The post How to Turn a Blog Post into a Video in 5 Minutes [Traffic Hack] appeared first on TrafficGenerationCafe.com. Don't miss Ana's free Bite-Size Traffic Hacks email series - short actionable traffic tips to double your traffic in no time.
Technology has changed the meaning of many words over time. When we picture a Tablet, we no longer think of the great stone slabs that the ten commandments were written on, for example. Trolls aren’t multi-coloured dolls with frizzy hair, but rather angry people on the internet. But technology has also given us its share of words — and few are funnier than the word dongle.
The etymology of “dongle” is actually largely unknown. The Atlantic posited 7 theories ranging from adaptations of poetry to, literally, someone making it up. Regardless of its origins, the word is a common part of our tech lexicon. It’s also very funny if, like myself, you are blessed with the sense of humor of a small child. Say it aloud. Dongle. Accentuate the ‘o’. Doooongle.
It’s a funny word.
But, as Zoom would like to point out, it’s also a word that is slowly being forced out of our lexicon by wireless products usurping the need for dongles. Dongles, at their core, connect two pieces of technology together. Wireless is changing that. And Zoom contacted the hilarious Tripp and Tyler to point this out:
To me, this video is a work of art. I’m always a big fan of companies that can cram as much tastefully presented innuendo into one video as possible, and Tripp and Tyler hit a homerun. To me, the real star of this video is the poor guy at home on a conference call, trying to understand what’s going on, and why everyone keeps talking about their dongles. The confusion-to-disgust pathway on his face before he quietly hangs up the phone is perfectly executed.
Tripp and Tyler have a long history of parodying office culture, especially remote working, as their more popular viral video A Conference Call in Real Life shows:
This video currently has just under 14 million views, and I know I’ve personally seen it five or six times.
For many people who work in offices, the dreaded “do I have the right connection to make this projector work” issue comes up almost daily. Doubly so if you tend to speak at a lot of conferences, or travel often. Projectors always seem to require the connection you didn’t remember to pack, and I can speak from my own experience that many a frantic trip to the nearest Staples or Apple store has been made mere hours before a big talk to a packed house. It’s no fun, and Zoom is working to solve that by making connecting to TVs and projectors easier.
But how do you get this point across in an industry crowded with solutions to everyday office woes? Look at who your audience is already laughing at. Tripp and Tyler have a loyal following among office grunts like myself. The Conference Call video is basically an accurate representation of 20% of my week, and their other videos, like Email in Real Life (a clever advertisement for Workfront) are all spot-on office jokes that are easy to relate to. For Zoom to get their point across, partnering with Tripp and Tyler was an easy win. Take recognizable faces that produce a very specific type of humor for a very specific audience, and get them to use that humor to talk about your pain point.
The dongle jokes are hilarious, but the underlying joke in the video is simple — people hate trying to find the right connector to connect to every device in their life, and for presentations, Zoom makes that easy. Simple, effective, and no dongle needed.
Earlier this month, our own Katie Nielson confessed to a deep love of Key & Peele – any internet comedians that keep you coming back for more? Tell us in the comments!
The post Check Out This Video: Put Your Dongle Away appeared first on Vidyard.
YouTube now has more than 1 billion users and thousands of high-reach content creators to partner with, making the Google-owned social media video platform and network one of the largest sites in the world and a goldmine for socially-savvy digital marketers.
Simply producing and publishing engaging videos, however, doesn’t always guarantee that a branded or brand-sponsored YouTube video will be viewed, liked, and shared. So how can marketers ensure that audiences will be receptive to their YouTube videos?
YouTube has become increasingly inundated with content. Its users watch millions of hours and generate billions of views each day with an average viewing session at 40 minutes on mobile. So today’s most successful brand marketers must know which type of YouTube videos are most popular with audiences and understand how to develop highly-shareable “viral” campaigns around these ever-evolving viewer trends.
To determine the most popular types of YouTube videos, Mediakix first identified the top 300 YouTube influencer channels, then analyzed each content creator’s videos from the first half of 2015 to ascertain which videos received the highest number of views and social engagements. Based on these findings, we distilled the most popular YouTube videos down into the following 13 categories:
While taking advantage of these findings and trends can offer an advantage over competitors, marketers should keep in mind that providing genuine value—either through entertainment or information—is key to developing impactful YouTube videos and YouTube video campaigns.
What type of video do you (or, okay, your audience) view most on YouTube? Share with us in the comments!
The post The Most Popular Types Of Videos On YouTube [Infographic] appeared first on Vidyard.
What’s on your list of “Wants”? Other than a unicorn or a nice ice cream sandwich. Is video on that list?
Wait, that’s probably a silly question. EVERYONE wants video. So let me rephrase: If you’re part of an employee communications team, is video on your “Needs” list? If it’s not, check your forehead – that ice cream sandwich might have given you permanent brain freeze.
Did you know that even as far back as 2012, 93% of internal communication professionals believed that video was becoming essential to internal communications? And that sentiment is only growing stronger year after year: video is no longer a nice-to-have for internal communications teams. It’s a must-have.
Video solves an abundant number of challenges that internal communicators face every day. It’s why communicators who are in-the-know make sure to fold their hands and pray for video every night before getting in bed, or wish upon the first star they see, or use the wishbone during the holidays to try to make their video dreams come true. Sound over the top? Let me tell you all the ways video will make your communications more powerful:
Brace yourself—this might scare you: 70% of US employees have admitted they aren’t engaged at work, according to one study. While you may not have known the exact number, and it may fluctuate, you’re probably not all that surprised. One of the biggest challenges communicators face is how to reach employees who are too busy, too bored, or too uninterested in what their company has to say.
That’s where video can help. Think of all the video you watch; we enjoy it so much that we watch 4 billion videos on YouTube per day, and we spend 6 billion hours watching video on YouTube per month. Nothing speaks to us the way video does; it’s personal, it’s relatable, it feels human in a way that text never can. It’s why people watch how-to videos on YouTube instead of reading a big manual. Simply, video is the next best thing to being there in person. There’s a lot of science that explains why, and if you’re interested, check out this blog post.
Our love of video means that we demand it in our workplace, too. A recent stat showed that 59% of executives would rather watch video than read text. You can bet that number is comparable for your whole employee base. So why stick with the traditional tools? Lengthy emails just aren’t cutting it anymore, and your important messages are likely just getting deleted. Even text-based Intranet pages may not be enough: In a survey from only a few years ago, only 13% of employees said they used their company’s intranet daily, while 31% said they never do. If you’re relying on email and Intranet, you need to strengthen your strategies with video. Give employees what they crave, and you’ll find that employee engagement strengthens.
