How Online Video Benefits Communications Initiatives

(This article is part of a 3-part series from an interview conducted by Paul Ritter (News - Alert), contributor for the Business Video site on TMCnet with Wayne Wall, CEO of Flimp Media on June 16, 2011.)

Almost every HR professional and benefits manager today is looking for ways to improve the effectiveness and reduce the costs associated with their communications programs, when rolling out new benefits programs and educating employees about their options. Many companies have been turning to video to boost their results and offer employees a more engaging and information rich experience than just sending printed materials or static e-mail messages. 

So is video offering the improved results that many businesses have been longing for? Wayne Wall, CEO of Flimp Media says yes, and his firm’s customers have the statistics to back it up. Wall says that organizations in industries such as insurance and benefits, hospitality, travel, retailing and education have been using video to achieve measureable results.  

Ritter: Wayne, can you share an example or two of how companies have been using video for real-world applications in order to communicate information to their employees?

Wall: Sure. Ruby Tuesday is a good example. They ran a campaign in November 2010 to announce the open enrollment period for their benefits program and to educate employees on a new Health Savings Account plan being offered. The campaign used video brochures enabled by the interactive video brochure platform provided by Flimp Media to reach 2,547 Ruby Tuesday employees by e-mail, most of whom were managers and corporate employees. There were a total of 980 video brochure views, including viral views, representing 38.5 percent of recipients. The average engagement time, a key factor in judging whether the content being provided was actually being effective in communicating the messages being conveyed, was 2 minutes and 30 seconds.  More than 26 percent of viewers actually watched the video brochure on a mobile device, either a smartphone or a tablet using HTML5 video format.

Ritter: Having more than one quarter of people actually watching the video content on their mobile devices is pretty significant. How important are mobile devices going to be in the future for internal business applications and for external consumer-targeted campaigns?

Wall: For consumer marketing, reaching audiences by mobile phones is absolutely critical, as most young people are shifting their attention from computers to smartphones and tablets. This is also true for high level decision makers in companies who do much of their communicating on smartphones and tablets. However, many of these folks are using Blackberries which historically have not been video friendly. That is changing now as RIM is trying to catch up with Google’s (News - Alert) and Apple’s dominance of the smart screen devices. It is essential that video marketing be accessible on any viewing device with both tracking and reporting capabilities.   

Ritter: You mentioned the importance of being able to effectively track and report on viewing statistics, which are clearly some of the important success factors for sales and marketing people that are using video. What are some of the key considerations with regard to integrating video lead generation platforms with other technologies that may have already deployed, such as sales force management tools, e-mail marketing services, CRM systems or other software?

Wall: We think that the ability to easily integrate video for lead generation with third party email, CRM and market automation is critical, especially for delivery and tracking. The data collected needs to identify the viewer by e-mail address and other information for quick follow-up. The integration of our video brochure technology with Salesforce CRM enables sales organizations to prospect with highly engaging information and get real-time alerts and valuable data for the follow up and qualification process. Enabling sales people to follow up with engaged prospects in real-time is a tremendous advantage.

Consider that MIT (News - Alert) research on sales follow-up times showed you that you have a 100 times better chance of contacting a prospect with 5 minutes of their engagement with your marketing, than if you wait longer than 30 minutes. It takes most marketing departments days and sometimes weeks to get lead information to salespeople for follow up. Salespeople need to be doing their own outbound marketing with content provided by and approved by the marketing department. Video brochures can allow this to happen.

(Part Two of this three-part series from the interview between Paul Ritter and Wayne Wall features additional case study results from other end user organizations, and Part Three will outline seven best practices for using online video for lead generation. Both will be posted to the Business Video site soon, and the entire interview can be read in the next issue of the Business Video eNewsletter. Click here to sign up to receive your copy.)