Consumers Get The Video Wake-Up Call From New Verticals

Capturing consumers’ attention isn’t easy work in the high-distraction environment in which consumers live.

So, when it comes to delivering a marketing message, the mechanism is critical. If accessing the information is too much work, a consumer is more likely than not to skip over the message entirely.

The major advantage of video content is that it’s fundamentally engaging for consumers and customizable with data-based personalization and curation. As SundaySky Head of Creative Strategy Jonathon Ben-Haim told PYMNTS, the ability to educate and communicate with one’s customer base directly and digitally has become an invaluable tool.

“This is a big wake-up call for all kinds of firms to start making a push toward educating their current clientele and leveraging video as one of the key catalysts for that education and communication,” Ben-Haim said.

It is a wake-up call that has seen video experiences (VX) expand both in terms of verticals tapping into such digital experiences and in terms of what those videos can actually do. He said it’s not enough to just show a customer a video to tap into it as a communication tool — it’s about showing them the right video at the right time.

The New Frontiers Of Video Messaging

The new demand for VX, the company’s personalized video experience platform, comes from B2B tech services, grocery and retail banking. Ben-Haim noted that these verticals shouldn’t be surprising as the company’s research, conducted with PYMNTS, found that the majority of consumers found banks’ website content irrelevant. These industries tap into video’s capability to communicate information-laden messages to their consumer bases and take advantage of the medium’s ability to help those customers adjust to new use habits.

VX is also expanding into other adjacent verticals. Telcos, he said, are an example. People don’t think much about their telco relationship because it’s something they don’t interact with much beyond a monthly payment. What most people don’t realize is that telcos have rewards programs. What telcos haven’t realized is there are benefits to educating consumers on how they can earn ongoing useful rewards and leverage them. It’s something those firms are often pleasantly surprised is a tool that boosts engagement.

Travel, he said, is also stepping up to becoming an increasingly important future vertical for VX as the pandemic is drawing ever closer to actually having an end date and travel brands are working overtime to entice consumers to get back out there.

“Travel has a lot of work to do now and is incentivizing people to begin traveling again and utilizing the rewards programs is a powerful way to do it,” he said. “There was a lot of equity in the form of used travel rewards left sitting on the table. Travel companies have the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, you still have a lot of these rewards left over. Maybe it’s time to start utilizing them again.’”

Ben-Haim noted video content is simply a more effective and engaging way to delivery that message.

Moreover, he said, travel firms have consumer education to do as many have over the last year modified their incentives and recreated the mechanics around how their rewards programs actually work in order to incentivize travel. They want consumers to understand those changes and how they can benefit from them — a message best delivered with the right video messaging to engage them.

“The ability to tailor that education, to tailor that status within the video is kind of paramount to getting results as far as that communication,” he said.

That’s only true if that tailoring is done right and to the greatest possible effect, he said.

Closing The Knowledge Gap

Lack of consumer understanding can be a real hinderance to consumer action, he said. Using the world of retail investing that has seen a major rise in prominence in the last year, a knowledge gap can be the thing that stops a consumer from ever starting a something new or taking the next-best action. And investing novices can often be frustrated to get all the way through the onboarding process to realize that as much as they want to try their hand at investing, they have no idea where to start.

Customers can be discouraged if a product or service is inaccessible due to a knowledge gap.

“So, [use] video experiences to start educating people during an onboarding process: where to get started, how to start leveraging next best actions, what technology to utilize, those already being offered by these companies to help with your portfolio,” Ben-Haim said.

But using data to curate the video selection can do more and better than that, he said. Data can further guide advice, for example, to the user’s actual use of the investment service. Are they saving for retirement? A home purchase? Tailoring more specifically to those needs makes the video content more engaging, and more likely to reach a customer and capture their interest and attention. The more data, the more tailoring, the more specific to a consumer need, the more that data can actually do — for the firm offering it and the person consuming it.

“The deeper level [of] using data in order to drive more engagement via personalization is using that data as a core part of the message to drive engagement and interest to make sure that your content is actually resonating,” he said.