Have you stayed away from video because you’re afraid to put confidential information on YouTube? Don’t let security concerns scare you away from video. All you need is a video platform for your business. Instead of residing on YouTube, you can embed your videos right into your Intranet pages, or offer your videos on “sharing pages” that seamlessly fit into your Intranet or website for a clean, distraction-free experience.
You can even add a video experience into your emails, which has been shown to increase email open rates and engagement (especially if you include the word “Video” in the subject line of your email). You don’t have to worry about whether it will be too big to send or if it will appear properly for everyone. All you need to do is add a thumbnail image, or “splash screen” of your video (along with the play button to indicate it’s a video) into the body of your email. Then when your audience clicks on it, it can open up on an Intranet page of your choosing, or a clean and distraction-free “sharing page” like this one that we created for one of our event videos.
You can even create a Video Hub, which acts like a video library on your website or Intranet (which can be locked down for employees only). A Video Hub is can be organized into topics, creator, video styles, or anything else you like, and it’s searchable so if you or your employees are trying to find past content, it’s all there right when you need it. Probably sounds a lot more tempting than what you’re using now, right? Here’s an example of what a section of our own Video Hubs looks like, or explore the full hub for yourself.
The bonus? Employees can access them on any device, and from any location. So if some employees are based in regions where access to YouTube is banned or limited, they can still get all the vital information they need.
What are you doing now to determine if your employees are really engaging with your messages? Are you checking whether your emails are being opened, or how much traffic you’re getting on certain Intranet pages? Those are all well and good, but they’re a starting point. Just because an employee opens your email, how do you know she read it? If someone lands on a certain Intranet page, did the page just sit on their screen while they did something else?
Video on the other hand, gives you what you need to know about your employees and your content. Get aggregate data on each video, like where your audience dropped off. Did they stop watching after 10 seconds? Or did they watch 80% of a 5-minute video? Were there any parts they skipped or rewatched? All this data tells you what kind of content is working and what isn’t, so you know what your employees are interested in, which messages to strengthen, and which ones don’t resonate. This “digital body language” of your viewers gives you a true indication of their engagement – perhaps even truer than asking them, since “body language” doesn’t lie.
You can also find out what individuals are watching, and even see a history of their viewing behavior. Why is this helpful? Well, imagine you created a video or series of videos that every employee needed to watch to the end in order to meet compliance needs. This data will tell you exactly what you need to know.
With true information on how audiences and individuals are responding, you’re better equipped to strengthen your content and employee engagement in the future.
Gone are the days when employees will accept getting messages, goals, and company values relayed to them in a one-way “communication”. Employees want to feel like they’re a part of something, that their work matters, and they are valued and heard. That’s how they become more engaged with a company, work harder, and feel more satisfied and connected.
Video can help you create exactly the experience your employees are searching for, because with video, you can offer a two-way conversation in ways that other mediums don’t allow. What do I mean? If you’re using a video platform, you can add calls-to-action onto your videos to get employees to take an action you want them to take, like visiting a page, watching another video, and more. Or you can include a form in a video to ask your employees their feedback and opinions. (If you like the sounds of that and want to see what else you could do, you might want to check this out.)
These kinds of two-way interactive elements in your videos can help you strengthen your relationships with employees so that your communications feel more like conversations and less like trickled-down mandates. Try it for yourself. You’ll see what it can do you for your company – you might even notice a 20-25% jump in productivity by employees who now feel more connected.
Imagine if you could share vital company information more quickly than ever, and have it be remembered. Well here’s an interesting fact: 65% of people are visual learners. And another one:
one minute of video is the equivalent of 1.8 million words. Which means your employees can absorb a lot more vital information in one minute through video than they could in any other medium. And they’ll not only enjoy it, they’ll remember it, too.
This is just the beginning of how video can help your company become more efficient. Think about Town Hall meetings and company updates with the executive team. Instead of getting everyone together in another location, setting everything up, and trying to get through all the technical delays or other hiccups of these kinds of events, you could offer key messages in video form, whether it’s live or on-demand where employees could digest them at their leisure.
Or, think of complex material you need to educate your employees on. Communicators know the golden rule of “show, don’t tell”, and video is perfect for that. Suddenly employees can see for themselves how something is supposed to work, instead of having to read and puzzle through tons of text. For example, show them where the fire exits are in case of an emergency, instead of having to create and email maps that some struggle to follow or remember. Show them through a screen-share video how to complete a benefits enrollment form, and suddenly the benefits team, and the employees filling out the forms, will breathe a sigh of relief. And these are just a taste of the ways video can help.
In a previous blog post, I talked about how images that elicit emotional responses cause our brains to release a chemical called oxytocin. This chemical helps us form empathy, leading to emotional connections, and even helps to build trust in a product or brand. What does this mean in terms of video? Well, it’s full of images that elicit emotional responses! When we see people on camera, we imagine that they are conversing with us. We see their body language and non-verbal cues, and we relate to them in ways that words on a page can’t re-create. We start to feel emotionally connected in their story…which helps build awareness, trust, and other positive emotions.
What does all that lead to? When employees feel positive emotions toward their company, they feel more loyal. They’re willing to work harder, think more positively, and connect in ways they wouldn’t otherwise. These engaged, happy employees create better, more innovative work.
Beyond emotional connection, when you offer your videos in a branded sharing page, Video Hub, or in a video player that is branded with your company’s logo and colours, you’re highlighting again and again who these communications are from, and creating a sense of unity for your employees – you’re all working toward the same goals, sharing the same values, and upholding a strong culture together. That’s a pretty powerful message.
Did you know that, according to IABC, 60% of internal communicators are still not measuring internal communication? It’s probably not a big surprise – the effect of communications has always been hard to nail down and measure. There are no sales numbers, no quantities to hit, no closed deals that you can definitively say occurred because of employee communications.
But with video, you have some effective tools to helping you prove the return on investment of your work and your team. With the data that is provided by a video platform, you have clarity on how much employees are engaged, and how that engagement strengthens over time. You can illustrate that you are creating better and better content that resounds with employees, helping your team and other employees achieve greater productivity and efficiency, and strengthening employee loyalty with your brand. Video offers you the opportunity to start qualifying and quantifying things that once seemed impossible to do so, so you can not only prove your worth, but feel your worth.
You don’t need to get tons of fancy cameras and lights and equipment and green screens and a production teams…your videos can be as simple and inexpensive (or as fancy!) as you want or need. You could get one great camera and clean out a meeting room to create your video shoots, or you can even use your own phone! Our own CEO sent out a company-wide video that he shot on his own phone as he was walking down the street, and sent it through email. When we clicked on it, it opened in a sharing page, and we were brought right into the experience. We felt like we were part of of the action, matching stride-for-stride with our CEO, hearing his thoughts and feeling his excitement. While I can’t show you the video (being an internal message, it’s confidential, after all!), it was a pretty powerful experience (much more so than a boring old text-based email would be!)
