Interactive content is taking over the digital world. From shareable quizzes to the rise of the metaverse, content that gets the user involved is leveraged by marketers to build deeper connections with their target market. But while you can make virtually any type of digital content interactive, video reigns supreme — and for good reason.
Interactivity and video go hand in hand. Video is a powerful storytelling tool. Interactivity makes it possible to not only watch a story but also take part in it. Whether it’s for educational purposes, product demos or customer onboarding, Interactive Video is transforming the way brands communicate with their audience.
It’s a winning combination with real business results. Viewers spend longer watching and engage more with Interactive Video. For example, with our Interactive Videos, we’ve seen 4x higher CTR. No surprise there: interactivity increases conversion rates because users can take action right from the video.
What makes Interactive Video so effective? When should your business use it? We’ll show how and why Interactive Video works and share a few real-life Interactive Video examples from top companies already using it in their marketing strategy.
What Is Interactive Video?
To understand why an Interactive Video works so well, you have to understand what an Interactive Video actually is. As the name suggests, Interactive Video combines traditional video content with elements that viewers can interact with. This includes elements like clickable hotspots, branching scenarios, quizzes, customized data inputs and more.
These features allow viewers to engage directly with the content, making choices that tailor the experience the way they like. The result is a more immersive and relevant video that holds the viewer’s attention longer than standard content.
Check out this magical (and personalized) Interactive Video as an example. You can make it your own by clicking the lightning bolt in the player. Add your name, your own image and whatever text you’d like to see!
From choosing the next scene to chapter markers to user customization, this video is full of interactive features that wow and delight the viewer.
Ultimately, the appeal of interactivity is that it turns what would normally be a passive viewing experience into one where the audience gets to be an active part of the narrative. That’s a powerful tactic to have in your arsenal — and it goes way beyond simply letting the viewer choose a magic trick.
Interactive Video Examples
Interactive Videos come in many different forms, each one including features tailored to specific purposes and to engage viewers in innovative ways. A few common types of Interactive Videos include:
- Gamified video: The viewer engages with interactive elements in the video to play a game of some sort. For instance, they tap on different areas of the video to uncover Easter eggs or try to “catch” a moving offer.
- Shoppable video: The viewer can click on a product within a video to purchase it, making ecommerce easier (and a lot more fun). This feature is increasingly in demand for online retailers.
- Customizable videos: The viewer adds or chooses text, images, soundtracks and more to create a brand new video in real time. Videos customized by the viewer are irresistibly shareable, perfect for posting on social media.
- Branching videos: These are a choose-your-own-adventure style of video where the viewer can decide where to go at specific decision points. They’re different from linear videos because they can have multiple storylines.
Any brand can create Interactive Videos for their customers. The versatility of the technology means that it can be used by companies of all different industries and sizes, helping them elevate how they engage with their audiences.
For example, a fashion brand could showcase its latest collection through a shoppable video, allowing viewers to click on items they like, discover more details and be redirected to the product listing from right in the video player.
Companies in the banking industry can also get in on the fun. Take this onboarding video by American Express. The video was designed to help their customers get the most out of their new card by highlighting its benefits and proactively addressing common concerns.
The twist? Viewers are able to pick and choose the topics they wanted to learn about.
By making the video interactive, AMEX was able to capture and keep viewers’ attention, ensuring they paid close attention to the important onboarding info. This upfront approach cuts down on future questions as customers get their answers right away.
It also helps customers see the value of the card by showing them how it can be used to earn points. This boosts long-term satisfaction and loyalty as customers better understand and use the card, happily collecting and redeeming points from the beginning.
In other words, interactivity helps customers pay attention to and retain information about their card’s value. Without that understanding, they might feel lost, complain, miss out on the card’s benefits or even end up canceling. It’s a good thing AMEX got interactive!
Pro tip: Personalize your Interactive Video to further improve engagement and relevance, ensuring each viewer gets content that’s tailored just for them.
