If video is gasoline for growing your marketing and sales, personalized video is next-gen, turbo-charged rocket fuel. 

Take it from the 87% of folks who are seeing positive ROI from video marketing, such as increases in leads, traffic, and brand awareness. When it comes to personalization, 81% also say customized videos have grown their sales.

In fact, people are 13% more likely to remember a message packaged in an email with video than a text-based send.

If you’re considering using video personalization to skyrocket your bottom line, we’ll help you get there in this guide. We’ll also drive home the benefits of using customized videos and hand off tips to creating ROI-positive videos. 

Top 4 benefits of video personalization 

From humanizing your marketing and outreach to supporting async work, there are tons of benefits that personalized videos offer. Here’s a quick rundown: 

Human-centered marketing 

Sending personalized videos is an effective way to stand out in a noisy world of marketing and sales.

Think of it, really. Would a video with a thumbnail showing a smiling face — waving hi — grab your attention better or a boring, text-based email that sounds like the sender has mass sent it to everyone in their outreach list? You’d pay attention to the video email, wouldn’t you?

In fact, video personalization not only grabs attention but is also a great way to show your personality for gaining prospects’ trust.

Numbers back this too with 70% of sales reps who have been using customized video for outreach reporting an increase in their response rates.

Time saving for everyone

Prepping for meetings, designing engaging presentation slides, and blocking in time for product demos all take a lot of time.

Once you get a hang of video prospecting though, you can quickly record personalized videos and save your and your viewer’s time.

Internally, recorded videos are super helpful for fighting the case of this-meeting-could-have-been-an-email minus the boring part of having to write and read long emails. 

All you’ve to do is to record your screen to answer questions your colleagues have or brief your team about an upcoming project.

Externally, personalized video is awesome for effectively (and humanly) pitching new ideas, prospecting better, and educating new adoptees and power users about your product.

Supports your ABM strategy 

Account-based marketing involves targeting selected businesses with personalized content to nurture and move them down the sales funnel.

The key to nailing your ABM strategy though? Personalized content that answers the specific questions target accounts have.

Thankfully, customized video is the perfect content format for nurturing these uber-important target accounts.

One, personalization stands out among written content, which helps you win a client’s attention without taking up a ton of their time. 

And two, because personalized videos come with diverse use cases, you can use it throughout the marketing and sales funnel. For example, use video personalization to share intro messages, answer customer support questions, and build your relationships with folks at target accounts.

Makes work easier 

Lastly, customized video helps overcome misunderstandings and confusions that poorly or hastily written briefs breed.

Sometimes—despite our best efforts to stay connected—we forget that everyone has different styles of working and communicating. 

Your project goal or key takeaway might get lost in a 1:1 meeting. Or the recipient might not fully understand your requirements in a Slack message or a comment left in your project management tool. That inevitably leads to clarifying responses, back-and-forth messages, or more time spent in Zoom meetings.  

In cases like these, video helps. Simply record your screen (psst! you can do it for free with the Vimeo Record Chrome extension) and take your team member or freelancer through the project brief or your PowerPoint presentation.

Plus, you can auto-generate your screen recorded video’s transcript for a written record of the video’s message. That makes your entire conversation searchable, CTRL-F-able, and easy to reference later.

9 proven tips for making a personalized video

Convinced you need to start using personalized videos for prospecting, pitching, partnering up with others, assigning work, and more? Start creating. And trust us when we say recording a custom video is easy. 

We’ve got the tips and video personalization software to get you started — let’s kick off with the tips below:

1. Draft up an informal script to stay on track

The secret to decreasing the number of retakes in video creation? Writing video scripts before recording.

You don’t need detailed ones though. Simply create a bullet list of what to cover on a sticky note and you’re good to go. Reference this list as you record your video, so your message is focused, and you don’t miss anything. If you’re having a bout of writer’s block don’t fret! You can use an AI script generator to create unique scripts that you can edit and customize in seconds.

One take video promo module that includes AI script generation UI on the right and text based editing tool copy on the left

2. Keep it short and simple

Long, rambling videos fail fast and hard. Short, easy to follow video works better for capturing and holding viewers’ attention. In fact, over 60% of viewers will continue watching a sales video until the end if it’s shorter than 60 seconds.

Scripting your videos reminds you to use simple language and stick to your message, which, in turn, ensures your video is short.