So go ahead! Don’t just wish for video—ask for it! Your prayers may just be answered, especially considering at least 87% of executives believe video has a great impact on an organization!
Do you use video now at your organization? How has it helped you connect with your employees and strengthen your results?
The post Why Video Is The Answer To Employee Communications Teams’ Prayers appeared first on Vidyard.
Going beyond email gates and surveys, Vidyard enables dynamic in-video content such as real-time pricing, social media updates and choose-your-own-adventure demos
KITCHENER, Ontario – September 28, 2016 – Vidyard, the video platform for business, today launched its new interactive video player, giving marketers, sales teams and others users powerful tools to improve viewer engagement.
Organizations that aren’t using Vidyard’s new player for their B2B video campaigns are limited to annotating videos with small text boxes in a corner of their video. With Vidyard’s advanced annotations powered by HTML and JavaScript, the possibilities become nearly endless. Users can add real-time pricing to videos so that it’s always up-to-date, integrate other services such as help desk ticketing software into video, overlay lead capture forms and surveys, or insert a “buy now” button directly in the player to convert customers while their full attention is on the product or service.
“Video in and of itself is already more engaging than other media, but when you add interactive features, the experience becomes that much richer,” said Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard. “Like personalization, interactivity pulls the viewer in to the content and makes them part of the story while providing deeper insights into what they want.”
Powerful capabilities with Vidyard’s new interactive player include:
With its new advanced annotations and interactive video capabilities, Vidyard continues its record of innovation in the video marketing industry. Vidyard is the only video platform provider to offer advanced interactive video, video personalization and audience engagement insights fully integrated with leading marketing automation, CRM and business analytics solutions.
Check out this example of the new interactivity features:
About Vidyard
Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, TD Ameritrade, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.
Media Contact:
Brad Hem
Phone: (281) 543-0669
press@vidyard.com
The post New Vidyard Interactive Player Makes Videos More Engaging appeared first on Vidyard.
How to Use SlideShare to Drive Traffic to Your Blog – with Ana Hoffman
Episode: 279
Who: Ana Hoffman
Blog / Website: Traffic Generation Cafe, SlideShare page
Are you getting the most out of SlideShare?
Did you know that you can use SlideShare to drive traffic to your blog?
In this episode, I’m talking to Ana Hoffman from TrafficGenerationCafe.com, a blog that brings together the most profit-pulling free traffic generation tips, tricks and resources. Originally from communist Russia, Ana moved to the states in 1996 to climb the corporate ladder. After realizing that she didn’t want to trade the quality of life she always dreamed of for money, she tried modeling and traveling.
After being unemployed for awhile, she decided to venture into the online business space and has seen a significant amount of success. Ana’s approach is to test out lots of different strategies for driving traffic, and she never shies away from a challenge. She’s been seeing huge benefits from using SlideShare, and she’s here today to share her tactics with you!
Ana was on the podcast way back in 2011, so if you want to know more about her backstory, head over to http://ift.tt/2d6dGdA. For this episode, let’s focus on what Ana has been up to since then.
She started her blog in 2010, and the first thing she says when I ask for an update is that she hasn’t stopped blogging! Ana compares blogging to a marriage: you know that there will be ups and downs, but you have to stick with it and keep working on it.
Ana’s blog: Traffic Generation Cafe
So what are some of the big ups and downs? Ana says that the need to constantly change her marketing strategies has been both a blessing and a curse. We’ve all been there, right? Just when you think you’ve got a handle on Facebook marketing, they change the algorithm.
It can be frustrating, but Ana says that it also keeps her on her toes and drives her creativity. She loves to learn new things, and you’re always learning something new in online marketing.
One of the biggest changes that Ana has noticed in the past several years is a shift away from SEO and organic traffic from Google. Although she loves SEO, this change has allowed her to really focus on writing and building relationships, which she loves.
So which traffic streams are working for Ana right now? The most important one is relationship-building. Relationships take time and effort to build, but Ana says that if she time for nothing else in her business, she would focus on building relationships.
For Ana, it’s all about creating a meaningful presence online. It takes time and maintenance, but if you have relationships and you’re being mentioned by other bloggers, your social media traffic will go up and search engine traffic will follow.
So how do you build these relationships?
Build Relationships on Twitter
Ana says that Twitter is a great place to start. Several times a day, Ana will go on Twitter, look at who is interacting with her, and try to learn something about these people. If someone is retweeting you or quoting you on a regular basis, reach out to that person and say “thank you, I really appreciate that you’re sharing my content.”
Why? Because they didn’t have to do that. Your content obviously resonated with them in some way, and they felt compelled to share it with other people. Most of your audience are usually just consumers of your content, but this person felt they had to share it with more people.
If you listen and pay attention to the people around you, you’ll find lots of places to build relationships. Sometimes it’s about offering something: Ana will often offer help and advice to bloggers just starting out when they interact with her on social media.
Sometimes, you also need to step outside your comfort zone. If you really, really want to meet somebody, go out of your way to meet them in person. Ana recently used this strategy to meeting Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting. She describes him as a leader in SEO: he has the biggest clients out there. Everyone talks about him.
When Ana decided she wanted to meet him in person, she drove way out of her way to attend a conference just to meet him. He was the only reason she went there. But as a result of that meeting, Ana and Eric are now good friends and meet up on a regular basis. And as a by-product of that relationship, Ana has access to one of the greatest SEO minds out there. So by pushing herself out of her comfort zone and stepping out from behind the computer to meet Eric in person, Ana was able to create a truly valuable and meaningful relationship.
The point is that there are always people in your industry that you can and should build relationships with. Sometimes, it can pay to look a little bit outside of your niche, too. Who could you talk to and share expertise with who isn’t your direct competitor. Get creative! Think about complementary niches.
SlideShare
Ana tells me that SlideShare is such an unexplored area of marketing, which is why she loves it and feels compelled to conquer it. It’s hard to argue with her results: after 30 days of using SlideShare, Ana had published 9 presentations. That resulted in 243,000 views on her blog. After 30 days!
Think about starting from scratch on any other platform. On YouTube, you’d be lucky to get 40 or 50 views in your first month.
Part of the reason that SlideShare works so well is because it isn’t too crowded. It’s a lot easier to be heard there than it is on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook.
The first thing that Ana does is reduce her blog post into short blurbs to use on her slides. These can be really, really, really short. You’ve to give enough information so that your audience understands your message, but you also need to leave them wanting more. The point of using SlideShare is to drive traffic back to your blog, so don’t give everything away in your slides!
Once Ana has her short sentences ready, she’ll use images to create a PowerPoint slideshow, but you can use whatever software you have available. If you want to see a great example of Ana’s SlideShare content, check out her post on Emoji Marketing.
