Wistia Blog

Introducing Wistia's Newest Feature: Privacy Mode

2018-06-11T12:45:15-04:00

You shouldn't have to choose between your viewers' privacy and collecting meaningful data about how your videos are performing. That's why we're excited to share with you our new feature, Privacy Mode. When your account is in Privacy Mode, you'll be able to collect to all the same viewer data as before, except IP addresses will be anonymized and cookie tracking disabled. You'll still get heatmaps, engagement graphs, and all your other favorite stats, with the exception of visitor tracking. Each video view will appear as if it's from a new unique visitor when this setting is turned on. If you're the owner of your account, you can easily enable Privacy Mode by default for all of your videos with a single click in your Account Settings! Just like that, and you're ready to roll. #### Opt-In or opt-out If you're using Privacy Mode, you can still have visitors opt-in for more detailed tracking using the API. We've seen customers connect this to the cookie opt-in banners on their sites, for example. And if you don't use Privacy Mode by default, you can elect to have your viewers opt-out of cookie-based tracking by enabling Privacy Mode for a visitor via the API as well. #### Jump on the bandwagon Privacy is super important to us and we know it is to you, too. We're really excited about Privacy Mode and hope that many other video providers offer something similar soon! Fingers crossed. #### GDPR and data privacy Privacy Mode isn't strictly a necessity for your video marketing to be GDPR compliant, but it's a helpful tool in minimizing the data you collect about individual visitors and users. If you have questions about GDPR compliance with video, check out our guide to GDPR and Data Privacy.

Becoming More Intentional with Your Video Ad Strategy on Facebook

2018-06-06T11:31:09-04:00

With all the hype around using video on social media, you're probably pretty eager to dive in and start making video ads right away—but not so fast! When it comes to Facebook, some of your videos will be a home run, and others might die a slow, painful death right there on your page. In order to achieve good results, you need to start planning ahead and being more strategic with your efforts. Luckily, we're here to help! Many marketers and creative teams make the mistake of focusing on the content alone for Facebook ads when in reality, the context is just as important. For your next campaign, try spending half your time on content creation and the other half on strategy and optimization. We bet you'll start seeing better results! After all, when you tie your creative efforts to measurable goals, there's no limit to what you can do with your marketing. Let's walk through some steps for setting your goals, testing your content, and being more strategic with video overall. ### Set your goals and choose your audience Before you put pen to paper and start drafting your next script, make sure you have a clear goal for your video and that your target audience is defined. Goals will give your video a purpose you can actually measure against—without a goal in place, it's hard to determine what's working and what's not. You can decide on your goals and audience before even opening the Facebook Ads Manager, but it's helpful to know what you're working with once you do.

"You can decide on your goals and audience before even opening the Facebook Ads Manager, but it's helpful to know what you're working with once you do."

#### Goals Facebook divides ad campaign goals into three categories based on the marketing funnel:

Awareness: Helping people recognize and remember your brand name
Consideration: Engaging people who are interested in your brand on topics they care about to prove your value and start conversations
Conversion: Getting people to complete a conversion action on your site or app

Here are some examples of goals you could set for a video marketing campaign:

Awareness: A “maximum reach” goal will aim to put ads in front of as many people as possible within your budget
Consideration: An engagement goal could be to drive a certain amount of reactions and comments on your video, or to get people to claim an offer in your ad
Conversion: A conversion goal could be achieving a certain return on ad spend. For example, for every $1 of Facebook ad budget, you get $3 worth of orders on your site.

Many businesses using video ads on Facebook tend to focus on the consideration and conversion categories. While awareness campaigns can be really effective for certain brands, the results can often be difficult to measure in a meaningful way. Video engagement and purchase actions are more directly related to lead and revenue generation, making it easier to measure ROI. #### Audience The more you know about your audience, the better you can hone your video messaging and imagery to match their preferences. The audience you choose in Facebook Ads Manager can be an extension of your marketing personas, or it can be based on data you've gathered from customers who've used or purchased your products. Here are some examples of defined audiences on Facebook:

Married moms ages 30-45 in the Southeastern United States
European product managers ages 30-50
People who have purchased from your Android app in the last three months

Once you have these target demographics set up, take the time to get to know your audience better. Think about what they value, the problems they are looking to solve, and the issues they care deeply about. The answers to these questions will give you clues about who to feature in your videos (humans or puppies), what terminology to use (marketing jargon or funny puns), and what emotions to evoke in your video (tears of joy or tears of sadness). ### Test your organic content So, you've identified the goal of your video and have established your target audience—that's great! You're finally ready to hit "go" on that Facebook ad, right? Well, not exactly. There's still one more step you can take to make sure you're putting your best foot forward when it comes to setting up your videos ads on Facebook. You may have noticed over the past year that your Facebook feed features more sponsored posts than ever before. And despite Facebook's efforts to favor these ads, one of the strange quirks of the newsfeed is that organic-looking posts still seem to outperform more polished and professional looking ones. Facebook ads expert and founder of digital agency Ad Hoc Media, Justin Marshall, put it this way in an interview with video ad maker Shakr, “People don’t want to be sold to on social media, but they love discovering new things and eventually buying them.”

“People don’t want to be sold to on social media, but they love discovering new things and eventually buying them.”

The great news here is that organic posts are easy to make and replicate, which means you can easily test your content in order to determine which videos are worthy of receiving those precious buckaroos. Shoot several low-budget, low time-investment videos, write multiple variations of copy with CTAs within the post, and then share them on your Facebook page in a series of casual (yet controlled) tests. Here's an example of an organic post that follows this format from event app Bizzabo's Facebook page: Post copy: Have you seen our totally revamped event app, yet? Not to brag, but it's pretty darn cool. To learn more speak to your CSM or request a demo here. When testing organic posts, be sure to judge the post's success in the same ways you would a traditional ad. As always, make sure your performance goals align with the goal you'll set for your paid ad (side note: you won't be able to do this if your goal is conversion-based). However, if your goal is tied to awareness or engagement, you can track the views, reactions, and comments each video receives from people following your company page. Doing so will give you a look into which content might be the most favorable for your video ad. The next step is to create an ad that looks identical to the successful organic post you shared. Rather than “boosting” the existing organic post, create an ad that mimics the format. That way you can apply the highly specific goals and audience you chose earlier, instead of letting Facebook assess who should see your content and what success looks like. A video ad (rather than a boosted post) will also help separate purely organic performance from your paid efforts. When you take the time to test your content before spending any of your budget, you'll feel more confident that your money will be going towards a concept with a great track record. ### Launch, rinse, repeat You're so close! Once you've tested your video and are confident in its success, you're ready to rock 'n roll. Don't let the complex Ads Manager fool you—this can be a relatively quick process. Since you've already determined the creative, audience, and goal, you should be up and running in no time. To keep things super simple and easy to measure, set as many controls as possible—in other words, cut down the variables that could affect your results. Choose one placement, i.e., mobile newsfeed, place one ad per ad set, and use one link as your call-to-action. Most importantly, always A/B test your ads. The more opportunities you have to optimize and tweak your content, the better off you'll be, so keep tinkering regardless of how small the changes may be! Here are a few examples of A/B tests you can try on your next video ad:

URLs: Test a full URL against a short-link in your post copy.
In-video CTA: Test a video with a CTA in the content itself vs. one with just a post CTA.
Captions: Test a video with auto-captions turned on vs. one without.

Facebook recommends waiting between 3 and 14 days to gather significant results on your video ad A/B tests. Once the test is complete, you can apply your learnings to the next ad. Keep a simple spreadsheet of all the tests you've run so you can track variables and results. This will help you track what you've learned so you can continue to improve performance.

"Facebook recommends waiting between 3 and 14 days to gather significant results on your video ad A/B tests."