Three more helpful tips to try today include:

  • Pause between sentences as you record then edit out the pauses for creating a smooth-flowing, well-thought-out customized video. You can do this with a non-linear editing (NLE) software or an online video trimmer
  • Talk to your camera like you’d to a person! Just because you’re creating a prospecting video doesn’t mean you need to use fancy words to sound professional.
  • Be authentic. Be yourself! Prospects and teammates appreciate you showing your human side on video. They aren’t looking for a highly edited version so it’s okay if your otherwise perfect video has a small slip up — it’s only human, after all. 

3. Leverage AI to create the perfect take

If this is your first experience with video prospecting, it can be tempting to put in a lot of upfront work recording the video a handful of times instead of finalizing the first take.

However, with one-take video creation, you can use AI tools to help you generate a script that can up added to teleprompter for easier recording. Once your finalize your video, you can automatically edit out any filler words or pauses in just one take.

P.S. We don’t recommend splurging on expensive video recording gear for beginners. In fact, make the most of what’s available to you — your desktop and mobile camera, in-built microphone, and natural lighting will do. Here are our must-read recommendations for setting up your space for recording yourself

4. Include your face 

This is especially important for remote teams collaborating using screen-recorded videos and for the sales team sending video pitches.

The reason: showing your face is the strongest way to connect with your audience. It’s step one to personalizing prospecting videos and a surefire way to gain your target accounts’ trust.

In marketing videos too, showing your face is helpful for more than gaining trust — it helps build brand familiarity. Rand Fishkin’s explainer videos for SparkToro that he shares on social media, for instance, help with brand recognition on top of product education and connecting with viewers.

Here are five more ways to look good on video — from how far to distance yourself from your camera to the best positioning for your houseplants. 

5. Pepper in your personality

Speaking naturally and being yourself are the biggest tips to follow here. But there are subtle ways to show off your personality too. For example:

  • Create a “uniquely-you” video recording workspace. Without cluttering the background, add in items that define you. For example, add books if you’re a reader (they’re a great conversation starter too!) and antique showpieces if you love those. Even your wall art can show what you like.
  • Include a defining item to your wardrobe. This could be anything from a specific-colored scarf to wearing a t-shirt with your company logo, or wearing a cap in all your videos.

All these tips not only help spotlight your personality, but they develop brand familiarity too. 

6. Research prospects to correctly personalize your outreach video

Personalization is often limited to taking your prospect’s name. But it goes beyond that. Because if you really want to leave a strong impression and drive positive results from video prospecting, you need to personalize your video the right way.

So how can you take personalization to the next level?

By researching your prospect’s pain point. Doing so helps you create a video message that speaks to the prospect’s specific challenge — offering them a solution they actually need. In turn, this guarantees positive responses. 

7. Include a helpful recap or a summary of what you’ll cover

Depending on who your video is intended for and how long it is, adding a text-based slide featuring what you’ll talk about or what you’ve talked about helps.

First things first though: limit the text you add to this slide for audience engagement. Ideally, stick with 3-5 bullet points with each line using no more than five words. This makes your slide easy to read, therefore, useful to the viewer.

For internal videos, we recommend adding a slide featuring what you’ll cover in the video — bring it up when you talk about what you’ll share in the video.

For external videos like sales pitches, include a recap or summary slide sharing how your tool can help the viewer. Position it before the call-to-action (CTA). 

8. Go the extra mile with interactivity

Want to create one video but engage many while personalizing the experience? Use interactive video.

Such a video uses features like hotspots, overlays, time triggers, and branching to encourage viewers to engage with your content.

Hotspots, for example, direct users to related content you talk about when they click on it. Similarly, branching lets viewers click to choose the section/topic they want to watch. For example, Vimeo’s Q3 2022 Shareholder Meeting used both these tactics to create an engaging, interactive video experience.

See for yourself:

https://vimeo.com/766080432

9. Give the viewer a next step (aka a CTA)

Lastly, it’s important you navigate your viewer to the next step they need to take after watching your personalized video.

For outreach emails, this could be inviting them to reply to your email for a product demo. For marketing emails, your CTA could be a micro-conversion like subscribing to your newsletter or asking viewers to try the freemium version of your tool.

As for internal team videos, make your ask clear. For example, tell the viewer to review the brief and get back to you with any questions that they may have. 

Start recording your own personalized videos today

To recap, personalized videos:

  • Are easy to make
  • Speed things up and support async remote work
  • Are an effective way to standout in a noisy world

The best part? You can create them for free with Vimeo Record