Emoji Marketing by Ana Hoffman
It’s really important to create content specifically for SlideShare if you want to get a lot of views. It needs to be coherent as a single unit, heavy on visuals, and light on text. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just do a very concise version of your blog post. For example, in Ana’s Emoji Marketing slide deck, most of her slides just have a short sentence each:
“All the cool kids are doing it.”
“It’s the hottest thing in marketing right now.”
“Our brain is hardwired to make sense of visual information.”
The slide deck needs to tell a story, and it needs to draw you in. It’s a good idea to create suspense by asking the audience questions. Make them want to know more. Take the reader on a journey.
Make them want to know more. Ask questions.
At the same time, you need to keep it moving. Don’t let them get bored! No paragraphs allowed.
A sense of humor also goes a long way. Be creative with the images that you choose.
Be creative with the images you choose.
Make sure that your text is easily visible against the background, too. Ana uses an overlaid, semi-transparent foreground. It’s really easy to do in PowerPoint: just insert a rectangle shape, choose the correct color and transparency, and then add your text. Fiddle with the formatting until it looks right.
Ana recommends choosing colors for your text that stand out, but keep it simple. Stick to a maximum of two colors and two fonts for most slide decks.
It’s really important to include a single call to action that you repeat multiple times throughout the slide deck. Again: keep it simple. When you give your audience options or send them in lots of different directions, they might feel overwhelmed or confused and decide not to do anything. Pick one clear call to action and repeat it.
Start including a single call to action in the middle of the post
Ana suggests putting your first call to action, with a link to the blog post, somewhere in the middle of the deck. If you put it too early, they don’t trust you yet, so they’re not likely to click. By the middle of the content, they are hopefully intrigued enough to want more information. You should repeat the call to action at least once at the end.
Ana says you should also include a picture of yourself at some point because that helps to create a personal connection. You should also draw attention to live links in your presentations. If you look at Ana’s Emoji Marketing slide deck, you’ll see that she has used emojis to highlight her links.
You can track how many readers are clicking on which links using Google Analytics. You can do this with Google Analytics URL builder, so it doesn’t require a lot of technical skills.
One more tip: you want to get on SlideShare’s homepage. The homepage features top presentations, and these are hand-curated by the SlideShare marketing team. Ana had a presentation featured on the homepage that now has a total of 180,000 views after 18 months.
SlideShare Home Page – Top Slideshares
SlideShare Home Page – Featured Slideshares
How do you get there? There’s not algorithm because the featured presentations are hand selected. So all you can do is just create the best presentations that you can. It’s obviously worth it!
So you’re creating content specific to SlideShare: a compact version of your blog post with compelling images put together as a slideshow. But Ana recommends being efficient with your content. So you can repurpose that slideshow by adding voiceover and turning it into a video.
Then you can upload the video to YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. You can use it to create a blog post or update on LinkedIn. And you can embed the YouTube video directly into SlideShare, too. You can also save the images from your slideshow and repurpose them as Pinterest and Instagram posts. If you look at the version of the Emoji Marketing post that’s on her blog, you can see a lot of these in action.
All of these tactics won’t necessarily work for every post. You’ve got to look at your content and consider what the best strategies are. But remember that everyone absorbs information differently. Some people will want to read, but others might prefer to listen or to look at images. By being efficient with your content and presenting it in many different ways, you’re reaching a much larger audience.
For example, Ana creates two separate videos to go along with most of her blog posts. The first one is really short, like 30-60 seconds. It’s just a summary of the post that she uses in place of a text excerpt on her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter. She knows that these videos are more engaging for her audience because she’s getting a lot more clicks since she started using them!
The second one is basically an expanded version of her SlideShare presentation, with extra details in the voiceover for added value. It’s a little bit longer, but it’s just another way to present the content to her audience.
Head over to Ana’s blog, trafficgenerationcafe.com, and sign up to her email list. I don’t subscribe to that many things these days, but I never miss Ana’s weekly Marketing Skinny. It’s a digest of all the important marketing news for the week, which Ana reads and curates for you. It’s all stuff that is actually important to your business. I highly recommend it.
She’ll also send you “traffic hacks,” which are short, actionable tips that you can implement right away. They’ll take you 2 minutes to read, but you’ll see a huge benefit from them.
How to use SlideShare to drive Traffic to your Blog – from an interview with Ana Hoffman
The post How to Use SlideShare to Drive Traffic to Your Blog – with Ana Hoffman appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.
Last week I snuck into our R&D lab on the second floor of our awesome new office and saw a few TOP SECRET things that I probably shouldn’t have, one of which was something labeled “New Vidyard Interactive Player”. And then I got busted by our VP of Engineer, Tyler Campaigne.
I was in trouble. He knew I had seen too much. So we made a deal: I keep my mouth shut until this new product is released, and he’ll let me be the first to break the news to everyone.
Finally that day is here! Meet Vidyard’s New Interactive Player, a monster upgrade to our already-awesome HTML5 video player!
Check out our video on your desktop to get the full experience:
You already know that keeping your customers engaged is everything. It’s why you’re using video for sales and marketing and why you’re more concerned about tracking value rather than views.
Our previous HTML5 player was at the top of its game, but at Vidyard we don’t stop innovating. Whether it’s personalized video, calls-to-action, or our powerful analytics, we make sure you have all the tools you could imagine to guide your customers on a journey, and keep them engaged every step of the way.
And that’s where our new Interactive Player comes in. It takes engagement beyond what you thought was possible by enabling your viewers to interact with your videos in new, powerful ways…essentially creating a two-way conversation. Pretty incredible, right?
We’re so passionate about this stuff that we could talk about it forever. But we know you have a lot of work to do (and maybe even some playing around with the new player yourself, hmm?) so we’ll break it down to the gist by sharing the main ingredients of the player with you:
If you’ve spent any time on YouTube, you’ve probably seen annotations before. They tend to be either small links that pop up in the corner of the video, or big obtrusive boxes that overlay on the entire video. Either way, if you’re anything like me, you’re pretty quick to click the x and dismiss them. We’ve improved upon the annotations you know by keeping the usefulness, but upping the experience. We’ve added an entire interactive layer on top of your videos. These aren’t your father’s annotations. These are Advanced Annotations. More on that in a minute.
We’ve also made it even easier to gather the information you want from your viewers. Simply add a fully-customizable form to any part of your video. The information the viewer enters, as well as detailed analytics about the viewer’s engagement levels and behaviours, will be pushed directly into your Marketing Automation Platform.
And, you can also turn a regular video into a powerful lead generation tool with our “Calls-To-Action” tool, which comes in two varieties: Pop-out CTAs to snag the attention of an engaged viewer, and Final CTAs to encourage post-video actions such as signing up for an event. Setting these up are easy with our WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor.
The better question is, “What can’t I do?”
