Email is still #1 marketing channel when it comes to conversion and ROI. For every $1 you spend, you can expect a return on your investment of $51.

Email marketing strategies have changed over the years, but we are still all looking at the same metrics to judge the performance: open rates, click-through rates (CTR), unsubscribe rate and bounces. These are top of the funnel, often secondary, metrics which impact the bottom line results (primary metrics) of your marketing campaigns when it comes to conversion rates and ROI.

So what makes the biggest impact on those metrics? An average subscriber receives 13 commercial emails a day, so your job as a business is to make sure your email is as relevant to the reader as possible.

Importance of personalization

Email comes in as the number one channel for personalized user experience (72%), followed by company website (57%) as the secondary channel for personalized content.

With the rise of personalized experiences, marketers are adopting machine learning technology to enhance the content and automate workflows.

33% of marketers rely on machine-learning personalization, meaning using algorithms and predictive analytics to dynamically present recommendations and experiences at the individual “one-to-one” level. Among those that don’t, another 32% plan to do so in the next year.

Rise of video marketing

From text to images, today video is dominating in content marketing.

As mentioned earlier, trust is an integral part of conversion. And personalized videos make this possible through presentation, body language, tone and expressions.

Add context and make interactions more memorable for the user. Personal video especially helps breed familiarity, and this is paramount to reducing new prospects’ apprehensions.

Hubspot study also verified that most users prefer to engage with a short video instead of other forms of content.

In addition, Oberlo study also suggests that not only for increased engagement, but also for lead generation — video is the one leading the ranks.

Personalized videos and email

Personalized videos are customized with recipient’s information such as their name, location, company, website or recent purchase. Personal touch makes this content much more appealing to users than a general email outreach.

A good example is an email blast for an Easter holiday campaign to thousands of subscribers, while each will receive a video customized for their company website, name and location. To do it manually might take months, but automation tools really help make it a scalable technique.

Here are some of the advantages for applying personalized videos as a part of your email marketing strategy:

• Improved conversion results and ROI
• Build strong personal relationship with your users
• Improved brand affinity and brand loyalty
• A shorter and more efficient sales cycle

Personal videos prove to be up to 10X more effective than standard emails. With the relevance and trust elements embedded, this is how it makes it work:

Casey Hill, Growth Manager at Bonjoro tells how to do it.

How Ontraport, ConvertKit & Design Pickle increased their conversions with personalized video

Q: How SaaS and other tech companies can successfully apply video personalization as a part of their marketing strategy?

A: There are a lot of great use cases for video and SaaS. One of the first ones is for booking confirmations. At Ontraport, we cut our no-show rate in half by using Bonjoro and that led to a 20% increase in trial conversions.

Another great one is post-sale application to keep the relationship and personal connection strong. Those of us in SaaS (especially early stage or SMB focused) know that the name of the game is CLV. So the purchase is really just the start. It can also be used post-sale, during onboarding and roll-out. We live in a world where reviews are crucial, so that is another great use case for SaaS. Guaranteed a personal, tailored video asking for a review with an easy to click CTA to leave a review is going to get 50% more reviews vs. standard text emails.

Another frequent use case is with outbound outreach. You can easily apply personal video to improve your open rate and CTR when trying to kick off new conversations with potential leads, partners, media or even investors.

Q: What’s the workflow like when starting with video personalization setup?

A: One of the beauties of tools like Bonjoro is that they are built to be tied in with your website forms, CRM and email automation system. So all you have to do is simply connect it with your existing technology stack, download the Bonjoro app, and you are good to go. There are over 30 integrations in place, from Active Campaign and Hubspot, to Mailchimp, Convertkit and Keap. Someone comes to your website and opts in and you will get the request popping straight up on your phone, which you can then just click and record for.

Q: Do you have ready templates and benchmarks that teams can use as a starting point?

A: Absolutely. We have an extensive set of templates for each stage of the customer life cycle that you can use to simplify things. Although benchmarks vary by when in the life cycle you send a personalized video and your industry, if you reach out to our team we are happy to share what we know! Here is the template library called the VFP (Video Funnel Playbook).

Q: How are you different from other video personalization tools such as Vidyard?

A: A few major things. First, tools like Vidyard or Loom are used for desktop screen recordings. Bonjoro can be recorded on a desktop but the majority of our users are active on the phone app. We think that as work forces and business owners are doing more and more work on the go, having this mobile accessibility is key.

Next, Bonjoro is built around being integrated seamlessly into people’s existing technology stacks. What that means is you can have data from the CRM pop up when you go to record a video. This helps you create a truly unique and tailored message each time.

Q: What other prominent use cases are there for personalized video marketing?

A: We see personal video being used pre-sale to maximize conversions, increase call attendance rates, post-sale to get more reviews, thank customers, upsell and build more relationships with your customer base. Some of the companies currently applying this technology are cure.org, Girl Scouts of America, ConvertKit, Ontraport, Basic Bananas, Design Pickle, and even Active Campaign.

At its core, personal video is about standing out from the crowd when there is a lot of generic content and messaging going on. Personal video is actually, not even about video. It’s about a business caring so much about a customer they are willing to spend the time to make them something unique.

Q: What’s your best piece of advice to teams who are just starting with video personalization?

A: Start with a specific test. Say for instance you want to use Bonjoro to convert more prospects on a call with your team. For 50% of the post-call follow-ups, do exactly like you normally do, and for another 50% — use Bonjoro to follow-up. I love this advice because it makes the relative impact of Bonjoro very clear and people are excited by the results.

Q: What do you see as the future potential of personalized video?

A: With improvements in connectivity globally we see a future where sending a personalized video becomes just another option alongside standard email. With advances in AI it might even be possible for a video version to be sent and on the backend to be a searchable script that is transcribed automatically. Today’s digital landscape has become so crowded with newsletters, promos and pitches that if you want to stand out, you have to differentiate yourself and make your brand human again.

Conclusion

• Emails with personalized videos prove to be up to 10X more effective than standard text-based emails.
• Personal video can help you increase conversion results, ROI, build relationship with your users, improve brand loyalty, and optimize your sales cycle.
• Some of the tools oferring personalized video solutions are Bonjoro, Vidyard and Loom.
• Personal video can be used pre-sale to maximize conversions, increase call attendance rates, post-sale to get more reviews, thank customers, upsell and build more relationships with your customer base.
• To get started, integrate your personalized video solution with your existing marketing automation solutions and CRM. This way you can get the necessary user information to trigger personalization, and also be to send your email campaign.
• You don’t need to start from scratch, there are templates available for almost each use case.

Now you should be fully equipped to go on with you A/B test to see if personalized video is right for your business and how you can improve your email conversion metrics.

How to increase your email open rate to 72% (and CTR to 55%) 😱

PS. It would be interesting to try this as a welcome message when subscribing to GrowRevenue newsletter. Maybe one day I’ll test that, as a fun project.