When starting out, you also can use industry benchmarks to bolster your knowledge of Facebook ad success. Here are some industry benchmarks for Facebook conversion rates, courtesy of our friends at WordStream. Of course, these rates are just guidelines—you know what a significant impact on your business looks like best. Once you've run a few ads, you can set your own benchmarks. Soon, you'll get into a groove of creating new content, optimizing your posts, and creating ads that deliver on your goals every time. ### Equal parts strategy and content Video ad performance on Facebook is not always intuitive. By creating a process for reaching the right audiences, setting concrete goals, and iterating on successful videos, you can make your performance more predictable. That doesn't mean success totally relies on the process, however. The 50/50 rule leaves plenty of room for creativity and video magic. When you combine equal parts strategy and content, you can create a video that feels authentic within the Facebook feed. Spark conversations and inspire others to start cooking up something good today!

How and Why We Decided to Invest in a Referral Program

2018-06-04T14:02:31-04:00

This May we launched Sudbuds, a referral program for our webcam and screen recording tool, Soapbox. One month later, and we have over 300 participants and a steady stream of referrals rolling in. And while it's still too early to measure success, we're feeling pretty good about our initial results so far! After all, we've never had a referral program before here at Wistia. So in order for us to really feel confident in our decision to start one, we had to conduct careful research, thoroughly assess the opportunity, and then deliberately scope the project from end to end. In this post, we're going to share the steps we took to determine whether or not starting a referral program was right for our business. After soaking up all this intel, you should be able to apply a similar framework to assess the opportunity for your own business! Let's dig in. ### First, conduct research Before we could get started, we needed to answer some questions about the referral program landscape. What successful programs were already out there? How were they structured and what did success look like for them? What were companies that we admire or even our competitors doing? What was working and what hadn't been tried yet? As it turns out, there are tons of companies out there doing interesting things with referral programs. But ultimately, we decided to research 10-12 of them. We put the following parameters in place to help us narrow down our selection.

"As it turns out, there are tons of companies out there doing interesting things with referral programs."

1. The companies had to be in our space (SaaS). We wanted to make sure we were being comprehensive, but also focused. What worked for one company may not work for another if their business models weren't similar enough. 2. The companies should vary in size, and represent both B2B and B2C industries. As we mentioned before, you want your research in this phase to be comprehensive, so don't just look at companies that are exactly like yours. Just because Wistia sells primarily to businesses and Airbnb sells to consumers, for example, doesn't mean we can't learn from each other. 3. The companies should share our values. There are some very successful companies out there that don't do business in the way we aspire to. What determines those companies' success and the nature of their partnerships will likely be very different from what informs ours. A quick Google search for “best referral programs” was a great place to start for us. We found that blog posts written by actual referral program platforms, like ReferralCandy, Influitive and RewardStream, tended to be very informative, since they knew a lot about their best customers that were growing the most. Some of our favorite examples of great referral programs were from Dropbox, Airbnb, and TheSkimm. Once we had our list narrowed down, we then dug into each referral program and looked at their sign-up pages, terms and conditions, rewards, and ultimately, signed up for the programs when we could. Dropbox was able to grow their business by 3900% with a simple referral program—check out their story.
Determining the nature of a program’s success took a little more resourcefulness than relying on good-old Google. First, we took a look at articles that had been written about each company's growth story. If the referral program was mentioned, we could then infer that it had been significantly impactful on their growth. Then, if the company was pretty transparent, we might even be able to find hard numbers around impact, like how many customers they had before launch and how many came in through referrals, for instance. ### Then, assess the fit After doing all of this preliminary research, the real question we had was whether or not our company would actually find success with a referral program. The fact that businesses like us had done well was an indicator of potential, but it didn't mean that we would be successful by default.

"The fact that businesses like us had done well was an indicator of potential, but it didn't mean that we would be successful by default."

So, we took a step back and looked at Soapbox from top to bottom. Based on the business model, where our growth had come from in the past year, what the current priorities were, and what our resources looked like, we had to figure out if a referral program made sense. Here's a deeper dive into how we actually assessed the fit. #### Customer affinity First, we wanted to get a clear idea of our customer affinity, both for our brand and our product. For true referral program success, we needed both customer loyalty and affinity. Sure, the perks had to be good, but the real reason anyone refers something to a friend or coworker is because they like the product and find it valuable. Here at Wistia, we’re lucky that we often receive a ton of positive customer love and feedback. We see it daily in our thriving Slack community, we saw it for years at WistiaFest, and we hear it anecdotally through our Support and Success teams. And one more factor in our favor? We've been known to design a pretty mean t-shirt or two. So, if we decided to go with physical rewards in a referral program (spoiler alert: we did!), we knew we could pull off some pretty great stuff that people would actually want. #### Customer acquisition The next step was to see what our customer acquisition funnel looked like for Soapbox. How did people hear about Soapbox? What was our pricing model? How were people signing up for our product? How did they expect to be able to buy our product? We’d seen both of our products grow organically through word-of-mouth referrals in the past, even without a program in place. Heck, Soapbox grew to over 70,000 users in its first year alone with very little marketing or direct sales for the product. At this point, we even had customers writing into our Support team asking if we had a referral program because of how often they told their colleagues about our products. Wistia and Soapbox also both run on freemium models, which means you can sign up right on our website and get started for free without even having talking to talk to anyone. We knew that this would also significantly lower the barrier for someone to refer a friend. After considering all of the above, going down the referral program route seemed like a pretty logical next step. #### Available resources Before we could really jump into the nitty-gritty details, we had to determine if we actually had the bandwidth to create and run a referral program. How did the company goals stack up to our progress so far? Was there an eagerness for new growth ideas or a readiness to experiment? What were the other projects on the table that might take priority? What was our resource capacity? The team focused on Wistia’s core product had plenty on their to-do list already. The team focused on Soapbox, however, was newer, more agile, and ready to experiment. That didn’t mean we had resources to spare, though. On the contrary, a small team with a new product has to be extra careful about prioritizing the right work and understanding the potential impact of various ideas. That's where the next step comes into play (a super important one at that!)—understanding your program's potential impact.

"On the contrary, a small team with a new product has to be extra careful about prioritizing the right work and understanding the potential impact of various ideas."

### Projected impact Would a referral program impact the current growth of Soapbox in a meaningful way? We had to find out! To begin answering that question, we needed to decide which Soapbox goals we were trying to impact. Adoption seemed natural—participants would be spreading the word to their networks and getting people to sign up. But we didn’t just want to get a bunch of new accounts for the sake of it. So, engagement became the next obvious choice. We decided that we would structure the program to only reward people if their referrals actually made their first Soapbox video.

Next, we established a clear objective: to incentivize and reward our users for spreading the word about Soapbox in order to increase adoption and engagement. If adoption and engagement were our ultimate goals, we needed to look at the current state of affairs for Soapbox in order to assess the desired impact of a referral program. We took a look at the following metrics:

Signup rate (# of sign-ups / week)
Conversion rate from free to paid
Activation rate (# of sign-ups that actually make a Soapbox video)
Activity rate (# of people actively making videos / week)

By marking what the current rates were, we knew where our goals needed to lie in order to help Soapbox grow. Down the line, we’d be able to measure the impact of the program against that starting point (keeping in mind that other things would influence the growth of those numbers, of course).

"By marking what the current rates were, we knew where our goals needed to lie in order to help Soapbox grow."

But we couldn’t just set goals for the program based on what we’d like for the impact to be. That's when we sought out some benchmark data for other referral programs. We did a bit of research, both looking online and talking with other companies that had successful referral programs. We found some useful metrics from Amplifinity, in particular: 1. 36% of participants will actively share their referral code or link (share rate)
2. Participants will produce an average of 0.87 referrals per year Now it was time to set our goals. We created a referral funnel with relevant conversion points, and then did some projections. Participation rate was based on our typical email click-through rate, since we rely on email as the main channel of communication with customers. If a percentage of our customers would open the email and click on a link to join, we could estimate the number of new Sudbuds. Share rate was taken from the Amplifinity benchmark data about the percentage of participants that actively share their referral code or link. Referral rate was also based on the benchmark data about the average number of referrals per participant. Activation rate—the percentage of people that sign up and then actually make a video with Soapbox—was based on current Soapbox numbers. Here’s how the conversion calculations actually work. Let’s say our participation rate was 10% and our activation rate was 50%. Starting at 70,000 Soapbox users, we’d get: 70,000 users x 10% participation x 36% shares x 87% referrals x 50% activation = 1,096 new active users With both sets of numbers in hand, we could more easily determine whether a referral program could impact the growth of Soapbox in a meaningful way. Keep in mind that a referral program is built to incentivize and reward participants for continuing to refer people over time, so any funnel numbers should be treated as the starting point for the first year. ### Scope and cost Last but certainly not least, how much time, effort, and money would it take for us to actually build a referral program? First, we calculated what the expected revenue was for new Soapbox sign-ups so that we could understand what it would mean for our program to be ROI-positive—after all, we want to make money, not lose it! To break it down, let's say our conversion rate from free to paid was 10%, and the cost of a paid plan was $100/year. For every new sign-up, we could expect the following: 1 sign-up x 10% conversion x $100 = $10 expected revenue For us, being ROI-positive was important, though this may not always be true for other companies. Next? Time and effort. We scoped out the work and time it would take to build this program for product, design, marketing, creative, etc. We thought through all of the steps it would take to design and build the program, to launch it to the world, track its success—you name it. We then met with team leads to get a sense of what the time and resource commitment would be.