Note: That sounds like hyperbole. So much, in fact, that our Brand and Creative Manager told me I had to take that line out. But when I showed her what the New Interactive Player can do, she said I could keep it in. Thanks Em!
Seriously. This puppy can do almost anything. Whether you want to drop in a traditional text-based annotation, we’ve got you covered with a number of pre-built options and a WYSIWYG builder to make it easy to get started.
Or if you’re feeling creative, spice things up a bit with CSS and Javascript! Think of our new interactive player as a platform on top of which you can build anything you want. With a little bit of HTML knowledge you’ll be creating engaging content in minutes.
Oh, you want to know how you can use it? Here’s how:
Marketers will love the ability to get the right content in front of the right people at the right time. Toss a downloadable document or a link to register for a webinar right on top of the video, encouraging prospects to take action right then and there, while they are most engaged.
Salespeople will find all kinds of benefits. You can guide specific viewers on their own unique journey by offering up links to other videos from within videos. True choose-your-own-adventure videos are now possible, keeping viewers engaged like crazy (and of course you’ll be able to track the journey they took, and send that data back to your CRM).
Yes, the new Interactive Player is also built for Support teams! Add ticket management capabilities right into a video. Already sending your customers how-to videos? Give your customer the ability to close the ticket and provide feedback directly in the video.
Well, this is going to be a lot of work…
Ha! That’s not how we work at Vidyard! You don’t need to do anything. If you’re a Vidyard customer your account has already been upgraded. At no cost! Simply add an event to your timeline and be amazed.
I’m looking forward to seeing what you create! Oh and Tyler, if you’re reading this, can I tell them about that other new thing?
The post Announcing Vidyard’s New Interactive Video Player appeared first on Vidyard.
While the idea of starting a blog can be quite appealing, if you have never done it before, you may have no idea where to start. The fact is, you are not alone. Most people who embark on the endeavor to begin a blog have to learn from the ground up.
There is good news. Starting a blog and actually making it successful is much easier than you would have ever imagined. Some tips, help and steps you can use to begin your own blog can be found here.
Hosting and Domain
One of the first things you need to do is register your domain name. There are countless places you can do this. When registering your domain name, you just choose what you want your blog to be called and then pay the fee. In many cases you don’t even have to set up your WordPress site first, since this can all be handled on the actual setup of the domain.
Choose Your Theme
The majority of blogs today run on WordPress. This is easy to use and provides you with a professional looking blog site without a huge cost. When you install WordPress you will have to choose a theme. This is what creates the style and look for your blog. One of the best features is that you don’t have to be a coder to use WordPress – virtually any average Joe can successfully set up a blog site with this platform. There are both free and paid themes to choose from, so be sure to browse around until you find something that sticks out and that you like.
Spend some Time Modifying Your Blog
Once you have set up your domain, hosting and your WordPress, you can spend some time tweaking the way the layout looks. You can install Widgets and other features that make the blog unique and that create the look you really want.
Write a Post
Once you have published your newly made blog site and it is live, you are set to write your very first blog post. Talk about something you are interested in and that you will be able to write in an engaging manner. Don’t choose dull or boring topics that don’t really excite you. If you do this, no one will read them.
Don’t Forget About SEO
When trying to write your post be sure to structure it in a way that will actually help your new blog site rank in Google. For example, you need to pay attention to factors such as SEO, meta tags and descriptions and other factors that Google wants to see. If you fail to do this, your blog will not make any traction, which means that it will have limited visibility. WordPress offers a plugin that is called Yoast, it is free. This will help you check the SEO “goodness” of your blog. If something does not add up, then the plugin will make suggestions on how you can make it better. If you are new to blogging, this can be extremely beneficial.
When you take some time to set you blog up right, you will find that you can actually gain traffic and peak people’s interest to stop by often and see what you have to say. When you really put some effort into creating this blog, you will find that success is just a short time and a bit of effort away. Don’t underestimate the power of a quality blog – it can help you have your voice and opinions heard and may even make you some money.
Original post: Tips to Help You Start a Successful Blog
Meet the Team is our monthly chance to introduce you to the fabulous, quirky, talented people that work at Vidyard, using our favorite medium — video! For this episode, we caught up with Katie Nielsen, Technical Writer here at Vidyard. Discover why her dad is the biggest influence on her professional life, and see the funniest dog impression we’ve ever caught on camera:
Katie had lots more to say than just doing the bow-wow-wow, so here are a few other fun facts about her:
What brought you to Vidyard?
I heard about the job at Vidyard from my dad. He sent me the listing. I think he knew Vidyard’s reputation, and thought “this is your crew.” So I looked around the website and got a really strong sense of the community and the vibe of Vidyard, so I applied. When I came in for the interview, the culture of the place shone through, and I thought “this is a magical place. I want to be here for a long time.”
That’s what attracted me to the job, and it’s also a place with a lot of flexibility, and creativity, which is something that is not always easy to find in technical writing.
What is your favorite video on the internet?
It’s difficult to choose just one favorite video on the internet, as there are many of them. However, the one video series that never disappoints me is anything by Key & Peele. I will sit for hours and watch their clips on YouTube and have lost several weekends to their entertainment. I like using funny videos to relax, so I’ll put on a video on my laptop while I’m folding laundry or doing dishes or something mundane. It just makes the chores a little more bearable, so thank you Key & Peele you have made me laugh!
What is your favorite place to eat in Kitchener, and what do you love to eat there?
My go-to hangout spot in Kitchener is The Bent Elbow. It’s up on Weber st. And I love it because when you first look at it, it’s just in some plaza next to a dispensary and a tax service, so you don’t think anything of it. But when you go inside it’s this famous local place! All the food is made by hand, they have like 37 or so beers on tap, and the best thing about it is they have so many beers on tap that you can try something new every time. Even if you’re really into craft beer they will always have something you have never heard of, so there’s always an opportunity try something new and interesting. The food is fantastic because they make it all in house, and I would recommend their beer ketchup and fries because it’s delicious!
And as a bonus, here’s some pictures of Katie’s adorable dog, Toady:
The post Meet the Vidyard Team, Video Style: Katie Nielsen appeared first on Vidyard.
What if you could make your sales job easier by using video intelligence to help determine exactly when to follow up with a prospect and what message to deliver?
How would it feel to see your name at the top of the leader board month after month?
From the CIA to the NFL, everyone is looking for an edge to stay out in front ahead of their competitor or foe. Better intelligence equals better endgame results.
Years ago the salesperson was taught to ‘spray and pray’ to prospect — blindly taking pages from a phone book and calling or walking into building after building aimlessly on the basis of numbers equals results. Not anymore!
Which is where video intelligence comes in – to help salespeople stay ahead of the game and crush their numbers. When you use video to engage prospects, you have tools at your fingertips to see what videos engage, when the prospect is most likely to open and view the video, and what stage they are at. All that data means you can skip unnecessary steps in your follow-up, and speed up the sales process. As an added bonus, you’ll avoid annoying your prospects by pitching something they don’t need or have any interest in.
