel, I wanted to know if you’ve had time to think about it?”

3. Respond with GIFs in your email bodies

You know the saying “a picture is worth 1,000 words”. Well technically speaking, a GIF averages 60 frames, meaning they could contain around 60,000 words of information. Visual content is more easily consumed, especially in digital channels. Plus, GIFs are the language of the internet, used by 22.8% of ALL websites, and often involve humorous gestures. Humor bridges gaps in sales conversations and establishes a trustworthy relationship with prospects. The great thing about GIFs is that they can be used to communicate points in just about every sales situation. Tools such as GIFLine, Glitch Wizard, and Giphy make it easier to leverage them within emails as well.

4. Introduce yourself on a cold call with a joke

Ditch your typical introduction and think of a relevant, lighthearted line to get into the conversation. 63% of sales reps say that cold calling is the worst part of their job. Make it fun! For example, be brutally honest: “Hi, I’m with <Company Name> and we’ve never spoken before.” Or introduce yourself with strong enthusiasm: “Hey, Bill, how the heck are you doing today?” The more humor you incorporate, the easier cold calling will get. Buyers hate getting the same intro and voicemail from sales reps…in fact, 84% of buyers complain that sales reps are annoying in their efforts trying to reach them. Making a witty introduction can in many cases be the touch of personalization it takes to move a prospect to a lead.

5. Leverage personalization tokens EVERYWHERE possible

Personalization tokens should be used as much as possible. We discussed including them in the email subject line, but you should always leverage them as well in preview text and email bodies. 80% of customers are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences. Why not get the most out of your sales automation platform? Modern technology has enabled all sorts of personalization options to include in emails. Not leveraging them will set you back against the competition. Here’s an example of a use case that even includes some manual personalization inputs:

6. Send a handwritten note at the onset of negotiations introducing yourself

Nothing is more personal than a handwritten note. That’s why your parents probably made you write them as a kid after your birthday or a holiday. Furthermore, one neuroscience study found that physical advertisements are actually more emotionally stimulating than digital advertisements. A notecard is tangible and subconsciously is perceived as more real by our brains. Not to mention, offline engagement platforms can now AI technology to replicate the handwriting of reps. This can be a huge time-saver and makes it much more feasible to use within existing sales cycles.

7. After closing a deal, send an onboarding gift

Once a new customer goes through the onboarding process, what better way to welcome them to your company than a personalized gift? 80% of C-suite executives believe that business gifts generate measurable positive ROI in addition to intangible benefits. When it comes to creating an amazing customer experience, it’s hard to beat a personalized gift right off the bat. This is a great tactic to use in tandem with a retention strategy that’s centered around gifting.

8. Record personalized videos of yourself to film product demos or walk-throughs

Similar to responding with a personalized video, filming a screen recording of an account set-up or onboarding tour with your voiceover shows the customer you’re willing to go the extra mile for them. This is a great option if you didn’t get around to cover something over the zoom screen share during the onboarding meeting.

9. Use a one-word subject that solely includes the contact’s name: “<name>?”

This is a more specific trick that can help get people to open your email. It catches eyes and is a super easy personalization tactic that will work in many situations. Look in your sequence or cadence to see which emails are getting the least activity and try implementing there.

10. Compliment someone’s social media profile when engaging with them

There’s something to be said for social media channels when there’s statistics like 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing. If part of your activity in your sales process involves engagement on social media, try complimenting a unique part of the person’s profile. This can create an amazing first impression and often generates an equally kind response. Sales is all about relationships, and this is a super simple way to get your foot in the door.

11. Record a personalized “Thank You” video of yourself after meeting with a lead

This one might sound a little weird, but think about it: what would you do if a company you just bought from sent a personalized video thanking you? It would feel GREAT. Sales teams generally aren’t leveraging video as much as they can. This humble gesture could open up new doors in the customers lifetime and also create word of mouth references to others in their network.

