How to take customer personalization to the next level

The whole phenomenon of personalization has been a major focus, some might say obsession, for marketers over the last decade. So much so that ‘personalization’ was declared 2019’s ‘word of the year’ by the Association of National Advertisers in the US.

If you thought such an accolade might mean we’ve reached peak personalization, brace yourself because, as they say in the classics, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Every customer thinks they’re special and no one wants to feel like they’re just a face in a crowd (or an entry on a database). That’s not going to change any time soon, so personalization will continue to be important to marketers.

In the video space, personalization has always been kind of a light touch. Sure, you can do things like embed a name onto a T-shirt and that’s cute enough. It adds the ‘surprise-and-delight’ element customers and their egos value by personalizing a passive experience, but it’s not exactly shifting the needle.

As any good marketer will tell you, marketing initiatives need to be judged not how well they can give customers the warm-and-fuzzies, but on the ability to change behavior and drive actionable outcomes. This is the next frontier for personalized video, with Vudoo interactive video technology.

Our partners Salesforce have built, what we call, a deep-level personalization integration in Marketing Cloud. We believe it’s a real game changer, harnessing the power of Salesforce Marketing Cloud by adding the ability to inject data and content into in-video interactions that can be used in a number of ways: provide a deeper dive into what’s shown, prompt a sign-up, connect to an online store, ask the viewer questions and more. We can also personalize those interactions with individual information-name, account info, purchase history.

The key paradigm shift with interactive video is in taking the viewing experience from passive to active. In literally hundredths of a second, interactive video shifts behavior. In that moment, the shift from passive to active, we know from the studies we conducted during development that there’s a cognitive resonance that leads to a clear, positive outcome in sentiment. Every interaction within a video is then presented as behavioral analytics fed back into Marketing Cloud via Journey Builder, providing a richer overview of the customer lifecycle.

Let’s say you serve a video featuring two hats. If Rosie clicks on the blue hat but not the black one, we can look at her dwell time and how many times she clicks through and trigger an interaction to ask her “Do you like the blue hat, Rosie?”. If she answers yes, we can serve a ‘buy now’ button. Suppose she decides not to purchase? We can then trigger a follow-up email in three days, offering her 15% off the blue hat.

These are the kinds of opportunities that are missed with a passive experience. Interactions unlock a raft of insights that can be utilized by marketers. It’s personalization, but not as we know it. This goes far deeper.

Need to see it to believe it? Check out our customer gallery!