"We thought through all of the steps it would take to design and build the program, to launch it to the world, track its success—you name it."

And finally, we assessed the risks involved in starting a referral program. We surfaced any unanswered questions, assumptions, and potential pitfalls we could find based on what we knew about our customers, the Soapbox product, and the internal workings of Wistia as a company. ### Referral programs for all Ultimately, after conducting research, assessing fit, projecting impact, scoping the work, and estimating our return, we decided to create an MVP, or minimum viable product (in this case, an MVP of the referral program) for Soapbox. This meant we would build the lightest, fastest version first, measure its performance, and then decide how much more to invest in it at a later date. It's safe to say we're really pleased with how our program has gone so far, and hope you feel more inspired than ever to start evaluating one for your own business! Interested in taking a closer look at how we announced this to the world? Check out this blog post and say hello to Sudbuds, Soapbox's very own referral program.

5 Quick Tips for Making an Effective How-To Video

2018-05-26T16:22:53-04:00

We know what you’re thinking—a "how-to" post on making how-to videos? Seems a tad Inception-like. But trust us, this won’t be nearly as confusing. You may already be familiar with the many benefits of using video throughout your marketing efforts, but have you ever really thought about what makes a how-to video great? If you're even toying with the idea of using video in the awareness stage of the marketing funnel, then this post is for you. When executed well, how-to videos have the power to engage, delight, and establish trust in a way other mediums can't. With these tips in your back pocket, you’ll be on your way to making stand-out how-to videos in no time! Let's get started. ### 1. Start with a great idea When it comes to how-to videos, the world is your oyster. There are seemingly endless topics your business could create content around that meets the needs of your target audience. However, focusing on topics that showcase your expertise in the field is one of the best ways to build awareness. Not only are you providing relevant content that interests your viewers, but you’re also establishing your brand as a trustworthy and knowledgeable resource in the industry. It’s a win-win for you and your audience.

"However, focusing on topics that showcase your expertise in the field is one of the best ways to build awareness."

For example, as a video software company, naturally we want to show people how to make videos. More people making videos? More people using our software to help them do better marketing! With that in mind, we set out to teach people how they can create video content by (get ready for it) making videos about making videos. The main takeaway here? Do your research. Find out what people are searching for online, and make helpful content that helps answers those questions. Check out this video we created to help folks answer the question, "How do I shoot my laptop screen?"

### 2. More how, less why If your viewers are interested in your video, chances are they understand why the content you’re providing is valuable. So, don’t waste time getting into a lengthy explanation about why they should watch or why the topic is important. Instead, cut to the chase. Introduce the topic and then jump right into the nitty gritty details that will help them solve the problem at hand. This will save your viewers time and make the video more digestible overall. At the end of the day, your goal with this type of video content is not to convert your viewers into customers—it's to answer their question or solve a problem.

"Introduce the topic and then jump right into the nitty gritty details that will help them solve the problem at hand."

So the next time you set out to make a how-to video, make sure you focus on the how, not the why—and that all starts with a great script. Here are some tips for keeping it informative:

Keep it short—jump right into the topic at hand.
Avoid jargon. Try to keep your content conversational.
Speak directly to your audience. You want your content to feel personal.
Stay true to your brand's voice and tone.
Don't assume your audience knows it all—explain complex or confusing subjects.

### 3. Simplicity goes a long way Raise your hand if you’ve ever dozed off in class. If your hand isn’t raised, we forgive you for lying. The point is, bombarding your audience with too much information at one time never ends well—they'll go elsewhere to find the answers. So don’t overload your viewer with lengthy, dense, or confusing instructions. Instead, try simplifying the steps of your how-to video as much as you can without cutting out any valuable information. This will make it easier for your viewers to follow along and see the tutorial through to the end without feeling defeated, or worse, bored. Take this post about how to make a stop motion video for instance. Since this topic is a bit complex and requires multiple steps, our video producer Trevor decided to create several separate videos to help explain each stage of the process. Instead of making one super-long video that covered it all, these individual videos help break things down in a more digestible way. Here's an example of one of the videos he made that covers one component of stop motion animation—editing.

This lengthy, in-depth post suddenly turns into an easy-to-follow, crash course in stop motion animation thanks to the help of smaller videos. ### 4. When in doubt, retrace your steps Here at Wistia, we like to think of how-to videos as mini adventures we constantly embark on with our viewers. Hopefully by the end of it, they walk away with some valuable and memorable learnings, but as their guide, it’s our responsibility to make sure they don’t get lost along the way. So, as you’re using video to walk your viewers through a multi-step process, be sure to check in every once and awhile to make sure they're still on track. You can easily do this by recapping your steps throughout. Summarizing where viewers are in the process will help keep them engaged and reinforce the main takeaways of your how-to video.

"Summarizing where viewers are in the process will help keep them engaged and reinforce the main takeaways of your how-to video."

Chris does a great job of reinforcing the key tips he shares throughout the video by repeating them once more for the audience at the end of this how-to video.

### 5. Don’t be afraid to have fun with it You have a great idea, you've planned out all your key steps, written your script, and are now ready to start shooting. But there’s just one thing missing—you! The content you share will obviously be the star of your how-to video, but adding a personal touch will bring it all to life. Whether it’s spicing up parts of the script, putting a fun spin on the demonstrations, or adding simple effects in post, there are plenty of ways you can give your how-to video some personality without distracting from the main content. This way viewers can learn how to do something new and have a little fun along the way. It’s also a great way to show new viewers what your brand is all about without having to go overboard. Check out how we utilized the personalities of some of our very own Wistians to give this how-to video some extra pizzazz!

Put it all together and what do you got? Hopefully a stellar how-to video that’ll inform your viewers in a unique way and keep them coming back for more. What are some other elements you think are crucial for a successful how-to video? Are there any other brands or businesses that do a great job with this type of video? Share with us in the comments!

Using Video Throughout the Customer Lifecycle

2018-05-09T12:32:19-04:00

When it comes to retention marketing, the world is your oyster. From email to in-product messaging to chat, you have an abundance of options to consider. And while there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to lifecycle marketing and the customer retention funnel, there are tried-and-true strategies for where video should and shouldn’t be used throughout the customer journey. But before we get to those strategies, let’s talk about the customer lifecycle. For starters, what the heck is it? At Wistia, we think of the customer retention lifecycle as the journey that someone takes when they interact with your product. This includes everything from the first welcome email they receive, to their in-app experience as they explore the product, to the friendly note they get from their customer success rep congratulating them on another awesome video. ### The marketing funnel vs. the customer lifecycle Whereas a traditional marketing funnel extends far beyond typical brand interactions, the customer lifecycle is focused on what happens once someone is in the door, plus everything that comes after that. Think of it as mini-funnel, where the sole focus is retaining those customers that other teams worked so hard to attract.

"Whereas a traditional marketing funnel extends far beyond typical brand interactions, the customer lifecycle is focused on what happens once someone is in the door."

