From cutting service calls over 70% to lifting conversions by 9x, we’ve seen firsthand how Personalized Video can improve the customer experience and drive real results for businesses.
While Personalized Video is certainly changing how we connect with individuals, the concept can be a bit confusing at first. Is it just adding someone’s name to a video? What makes it work? How do you launch a campaign? This guide covers all that and more.
Ready to dive in? Here’s everything you need to know about Personalized Video.
- What Is Personalized Video?
- What Personalized Video Isn’t
- What Can You Personalize?
- How To Create a Personalized Video
- Who Can Personalize?
- When Should You Use Personalized Video?
- Using AI To Make Personalized Videos
- The Idomoo Difference in Personalized Video Marketing
- Personalized Video FAQs
- Your Guide and Partner
What Is Personalized Video?
Picture a video that speaks directly to you — literally. It greets you by name, shows content tailored to your interests and even features helpful information relevant to your situation.
That’s Personalized Video in action. It’s an innovative approach to video content that tailors the viewing experience to the individual. Instead of a one-size-fits-all message, Personalized Videos incorporate unique data points to create content that’s relevant and engaging for each viewer.
You might hear Personalized Video also referred to as hyper-personalized video or customized video, which essentially describe the same concept. Hyper-personalization may imply a deeper level of personalization while customization refers to how the business (and sometimes even the viewers themselves!) tailors the video content to a particular person.
You could also hear it called data-driven video because data is what personalizes the scenes. However, this term is broader because data doesn’t necessarily correspond 1:1 with the individual viewer. Dynamic video is a similar term. You could customize the video for a segment of users, for example. But not with Personalized Video — true personalization means that video is 100% unique to the individual watching it.
Whatever you choose to call it, though, the goal is the same: to deliver a unique, engaging video experience that resonates with each individual viewer.
What Personalized Video Looks Like
Personalized Video involves incorporating viewer-specific data into the content. This can range from adding elements like names and locations to the video or more complex approaches where the data — such as insights about past purchases, viewing history or behavior patterns — shapes the narrative.
Let’s take a look at it in action. Check out this video offer from Celebrity Cruises, which is personalized to include the viewer’s name, their last trip and membership status.
All of the personalized details emphasize how the offer — a trip to the Galapagos on their newest ship — is crafted just for the recipient.
Of course, this video is personalized with the text on screen. You’ll see more examples below with personalized audio as well.
What Personalized Video Isn’t
So we’re off to a good start. You’ve got an understanding of what Personalized Video is but we want to cover all the bases. Let’s clear up some common misconceptions about Personalized Video:
1. It Isn’t Segmentation
Personalized Video goes beyond simple demographic targeting. These aren’t videos tailored solely because you’re a woman in your 50s living in Minnesota. They’re personalized to you, the unique individual, often incorporating your recent interactions with a brand, your preferences or your unique customer journey.
In other words, these videos are personalized experiences that go deeper than just segmentation by age, gender or location.
2. It Isn’t Fill-in-the-Blank
Think Personalized Video is just about filling in the blanks? Think again.
Unlike the 1950s game Mad Libs, where everyone gets the same story with a few details swapped out, Personalized Video allows for dynamic content that can adapt to various elements. It isn’t about creating one generic video and filling in the blanks with bits of your data. Scenes, audio, graphics and text can all be adjusted to create a truly unique video.
Much of this is possible with dynamic scene selection, which results in bespoke combinations of different creative based on the recipient. The data drives the narrative so that each person receives a storyline relevant to them.
For instance, let’s say a bank wants to provide their customers with information about their account along with some helpful money management tips. Would it send the same message to a customer with less than $300 in their account and a customer with over $3 million? Probably not.
With dynamic scene selection, the customer with the lower balance could receive a video with a scene about managing overdraft protection while the high-net-worth customer might see a scene about investment opportunities. Repeat this process for more data points — maybe a scene personalized to their location or one that’s aligned with their account type — and you’ve got a custom-tailored video on your hands.
Check out the GIF below to see what this process looks like visually.
3. It Isn’t Celebrity Shoutouts
Getting a Personalized Video message from your favorite celebrity has become a popular trend these days, with companies like Cameo creating a marketplace where you can purchase video shoutouts from public figures.
But while Cameo videos do have a personalized element to them, the business-facing term Personalized Video is about much more than just a famous face mentioning your name. It involves leveraging data to create relevant content that’s unique for each viewer, making your marketing and communication efforts much more effective.
What Can You Personalize?
Now that we’ve established what Personalized Video is and isn’t, let’s take a look at what you can do with it. Here’s a sneak peek at 6 elements you can personalize to make your videos strike a chord with each viewer.