When you have intelligence gathered from video that tells you what the client is interested in, and the best time to engage with them, it’s like you’re starting on 3rd base with no outs. You have a leg up on the competition and you have a solution in hand that increases the probability of closing an engaged prospect.
Because of this intel, the salesperson also knows who not to engage with. Video helps weed out low probability prospects, but don’t forget to keep them in your database and nurture them until they do become a higher probability.
When you have better targeted leads that have a higher probability of closing, the salesperson can not only build up a solid, sizeable funnel, and the intel helps you close quicker. Sales turnaround time lets the salesperson make more quality approaches to qualified and interested prospects which helps create more sales.
When a prospect can see you, they have a better chance of knowing, liking, and trusting you because they can put a name to a face. You can leverage your personality to win clients over, show yourself an authority in your space, and make your intangibles tangible by presenting that in your video.
Make a video where you tell a story about a client you helped, lay out what the challenge was, the multiple solutions you came up with, and why you chose the solution that ultimately helped your client. This helps your prospect identify with the problem, see the value you provided and think of you as an authority. More authority means more conversions!
Sales Reps will scramble to find a solution that puts highly probable closes in front of them. High percentage prospects that come with analytics to help the sales rep know when and what to focus on as they make the follow up call/approach.
Would you rather smile and dial, or have competitive intel in your hands to help crush your numbers? When you customize your video to your targeted prospects, the conversion ratio increases.
In a study by Forrester Research, video in email engages prospects by increasing click-through rates by over 200% compared to traditional email or article posting.
It doesn’t matter what type of sales you are in, face time with the decision maker counts. Video gives you face time, and gives you the analytics to know when to best follow up and what to follow up with. That kind of data helps you close more business, generate more commission and stay atop the leader board
So how do master video salespeople do it? Simple:
Learn how to leverage video like a pro and be the number one salesperson in your company!
The post How Top Sales Reps Leverage Video to Crush Their Monthly Numbers appeared first on Vidyard.
The importance of statistics is undeniable. They give us valuable insight on the website traffic and how visitors interact with it. By analyzing and getting deeper into your website stats you can significantly improve its performance, accelerate its growth and better serve your visitors.
If you’re looking for good analytics tool you’ll most probably end up by choosing Google analytics, the free and most complete analytics tool offered by Google.With its second to none tracking and monitoring functionalities it’s the first choice for millions of users and website owners. Another great thing about Google Analytics is that it’s pretty flexible, which allows you to obtain individual statistics and maximize the benefits of the tracked information.
The partnership of Google with WordPress made it easy to bring GA to WordPress powered websites and get tracking reports directly from the website dashboard. Moreover, with the available plugins you also get tons of tracking customization options to make your data more valid and useful. Below, you can find 10 tips that will help you maximize the benefits of WordPress Google Analytics.
1. Add Google Analytics to WordPress
Adding Google Analytics to your WordPress website comes with a bunch of advantages. It will allow you to access your website stats from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard, and ease you from the hassle of checking your GA account separately every time you need to get a glimpse of your website stats. There are a lot of tools out there that will help you to add Google Analytics to your WordPress website without touching a line of code. And Google Analytics WD plugin is one them. It’s the official member of Google Analytics Technology Partners Program, and makes GA integration with WordPress a breeze. The plugin comes with all the advanced tracking and reporting functionalities that GA provides, and makes it way easier to collect and monitor the data.
Google Analytics WD comes in FREE and PRO versions, both offering a set of most needed analytics features. Find the plugin demo here, and see how it tracks and collects data.
2. Get a more accurate picture of your stats with data filtering
Of course, there can be data from specific resources that you might not want to be included in the tracking reports. Using filters is a smart way to improve the accuracy of the collected data. With data filtering option of the Google Analytics WD you’ll be able to filter out the traffic from specific IP addresses, countries, regions, and cities.
3. Exclude specific tracking
Tracking exclusion is a form of data filtering which allows you to exclude tracking based on specific roles and user accounts. Any activity and interaction performed by them on your website will be ignored and you’ll get a valid data on your website performance. You can exclude interaction tracking for site administrators, editors, authors, contributors, subscribers, admin and user accounts.
4. Get the most out of custom reporting
With the sheer volume of the data that Google Analytics provides, sometimes it’s overwhelming to figure it all out. Plus, there can be specific data which is not automatically reported by the plugin, but you’d really like to track it .This is where custom reporting functionality of Google Analytics WD comes to rescue. You can set custom reports for any metrics and dimension and access them directly on the plugin reports page. For example, you can set pageview as a metric and session duration as a dimension, and track how much time your visitors spent on viewing pages.
Google Analytics also allows you to export the tracking reports to CSV and PDF formats, and forward to specified email recipients on a scheduled basis.
5. Display frontend reports
With Google Analytics WD you can enable displaying reports on the frontend of your website and give access to them to specific users, such as site administrator, editor, subscribers, and contributors. This is a great option to enable those users to access individual page or post reports right on the frontend while working on the pages. This saves a lot of time and keeps them focused on their work.
6. Set reports for custom dimensions
You can maximize the benefits of your stats by tracking specific data that you have on your website. That could be the tracking which of the authors is the most popular among your readers, or what type of posts your readers like to read the most. With Google Analytics WD you can track custom dimensions based on logged in users, post type, category, tags, post author, post publishing year and month.
7. Measure how often your visitors complete specific actions
You website visitors perform thousands of activities on your website every day. With some additional setup you’ll be able to track targeted activities and get notified as soon as they are accomplished. You can set visiting a certain page as a goal, or measure how many of your visitors proceed to checkout on your shopping website. For setting and managing goals you’ll have to provide its name, select one of the goal types (destination, duration, pages/screens per session) and configure the options for the goal type. The plugin collects data based on the configured options, and keeps you notified by sending you an email or pushover notification.
8. Set alerts for specific conditions
Google Analytics WD comes with an advanced option to send you alerts and pushover notifications when a specific metric meets the predefined condition. It could be the highest/lowest number of the traffic, bounce rate range, and average session duration. For example, you can set to get an alert or pushover when the number of your website visitors exceeds a specific number. The alerts and pushovers are sent based on the selected period, either daily, weekly or monthly.
9. Track your sales stats
You can link your Ecommerce account to Google analytics WD and track your sales stats based on revenues, transactions, time to purchase, product name and category and sales performance. It’s a time-saving option for tracking your sales stats.
10. Google Adsense and AdWords reports
If you have authorized accounts on AdSense and AdWords, Google Analytics WD will enable you to view relevant information tracking within the reports page of the plugin. All you have to do is to link your accounts to the Google Analytics and access the tracked data from the WordPress dashboard.