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Here’s a not-so cheesy example that might make the difference clearer. Even though every business is different, there’s a shared language and way to model your customer lifecycle that anyone can apply. Whether you work for a financial institution or a vegan grilled cheese truck, your customers and your business still have certain core needs: #### Customer needs: - Understanding your service (What is a vegan grilled cheese? Do you use dairy-free cheese in your sandwiches?) - Knowing how your product helps them reach their goals (As a vegan, you want something delicious that won’t upset your stomach.) #### Company goals: - Educating your consumers - Retaining your customers, and keep them coming back ### Translating needs into program goals At Wistia, we group each lifecycle retention campaign by its goal (the problem/need the campaign is trying to solve), and then map it back to one of five program goals: activation, engagement, retention/optimization, pre-winback/retention, and winback. Every campaign we run always falls into one of these buckets, regardless of the channel. In fact, more often than not we’re utilizing a few channels simultaneously, like in-app notifications and email, to promote a campaign and get the most out of it. Some examples of the types of campaigns that fall into each category include: Activation: Onboarding emails that tell customers all about your product and how to use it. Engagement: A modal on your site that uses an algorithm to recommend blog posts on topics your users care about (like the one you’re reading now!). Optimization: Outreach from a sales rep after someone has completed a free trial. Pre-Winback/Retention: A proactive, pre-renewal email series that reminds customers of the benefits of their paid subscription. Winback: An email sent 30 days after someone cancels their account to remind them of the benefits of your product, with the end goal of getting them to sign up again. ### Taking the time to do it right We realize this may sound like a pain to map all of your campaigns back to these five buckets, but the effort is more than worth it: It’s extremely important in helping determine where your team should be spending their time. One way to make the process more streamlined is to organize your plans with the help of a visual chart. At a glance, you can understand what the state of your current program is, and get a better idea of what your goals are in the coming months. By creating a visualization of your customer lifecycle, you can easily identify gaps in the customer journey. (It’s also a great way to explain to the rest of your company why you’re choosing to work on the projects you’ve prioritized.)

"By creating a visualization of your customer lifecycle, you can easily identify gaps in the customer journey."

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Luckily, we’ve created a downloadable template you can use to indicate which campaigns currently exist (green), are in progress (yellow) or are ones you’d like to add in the future (blue). Keeping the content on your chart high-level (four words max per bubble) will help to improve its shareability. Plus, think of how awesome it will feel when you can turn those grey bubbles into red ones as you make progress!

Access the sheet

If you’re looking at your chart and thinking, “How am I going to fit all of my details into four words?” there’s reassuring news: you’re not! You’ll need to plot out more details (like copy and targeting) before you can get your campaign off the ground, and that’s ok. Google Docs or Quip are great for storing all of that information, and if you’re feeling really fancy, you can link out each bubble to your program-specific docs. So you have your map—now what? If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to tackle all the grey bubbles right away, but let’s be real—that’s not going to happen unless you have a team of 50 marketers working with you who all LOVE the customer journey (and if that’s the case, can I borrow a few? I promise I’ll give them back… maybe). But you have to start somewhere! We’re huge believers in the ICE method at Wistia. By “ICEing” a list of projects, you can determine which ones will get the highest priority based on (I) their level of impact to the brand and consumer, (C) your confidence that the campaign will move the needle, and (E) the effort required to successfully execute each campaign (such as dev resources or the help of a designer). Too often we promote content because it meets our goals, when it may not necessarily meet our users’ goals. By mapping campaigns back to this model, you’ll be able to determine what’s best for both parties and keep your target customer top of mind. Then, once every element is scored, you can prioritize accordingly and get to work! Looking for a foolproof way to get started on your next retention campaign? Download this three-page planning doc and get started today.

Download the template

### Creating an omnichannel campaign The best campaigns are omnichannel, meaning they utilize multiple mediums to create the most impactful customer experience. However, omnichannel campaigns can also entail omni-project management. If you aren’t the designer, writer, developer, and marketer for your company (and if you are, who *are* you?!), there will undoubtedly be some coordination skills required to successfully execute your campaign. GANTT charts, Trello boards, and weekly check-ins have been lifesavers for our team. Whatever tools you go with, find a way to work together cross-functionally that’s both respectful of people’s time and cognizant of setting realistic expectations. #### Where does video fit in? That’s a question we ask ourselves every time we create a new campaign. Although video can work wonders for your brand, it’s not always the right medium for every initiative. Yes, this idea may sound shocking coming from a video marketing software company, but it’s why you won’t always see video in every part of our lifecycle marketing.

"Although video can work wonders for your brand, it’s not always the right medium for every initiative."

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When thinking about the customer journey, it’s important to remember humans have extremely short attention spans. I’m talking less than that of a goldfish. According to an article published by Time, the average human attention span is under 8 seconds. That’s less time than it takes most people to text their mom! If you have a specific conversion goal that you need to meet in a short period of time, video may not be the solution. An example of a place where video may not make sense is in your activation content. Although video can be a great way to introduce your brand and get someone in the door, it can be a distraction if you need your customer to take an action (like creating their first video or entering their credit card information). Instead, drop users directly onto the page you need them to visit, and try using a video post-transaction to create a delightful moment that lingers in their minds. If you still want to spice up your activation content, GIFs cant be a great way to bring movement and life to an otherwise straightforward interaction. For example, we recently updated our onboarding emails to focus on three key ways to get started using Wistia (uploading a video, recording a video, or borrowing a video). Because we didn’t want to detract from the message with a lengthy video, we instead added subtle movement into our emails to make the content more appealing and hold people’s attention, while still staying true to our brand identity.

But you’re a video company. Are you saying I shouldn’t use video in my retention marketing? Absolutely not! Video can be hugely successful for your engagement, retention, and optimization efforts. Think back to the example at the start of this post: Your customer success manager wants to give you a virtual high-five you for meeting a certain goal. Would you rather receive a boring plain-text email, or a video of her smiling and addressing you personally? There’s no contest. Our Sales team has seen success using video in their outreach to prospective customers who may be ready to upgrade their accounts. They’re not trained to be video experts—all they’re doing is recording simple, professional videos with Soapbox, adding them into their emails, and presto! The result creates a personal connection that helps them, and the Wistia brand, stand out.

Still not sure where to use video in your customer lifecycle? Test, test, test! As marketers living in the digital age, we’re fortunate to have access to automation tools that make testing easier than ever. Whether you’re looking to add a video to your email, chat tool , or just want to test out an overlay video on your homepage, the world is at your fingertips. Get in there, play around, and let us know how it goes!

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Tips and Tricks for Optimizing Your Videos for Success

2018-05-09T10:27:42-04:00

Video marketing has become more than a catch-all phrase for brands using video. In fact, video is an integral part of any effective marketing strategy. It has the ability to bring together a brand and an audience by adding a human touch to an otherwise static two-dimensional online presence. Video encourages action and creates an emotional connection unlike any other medium, but a video's hard work doesn't end there. As marketers, we invest our time, energy, and resources into video because we've seen the impact it can have on reaching our goals (and we can easily track the return). Whether we want to spread the word about a new product update, inspire our audience to attend a webinar, or even get someone to sign up for a free account, the videos we create always have a concrete goal in mind. In this post, we'll walk you through some of the many ways you can optimize your videos to get the biggest bang for your buck. Whether your goal is connecting and building trust, or inspiring action, you can make your videos work harder for you. Let's get started! ### Optimizing your video for views Your video's thumbnail is the first thing your audience sees when they interact with your video. It catches their attention and gives them an idea of what to expect. Choosing a great thumbnail is as easy! Just following these handy-dandy optimization guidelines.

"Your video's thumbnail is the first thing your audience sees when they interact with your video. It catches their attention and gives them an idea of what to expect."

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#### Put people first Think of your video thumbnail like a movie poster. Feature a smiling human face in your thumbnail, and create an enticing, click-worthy experience. As it turns out, people respond positively to human faces (our brains are hardwired to react to them). Your video thumbnail can be a still from your video, or it can be a custom-made thumbnail that represents your video's content. If you're not totally bought in on the power of featuring human faces in your video thumbnails, you can always create your own A/B test by splitting an email send with different thumbnails in each and seeing how your CTRs compare. Or, check out this blog post we wrote on testing video thumbnails in our email campaigns. Spoiler alert: they increased our click-through rates by 20%! #### Consistency matters Match your thumbnail to your brand by choosing the color of your play button and controls. When your player matches your brand, your website instantly feels more professional and put together. At Wistia, we use "best friend blue" on our player (#54bbff), to bring our video and website together in a nicely branded way.