Some more good news — Interactive Videos aren’t limited by scale. Thanks to the latest technology, brands can now deliver these videos in real time, even to millions of customers. This scalability is crucial for large brands looking to connect on a personal level with a global audience.
For instance, an international corporation could use customizable videos to create localized marketing campaigns, allowing viewers in different regions to personalize their videos with language preferences or culturally relevant content.
All in all, the possibilities and use cases for Interactive Video are virtually limitless, making it a versatile tool that can improve the results of any business strategy. Let’s take a look at some more reasons to leverage Interactive Video content below.
Why Interactive Video Content Works
From boosting conversions to resolving customer service issues, Interactive Video is incredibly useful. In fact, it’s forecasted as one of the top video marketing trends this year, with more and more brands realizing that the ability to engage viewers actively sets Interactive Video apart in a world where people’s attention spans are dwindling.
Because interactivity gives the viewer control of the video, it creates a more immersive experience. This opens the door for greater engagement and better results in all sorts of scenarios, from effectively encouraging the creation of UGC to boosting conversions. Here are 4 ways Interactive Video can make a difference for your business.
Take Advantage of UGC
User-generated content has long been a fan favorite. Customers love it, too, and it’s not hard to see why:
- It’s trustworthy. Brands create content to boost their bottom line. A customer, on the other hand, has no reason to falsely praise a brand. This honesty is crucial in an era where consumers value transparency and genuine experiences.
- It’s authentic, which is especially important to Gen Z. Real, unpolished experiences are becoming equally, if not more, important as slick marketing campaigns.
- It gives customers a chance to be a part of the conversation rather than a passive, disengaged viewer. And when users contribute their own content, they become more invested in the brand and its community.
It’s easy for brands to make the most of this trend with Interactive Video. Imagine you’re a user browsing through your newsfeed. You see your favorite brand has announced a contest to score some free merch — all you need to do is submit a video stating why you love their company.
It may seem like a fun idea, but is it enough incentive for you to go ahead and create your own video? Pulling out your own camera, recording a video and editing it can seem like a lot of work, after all.
An Interactive Video template changes this. With this approach, the brand sends you your very own interactive film you can easily customize. Enter the text, images or other media you want to add straight from the video player, and you’re done. Our Interactive Video platform generates the new, never-before-seen video in real time.
This strategy has become an increasingly popular way for brands across industries to collaborate with customers. Just take a look at this example from CCP Games.
Players could create their very own highlights reel featuring the stats and moments they were most proud of. And this type of content is incredibly shareable. It’s no secret customers love to show off their achievements on social media, and customizable videos streamline the steps it takes for them to do so.
A video like the one above makes it easy to brag (or humblebrag) to friends and followers across platforms. Our user customized videos have seen stellar results, such as:
- 2x social media share rates
- 2.5x unique views
The ROI of UGC is also pretty impressive. People tend to trust and really enjoy content created by their peers, with 85% of consumers finding UGC more influential than brand photos or videos. Because it’s seen as authentic and relatable, it tends to spread quickly on social media, reaching a much wider audience without you having to spend a fortune.
Additionally, it’s cheaper to make than traditional ads and their high-cost video budgets. With UGC, the viewers are doing most of the heavy lifting. They customize the content themselves, which means you save on production costs while still getting top-notch, engaging content.
In short, with interactive UGC, you get higher engagement and trust without breaking the bank.
Collect First-Party Data
Third-party data rules are becoming increasingly strict as consumers grow more and more concerned about how their personal data is used.
The thing is, customers don’t mind sharing their data. According to a recent report, only 27% of consumers see personalized brand communications as too personal or invasive, with more than two-thirds only feeling that way in situations where “they didn’t knowingly provide the data the brand used.”
Because of this, many businesses are turning to first-party data to gain insight about their customers. But collecting first-party data can be tricky. How do you convince your customers to share information with you?