12. Create triggers within workflows when an email CTA is clicked

Automated workflows or sequences enable all sorts of opportunities for personalization. One that isn’t used as much is creating a triggered action specifically when an email CTA is clicked. For instance, if it’s a CTA to request a demo, you could send them another email to follow-up from one of the sales reps saying they’d love to get to know them.

13. Record a personalized video thanking a customer for their commitment to your brand

A HubSpot survey revealed that 54% of consumers want to see more videos. For instance, once a customer reaches their 6-month mark in a year subscription, have a video saved for automation that will thank them for using your product. This is just another great way to keep your solution top of mind, especially right in the middle of their subscription or lifetime.

14. Send a personalized gift thanking a customer for a landmark with your company

Similarly, save personalized gifts for automation to thank customers when they reach a certain landmark with your business. Increasing customer retention rates by 5% leads can lead to a 25-95% increase in profits.

15. Keep personalization consistent throughout channels of communication

Lastly, ensure your omnichannel approach is FULL of personalization. While automation and personalization act like two polar magnets pushing against each other, modern sales technology is only pushing them closer together. Ensure your tech stack enables your team to create genuine connections across all mediums, from phone calls to emails. Doing so will create a more authentic voice of your brand and establish a repertoire.

Takeaways

Hopefully, you see one or more of these strategies that will fit in your sales cycle. Personalization is proven to generate more replies and book you more meetings. It can be a great retention tactic as well.

Sales is about creating and cultivating relationships. How are you supposed to do that when you send the same email to hundreds of people?

Fortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what sales automation technology is capable of. The next few years could revolutionize the next century of selling by standardizing how personalization can be leveraged with automation.

We hope you enjoyed this! Happy selling.

The post 15 Ways to Enhance Your Sales Strategy with Personalization appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

Videos have become ubiquitous and it is no surprise that businesses, especially digital marketing agencies have embraced its advantages to market and sell their services. Being the most versatile, videos house content that is easy to digest, engaging, and also help give life to pictures. This makes them the most sought after medium in the digital space by companies and the consumers alike.

97% of marketers claim that videos help customers understand products. (Hubspot)

Given their advantage of easy accessibility they provide a fairly high share of ROI for the marketers. They are considered dynamic and can be used for product tours, interviewing guest influencers, product reviews, inside emails, or even for live streaming.  Videos for agencies specially can be the way forward.

And there is this one component that multiplies the veracity of the videos, which is ‘personalization’. A survey from the campaign monitor states that some brands have recorded an 8x improvement on click-through rates with personalized video versus standard outbound email campaigns. 

In order to leverage this power of videos, Hippo Video has launched a bevvy of new personalization features that can enhance user experience inside of emails, webpages, mobile apps, and even on third-party websites like HubSpot, Salesforce and Intercom. This is more of a guide to help you send successful personalized video campaigns. 

The following infographic is an effort to showcase how Hippo Video can help you personalize your videos across different channels and help businesses such as an online marketing agency, reap the benefits of customer satisfaction, experience, and brand equity. 

If you liked this infographic on how Hippo Video can help businesses personalize using videos, please don’t forget to share it. We would love it if you would like to try our 7- day free trial. Personalize all the way with videos!

You may want to check our free 3-part video tutorial series on personalized videos for agencies to get started with using personalized videos in your email campaigns.

The post How Hippo Video helps with video personalization appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

Top digital marketing agencies in the US and around the globe have suddenly started using videos. While we have seen marketing agencies usually use videos in their campaigns, the rapid adoption got us curious to deep-dive and understand what has changed;most importantly how these agencies are using videos. 

Video emails have been there for a while now. In fact, 90% of marketers use videos in their marketing campaigns, says wordstream. However, In the past 12 months, the rise in search for video emails have more than doubled. 

While we noticed a spike in the use of videos or specifically video email from different groups of users such as digital marketers, teachers, online instructors, and technical support teams, one particular group of users stood out. 

In order to explore this trend, we interviewed 60 agencies and studied their success strategy. 

What we found was a systematic process of using videos to generate leads, to efficiently manage accounts and run marketing campaigns for clients.

