The following is a guest contributed post from Sarah Nochimowski, marketing director at Treepodia.

Gone are the days of generic sales pitches that talk AT customers instead of WITH them or TO them.

They Engage your Customers

Advertising has evolved into a conversation between the vendor and the client, which allows relationship building. Personalized videos have the added benefit of engagement that draws in customers so that they feel special and valued by hearing or seeing their name in videos or watch a personalized video ad that connects with their unique story. The videos provide a powerful and entertaining medium with an element of surprise. The two examples below show the engaging power of personalized video.

Gambling giant, 888.com, captivated their clients through videos that summarized and discussed their poker stats. The excitement of receiving the videos was so widespread that if there was a delay in receiving them, their customers contacted the call center asking about their personalized videos. This is clearly a sign of engagement when your clients start to think about and miss your brand.

Another example of engaging your customers with video is by sending a Happy New Year video, or a Happy Birthday video. You are not selling anything; you are purely talking to your customers in the most personal manner. How can they not be swept away by a message like that?

They Take your Brand to New Heights

When launching a national campaign, you can advertise on TV / billboards, but you are faced with limited space. When creating a companion campaign on social media (like Carolina Lemke), it quickly trends all over the internet as people share their own videos. The personalized companion to the national crazy summer campaign featuring Bar Refaeli and Steven Tyler’s gave users the chance to interact with the video by replacing either Bar Refaeli’s or Steven Tyler’s photo with their own. Users who interacted with the brand on such a personal level are sure to have the product and brand etched in their minds, as they see the company on a whole new level. The key is to find a creative way to present your brand that make you stand out from the competition.

They convert more

Personalized video provides an added value that people have come to expect in a sea of boring ads. Users are more likely to take action when they feel inspired to do so. Video facilitates conversion rates by creating a level of excitement for users.

A successful eyeglasses company, EyeBuyDirect (EBD) harnessed the power of personalized video by using them in their email campaigns. EBD enjoyed an increase of 2.4x in conversions. They reached out to customers who recently made a purchase on their site by rewarding them with discounts on future purchases. The video is personalized on many different levels: first and last name, gender, while also incorporating previous purchases, making it the perfect fit for each recipient.

They reduce your costs

Many companies encourage customers to purchase products through their website, and to log into their site to check and manage their accounts. Some people are not tech savvy or they just prefer to reach out to companies by phone. But imagine if those reluctant customers, as well as the rest of your customer base, received a video that explains how to navigate various sections of your website, or a video that explains their bills in great detail? This would reduce calls to your support center and therefore, reduce operating costs. We estimate this reduction to be about 30%.

Tips for Creating Personalized Videos

• Define your goals and scenario head of time and focus your strategy on your target audience. For example, 888 wanted to increase engagement with their large client base. EyeBuyDirect decided to focus on customers who had recently made purchases from their website, by trying to upsell. KPIs are not the same for each of these companies and that kind distinction is important and should be defined ahead of time for each of your target market.
• Create a cleverly designed landing page for the video. This landing page for Zalando cross-sell videos is very attractive, chic but also showcases the “complete the look” products displayed in the video. If you are sending personalized videos as part of an email campaign, add a personalized image with a play button in the body of the email.
• If the goal is conversion, the CTA should be very clear and even personalized. The voice-over in the video can say: “Check this out Michelle!” or “You’ve got to see this David!”
• Add a level of interaction if possible. For the Carolina Lemke campaign, users can directly interact with the brand, while at the same time see their name appear throughout the video, in keeping with the personalization factor.
• Keep the language engaging, yet simple. If you are sending videos to your customers on how to navigate your website, for example, you want to make sure that the language is easy to comprehend.
• Make it fun, entertaining and something that inspires users to share. Sharing video increases both engagement and brand awareness.
• Present yourself as a partner in the consumer’s shopping experience, rather than as a seller that is only out to make a profit. Always think about your message and tone.

The post Op-Ed: 4 Reasons Personalized Videos Are Key to Your Retention Strategy appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Although content marketing has always existed, it’s no longer produced and delivered as it was in the old days.

“Companies have long created white papers, articles, charts and graphs, videos, and reports to position their brands as thought leaders and industry experts deserving of loyalty, with the goal of generating leads and sales,” today’s report reads. “It’s the delivery model that has changed — mailboxes used to be chock full of ads of every type, from sales circulars to envelopes full of coupons, while newspapers and magazines consistently ran ads for consumer products, clothing, attorneys — you name it.”

That content is now delivered digitally via search engines, email, social networks, and corporate websites.

Based on the information presented, 90% of organizations now market with content. On average, marketers spend more than 35% of their budget on content marketing today.

To learn more, check out the infographic below.

The post Infographic: A Beginners Guide to Content Marketing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

For frequent readers of MMW you know that we’ve always had mixed feelings on QR codes.  While the concept is more than promising and adoption is only getting stronger, a majority of the implementations we see today translate to poorly executed campaigns that actually detract from the benefits QR codes are supposed to provide.

Luckily, the folks over at 3Seventy seem to share the same sentiment . . .

[youtube width=”500″ height=”344″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbhks2uUJPc[/youtube]

The post 3Seventy MobileMinute: Why QR Codes are so Misunderstood and Poorly Executed appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.