Personalized video marketing: What it is, examples, and strategies

In a Forbes article, personalized videos were called the “ultimate marketing breakthrough that brands need” (forbes.com). The article originally came out in 2018, a rather “distant” time by the standards of today’s digital marketing ecosystem. 

In short, this relative distance in time allows us to question some important points, including: how concrete is the personalized video marketing breakthrough today? How far have we come? What are the results in terms of performance and what do marketers think about it? On the flip side, what are the perceptions of customers? What strategies are proving successful? What successful examples are leading the way?

This post aims to answer those very questions with four concrete examples where personalized videos have been leveraged to empower different aspects in marketing. 

But to do so, first, it is best to start with the basics.

Personalized video marketing – what is it?

Video is the most powerful medium when it comes to digital marketing: in terms of communication effectiveness, message comprehensibility, memorability, and user preference. 

Adding the boost of personalization to video marketing means making sure that video adapts to each individual recipient’s characteristics and browsing choices. 

All of this is done in an automated way and from a common matrix.

The first step in personalization is knowing the individual people who make up your audience.

So, how do you achieve this knowledge when you’re talking about a very large and diverse audience? 

Through data collection and analysis: from biographical information to first party data, from geolocation to psychographic data, not forgetting everything about previous behaviors and past customer journeys (when dealing with already actual customers).

After the in-depth knowledge of your target audience (or, rather, targets), comes the creation of the video, which—starting from an effective and well-designed matrix—automatically adapts to the characteristics of the individual recipient, calling him/her by name, building a one-to-one narrative that is influenced by his/her browsing choices, inviting him/her to follow call-to-actions that are also personalized.

The returns in terms of communication effectiveness and conversion rate that come from putting similar operations on track are enormous; and it almost goes without saying.

What’s more, it’s something very simple, and within the reach of any brand. You can rely on Video Personalization platforms like Babelee’s (learn more about how it works and the opportunities at this link).

Before moving on, as promised, to the concrete examples of personalized video marketing, let’s take a look at this relevant data:

– More than 98% of marketers believe that personalization definitely improves the relationship with their customers (komarketing.com).

– Moving to the customer front: 81% of people want the companies they come in contact with to have prior knowledge of their characteristics and needs (marketingdive.com).

– Narrowing the focus to the specifics of video marketing: 93% of companies that use personalization elements in their videos have noticed an increase in conversion rates (econsultacy.com).

– In addition, personalized calls to action improve conversions by 202% compared to standard calls to action (hubspot.com).

– Finally, data that is related to two other very impactful elements in video marketing campaigns: engagement and retention. For users who start watching a personalized video, 80% continue watching until the end of the video.

For further insights related to the possibilities and performance of video personalization, see this post where we lined up a long series of data on the effectiveness of these strategies.

Some examples of personalized video marketing – with underlying strategies 

After our brief overview on the definition of personalized video marketing and some numbers about its effectiveness, here we come to the more concrete part of our post.

Personalized video can be used in all kinds of campaigns and it’s a perfect fit for all kinds of strategies. 

Of course, the most important boost of personalization emerges especially in the final (and decisive) stages of the sales funnel: from lead generation to the push toward conversion. Those stages, in short, where close one-to-one communication can make a huge difference.

For the same reason, another side where personalized videos can play a crucial role is in campaigns that have loyalty and advocacy as their primary goals (with the associated upselling and cross-selling opportunities).

But personalization can also play a key role in what concerns internal company communication (and we will focus on a specific case a little later).

Now, as promised, let’s look at some interesting cases of personalized video marketing. 

As anticipated, we have chosen them both for their success and because they are emblematic of some strategic aspects that we want to focus on in this discussion. 

Finally, we’ll conclude with a case that we could almost call the “prehistory” of personalized marketing…a very famous and still very significant case.

1) Delta Airlines and loyalty

And let’s start with a personalized video marketing campaign that has loyalty as its primary goal. 

This is the campaign by Delta Airlines aimed at members of its Medallion program: “The path you make.”

Central to the video are the experiences of the individual traveler, with data on places visited and miles traveled. 

The video is intended to exploit the personal aspect of remembrance. 

Memories of good times spent are triggered, which is a great way to entice people to add more experiences with the same airline.

All of this triggers an additional important positive effect: users are led to share this kind of content on social networks, turning themselves – in a spontaneous and natural way – into testimonials and ambassadors for the company. 

In short, it triggers a virtuous circle that leads from loyalty to advocacy.

2) Barclay’s and the possibilities of cross-selling 

From loyalty, we come to another highly coveted goal in any marketing strategy: cross-selling.

As we have mentioned, personalized videos are a very effective and “surgical” tool for targeting to sell related products or services to those who are already loyal customers, based on their characteristics and needs.

This is what Barclay’s did, in a highly successful campaign related to the possibilities of personalized bank loans. 

Here, the focus on the human and individual aspect immediately jumps out at you: the customer is not one account number but a person called by his name, whose needs and desires are known.

3) Amazon – personalization and on-boarding

Personalized video marketing is a very powerful weapon not only for B2B and B2C, but also for B2E (Business to Employee), thus for everything related to company communication.

In this specific case, we are talking about a personalized interactive video that uses animation and gamification to introduce an employee on her first day of work. The department is Customer Service. 

The video takes the form of a sort of course—anything but boring—to follow Amazon’s corporate on-boarding process, sharing various scenarios and the ways to best handle them.

4) The “prehistory” of digital personalization: Coca Cola and omnichannel marketing

When talking about the frontiers of marketing, we have to mention Coca Cola. And it’s not surprising that one of its most iconic campaigns is recognized as the forerunner of personalized digital marketing. 

It was, however, a very “physical” campaign.

We’re referring to the “Share a Coke” where individuals’ names were printed directly on the cans instead of the very famous brand name.

That was in 2011, and the campaign was initially launched in Australia, aimed specifically at the target audience of Millennials. Later, given its huge success, it was exported to more than 70 countries around the world.

This was a very basic level of personalization. Yet it worked remarkably well, turning individuals into true brand “ambassadors.” 

The interesting fact is that this very “physical” campaign had a huge echo, also in the digital ecosystem. 

In this regard, here is some data, collected only 3 months after the campaign was launched in Australia (ogilvy.com): 

– Over 76,000 “digital cans” of Coca-Cola were shared online.

– Traffic on the brand’s Facebook channels increased by 870%. 

– There were more than 121 million photo and video views related to the campaign on Facebook alone (and again in 3 months)

(Mind you, Instagram had just been launched, and TikTok did not yet exist).

In short, the big lesson from this campaign that is now part of history is this: omnichannel. A lesson that is still very relevant today. 

And it’s not only a matter of integration between “physical” and “digital” sides. 

Above all, when it comes to video, it’s about the ability to optimize your campaigns for all types of devices. 

And not only that: the same personalized video marketing campaign can and must be conveyed through different platforms: from YouTube to company websites to social networks (with the increasingly marked differences between one social network and another). 

Each channel has its own technical rules and best practices. And your video must adapt to it.

Companies must consider all of this with a very “traditional” awareness in mind: there is nothing more effective than reaching out to individuals, getting close enough to anticipate their desires.