"When your player matches your brand, your website instantly feels more professional and put together."

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#### Placement is key Your video needs a place to shine. When thinking about your website, the content that you have to scroll down in order to see is what we call "below the fold." Adding your video above the fold on your website will help get your content in front of potential viewers faster, which can have a huge impact on your video's play rate. The further down you put your video, the less optimized it is for success. And after all, you want people to watch your video, right? Make it easier for them to engage with your brand, whether it's sticking around on your site for some delightful content, or taking a specific desired action. #### SEO is king You've spent a lot of time creating your video, so it's natural that you want to get it in front of as many people as possible. And while SEO may not seem like the "new big thing" in the marketing world, it's still important when it comes to getting your video out there online. Optimizing for SEO is as easy as making a few simple changes:

Title your video. Choose a name that you feel represents the content. For example, never leave a video titled mynewvideo.mp4. You don't want your audience seeing that! Make sure to re-name your video once you upload it, to something short, sweet, and representative of the content.
Use an inline embed. Inline embeds play, well, inline with the rest of the content on your page. For example, all of the images in this blog post are inline. Popover embeds, on the other hand, pop out in front of the rest of the content, and Google doesn't really like that. They tend to rank websites with popover embeds lower than ones with inline embeds, so always keep that in mind.
Keep your page clean. If you want to highlight one key video, feature it prominently on the page. Google won't be able to identify that you have this type of rich media on the page if it is buried under layers of messy JavaScript.

"Lead generation is an integral part of any inbound marketing strategy, and video can play a major role."

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Adding a Turnstile

"You can add a Turnstile at any point in your video, but we've found that more people actually fill them out when they're placed about 20% in."

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Call to Action

Calls to action fail to convert for a few main reasons:

The necessary action isn't clear
There isn't enough information
There's nothing charming or engaging
The timing is off

OnStrategy

Guide to Calls To Action in Video Marketing

Integrate with other tools. Link your Wistia account with marketing tools you already use, such as Intercom, Trello, HubSpot, Marketo, and others. With these integrations, you can use your video marketing superpower to benefit your overall marketing strategy.
Create UTMs. Create unique UTM codes for your videos so you know exactly where folks are watching and clicking through on your videos them the most. Adding UTMs for specific social channels, for example, can show you where folks like to interact with your social video content.
Use audience data. If you're a Wistia customer, you can use our audience view to see whether hyper-targeted videos are being watched by specific people or companies that you're trying to get in touch with. Account based marketing for the win!

Do you have video optimization tricks that you depend on for success? Leave them in the comments and help a marketer out!

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3 Steps to Optimizing Your Marketing Videos for Sales

2018-05-09T12:36:04-04:00

It’s no secret that marketing and sales alignment is paramount to the success of any growth-seeking business. The best video marketers take a few simple steps to optimize their marketing videos, thereby helping sales and strengthening their alignment in the process. But there is a secret to making it work, and it all starts with creating the right types of videos. From there, you can set up integrations with your marketing automation platforms, and then connect viewing data with triggers and workflows using your marketing automation platform. Let’s get into it! ### 1. Which marketing videos will help your sales team? Videos can inspire customers along each stage of the buyer’s journey. From creating top-of-the-funnel awareness to retaining customers through product education, there’s a huge opportunity to match videos to every buyer persona. Let’s take a look at a few key types that can help your sales team—and your prospect or customer—at the right time in the buyer’s journey. #### Product videos Whether it’s telling a story, highlighting a customer, or showing a pain point you solve, there a plenty of strong use cases for product videos. Once prospects are aware of the problem they need solved, your video should answer, “Why my product, and why now?” This product overview from Quip does just that.

At this stage, prospects may already be engaged with your sales team, which tends to deal with the same questions around explaining your product and handling any hesitations they might have. A great product video that’s positioned well in email outreach can help shorten the sales process. If you have new features or products that you’ve highlighted in a video, encourage your sales team to share it directly with prospects and customers to help close the deal. #### Webinars In 2017, 2.7 million webinars were hosted on GoToWebinar alone, not to mention 63% of B2B marketers still view webinars as one of the most effective marketing tactics. At Wistia, we use webinars for sales enablement. Once they’re recorded, we publish them on our website, send the recording in an email, track which viewers are watching, then share the results with sales for them to follow up. One way Wistia helps users collect email addresses is with a feature called Turnstile. Turnstile asks viewers to enter their email addresses in order to keep watching the video. In a world of free content, when is the right time to ask for a viewer’s email address? We’ve sorted through a bunch of data that shows the best place to add a Turnstile is the moment in the webinar when the viewer is getting the most value. For example, you don’t want to ask for a viewer’s email too early in the webinar recording, nor do you want to wait until the very end. Instead, it’s usually best to ask for an email far enough into the video that the viewer knows what they’re getting is valuable enough for them to continue watching.

"It’s best to ask for an email far enough into the video that the viewer knows what they’re getting is valuable enough for them to continue watching."

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#### Customer stories and case studies More than ever, buyers want to know exactly what to expect if and when they purchase your product. They’re searching for everything including reviews, expert opinions, customer stories, and case studies before they purchase your product or service. In their book Absolute Value, Stanford professors Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen talk about what really influences buyers in the age of “nearly perfect” information, culminating in the “Influence Mix.” Today, that mix means buyers are more informed than ever on the absolute value of a product before they buy it. With so much information at our fingertips, we all feel an obligation to research and look for reliable testimonials before we purchase. Your prospects are no different. If your sales team has access to customer stories and case studies, they can help your prospects and customers get closer to understanding the absolute value of your product or service. Here’s where video comes into play. You can use the visual medium to help communicate your most valuable customer stories and testimonials. From there, your sales team can share these videos at the right time to guide your buyers to what they would’ve been searching for anyway. Not only does this help push prospects further down the buyer’s journey, but also it effectively shortens the sales cycle. Plus, they're super simple to shoot, as this testimonial featuring Unbounce shows.

### 2. Integrating with your marketing automation platform At this point, your team has worked extra hard to get eyeballs on your marketing videos, so let’s move beyond the aggregate and get super granular. Because every video view comes from a real person (ok, maybe a few are bots), it’s important to understand as much as possible about the humans behind the names and email addresses you see. These people are spending valuable time interacting with your brand, and more than that, they’re learning while doing so. By identifying the humans behind the view and keeping a history of what they’re showing interest in, you’re creating a more streamlined approach to the sales cycle. If you’re using Wistia for marketing and sales purposes, integrating with your marketing automation platform is a great first step. Once that’s done, there are a plethora of steps you can take to optimize your videos for sales, including the following three ideas:

"By identifying the humans behind the view and keeping a history of what they’re interested in, you’re creating a more streamlined approach to the sales cycle."