1. Text
Personalizing videos often starts with simple yet effective text personalization.
For instance, beginning a video with “Hi, [First Name],” is a straightforward way to grab attention and quickly communicate that the message is personalized. Addressing someone by name makes them feel seen as an individual while also increasing the likelihood they’ll watch the whole video.
Besides names, personalized text can also include plan information, rewards balance, renewal dates, recent purchases and more. Providing relevant numbers, such as account details, loyalty points or upcoming renewals, is another impactful way to communicate important information.
This customer onboarding video by JPMorganChase is full of dynamic text, from the recipient’s name and business to important dates, the nearest branch locations and minimum balance requirements. The result is a Personalized Video that genuinely provides value because of how relevant and tailored it is.
2. Images
Images can also be personalized.
Show customers their soon-to-arrive purchase, include photos of the last destination they visited or help them imagine their next amazing experience. As long as you have a platform that supports it (like ours!), you can create videos that include images that are unique to each viewer.
3. Video-in-Video
Since we’re talking about video personalization, it wouldn’t be right to leave out video-in-video. Including personalized footage keeps things dynamic while making the message unique for every viewer.
Take adidas, for example. When they sponsored the Boston Marathon, we helped the brand go above and beyond to congratulate each participant with Personalized Videos that featured footage of them during the marathon.
By collaborating with the agency Grow to capture the footage, we were able to produce 30,000 videos within hours, allowing runners to receive their Personalized Video on the same day they finished the race. While creating tens of thousands of videos is relatively small in the world of Personalized Videos — where we regularly launch campaigns with millions of Personalized Videos — this was an innovative approach to using customer footage for a personalized showreel.
And it was effective. Runners loved the video — and then showed much love to adidas in return, with the campaign driving over 80,000 visitors to the brand’s web properties.
4. Voiceover
Personalizing what people see on screen is powerful, but don’t overlook the impact of tailoring what they hear. One effective way is through personalized voiceovers, such as addressing viewers by their names. Hearing their name spoken aloud creates a delightful surprise, grabbing attention from the get-go.
Besides names, there are plenty of other opportunities for voiceover personalization. For example, mentioning the exact number of reward points earned by a customer can emphasize the benefits awaiting them and encourage greater loyalty.
5. Languages
Are you creating videos for a global audience? Make sure your content speaks the same language as your audience. The personalized content platform you work with should offer:
- Support for various alphabets and fonts
- Compatibility with left-to-right and right-to-left text layouts
- Multi-language captioning
Pro tip: Don’t forget about the universal appeal of emojis. Check that your provider supports emojis for that touch of fun that translates across cultures.
6. Interactivity
Interactivity puts the power of customization in the hands of the audience, completely transforming the viewing experience. Even with the same video, each viewer interacts uniquely, crafting a one-of-a-kind experience every time.
With Interactive Video, viewers can personalize their experience in a number of ways.
- Let viewers choose. Present options directly within the video, allowing the viewer to choose their own video path. A great use case here is customer service. Offer solutions and explanations via video, with customers selecting their scenario or navigating to the information that they’re looking for. It’s immediate 1:1 assistance without the wait.
- Extend the journey online. Embed call-to-action links within the video to guide users beyond the viewing experience. These CTAs can lead to a shopping cart, another webpage or even trigger an email for their next action. This tactic naturally enhances engagement and can boost sales by enabling direct purchases from the video.
- Add chapter markers. Incorporate a menu feature that lets viewers navigate between different segments or revisit specific scenes. This is especially beneficial for instructional videos that viewers may revisit multiple times.
- Gamify the experience. Turn your video into a game by making clickable elements dynamic and engaging, like a moving 50% off coupon that challenges viewers to catch the deal.
- Offer viewer customization. Let viewers easily create their own video. This involves having customizable fields directly within the video player or on a landing page — you choose — letting viewers tailor various aspects in real time. From choosing product colors to submitting loan requirements to get a personalized offer on demand, the possibilities are endless.
As you can see, there’s so much you can do with interactivity. To truly showcase its magic, though, let’s look at an example you can play with.
This Interactive Video by Mr. Cooper walks viewers through its digital tools, from how to make a payment to its payoff calculator. With chapter markers and clickable elements, you can navigate to the segments you’re most interested in and get redirected to create an account with an easy click of a button.
Try it for yourself below — and be sure to click on the lightning bolt to customize the video to include your name.