What has changed for digital marketing agencies

With the digital ad spends($201 billion) finally overtaking the television industry ads spends ($178 billion) in 2017, the digital ad market was expected to reach $348 billion by 2022, the overall outlook for digital agencies looked positive.1 

However, things have taken a drastic turn and the post-COVID expectations of digital marketing agencies are completely different compared to a few months ago. A recent study by Ad World Masters found that,

57% of agencies expect that their annual income will be lower than in 2019

42% of owners and top managers believe that many agencies might go bankrupt.

With companies refactoring their media spends, ‘offline events’ one of the biggest lead generation channels for agencies almost wiped out and direct meetings becoming a thing of the past, digital marketing agencies were forced to be creative in their approach for landing new clients as well as delivering results for their clients. And videos seem to be one such creative step taken by the digital agencies.

How Digital Marketing Agencies using Videos

1. Using videos to prospect and generate leads

When we assessed the growth trajectory of an online marketing agency, we noticed that during the early stages, most of them are built around networks, contacts, and events. As soon as agencies gain expertise in the business they reach out to people who they can help. 

However, when there is an opportunity for growth, the need for a structured sales process kicks in. 

According to a survey report of 1400 agencies by Hubspot – 2019 the State of Agency Selling found “The lack of a clearly defined sales process can hold major implications for how agencies find, and close, new client business” as the major roadblocks.

Generating leads and having a structured sales process was a challenge for marketing agencies even before the global pandemic. The survey reports,

31% does not have a defined sales process at all. 13% found it difficult to get in touch with and connect to, prospects12% struggled to inspire urgency with prospects and encourage them to buy now, versus later.

Source: Hubspot: 2019, The State of Agency Selling

This is because prospecting for an agency is very different from product prospecting. Here companies are outsourcing one of their core operations which would directly impact their top-line revenue.

Hence they want to be sure they are partnering with the right agency with the right expertise.

One of the agencies we spoke to sends out 150 targeted video emails per week. The agency has crafted the well-polished short pitch, shot a video, and had a cadence scheduled using Hubspot.

Each week they were reaching out 150 to 200 prospects. And these video emails are performing better when compared to the cold emails. As one of the Sales Director of a Spain-based agency explains,

“It is not just about the increase in the responses, the way the prospects respond has also changed for the better. I believe it is because they are able to see us as a person, our enthusiasm, voice  and this helps us build trust as opposed to cold email.”

Another independent boutique agency based in the UK has a team of 4 salespeople. Every day salespeople are tasked with sending out 20 introductory video pitches recorded by the sales reps themselves which were followed by a more personalized sales pitch for people who have watched the videos. 

When asked about their journey towards video adoption, the CEO of the agency says, 

“It took us nearly 2 months to get the process right. While some of the sales reps were initially camera-shy, they quickly got on board as soon as they saw it worked for the other team members. While this process of prospecting is not scalable, we are happy with the number of leads they have generated.”

A few other agencies also employ a lead magnet such as useful resources, blogs, ebooks that they want to give away and brief it in a video recording. 

2. Using videos for account management 

Adweek reported that “58% of digital marketers are telling us that they need to prove ROI in order to justify spend and get approval for future budget” 

True story! Agencies are accountable for several reasons. In fact, their abilities to provide high-quality results are attached to their data-driven marketing strategies.

So it is important for agencies to showcase their client’s success in a way that will attract new acquisitions and expand to upsell. 

The agencies we interviewed only knew it too well. Customer reports, projects, and proposals can become extremely long when presented in a pdf format, however, when they are delivered in the form of a video, they consume less time and improve comprehension and customer satisfaction. 

A Sr. Accounts Manager, responsible for handling large accounts said 

 “We used to send monthly reports to clients via ppt. But most often they didn’t have the time to read or even if they read it was hard for them to comprehend.

We now send out a quick screen recorded video showing their results and the progress. It is actually working well for us and our clients are appreciating this mode of communication”

Check out how to create a screen recording + webcam video here.