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#### Lead scoring Marketo, Pardot, and HubSpot all have tools that help marketers create custom lead scores for contacts. Why is lead scoring so important? For one, it helps identify the best fits and most interested prospects, making it a vital tool for marketing and sales teams. Lead scoring can be used to identify the best potential score on explicit attributes (fit) and implicit attributes (interest). A few examples of explicit attributes are the contact’s job title, industry, and geography. On the other hand, implicit attributes could include page visits, video views, and clicks. All of these actions imply that a contact is interested in your product or service. Here’s a quick example: Your marketing automation platform lets you score leads based on video views. You can set lead scoring as a criteria to identify marketing qualified leads, and your sales team can then use these lead scores to prioritize all the leads they’re currently in conversations with. At Wistia, we add 20 points to a contact’s HubSpot score when they watch at least 25% of our HubSpot integration product video. We also set up this type of scoring for many of our other highest value videos. In this stage, it’s crucial to establish consistent naming conventions for your videos, as it can save time and keep your marketing automation platform neat and tidy. Say you have several customer story videos for which you want to add all video views with the name “customer story” into a list in your marketing automation platform. Keeping your video naming conventions consistent (so that all customer stories will include “customer story” in the name of the video, for instance) will help save a lot of time as you create scores and workflows for different groups and types of videos. #### View notifications Now that you have those product videos, webinars, and customer stories on hand, let’s make sure you and your sales team know exactly when your most important leads are watching them. A timely email notification that one of your prospects or customers watched a key video could make the difference between upselling and losing a prospect altogether. Not only that, but these notifications can also help your sales team better prioritize their time between prospects. During the decision stage, your prospects might be exploring and researching your competitors for alternative options. How great would it be to have a view notification that goes directly to your sales team? This could spark a timely email reply and continue to position your sales team as the experts who can help solve your prospects’ business problems. These notifications are particularly important for when your brand is top of mind, since they show that you value prioritizing your customers’ needs and actions. #### Turnstile for email collection Luckily, Wistia has integrations with dozens of popular email marketing services. When you add a Turnstile to your videos, you’re asking viewers to enter their email addresses in order to watch the rest of the video. Remember all of the different types of videos that can help sales from step 1? Try adding Turnstiles to these videos, and you’ll be one step ahead of the game as you collect prospects’ email addresses at the right time in their buyer’s journey. Once you’ve captured a new email address, you can send that contact an automated email to share additional content that’s similar (or more in-depth) to the video they watched. You can even give them a chance to set up a meeting or a demo with your sales team right from the get-go! ### 3. Getting your sales team involved in promotion Now that you’ve created a ton of great videos, it’s time to share them with your sales team! Only problem is, they’re going to have some questions for you. What video should I send? Where can I find them? What problem might this video help solve for the customer? Sure, there’s always the chance they’ll spend hours watching all of the videos and taking notes. But we’re guessing that’s not likely. Instead, you can make their lives easier (and make everyone else happy) by giving them a quick reference guide that 1) specifies what’s on your videos and 2) provides context about when and with whom to share them. A quick and easy way to do this is by creating a shared spreadsheet with links to each of your videos, along with the following details for each video: - The value proposition - The product features shown - The best job titles to share the video with - The best industries and company sizes to share the video with - The ideal buyer’s stages for this video (awareness, consideration, and decision) Creating a quick reference guide will not only assist your sales team, but also it will increase the likelihood that your videos get shared with your customers.

Access the spreadsheet

If you’re a Wistia user, the fastest way for sales (or anyone) to share an attractive thumbnail that links to your video is to right-click and select “Copy link and thumbnail.” After that, paste it into the body of your email, and bada-bing, bada-boom: You’ve got a great-looking thumbnail and the title of the video all ready to send! And what’s more, it creates a great viewing experience for the recipient since the hyperlink brings them right to your website, where the video will then autoplay.

### Wrapping it up If you’re serious about video marketing, taking the extra effort to put processes in place will pay off in the long run, especially when it leads to a reduced sales cycle. Even if you don’t have a robust sales team, the tactical steps we covered will help you increase the value of your videos and your video viewing data, ultimately leading to more qualified leads and happier customers. And at the end of the day, who doesn’t want more of both?

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Evaluating Your Video's Performance Across Multiple Channels

2018-05-09T12:27:36-04:00

It may sound simple, but the hardest part of measuring your video's success is actually understanding what success looks like on a different platforms. In other words, you don't want to measure your videos in a vacuum. Because nearly every channel you share your video on has a different definition for metrics like "views" or "engagement," things can get confusing pretty fast. As it turns out, video performance and key success indicators are more relative measures than you might think. How does a video shared on Facebook compare to a video embedded in a blog post on your site? We'll uncover those key differences—and many more—in this post. Here's what we'll look at (click to jump down to the section of your choice):

Website videos
Facebook videos
Instagram videos
LinkedIn videos
Twitter videos
YouTube videos

We're going to take you through all of the metrics available to you on each of these platforms, what those metrics mean, and which ones are the biggest indicators of success. After reading this post, you should walk away feeling confident in your understanding of your video's performance, wherever it may live online. Don't have time to read this whole post right now? No problem. Download the Video Metric Glossary and start having more meaningful conversations with your teammates about your video's success.

Download the glossary

### 1. Website videos From product pages to blog posts and help documentation, video can be used on practically every page of your company website. Whether you are looking for an added SEO boost, or just hoping to encourage visitors to spend more time on a certain page, using video across your website is a no-brainer. If you’re using Wistia to share video on your site, these are the marketing metrics you’ll want to look out for.

"Whether you are looking for an added SEO boost, or just hoping to encourage visitors to spend more time on a certain page, using video across your website is a no-brainer."

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#### Video metric definitions - Total plays: Total number of times a video was played—either by pressing play or autoplaying - Average engagement: Hours watched divided by total plays, multiplied by the length of the video - Play rate: Total number of unique plays divided by unique page loads - Timeline Actions: Viewer engagement from Calls to Action, Annotation Links, and Turnstile email submissions #### Which metrics matter most? Average engagement: We love this metric because it goes beyond view count to provide more meaningful context. Average engagement indicates whether or not a viewer found the content helpful, informative, or at the very least worth watching. Unlike the way many of the platforms listed below measure engagement, Wistia gives you an idea of what your engagement looks like as a percentage: Images: 70% engagement? Not bad at all! We tend to look at this number to get an overall idea of whether or not our content is resonating with our audience, which is why we believe it's one of the most important metrics to keep your eye on. Timeline Actions: What's a more straightforward indicator of success than a viewer taking action as a result of watching your video? If a viewer decides to click on an Annotation Link or a Call to Action, that's a pretty strong sign that they've found your content engaging or informative. Heck, if your viewer fills out a Turnstile form, they've officially entrusted you with their email address. For those reasons combined, the Timeline Actions people take on your video should be one of the first and most important metrics you monitor. ###### Bonus: Site metrics: Factors like bounce rate, time on page, and conversion stats can help you determine the success of your video in a way that posting videos to social media doesn’t. For example, did adding a video to a highly-trafficked page on your website influence visitors’ time on that page? Did you see any other improvements there? When you share a video on your website, it gives you more control over your data than on any other channel. ### 2. Facebook videos What business doesn't share videos on Facebook these days? The opportunity to get in front of a new, targeted audience is much more likely here than on other channels, which is one reason sharing video on this platform is so enticing. Facebook provides an outlet for marketers to share fun, autoplay-friend videos that cater to leisurely browsing. Typically, it’s wise to create Facebook videos that engage or delight untapped audiences. Let's take a look at the metrics Facebook shares with business profiles.

"The opportunity to get in front of a new, targeted audience is much more likely on Facebook than on other channels."

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#### Video metric definitions - Minutes viewed: Total minutes of watch time spent on the video - Unique viewers: Number of individual people who saw the video - Video views: Number of times your video was viewed for an aggregate of at least 3 seconds - 10-second views: The number of times the video was viewed at least 10 seconds. If the video is shorter than 10 seconds, this metric refers to the number of times people viewed at least 97% of the video. - Video average watch time: Total watch time of your video, divided by the total number of video plays (including replays) Audience and engagement: Include people reached, post engagement, top audience, and top location #### Which metrics matter most? 10-second views: While 10 seconds may seem pretty short, these types of views are a much more insightful metric to look at versus regular video views. Sure, it's tempting to just look at that video view number and call it a day. After all, it can feel pretty great to see your video skyrocket to hundreds of thousands of views. However, when a "view" could mean someone watching your content for 3 seconds, that overall number becomes pretty meaningless. If your viewer sticks around for at least 10 seconds, however, that's a bit more telling. Looking at the 10-second views relative to the overall views gives you a better idea of the quality of views you're receiving on your video. Audience and engagement: Reactions are akin to pulse indicators on the success of your content. Comments measure how strongly your content resonates—did it spur some discussion? They’re also unique in that they indicate quantitative and qualitative reactions from your audience, making them all the more valuable. Finally, shares are a key indicator of the virality of your content, especially on Facebook. It's one thing to passively watch a video on the platform, but sharing it on your own feed suggests a much higher level of engagement. ### What about Facebook Live? We can't forget about live video! Here are the metrics Facebook currently offers for Facebook Live videos: - Peak live viewers: Highest number of concurrent viewers who viewed the broadcast for at least 3 seconds - Minutes viewed: Total minutes of watch time spent on the video, including replays and views less than 3 seconds - Video views: Number of times your video was viewed for an aggregate of at least 3 seconds - 10-second views: Number of times the video was viewed for at least 10 seconds - Video average watch time: Total watch time of your video, divided by the total number of video plays and replays (note that this doesn't count live video sessions) - Audience and engagement: Include people reached, post engagement, top audience, and top location ### 3. Instagram videos When you want to showcase your brand with fun and engaging video content, there’s no better platform than Instagram. Instagram videos can highlight the behind-the-scenes aspects of your business, allowing you to show off the people who make your business thrive. It's also a great place to engage with your followers on a personal level, as well. Take a peek at the metrics that are available to business profiles on Instagram:

"Instagram videos can highlight the behind-the-scenes aspects of your business, allowing you to show off the people who make your business thrive."

