An introduction to print marketing with personalized video, by John Arnsdorf, Product Marketing Manager at XMPie. This article was first published in Printing Industries of America: The Magazine (June 2014 edition).
Personalization across multiple channels, creating a two-way dialogue between seller and customer, is a key goal that ensures optimum customer experience, brand building and increased ROMI. Personalizing text, images and charts is just a first step towards launching a successful omnichannel campaign. Print service providers can now stand out even further from the competition by augmenting their print campaigns with an integrated personalized video experience.
Personalized video is a growing data-driven marketing tool, which helps marketer’s achieve their business objectives. Across many industries, including automotive, higher education, real estate, education, financial services, and non-profits, personalized video is already being integrated into print campaigns, driving higher response rates and greater click-through rates. Simply adding a personalized URL or QR code to a personalized print piece drives recipients to the personalized video, which is embedded in a unique personalized landing page for each recipient.
The medium of video has a unique place in the marketing mix since video content is easily digestible and ideal for communicating complex details simply and with minimal effort required from the target recipient. According to Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. there are four core reasons we are drawn to video: Our brains are hard-wired to use the human face as a gathering point for information and believability; the sound of a human voice conveys rich information better; movement grabs attention; and the body language of emotions is not just appealing but contagious. In other words it creates a more natural conversation with your target audience and therefore has a greater impact.
This understanding explains the massive growth of video across multiple technologies today, particularly in the burgeoning mobile market. In fact, 76 percent of marketers now plan to add video to their sites, making it a higher priority than Facebook, Twitter and blog integration. More and more consumers are even accessing their smartphones first and the smartphone market is now larger than the desktop market (Smartphones outsold PCs in Q4 of 2010 101 million to 92 million). Video is also an attractive source of content for recipients to share on social media and an incredible 92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others, thus spreading the reach of a print campaign even further and creating ambassadors for your customers’ brands.
Virtually all types of customer data can be displayed creatively as personalized variable elements within the video to create the most relevant viewer experience with cinematic-quality visual effects. Here is a rundown of the most popular elements:
- Variable Text – the most basic of the variable data options available is best used in conjunction with other elements, for instance in these personalized Christmas video messages, and this birthday wishes video
- Personalized Still Images can be embedded into the moving footage. For instance in a car promotion, the recipient’s name could be displayed on the car’s license plate.
- Special effects can be added like animate, wiggle, shatter, blur, warp, distort, and more. In fact the only limitation will be to your editor’s creativity!
- Animated Video Maps based on geo data can be incorporated into personalized videos in order to target local geographical areas and optimize content impact on a global scale. In this example, an invitation to a financial seminar includes a personalized map setting out the route to the seminar from the recipients home
Adding video to your next cross-media campaign is a great opportunity to take print campaigns to the next level and offer compelling, value-added services to your print customers who may not even realize such a marketing tool exists. Yet before going ahead with any campaign, it is important to understand that as with all personalized marketing strategies, robust data and a strong call to action are absolutely crucial to the success of a personalized video campaign. Historical purchase and demographic data along with real-time analytic insights and brand engagement data should all be used in tandem to build each unique customer profile, enhance the customer experience and produce videos with individualized call-to-actions.
XMPie uDirect® Video: A unique solution addressing the need to incorporate dynamic content into cinematic-quality movies, and link to them from other personalized media, such as email and Web pages. The uDirect Video solution consists of uCreate™ Video, a variable data desktop plug-in to Adobe® After Effects®. Starting with either an original After Effects movie or an existing template from an online library, the user can incorporate variable text, images, and other footage with exciting special effects like animate, wiggle, shatter, blur, warp, distort, and more. Images created in Adobe Photoshop® or Illustrator® and personalized with XMPie uImage® can also be embedded within personalized videos. Furthermore, personalized videos created in After Effects and personalized with uDirect Video can even be displayed inside other personalized movies.