The SmartVideo Blog

Earlier this month, we hosted our second annual SmartVideo Summit, a day rich in best practices and effective ideas, to support our customers for success. I spoke about… guacamole. If you think about it, SmartVideo is similar to a recipe for guacamole. Avocado is a key component of guacamole while there are four core ingredients that go into each successful SmartVideo program:

1. Maximum potential viewer volume
2. Data and personalization drive higher levels of engagement
3. Measurement of key performance indicators
4. Adoption of best practices

Allow me to explain…

Core Ingredient #1: Viewer Volume

At SundaySky, we want our customers to think about reaching the largest potential SmartVideo audience, as we can deliver the maximum amount of value through delivery of the greatest amount of volume. That said we don’t want our customers simply throwing more viewers into the top of the funnel. You need to consider who you’re communicating with, how often, and through which channels.

While email is certainly the most popular delivery channel, it doesn’t represent the only channel that you should leverage to deliver SmartVideo. Consider alternative delivery channels to increase your view volume, such as:

• Present an interstitial pop-up upon login to the My Account portal
• Leverage SMS as a delivery channel for customers without a valid email address, or as a follow-up for those who have not opened an initial SmartVideo correspondence
• Enable access to SmartVideo through a set top box (IPTV) to achieve maximum reach and address customers with incorrect or no email addresses
• Incorporate SmartVideo into your mobile app 

Consider other triggers to increase your viewer volume, including:

• Adding a link to SmartVideo within your other customer communications, such as a monthly newsletter or online web form
• Include an option to request SmartVideo through your IVR system
• Provide call center agents the ability to send a SmartVideo to customers following a call or chat

Core Ingredient #2: Data and Personalization

Data drives the content shown within each SmartVideo as well as the personalization elements. We know that personalization leads to higher levels of engagement that ultimately influence customer behavior and drive customers to take action. Here are a few metrics that our customers have shared with us supporting the fact that data provides a more personalized and informative experience, resulting in a more engaged viewer:

I know that all of this sounds great, but you probably want to know, “How do we turn this into real, measurable value?” This brings me to our next core ingredient…

Core Ingredient #3: Measurement of Key Performance Indicators

There are four sub-ingredients that comprise the measurement element of our recipe (I’d call this the salt, cilantro, and lime of my guacamole recipe!):

• You want to identify clear, transparent key performance indicators to help understand the impact of SmartVideo on driving a viewer to take an action or change a behavior.
• We need to be able to associate a value with each of your KPIs to identify the value of each action or behavior change.
• The insight gleaned from survey data is important to help us understand both the impact that the video has as well as optimization opportunities going forward.
• We also need to make sure that we get the data to measure these KPIs as to avoid any data issues post-launch and ensure that we can measure SmartVideo impact. Data can be sorted into three buckets that will help us identify the true end-to-end performance of a SmartVideo program:
  • Pre-View: Delivery channel data (data that you, our customer, has in your system)
  • View: Video view data (data that the SundaySky platform provides)
  • Post-View: Viewer actions and behaviors (joint effort between SundaySky and our customers – we’ll identify which viewers clicked on a CTA, and we need you to fill us in on the subsequent action.)

Core Ingredient #4: Adoption of Best Practices

Everyone likes to benefit from best practices, including the Avocado Farmers in Australia. Our current best practices are informed by the results that we’re seeing with live SmartVideo programs across all of our customers. With over 200 million video views to date, we have quite a bit of data to support each best practice! These best practices are built into our lifecycle marketing platform that our customers can leverage for use in their SmartVideo programs, for a complete, end-to-end viewer experience.

Best practices have a significant impact on the success of SmartVideo programs, but don’t just take my word for it. Look at the results for one of our customers who adopted nearly all of our best practices:

• 22% lift in email open rate (over the control group)
• 44% of opened emails resulted in a click
• 55% lift in total response rate (opens plus clicks divided by the total sent)
• 19% SmartVideo CTA click rate
• 70% of viewers watch all of the video 

Mix it all together and… voila!

SmartVideo is no different from my guacamole recipe. SmartVideo is comprised of a set of core ingredients – if all of those ingredients aren’t present, then the dish just isn’t the dish. After you’ve whipped it up initially, then you’ll want to fine tune the recipe by testing out new ingredients and flavors, and adding more of one element or less of another so that over time your recipe matures and improves.

What do you think? Have you stumbled upon SmartVideo best practices that have excelled your programs? Or does your guacamole need some kick? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

And here is my full presentation on SlideShare if you want to learn more, and see additional SmartVideo best practice examples: Recipe for SmartVideo Program Success from SundaySky

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