How To Create a Personalized Video
Creating a Personalized Video doesn’t have to be complicated. The first decision is to choose the provider you want to work with. If you’re personalizing 10 videos, you can do it on your own. If you’re personalizing 10,000 videos — or 10 million — you’ll need a tech partner (like us).
Here are the steps to create a Personalized Video.
- Determine your goal and approach. This is the ideation phase. What do you want to accomplish, and what kind of video best fits that goal? Choose a use case that aligns with your objective, whether that’s cutting churn, driving sales or simply engaging customers.
- Review your data. You want clean data in your finished video. Check what you have available. Is it accessible and accurate? Even if you have only first names, you can make a video that catches viewers’ attention.
- Define the video logic. This is where you determine who sees what. Maybe everyone gets an opening scene with their name, but the next scene is different depending on if it’s a loyal customer or a new customer. As we covered above, you can add all kinds of personalization. More isn’t always better. Do what makes sense for your audience and goal.
- Create your video scenes. This includes pre-production, such as developing the script and storyboard, as well as choosing the video creative and post-production work. The video can be animated or live action, 2D or 3D. The right Personalized Video provider can work with any creative style.
- Add personalized data to your video. This is where the platform you’re using is critical. You might choose batch mode, adding the data in advance, or real-time generation, where the latest data is added to the video right before it’s rendered. Either way, the platform will automate this so you’re not doing it manually.
Of course, the steps above are just related to creating your Personalized Video. As with any video campaign, you’ll want to optimize it for the channels you’re sharing it on and measure performance. You can also choose to make your video interactive, adding another level of user-led personalization.
With over 15 years of experience creating Personalized Videos, we know a thing or two about the process, and we’re happy to help guide you through these steps. We can even create the video, thanks to our award-winning in-house studio, but you’re always welcome to work with the agency of your choice.
Long story short, anyone can make a Personalized Video. It’s just a matter of having the right tools!
Who Can Personalize?
One of the best things about Personalized Video is how versatile and accessible it is. Any business with customer data can get in on the action. Whether you’re pulling info from your CRM, email lists or tracking website clicks, there’s plenty to work with.
Personalized Video also isn’t limited to specific industries. In this guide alone, we’ve explored its applications in travel, banking, retail and mortgages. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Take healthcare, for instance. Considering how personal one’s health is, it makes sense that Personalized Video can effectively help people understand and take control of their well-being.
The example below shows how Optum used Personalized Video to boost customer engagement by reminding customers of their health savings account balance. The videos also educated viewers on the different health-related expenses that could be covered by the HSA, encouraging greater understanding and use of the service.
Gaming is another arena where Personalized Video excels, as shown by Assassin’s Creed’s 15th-anniversary player recap.
These videos celebrated the fun of the game and featured unique statistics, scenes and languages — all tailored to each gamer’s journey. Talk about making players feel like a VIP.
Quick insight: Year-in-review videos are a great multi-purpose tool. Use them to surprise and delight your customers and strengthen loyalty by spotlighting their best moments. Even better, they’re perfect for sharing on social media.
Education is another industry adopting Personalized Video to convert prospective students, streamline admissions (for college), communicate about testing scores (for grade school), congratulate graduates and more.
For example, the University of Dayton leveraged Personalized Video to present financial aid information, providing tailored explanations to students about their aid package. By offering personalized guidance, educational institutions are building stronger connections with students and effectively setting them up for success.
Want some more inspiration? Check out 18 cool Personalized Video examples from top brands across different industries.
When Should You Use Personalized Video?
At this point, we’ve established that Personalized Video is not only versatile but that it’s been leveraged across industries to boost engagement, strengthen loyalty and improve the customer experience. But when exactly should you break out this powerful tool?
Because it relies on customer data, Personalized Video is most effective when used in interactions with existing customers. It’s great for keeping your current customers happy and engaged. By showing that you truly value their relationship and understand their needs, you strengthen customer relationships, thus increasing customer lifetime value and boosting ROI.
You can sprinkle Personalized Video throughout the most of the customer journey:
- Customer acquisition
- Sales
- Onboarding
- Customer service
- Engagement
- Loyalty
When it comes to customer onboarding, Personalized Video shines as a tool for explaining complex processes simply and engagingly. For instance, imagine receiving a detailed breakdown of your upcoming monthly statement just after subscribing to a service.
This bill explainer by Charter proactively clarifies new customers’ monthly statements, ensuring a smooth transition into their service.
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Bill explainer videos are great for reducing confusion and enhancing customer understanding, with our clients seeing results like 42% fewer support calls and 99% customer satisfaction with similar campaigns.
Along with saving time for both customers and support staff, this approach also instills a sense of trust and transparency.