Replace your monthly pdf and ppt reports such as improvement in website traffic, SEO ranking, social media followers & engagement, and no of leads generated with videos.

Have your account manager walk through the highlights in the screen record video format and attach the detailed report as pdf. This is a smart way to keep all your stakeholders informed of the progress instead of sending them pages of reports.

On the other hand, sending them a video showing additional services you provide will improve your chances of upselling and cross-selling. Include a happy customer story to walk them through the case study in a video to add more credibility. 

3. Experimenting with personalized videos 

The third biggest trend that we observed was the rise of personalized video for agencies in their campaigns. This trend was widely observed among agencies handling large B2C and e-commerce brands. The brands often ran large scale campaigns be it on social media or emails. 

These personalized campaigns are not merely creating a merge field with first name, company, or occupation. Here every data the company has captured in its CRM is used for personalizing the offer, be it text, image, or audio. 

One of the other agency we interviewed ran an interesting personalized video email campaign for a large fitness chain with over 200+ branches. In response to the COVID-19, the fitness chain launched ‘on-demand fitness programs’  and wanted to promote to its subscribers base.

The agency segregated the client based on the interest of the subscribers based on the activity such as Zumba, Pilates, and Yoga, etc. Then delivered a short personalized video of the program of interest and with Call-to-Action at the end of the video. This was then followed with a series of personalized video emails whenever a new trainer or a program was introduced.

The result was that the agency had over 4X in response compared to social media and cold email campaigns.

Digital agencies in space finance and insurance also seem to be bullish in experimenting with personalized videos. Though many agencies do not have large amounts of data or projects to give us the ROI, experimenting with personalized videos gives them an edge in winning new clients as well. There are also video marketing agencies that are thriving in this game. Also there are certain video hosting platforms which would help these marketing agencies in creating completely customized videos

Check our free 3-part video tutorial series on personalized videos for agencies to get started with using personalized videos in your email campaigns.

Conclusion

The sudden adoption of videos among the digital marketing agencies was predominantly driven by the global pandemic as the opportunity for networking, direct meeting, and avenues of lead generation vanished overnight.

While most of the agencies are still experimenting with videos, many of them have seen positive results. Also, quite a few agencies struggle with adoption.

If in the long run agencies can consistently generate leads, land new businesses, and drive results for their clients, personalized videos are here to stay. If you would like to sign up for a free 7-day trial, please click here. 

The post How Digital Marketing Agencies Are Leveraging Videos to Fuel Growth appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

During the current crisis, the world is increasingly turning to digital assets for help. Clearly lockdown and quarantine have left the consumers to fend for themselves from the virtual world both the essentials and the non-essentials. Even face-to-face interactions have been replaced by video conferencing. This drives a dramatic change in human behavior and spending patterns. 

This behavior means that companies should start to adapt to this change. This also dictates some very clear facts that the competition is high and unless companies burnish their digital strategies by including a very distinctive element called personalization, they may not sustain. 

At the start of this year, I received many greetings…but here’s a message that stood out from the crowd. “But Why,” you might ask? It is a personalized video greeting with my name on it!

The video caught my attention as it had my name . Here is a perfect example of a unique, casual, and personalized greeting to thank their loyal customers during the festive season. The objective is to show their appreciation and gratitude to their customers. So the next time around, this gesture makes a favorable impact when making the final purchase decision.

Gartner predicts that organizations that excel in personalization will outsell companies that don’t by 20%.

Simple Personalization vs. Personalized Videos

Personalization goes hand in hand in all stages of the purchase funnel. Awareness, Interest, Desire & Action (AIDA) – to attract and engage your audience. Businesses use personalized Emails in every stage of the buyer’s journey. This is done by adding ‘merge tags’ in the content copy.   

Here is an example of a simple personalization technique.

A simple personalization just includes the customer name and their interests and is drafted with a personalized video message that addresses the customer interest/ pain point. This type of personalization can help in different ways. 