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#### Video metric definitions - Views: Number of times your video was viewed for 3 seconds or more (not including views from embedded posts, desktop views, or video loops) - Likes: Number of likes on your post - Impressions: Total number of times your video was viewed - Reach: Number of unique accounts that viewed your post #### Which metrics matter most? Although the metrics on Instagram are less robust than on Facebook or your own website, they can still provide insight. Let's dig in. - Reach: The discoverability factor on Instagram makes reach one of the top metrics to keep track of. Unlike Facebook, Instagram's platform is much more catered to discoverability. The use of hashtags to spread the word about the posts you share, in addition to the Search and Explore pages, means marketers have more opportunities to get their videos in front of new eyes. An added bonus? You can also see the percentage of accounts that consumed your content yet aren't actually following you. By pairing this information with another metric like follower growth, you can see which content is driving viewers to follow your page. Neat stuff! #### What about Stories and Instagram Live? As big fans of Instagram Stories ourselves, we weren’t about to leave them out of the video metrics fun. Here’s the data currently available for both Instagram Stories and Instagram Live videos: Instagram Stories: - Impressions: Number of times a video has been seen in your story - Forward taps: Number of times a viewer taps the right side of the screen to go to the next story - Backward taps: Number of times a viewer taps the left side of the screen to rewatch the previous story - Exits: Number of times a viewer swipes down to stop watching stories and go back to the main feed - Replies: Number of times a viewer swipes up and responds to a story, starting a direct message conversation between you and the viewer. Instagram Live: - Live viewers at any given time: Number of accounts watching your live video - Viewers: Number of accounts that saw any part of your video As is the case with Instagram video posts, combining a few metrics can help you get a more comprehensive view of how your content is performing. For example, you can calculate metrics like the completion rate of your story by simply dividing the number of people who viewed the last snap of your story with the first one. Even though it takes a more legwork to get to these numbers, it’s worth it if you're making a big marketing investment in Instagram. ### 4. LinkedIn videos Now that native video is a built-in feature for business profiles, LinkedIn seems poised for greatness for video marketers. This channel still has plenty of untapped potential, especially for business video, so don’t be afraid to play around with it and see what works for your brand. You can promote an upcoming webinar, create a video series on an industry-related topic, or share a behind-the-scenes look at your company culture. Unfortunately, the only detailed analytics you can see at the moment for LinkedIn videos appear when you set them up as ad campaigns. So what are the metrics you should be on the lookout for, be they organic or paid? #### Video metric definitions LinkedIn is one of the more confusing social platforms with regard to understanding your data. Whether you’re posting an update, article, or video, it can be tricky to decipher what means what. Hopefully, now that businesses are able to upload native video, LinkedIn will step up its game with regard to video metrics. Organic LinkedIn videos: - Views: Number of times your video was viewed for at least 2 continuous seconds - Post metrics: Include impressions, clicks, social actions, and engagement Paid LinkedIn videos: - Views: Number of times your video was viewed for at least 2 continuous seconds while the video is at least 50% on screen, or a click on the CTA (whichever comes first) - Views at 25%, 50%, 75%: Number of times your video was watched at x% of its length, including watches that skipped to this point - Completion rate: Number of completions divided by number of views, multiplied by 100 #### Which metrics matter most? - Post metrics: For now, it’s safe to rely most heavily on post metrics when analyzing your videos on LinkedIn. Not only are post metrics what LinkedIn users have the most access to currently, but also they’re the most cut and dry. Plus, there's the fact that not everyone is using LinkedIn for paid efforts. Metrics like impressions, clicks, and engagement should give you a comprehensive overview of whether or not your video is reaching the right people. ### 5. Twitter videos Ah, good old Twitter, the platform where marketers can run wild experiments with the types of video content they share. According to Twitter's own research, tweets with video generate nine times more engagement than basic text updates, so the incentive for marketers to jump on that bandwagon is clearly there. And like Instagram, Twitter is perfect for businesses wanting to shine a light on the more personal, even humorous side of their brand. It’s just another reason why video is the perfect match for this social media behemoth. Check out the significant metrics for when it comes time to implement your video marketing strategy on Twitter.

"Twitter is perfect for businesses wanting to shine a light on the more personal, even humorous side of their brand."

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#### Video metric definitions - Minutes viewed: Number of minutes users spent viewing the video - Video views: Number of times your video was viewed for at least 3 seconds across all tweets - Completion rate: Total number of completed views, divided by total number of video starts - Calls to action clicks: Clicks on the call to action button in the video #### Which metrics matter most? - Completion rate: Out of everyone who watched your video, what percentage actually watched the whole thing? Again, this is a more telling metric than video views as an aggregate. If you notice your completion rate is super low, you might want to take another look at your video content and see how you can optimize it. What happens when you upload a shorter version of the video, for instance? Does the completion rate increase? With the completion rate in mind, you can run various tests and versions of your video, so start hypothesizing! - Calls to action clicks: Unlike Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is still a go-to platform for promoting content that lives outside the site itself. Teaser videos accompanied by a call to action can be an effective tool for marketers who want to incorporate video into their promotion tactics. When you upload a video to Twitter, you have the option to add either a "Visit site" or "Watch now" call to action in your tweet. Regardless of what you choose, you can link out to your site, then track how many people click through. ### 6. YouTube videos Last but not least, let's talk about the video giant that is YouTube. In case you weren’t already convinced that YouTube is the go-to video sharing channel, it happens to be the world's biggest video platform and the second largest search engine in the world, with 1 billion users per month. Sounds both impressive and intimidating, right? Chances are you're already using YouTube in some capacity to market your business (and hopefully in a strategic way!). It makes sense that a video platform like YouTube boasts one of the more comprehensive video data glossaries on this list, so let's take a look at which metrics they offer. #### Video metric definitions - Watch time: Estimated total viewing time of your content - Views: YouTube is vague about this, but the generally accepted number for watch time to count as a view is a full 30 seconds - Average view duration: Estimated average minutes watched per view - Engagement metrics: Include likes, dislikes, comments, and shares - Videos in playlists: Number of times your videos were included in viewers' playlists, (including favorites), as well as filters such as selected date range and region - Subscribers: Total number of subscribers, accounting for the change in total subscribers (found by subtracting subscribers lost from subscribers gained for the selected date range and region) - Audience retention: Average percentage of a video your audience watched per view - Demographics: Include age, gender, and geography - Traffic sources: The various means through which viewers found your video - Playback locations: The page or site the video was viewed on #### Which metrics matter most? - Watch time: For marketers who are invested in cultivating a significant presence on YouTube, watch time is particularly important. Every video on YouTube, as well as every channel on the platform, is ranked by watch time. Videos with higher watch times are more likely rank better in search results, so you'll want to keep an eye on the “Watch time report” in your dashboard if one of your goals is to rank for a certain channel or topic on YouTube. Watch time is a more meaningful metric than views, as it's a stronger indicator of quality content. The more time people spend watching your content, the better your chances of getting your videos seen.

"The more time people spend watching your content, the better your chances of getting your videos seen."