Google Analytics WD is a powerful tracking tool. The data that it tracks includes tons of valuable information that you can use to improve your website performance. So, why not use these useful tips and get the most of your website stats.
Original post: 10 Tips for Maximizing the Benefits of WordPress Google Analytics
How to build an Audience on YouTube – with Gabby Wallace
Episode: 275
Who: Gabby Wallace
Blog / Website: Gabby Wallace.com
Struggling to get people to subscribe to your YouTube channel?
Looking to branch out into video content?
In this interview, I’m on the line with Gabby Wallace from gonaturalenglish.com, a blog dedicated to helping people learn English. She’s a TEDx speaker and entrepreneur who combined her years of classroom teaching experience with the power of YouTube video marketing to build her business. Her first YouTube channel for English language learners has over 200,000 subscribers and 10 million views. She has been featured in Yahoo! Travel for running her business while traveling the world and on several top podcasts for entrepreneurs. Video is a powerful medium, and YouTube is still a great way to get exposure, so Gabby is here today to talk about building your audience on YouTube.
Back in 2011, Gabby was teaching English over in Japan. She had some free time during her work day, and she wanted to find creative ways of helping her students. She came up with the idea of video tutorials to answer their recurring questions.
Gabby in Japan. Source: abroadlife.us
Her students were mostly adult businessmen who wanted to learn English for business purposes. She found that different groups of students were asking a lot of similar questions. The videos were a solution because they were reusable and repeatable. They saved her a lot of time.
Gabby wasn’t thinking about the videos as a business opportunity. She was learning as she went, and she was absolutely terrified to see herself on camera at first! She was really out of her comfort zone. So how did she get over that fear? She just pushed herself to keep going. She felt that YouTube could provide a lot of opportunities for her, and so she kept at it until she started to feel more comfortable.
Does she still get nervous? No way. Now she feels totally comfortable in front of the camera.
Also keep in mind that your viewers are more interested in your content than in how you look on camera. Gabby’s most popular video, with about two million views, is obviously providing her audience with a lot of value. But she hates her hair in it and she thinks she looks awkward.
Content is king. You can provide great value even if you haven’t got perfect camera technique yet! There’s no such thing as a perfect video, but the more you work at it, the better you’ll get.
After a few months of making videos for her students, they started to get a little more traction, a few more views. At the point where the videos were getting hundreds of views, she knew that the audience couldn’t be just her students, friends, and family.
About six months in, Gabby started getting messages through YouTube asking if she was available to do online tutoring. People loved her videos so much that they wanted one-on-one coaching from her. This was the start of monetizing her YouTube channel.
Gabby initially thought that tutoring would be the core of her business. Once she crunched the numbers, however, she realized that there weren’t enough hours in the day to make tutoring truly profitable for her. In addition, she was more excited about creating content that could reach more people than one-on-one tutoring could. She also wanted more control over her time.
Think about what’s right in front of you
If you want to add YouTube content to your business, Gabby says to think about what’s right in front of you when you’re looking for content. What questions are getting repeated over and over? Which areas do people consistently need help in?
Remember that YouTube is ideal for short content. Videos should be no more than five minutes long. Focus on quick takeaway points.
You can have a variety of different kinds of content, too. Gabby says that her early videos ranged from answers to very general questions like how to seem more confident to really specific things like the difference between past tense and past perfect tense.
To keep things simple at first, Gabby didn’t attempt a specific progression or course structure. She took inspiration from what was in front of her in the classroom on a daily basis.
You don’t need fancy equipment to get started. Gabby started off using her smartphone, then she bought a fancy camera and lens, but eventually she just went back to using her phone. Why? Her iPhone 6S is way easier to travel with than a fancy camera. Plus, it auto-focuses, so you can work more easily on your own. With her camera, Gabby found that she had to re-record a lot of videos because they were out of focus.
Creating Your Own Video
You also don’t need to buy lighting equipment. Natural light is the best. Gabby just recently bought herself some LED lights, but finding a shaded area outside with great natural light is really all you need when you’re just starting out.
If you’re going to invest in any equipment, get a good microphone. When you’re just starting, even this isn’t really necessary. People expect and accept a lower sound quality on YouTube than they would on, say, a podcast. But once you’ve built up a little money, it’s worth investing in a good microphone. Gabby is using a RODE smartLav, which cost her about $80.
What’s more important than your technical equipment is your content, your consistency, and your ability to listen to your audience.
That said, you’ll know it’s time to update your equipment when you’ve outgrown what you have. If the stuff you’re using is holding you back, and you can’t do the things you want to do because your equipment isn’t capable of it, it’s time to upgrade.
Gabby says it’s a good idea to reinvest money that you earn from side jobs like tutoring or consulting into equipment purchases to avoid building up credit card debt.
YouTube Channel Stats
Gabby has 200,000 subscribers, so she must be doing something right! How does she do it? She had two big tips:
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. If you’re already blogging, you can repurpose some of your blog content as YouTube videos. Just record yourself talking through some of the highlights from each of your posts. Gabby has a new strategy that she’s been trying out: she takes new blog content and does a weekly Facebook Live post, then uploads that video to YouTube.
Tell them what you’ll be talking about at the start of the video. It’s important to bring LOTS of energy to your videos. You actually need to have more energy on video than you do in real life, even if you’re normally a very upbeat person. Smile, laugh, use hand gestures. Pull them in.
You should also link your videos to each other. Make it easy for viewers to consume more of your content. If you have a video that does really well or goes viral, put a link in it to a less successful (but still great!) video to balance out your views. You can also create a sequence of videos.
This is important because you want to create loyal viewers on your channel. You can’t rely on YouTube’s suggestions at the end of the video to lead people to your content. You’ve got to be sending people there yourself. The more people view your content, the more YouTube boosts you when people search for content like yours.
What else can you do to get more support from YouTube? View time is really important. The average view time on YouTube is 2.5 minutes. That’s actually a lot of time. But it also means that your videos should be no more than 5 minutes long. Keep them bite-sized.
You can also make use of the titles and descriptions. These are how people search for you, so think about what people will be looking for and mimic their language. Gabby’s audience are looking for videos on how to speak English, so those words should be in her titles and descriptions.
How do you turn your audience from viewers into subscribers? You just have to ask them.
In every single video, ask your viewers to subscribe and say why it’s important for them to do so. And then remind them on a regular basis. Put the subscriber link in the video itself and in the description. Use your subscriber list from your blog to encourage people to subscribe to your YouTube channel.
Links in Video Description
Gabby includes a call to action at the beginning AND end of her videos. It just takes two seconds at the start to say, “Hey, you can subscribe to my channel by clicking here. Now let’s get on to what we’re going to talk about…” Then at the end of the video, she can say, “If you enjoyed this video, remember to subscribe by clicking here.” Why does she do it this way? It works. It might feel awkward at first, but she really has gotten more subscribers this way.