What personalization can help you with :

• Unique user experience that can be enjoyed by individuals. 
• Improves sales conversion and encourages conversation with your customers. 
• A positive impact on conversion rates
• Enhances trust and credibility and also impactful email campaigns
• Encourages engagement and nurtures leads 
• Impacts revenue by contributing to customer loyalty and results in increased customer retention. 

Here is the thing about personalization – it involves more than just the first name. With so many tools available to the marketers in this technology-driven world, companies are able to segment their marketing efforts based on business size, age, gender, industry, job title, company name etc. to appeal specifically to each individual. Also personalization based on geo-targeting is very useful.

Personalizing your video campaign is an imaginative technique to surprise your audience. Get creative and think about all the different ways you can impress your viewers.

Why Simple Personalization Fails

Like you saw in the snapshot of the greeting above, videos deliver a personal connection. It creates an emotional bond right there when brands send a personalized video to a customer.

Marketers use different campaigns at different stages of the buyer’s journey. These promotions typically deliver poor results. We went through several surveys available online and here’s an average compilation of all those results.

These campaigns use personalization but typically fell short in delivering a positive experience. On the other hand, personalized videos have an impact right away. You can use them at each stage of your buyer’s journey. Below mentioned are just a few ideas out of the box to get you started.

Personalized Videos in Marketing

Marketing Campaigns are designed with the ultimate aim of generating new prospects for your business. Once you receive the name, email address, and contact information, the next step is to initiate the communication process.

A personalized video should contain information and details that are relevant to your customer. For example, you can send out a personalized video to your customer that’s based on their product usage, you can send a personalized demo that’s based on your customer’s requirements, or you can also send a customized travel itinerary video according to your customer’s preferences. Options are endless. 

Including such personalized videos in your email campaigns will increase response rates by 2X.

You can kickstart your marketing campaign by using the ‘one-to-many’ technique. In other words, a single mailer with a personalized video can be sent to multiple people. Each person gets the same mail but yet feels special as their details are inserted into the mailer within the video.

Signing up with Hippo Video helps you send personalized video prospecting emails by taking the data from a spreadsheet.

Next is the one-to-one technique, which involves sending a mail to a single person, one at a time. A database containing all their personal details comes in handy when creating the mailer content for the one-to-one strategy.

You can find out the level of interest your viewers have in your business by sending out such a personalized video email.  You can track the video, analyze the watch rate, and viewership reports. With Hippo Video’s Gmail Add-on, you can send one-to-one emails. You can also know the prospect’s intentions, and follow up with them with engagement data.

The personalized video software platform gives you live notifications of who watched your video. Also, the duration, the click rate, and email open rate so that you can approach them accordingly. You can spend more time on the prospects who are interested. Track those who are not too keen, and design newer and better personalization strategies to convert them as well. Click here to know more about personalized video email campaigns.

Personalized Video in Sales

People receive several promotional mailers every day. How can you make sure your brand stands out from the crowd? You can create promotional videos by adding branding features. Also, by utilizing online video marketing platforms, or video personalization software which offers various customization tools. Just with a click of a button you can change your player theme and choose the colors as per your company’s branding standards. This helps in conversion and brand recall.

Other personalization techniques are adding your company name, logo, thumbnail, etc. to increase your brand reach and drive more traffic. Such customizations and settings can help you succeed in creating attractive and engaging videos to convince your leads. By personalizing your videos, you can boost your click-through and open rates, and wow your customers.

Read more on How can Salespeople use Videos to Engage Prospects Better?

Promotional videos can also include customer testimonials from your loyal customers. Enhance the conversion rate with interviews with your patrons speaking about their positive experience with the brand. Convince your leads to get associated with the brand, sign the contract, and ultimately become your customers. Testimonials help to build trust and assurance among your leads and encourages them to take the plunge.

Collect video testimonials, surveys, and feedback from your customers. You can utilize the features offered by online video marketing platforms such as Hippo Video. Collect a video testimonial by sharing a video recording link with your customers. They can then record their message, without even signing up, and finally, send it back to you. The platform also helps you get face-to-face feedback and surveys from your existing customers.