Personalized Video can also be used during the renewal stage to reduce churn. See how Zurich uses one to notify customers that it’s time to renew their insurance.
The video below not only informs viewers of their plan details but also emphasizes the value that Zurich offers.
These kinds of retention campaigns have led to our clients getting results like 17x player reactivation and an 85% renewal rate, just to name a few. Ultimately, by delivering tailored messages at the right moment, you show them that they’re more than just a number — they’re valued individuals.
The result? Reduced churn and improved customer loyalty.
Using AI To Make Personalized Videos
Not surprisingly, the next level of video automation involves artificial intelligence. By leveraging AI, you can create video content faster. Sync it with a video personalization platform, and you can create Personalized Videos with AI at scale.
Our Enterprise AI Video solution handles everything from the script and storyboard to the animation and CTA at the end. All you need to provide is the prompt. This dramatically reduces the time to market for any video project, whether it’s video ads or a personalized marketing campaign.
One of the biggest benefits of AI videos is the time savings. You don’t need a full production team with extensive video editing or animation expertise. You don’t need to spend months creating a video and then more months on edits. With AI, anyone can make a video and then edit the finished results — and that means not just time savings but also huge cost savings.
Once you have your video, you can add personalization and create millions of variations of your video, one for each customer.
The Idomoo Difference in Personalized Video Marketing
Creating Personalized Video content can be simple on a small scale, such as a personalized thank-you message from a sales rep to a client. However, if you’re looking to scale this to thousands or even millions of viewers, you’ll need a specialized platform.
Our Next Generation Video Platform handles the heavy lifting by automating the personalization process, allowing you to create and distribute Personalized Videos quickly and efficiently.
Why does Idomoo stand out? It’s all about quality at scale. We can generate millions of cinematic quality Personalized Videos in up to 100x real time, with dynamic elements, interactivity and more blending seamlessly with each scene.
Ease of use is another key factor. With us, you can launch video campaigns in days instead of months. Whether you prefer to handle everything yourself or let us manage the details, our award-winning platform, complete with automation tools, integrations and APIs, simplifies the entire process.
Plus, with enterprise-grade security, your data is safe. We’re ISO 27001 certified, SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and trusted by global leaders in finance and healthcare.
Personalized Video FAQs
Here are a few of the most common questions we get asked about Personalized Video.
Do people want Personalized Videos from brands?
Absolutely! We conducted a market study asking consumers what they wanted from brands. They expect personalized experiences, and 83% want more video from brands. They also say Personalized Video is 4x more likely to make them feel valued than a non-personalized video.
How long does it take to launch a Personalized Video campaign?
We’ve launched global campaigns with millions of videos in a matter of days. Our platform’s built-in automation tools speed the process, and you can even take advantage of AI so video creation is simple. Don’t have lots of CRM data? Don’t worry. Starting small with your customer’s first name already creates a wow effect and can immediately start boosting conversion rates.
How well does Idomoo Personalized Video scale?
Unlike other video personalization providers that are just meant for low-relevance email marketing or over-generalized explainer videos, Idomoo can scale to tens of millions of Personalized Videos, even when rendered in cinematic quality and real time. We’re the only solution that can do this, thanks to our powerful GPU-based rendering engine.
What are popular use cases for Personalized Video?
Personalized Video is relevant at every step of the customer journey. This includes onboarding, where you can show off benefits, help users set up online accounts and make a good first impression, as well as bill explainers and sales videos. A year in review is an especially effective way to create engagement with Personalized Video. Recap the past month, year or more, showing customers how you’ve helped them each step of the way and creating a fun video that’s irresistibly shareable.
Can I reuse existing video assets?
Yes. In our platform, you can add personalization to any video content, even assets you may have already from previous projects. Personalization immediately upgrades old video creative to make it timely and relevant.
Where can these videos be viewed?
Your videos can be viewed everywhere — any channel and every device. Customer videos are sent via email, in app, SMS, MMS and more, and people view them on everything from their smartphone to their smart TV.
Your Guide and Partner
Personalizing your marketing strategy is a game-changer. Whether you’re aiming to boost engagement, enhance customer support or drive conversion rates, Personalized Video can take things to the next level.
At Idomoo, we’re pioneers in Personalized Video technology, dedicated to helping you bring your ideas to life and achieve meaningful results. With our Next Generation Video Platform, it’s never been easier to produce dynamic, data-driven videos that resonate with each one of your customers.
Ready to see how Personalized Video can transform your efforts? Book a demo with our experts and let us show you how Next Gen Video can work wonders for your business.