One solution is using Interactive Video to enhance the CX. Research shows 66% of consumers are willing to share their data if it improves their experience.
This can work a couple ways when it comes to video interactivity. Let’s rewind to the highlights reel we looked at earlier. In exchange for entering the information required to customize the video, customers get a personalized piece of content worth sharing. Meanwhile, companies can leverage this first-party data for future customer outreach. It’s a win-win.
Interactive Videos also support lead generation. Data can be scarce when it comes to potential customers. You can encourage prospects to share meaningful information, even before you’ve spoken to them, with an Interactive Video like the one below.
By selecting options from the drop-down menu, users can design their own dream car. The business can then leverage that information to personalize and improve the sales process.
Tip: Curious how it works? You can try it out for yourself in the video above by clicking on the lightning bolt icon in the player.
Allow Customers To Self-Serve
Customer service is a common point of friction. Customers are often frustrated with long wait times and generic answers. And when customer service departments face a high volume of questions, these problems become even worse.
Interactive Videos allow customers to answer pressing questions immediately, rather than wait for an agent to pick up the phone. They can provide step-by-step instructions with actionable interactive elements along the way. See the explainer video below as one example.
This video was created to help mortgage companies streamline customer support and deal with common questions related to ending forbearance. It was a lifesaver during a difficult time when call centers were overloaded. Customers could easily self-serve straight from the video, and calls dropped dramatically — as much as 73%.
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Plus, videos like this are a resource customers can use anywhere at any time. Instead of waiting on hold or browsing through dense FAQs, the interactive chapter markers make it easy for them to jump to the place in the video they need. It’s especially helpful if they’re watching the video again, which our analytics show is common with these videos.
Because they’re on-demand, Interactive and Personalized Videos are a great solution not just for customer service but also for onboarding, as we showed in the American Express example earlier. Tell (and, just as important, show) customers what they need to know. Then let them click ahead for their next steps, whether it’s signing up for an online account or opting to go paperless.
Boost Conversions
An Interactive Video engages and informs customers. But does it have an actual impact on a business’s bottom line?
Absolutely! Interactivity makes it easy for your customers to convert. For instance, once a customer reaches the end of their video, they can click the CTA for the desired action. Some of the best examples of clickable CTAs include:
- Learning more about a product
- Making a purchase
- Signing up for content
- Filling out a form
This CTA doesn’t have to be a button, either. You can make any interactive element in the video a hotspot, and the video “knows” where it is throughout, even if the location changes as the object moves from frame to frame.
And don’t think you’re limited to a link that opens a web page. When the viewer clicks, it can send an API call for a whole host of actions, from sending a text to saving data in a database. When it comes to interactive experiences, the world of video is your oyster, so to speak.
One final advantage to mention — Interactive Videos are a great source of user behavior insights. Analytics from interactive elements can tell you all about which parts of the video are most engaging, where viewers tend to drop off and which CTAs are most effective. With this data in your hands, you can continuously optimize your video content to maximize conversion rates.
To learn more about how video can function like an app, read our CTO’s blog about using Interactive Video for surveys, forms and more.
Upgrade Your Digital Comms With Interactive Videos
It’s no secret that Interactive Video works. To leverage this type of video, though, you need the right technology. Whether you have a hundred thousand customers — or a hundred million — you need a platform that can handle reaching every customer personally.
That’s where we come in. We empower advanced Interactive Videos. We don’t use overlays to add interactivity. Instead, interactive elements are part of the video itself, created in After Effects just like the rest of the video. But it’s so easy, our self-serve clients can add interactivity to their own videos. No complicated video editing here. Our platform makes it simple and streamlined.
And, as always, we can create your video campaign from start to finish if you’d rather.
If you want to see more examples of Interactive Videos from our work with clients, visit our video gallery and click the Living Video button.
When you’re ready to get started with advanced video interactivity, all it takes is a call.