You can also send Welcome videos to your customers after they have signed up or registered with your business. Personalized videos show that you value your customers. Thank you videos lets them know that you appreciate their decision to join your circle. You can get the best out of this by making it an interactive video platform. 

Personalized Video in Support

Happy customers surely generate more business through referrals and becoming repeat customers. Personalized videos such as Introductory and Explainer videos are used to engage and retain your customers.

SOURCE: OUTGROW

 Businesses use introductory videos to provide personalized customer service. Personal details of their support team (such as the name and designation of the staff) are shared with the customers – to get them familiarized with each other. Therefore, a personalized rapport with your customers is built.

Support teams can ask customers to record their issues instead of sending lengthy and exhaustive texts. Additionally, sharing a video link with your customers, they can record their issues, and send them back to you. Help your customers to solve their problems quickly by creating personalized explainer videos.

Click here to read a case study on how CloudChoice increased productivity by 2X by using such videos.

Why Personalized Videos Win

Well, sending personalized videos not only increases the click-through rates and open-rates but also ensures that all your mailers not going unseen. The reader’s attention is instantly captured when they see their own name, company name, logo, and other specialized tidbits. Therefore audiences get interested and consequently get motivated to take the desired action.

We are going to see an upward trend in the adoption of personalized videos among businesses. So, wave your magic wand, entertain and delight your audiences, and customer success is guaranteed.

How do you use personalized videos to wow your customers? Share with us your ideas/feedback in the ‘Comments’ section below.

The post How to ‘WOW’ your customers using Personalized videos appeared first on Hippovideo.io.

Limitless Webinar Series brings yet another webinar where we share industry experience, strategy, best practices and most importantly actionable inputs that you can readily implement.

Download Ebook: Winning Strategies That Help Close The Sale, From Top 18 Sales Leaders

Featuring Sandy, marketing and communications specialist at Hippo Video, this webinar helps sales professionals on how to re-imagine their sales strategy using videos. Let’s dive in. 

The webinar is all about re-imagining your sales strategy with videos and we have covered 

• strategies for remote-working sales teams, 
• how to use video to increase productivity in your sales outreach, 
• improve your prospect engagement with personalized videos, 
• pointers on tracking and closing deals with effective video communication. 

Register here to watch the complete webinar now. 

In-Short:

Question: Why should you re-imagine your sales strategy?

The situation we are facing right now is unprecedented. It is one of the biggest news stories right now. It has affected various industries from travel to industry events to global supply chains. None of us has seen anything like this in the last 100 years. Be it governments or businesses, there is no playbook or manual on how to handle this situation. While the governments are discussing trillion-dollar stimulus packages, businesses have to try to keep their head above water.

Question: Why is it time for businesses to be brave and creative?

With social distancing having become the norm, sales teams have no other option other than selling remotely. So sales folks need new tools, new  strategies and new tactics to adapt to this situation. The idea is not just to survive but thrive and come out stronger. It is essential that sales professionals have to find new and creative ways to sell. 

Question: How to re-channelize remote selling?

There are a couple of things here. There are some things you shouldn’t do. A big No to some of the things we have already been doing. 

Second, we need to re-think the selling channels. We can definitely learn some things from the countries that are 2-3 weeks ahead of this. We can look at the things businesses are doing and we can learn a lot from them.

Most importantly, we need to rethink the way we prospect, we nurture, generate leads, qualify leads, and close them.

Question: What has changed in sales?

All your prospects are working from home and so are you. You might have had a target of getting X number of meetings in the month of May. That is not happening.

Almost all the events and conferences are either canceled, postponed, or have gone virtual. So almost every salesperson is an inside sales representative. You have no chance of meeting your prospect in-person.

Question: What you should be doing to increase sales?

First thing is to have empathy. Second, be authentic. Third, genuinely try to help. 

Register here to watch the complete webinar now. 

The post Re-imagining the sales strategy – What makes it the need of the hour? appeared first on Hippovideo.io.