Calls to Action mentioned at the beginning and end of video.
You’ve also got to make use of social media to promote your videos. It’s not enough just to uploads to YouTube every week. Your videos will get lost in the thousands and thousands of videos uploaded every day. So do a little heavy lifting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and email. You have to push it out there (but not in a spammy way!).
Make sure you think about where you want your audience to end up, too. If you want to drive traffic to your blog, embed your video into a blog post and then share it that way. If you just want to build your YouTube channel, send them to YouTube.
Gabby has three main revenue streams from her YouTube channel: sponsorship, YouTube ads, and online courses for English learners.
How do people get to her courses? Gabby takes it slow. People don’t go to YouTube looking to buy something. It isn’t Amazon. So you’ve got to appreciate that they’re there to be entertained, or maybe to learn something for free.
From YouTube, Gabby invites people to her website to sign up for free training. To get the free training, they have to sign up to her email list. Once they’re on the list, she can put her courses in front of them.
Invite Your Viewers to Sign Up for Your Free Course
Gabby is putting together a new YouTube training course designed to help you get the most out of YouTube. Keep an eye on her website www.gabbywallace.com for details coming soon!
How to build an Audience on YouTube
The post How to build an Audience on YouTube – with Gabby Wallace appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.
Influitive, Marketo, Reltio and the University of Waterloo use personalization to stand out, connect with audiences and get big results
KITCHENER, Ontario – September 20, 2016 – Today’s marketer knows that no matter how important their message may be, the biggest challenge is getting their audience’s attention and keeping them engaged once they have it. In this age of jam-packed inboxes, a simple video featuring the recipient’s name can make all the difference.
Organizations including Influitive, Marketo, Reltio and the University of Waterloo have experienced direct results using Vidyard’s Personalized Video capabilities to convert more leads, increase attendance at important events and even recruit more students. For example:
Influitive
Advocate marketing software leader Influitive wanted to triple attendance for its second annual customer experience, engagement and advocacy conference, Advocamp. To help it stand out from all the other marketing conferences that promise to be exciting and different, Influitive created a series of videos about Buck, a wacky camp counselor character. This year, Influitive personalized one of the videos to feature the viewer’s name on merit badge sashes to convey the “summer camp for marketers” experience they would have at Advocamp.
Example of video personalized for recipient named Katie Watson
Personalization made a huge difference in the results. For previous Advocamp promotions, Influitive had a 16.1% open rate, 0.7% click-through rate and 4.5% click-to-open rate. The personalized video campaign crushed those numbers with a 29% open rate, a 5.5% click-through rate and 18.7% click-to-open rate. The click-through rate was 8 times higher and the click-to-open rate 4 times higher than their other campaigns.
“Everyone says their conference is the best, the most interesting, the most important to attend, but anyone who’s attended these events knows that’s not always true,” said Jim Williams, vice president of marketing at Influitive. “We wanted to show our audience that we were planning something really special and worth their time to attend. Advocamp 2016 was our biggest yet, and we give a lot of the credit to the personalized video campaign for capturing the attention and interest of target attendees.”
Now Influitive is planning to do at least three more personalized videos over the next year, including as part of its account-based marketing strategy.
Marketo
Marketo also invests heavily in its annual industry conference, the Marketing Nation Summit, and personalized video helped draw more people to its 2016 event. In fact, Marketo’s video was directly responsible for more than 50 registrations worth more than $70,000 in direct revenue.
Example of video personalized for recipient named Katie Watson
“Getting your audience’s attention is harder than ever in today’s world of crowded inboxes,” said Heidi Bullock, Group Vice President, Marketing at Marketo. “Personalized video is an amazing – and effective – tool for helping today’s marketers make sure their messages stand out, get noticed and ultimately produce results.”
Reltio
Reltio, a data management platform that delivers reliable data, relevant insights and recommended actions, sent its first personalized video campaign to more than 10,000 contacts to build awareness and drive interest in its flagship product offering. The personalized thumbnail showing the viewer’s name on a mug led to open rates 10 times higher than the company’s average. Nearly 30 percent of the people who opened the emails actually viewed their videos and engaged with the campaign.
Example of video personalized for recipient named Katie Watson at company Keyboardly
“We were blown away by the performance of our personalized video campaign and how well it worked to engage both warm and cold prospects,” said Ramon Chen, Chief Marketing Officer at Reltio. “But it didn’t end there, we correlated the viewing data with the master profiles managed in our own Reltio Cloud platform for a 360-degree omni-channel view. Then we used Vidyard’s A/B split testing on thumbnails, and relaunched the campaign with even better results. If you want to do personalized video, you first need accurate, reliable personal data, then you need Vidyard.”
Reltio views Vidyard’s personalized video as a groundbreaking competitive advantage, but they aren’t stopping there. Reltio, who committed to four videos, is readying its next installment that will further push the envelope of what’s possible. Their next video will be a spy-action thriller to be used with account-based marketing campaigns with hyper-personalized messaging. Reltio also does not limit the use of personalized video to just customers, prospects and partners. Other audiences that have received personalized videos and have resulted in significant impressions and awareness include media, analysts and partners.
University of Waterloo
With roughly 100 universities in Canada and thousands more in the United States, University of Waterloo has a lot of competition. Prospective students value the school’s academics, but when it comes to choosing a university, they also want to know what it would really be like to attend. To attract the highest quality students and get them to convert from applicants to enrolled students, the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences created a personalized video that would put the viewer in the shoes of a student being dropped off on the first day. It was designed to appeal to both potential students and their parents.
Example of video personalized for recipient named Katie Watson
“Video is such an important medium to convey an emotional response. I wanted to capture a range of emotions,” said Sal Aziz, head of marketing and recruitment at the university. “I wanted the decision to come from the left brain, not the right brain. I wanted it to become emotional, not logical. One student told me his father cried after watching the video.”
The click-to-open rate for the video was 70.7%, a massive increase over their average of 20% for other recruitment emails.
“The beauty of personalized video is that it brings viewers right into the story in a creative and relevant way, making them want to engage further with your message,” said Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard. “For marketers, it’s an amazing way to stand out from the crowd while connecting with buyers on an emotional level to create a memorable experience. That doesn’t happen with an email.”
To view more examples of successful personalized videos, visit Vidyard’s Personalized Video Hub: http://ift.tt/2bM7Zed
Or sign up to have your own personalized video sent directly to your inbox: http://ift.tt/2bH5jkQ
About Vidyard
Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, TD Ameritrade, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.
Media Contact:
Brad Hem
Phone: (281) 543-0669
press@vidyard.com
The post Personalized Video Helps Businesses Drive Event Attendance, Recruit Students, Increase Email Open Rates by 1000% appeared first on Vidyard.
