Great marketing has always been about building genuine connections between consumers and brands.

Personalized marketing, which is super-targeted to individual customers, is an obvious way to make that happen. This kind of content makes every interaction feel like a genuine, one-to-one conversation — but until recently, it wasn’t realistic or cost-effective to customize marketing material to individual customers and audiences.

Today, that’s changed. With a wealth of new tools available that make content creation fast and easy, it’s perfectly within reach, even for smaller companies, to personalize communications to their customers. It’s a powerful tool at many parts of your digital marketing process, from lead-generation to email marketing, newsletters, content marketing strategy, and even social media marketing.

One of the most exciting ways to leverage personalized content is through video. Video is one of the most popular, and effective, forms of online marketing content — last year, 96% of consumers watched more online videos, and by 2022, video will make up 82% of consumer internet traffic.

In this landscape, bringing personalization and video together is a no-brainer. B2B marketing or direct to consumer, inbound or outbound, it’s a natural fit for an effective marketing strategy. But what exactly does personalized video look like, and how can it help marketers reach their business goals?

Create a stunning video in minutes

Try for free

What is personalized video content?

A personalized video is anything that’s highly customized to a specific audience — that could be prospects, existing customers, partners, or even influencers! These videos could be personalized to specific individuals, or to larger demographics within your target audience.

Personalized videos could include a customer’s name, like a thank-you video for making a purchase or a customized birthday card. Or, it could be a sales outreach video recorded especially for your most important client.

Why create personalized video content?

What’s the easiest way to get someone’s attention? The answer is obvious — mention their name! People are hard-wired to like talking, hearing, and sharing about themselves. That’s why personalized internet marketing is such an effective way to stand out in a world that’s more crowded with advertising than ever.

When they’re interacting with brands, potential customers want to feel like actual people, not just another lead. That’s why 75% of customers are more likely to buy from companies who know them by name, and give them personalized service based on their buying habits and purchase history.

Personalized content works, especially in combination with video’s information-sharing power. In email, personalized video results in 280% higher returns, and 16x higher click-to-open rate than typical marketing and sales emails.

It’s also a great way to recapture the attention of customers who may be drifting away from your brand. One study showed personalized videos, when sent to inactive people on your mailing list, are opened five times more often!

Are you searching for the perfect corporate video maker to create professional and personalized videos effortlessly? Look no further! PlayPlay's user-friendly tool is the solution you've been waiting for. From your website to social media, make stunning videos in just a few clicks!

Types of personalized video to create

The options are limitless with personalized video — whatever video you can imagine, there’s probably a way to personalize it! However, there are a few types of marketing video that are especially great for personalization.

Here are a few ideas, along with examples, to get you started.

Sales demo videos

Sales demo videos are all about making it crystal-clear exactly how your product works, and what makes it valuable! That’s why they work so well for personalization. Personalized sales demos give reps the ability to go beyond explaining why a product’s great in general, and delve into how it can work for each specific customer.

Demo videos are usually used at the bottom of the sales funnel, where the stakes are high and conversions are especially valuable. That’s why it’s well worth the effort to personalize videos here.

Check out this example of a sales demo video that the PlayPlay team made to prospect Tufts university, in order to show them what a video made with PlayPlay can look like.

Explainer videos

Video is one of the most effective ways to explain difficult concepts. But personalized explainer videos take it a step further!

If an explainer video is personalized to the person watching it, they’ll be able to understand the concepts in relation to their unique needs, and picture how it could be applied within their actual life.

Personalized explainer videos work very well to move prospects forward through the sales cycle, for example after they’re signed up for a product’s free trial. Check out the blog article to learn more about video prospecting.

Thank you videos

A thank-you is most meaningful when it feels authentic and genuine. What would you find more special and memorable, a generic thank-you message blasted out to thousands of people, or a handwritten note written specifically for you?

When you’re thanking customers for using your product, or clients for their ongoing partnership, a personal touch goes a long way.

This video from Plan Canada is an excellent example of a personalized thank-you video that shows sponsors the impact of their contribution.

Case study videos

Since the whole point of a case study is to communicate value to prospects, they’re an excellent option for personalization.

While the case study video example below isn’t personalized, it could easily be tailored to individual clients by adding a custom greeting, or notes about how different product features could address their needs. Oh, and it was made with PlayPlay!

Event invite videos

Who doesn’t love a personal invitation? Video invites that have been customized with the recipient’s details are a great way to build hype and interest for an upcoming event, whether it’s in-person or virtual. When showcasing events, the format of a video slideshow suits very well - by providing for example insights of last year's session.

💡 Wondering about the budget for a corporate video?

Unlock the secrets with our step-by-step guide to effective video budgeting.

How to create personalized videos efficiently

Most marketers understand the value of personalization, but many struggle to find the time and resources to make the most of it. 83% of marketers find personalizing content to be their biggest challenge, and for 46% time constraints are the biggest barrier holding them back.

Start with great video

To make a personalized video awesome, you’ll need to start with great content. That means following the golden rules of video creation, like a clear video script, good-quality footage, subtitles, and more. You don’t need to be a video expert to achieve this — on our blog, we’ve shared plenty of tips on how to make your videos look professional.

But to personalize, you will need to create different versions of your video for different audiences. That’s where things can get time-consuming.

Make the most of tech

To make personalized video creation more sustainable, try out video-makers like PlayPlay. Designed specifically for the needs of busy marketers, these tools come loaded with libraries of templates, stock footage, text animators and more.

Because they make the most challenging, technical parts of video creation so easy, it becomes perfectly achievable for teams to create multiple, personalized videos for different customers. We suggest creating one master video to use as a template, then duplicating it and entering in your prospect’s personal information to effortlessly create a personalized viewing experience.

💡 More inspiration needed ?

These video ideas will fill your content calendar, promise!
Turn how-to videos, to make features and use case more understandable to your users and increase your customer satisfaction.
For social media, you could create buzzfeed videos which are designed to go viral.
Testimonial videos are important to strengthen the bond with your customers and provide a strong sales argument which could convince prospects to test your product as well.

One important rule once you create valuable assets: quality over quantity! More specifically, this means to repurpose video content. It took a lot of time and effort to provide those, so use what you already have and get the most out of it. You just hosted a webinar? Post several short highlights of the webinar to make people want to watch the recording.

Time to get personal

The future of marketing is all about personal connection, and video is the tool to get us there. With fast, easy video-creation tools like PlayPlay, there’s no need for customizing video to your prospects to be an unrealistic amount of work.

To make personalized video creation fun, creative, and accessible for your team, try PlayPlay’s 7-day free trial and get a taste of our entire product — no credit card required.