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How Businesses can Utilize Personalized Videos to Increase ROI

At this point, if you’re not using content personalization to engage your customers, your brand is in the minority. Advertisers in retail and even B2B businesses have been personalizing ads for ecommerce. Now, video tech has advanced far enough to offer the relevancy and connection that customers have come to expect. 

What could have been seen as ‘intrusive’ just a few years ago is not just the norm today — consumers expect personalization.  Prospects see it as a way to feel attached — that a brand knows and cares about their needs and desires.

Let’s Talk Facts: Personalized Videos Benefit your Marketing Strategies

87% of businesses see video marketing as an asset worthy of investment. Consequently, most — if not all — video marketers are feeling an increase in the levels of noise and competition.  

So let’s cover just a few of the benefits personalized marketing provides:

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  • 75% of consumers say they will buy from a retailer more often that recognizes them by name, that recommends products based on past purchases, OR who knows their purchase history. 
  • 54% of shoppers expect a personalized discount within a day of sharing their information with a retailer.
  • 74% of customers are frustrated when website content is not personalized.
  • 65% of email marketers say their most effective personalization tactic is dynamic content.
  • 77% of consumers prefer brands that provide a personalized experience. They regularly chose, recommended or paid more for a brand that offers personalized services.

As shown, personalization can no longer be considered a luxury for marketers — it’s an indisputable cornerstone in modern advertising.  Regardless of your product, your selling platform or what business you belong to, personalization should be a major part of your marketing strategy.

Here’s just one example of successful marketing with video personalization. The Network of Executive Women (N.E.W.), a professional community committed to advancing women in the workplace, hired Rip Media Group to create personalized videos for an upcoming campaign. In just one video marketing push, N.E.W. saw an increase in its holiday campaign’s click-through rate of over 400% when compared to a similar campaign in the previous year that did not feature personalization.

N.E.W. is not a billion-dollar company. It’s a small organization that has taken advantage of select large business marketing tactics.  There are many different methods to personalizing videos, most of which are easy to create cost-effectively, no matter the size of the brand.

The Best Personalization Methods

Traditional Personalized Video: Videos that use “traditional personalization” are pre-rendered as a template, destined for a segmented list of your CRM audience. Email blasts would be ideal for this audience if they contained strategic loyalty building campaigns — like a link to a video sent out to registered holiday shoppers offering exclusive discounts.

These offer better control over elements that can be personalized and the finished product’s appearance overall. Traditionally personalized videos could include a custom message that appears as skywriting or as text on a holiday gift box.

With template-driven videos, the speed to release is measured in hours rather than in weeks or months. That includes production, integration and implementation. Good examples include templates on sites like this that offer personalized videos, usable in minutes by filling in the blanks and pressing send.  Variations include uploading your list or customizing messages by customer, market segment, location or product type.   An example of a template-driven personalized video creator (credit to The Video Bot)

Where and When to Use Personalized Video

Personalized videos can improve performance throughout your sales funnels, from top-of-funnel awareness marketing through loyalty expansion.

Here are a few ways personalized video marketing strategies can benefit your business. We’ve identified examples that will work in retail but can also work for your network of B2B affiliates and resellers.

1. Invitations to events: Lean heavily on video personalization with event planning, especially with virtual events, whether you’re making a tutorial, a webinar or a product launch promotion.

Personalized invitation emails lead to 3X to 8X improvements in click-throughs. When SpiritSox implemented personalized video marketing with a cold list, they experienced a 4X increase in opens and sales.

2. Product explainer videos: Explainer videos are great for talking directly to a prospect, to explain your product and to explain how you solve a pain point that you know a market segment has. Almost 75% of customers prefer product pages that include explainer videos.

3. Testimonial videos and case studies: Use case studies to boost customer trust. No one wants to jump in a potentially icy lake first. When someone else does, and says “it’s warm and terrific here, come on in!,”  you now have examples of credible customers who highlight how your company adds, and measures, value.

4. Video thank you messages: Support after a purchase is central to the growth of potential customers. Repeat customers are often less expensive to please and buy more than potential new customers every day.  Convey your gratitude so they recommend your brand to others before they shop with one of your competitors.  

5. Social network ads (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.): Video has become popularized across every social media platform. Facebook itself uses personalized videos during its end-of-the-year montages of your ‘favorite memories’. 

Personalization doesn’t have to include your customers’ names, but they certainly should focus on customer segmentation, demographics and psychographics with the data you can access through your ad platform.

Use demographics and interests to customize your videos to more specific audiences. For example, try targeting customers who have liked an ad, page or video by creating a personalized video that begins with, “We noticed you enjoyed  ______, so we think you’ll like __________.”

Finally, here are some social-specific tips for using personalized video marketing:

  • Use attention grabbing visuals immediately. 85% of Facebook videos are muted while the user is watching. To stop a scroll, you must grab attention within the first one to five seconds.  Use storyboards before making your video to make sure your viewers can understand your point without sound.
  • K.I.S.S. Keep it short and shareable.  Engagement falls off with every second you add to your video. Be strategic by placing the most valuable points in the first few seconds of the video, not at the end.
  • Write a strong call to action (CTA). Every ad and post has to have a CTA. Your customer is much less likely to take action without a direct appeal from you. 

6. Email campaigns: Recent campaign videos inside emails, especially with personalized images above the fold, can increase click-throughs by nearly 300%. Try sending personalized videos at the start or at the end of top-of-funnel campaigns to help with post-purchase upselling and cross-selling.

Inside the emails, you should also add in a personalized thumbnail to entice your customers to click through to your demo videos, tutorials or to any other products you offer.  For example, if sending to ‘Jason,’ leaving a teaser in the thumbnail gets more clicks as there is ‘an unresolved email there…’

Personalized Video is Like Hitting Two Birds with the Same Stone: Higher Conversion Rates and Increased Engagement

The more closely personalized information ties into your message; the more effective your video will be. So even though putting your client’s name and face on a coffee mug is interesting by itself, if you put them on a coffee cup that goes through a journey from an espresso machine to an eager customer’s waiting hand, you create a more powerful story.

As a reminder, your customers see personal touch as a way to attach and connect with you and your brand.  It is our job as marketers to embrace personalization.  


For 10 years, Maury Rogow has served as Chief Story Officer of Rip Media Group, and he has helped hundreds of brands such as Cisco, Ben & Jerry’s, Comcast, and Harvard thrive through the power of story.  Rogow is a member of the Producers Guild of America, an author, speaker and trainer, and he’s passionate about seeing companies succeed in the marketplace due to the stories that they tell.

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