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- Traffic sources: This metric provides insights into where your viewers are coming from. The "Traffic sources for views" report details the sites and YouTube-specific features your viewers are using to access your content. You might discover that viewers are finding your content through YouTube Search, or perhaps they're seeing your video appear as a "Suggested Video" thumbnail. Understanding how people end up on your YouTube channel could help inform your video marketing strategy. Here’s why: If you notice that people are arriving at your video through Google search, you might want to consider hosting that video on your own site, so that your business (and not YouTube) benefits from those SEO powers. ### Context is everything Ultimately, there's a time and a place to share videos on your website or on one of the many social media platforms that exist today. Qualitative data can help you make more informed decisions about where to invest time and resources to get the biggest bang for your buck—and video is no exception. But actually understanding how your videos are performing across the web is crucial to the success of your video marketing efforts, especially when every platform has its own vernacular associated with video reporting. When it comes to analyzing the performance of your videos across different platforms and channels, not all metrics are the same, nor should they be treated equally. By staying on top of what works best for each channel and iterating based on the metrics you report to your team, you’ll be primed to conquer whatever video marketing platform you decide to take on.

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A Quantitative and Qualitative Approach to Video ROI

2018-05-02T12:16:08-04:00

"So how is that _______ performing?" You can fill in the blank with whatever marketing initiative your team is focused on right now: a new homepage design, your latest A/B test, some ad campaign results, a big email send...the list goes on and on. The truth is, it's a loaded question marketers get asked a lot. And sometimes, it can be really tricky to answer. So, should you focus on directly trackable KPIs like views, clicks, conversions, and ROI? Or do you focus on the measures that are harder to track but are equally as important, like connecting with your audience or pushing your brand forward? The modern marketer hates this question. But because marketing campaigns are analyzed through quantitative and qualitative lenses, the modern marketer should be able to do both. At Wistia, we spend a ton of time thinking about how marketers can answer that tricky performance question. We believe that marketers should be able to confidently understand their return on investment for video. And, we recognize that trackable KPIs are only half the story. First, let's dig into what numbers you can track easily. ### Quantitative: What you can start measuring today #### Video data Metrics like impressions, play rate, and viewer engagement are table-stakes in most video platforms these days. And as such, they're typically the first stop on your list when it comes to analyzing the success of a video. Understanding your video's analytics will help you make quick decisions about what to do with your video content. Not getting many impressions? Try boosting a post on social media to expand your reach and get more views. Does your play rate seem low? Experiment with a different video thumbnail and see if that does the trick. Low engagement? Perhaps a different version of the video is in order. These metrics are great for gaining a deeper understanding of how your content is performing, so if you haven't been checking them out, this is a great place to start! #### Leads generated Not every marketing campaign will be focused on generating leads. But if it does have a lead generation component, reporting on the number of leads your video is able to generate will be super valuable in understanding its success. Those leads are worth real dollars to your business, so finding out how much revenue you can expect based on the leads your video generates is crucial. Plus, you'll be able to more back up your case for future investment if you've got the numbers to prove it!

"Those leads are worth real dollars to your business, so finding out how much revenue you can expect based on the leads your video generates is crucial."

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Here are the two main ways you can generate leads and track your results:

Add video to your landing pages and track its influence on your conversion rates. Here at Wistia, we've found that using video on a landing page increases conversion rates for our paid ads and downloadable content. But, don't just take our word for it! Every business is different, so you should always experiment to find out what works best for your industry. Put your video to the test by making two different versions of the page and seeing which one drives more conversions, the one with or without the video.
Add a form to your video and track the total number of leads generated, as well as the conversion rate of video views to leads. Our email collector, Turnstile, provides a pretty simple solution for capturing leads from right within your videos. You can place a form at the beginning of a video, requiring an email from the viewer in order to watch, or even give your viewers a taste of the content by adding a form to the middle of your video. The choice is yours, but we've found that there are some significant conversion rate differences depending on where you place the email collector. As always, experimenting is the name of the game!

#### Call-to-action clicks Tying video views directly to clicks or conversions is another great way to assess video ROI. Adding clickable links for other relevant CTAs (like signing up for an account) is one way you can bridge the gap between your content and other important marketing KPIs. Use a bit.ly short URL or a Google UTM code to track the number of people who watched the video and clicked through to your sign-up page. From there, you can determine who is converting—and who isn't. Identify your most engaged audience members and then start figuring out how to appeal to those new audience segments. #### A/B tests If you're looking to prove the power of video on conversion pages, there's no better method than A/B testing. You can use tools like Optimizely to test whether your video is actually driving more sign-ups than say, static copy. You can also A/B test the conversion power of video A vs video B, and then report back to your team on any differences in conversion. We've done a lot of A/B testing with video here at Wistia—check out the method to our madness from start to finish in this process-centric post. Here are some testing ideas to get your wheels turning:

Page with video versus page without a video
Video A vs. Video B
Different thumbnails for the same video
Different placement of the same video

#### Movement in the funnel Ultimately, you're probably using video to help influence some action in your marketing funnel, so understanding how video influences that action is super helpful. For example, if you created a product explainer video for your homepage, you're probably hoping that visitors will check out your product page after watching it, right? Or similarly, if you embedded a video on your product page that explains the features included in your free trial, the next logical step you hope your viewer will take is signing up for a free trial. Tracking the actions your viewer takes after watching your video can be really important in moving users through your funnel and driving action. This starts to enter the more "advanced" category of KPIs and Google Analytics skills (so be warned!), but it's something that all marketers can do with a little work and is super valuable in understanding videos impact. If you want to take the plunge, head over to this post on how to view your video data in Google Analytics.

"Tracking the actions your viewer takes after watching your video can be really important in moving users through your funnel and driving action."

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#### Time (and money) saved It sounds counterintuitive when it comes to video, but hear me out. How much time do people at your company spend giving the same sales demo? How about explaining a common support issue or onboarding process? If you find yourself repeating the same things over and over again, it's not the customers fault—it's yours. Addressing frequently asked questions using a more scalable system, like walkthrough videos or webinars, should give your teammates time to contribute in ways that are more valuable. For example, if you create a video that saves 30 sales people even just 10 minutes a week, that's more time they can spend bring in more customers. You can start to calculate ROI for these types of videos by looking at the time your team saves using these scalable resources.

And of course, don't forget about time time your customers save! If your customers can get their basic questions answered via video, they can get started accomplishing their task right away. Delivering your customers value is just as important as measuring ROI for your own business. ### Qualitative: What's harder to measure Hard and fast numbers are necessary for proving the ROI of your videos, however they don't tell the full story on their own. There are also qualitative benefits that contribute to long term ROI. It's important to consider both hard data and the following qualitative factors when deciding how successful a video is. #### Brand influence You can actually keep track of this one qualitatively to some degree—social media monitoring tools or even simply the comments on your blog can give you a better idea of how video is impacting your brand. At the end of the day, though, word-of-mouth marketing is every business' dream. Free advertising? Sign me up! Video can help you differentiate yourself from your competitors, allowing you to build a superfan club of customers who are loyal to your brand. And while measuring that impact from a video campaign can be hard, the impact is undeniable. When you start hearing things like, "Hey! I saw you in that video on the blog the other day—pretty sweet," you'll know that your videos are starting to gain some traction. Marketers often fall into the trap of letting data drive their efforts completely, leading you to optimize for things that are easy to measure, and not necessarily what matters most. So keep your brand top of mind and try to create videos that are representative of what makes your company or product so unique. #### Product education There are several ways to abstractly quantify improvement in customer understanding: metrics like volume of new customers that come from word-of-mouth, number of support requests per new customer, and ratings like Net Promoter score. But ultimately, it can still be really tough to nail down a single number that summarizes how video improves your new customer's first experience.

"But ultimately, it can still be really tough to nail down a single number that summarizes how video improves your new customer's first experience."

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What we do know, however, is that video is a great way to provide context, and it requires just a small investment from the learner. So, use video to make it clear what your product does and how it will benefit the viewer. Instead of using vague language to explain your features, show how they actually work in a product explainer video. The highly visual nature of video allows you to explain tricky concepts or complex product to an audience with a limited attention span (because whose audience isn't distracted by shiny things?). Companies like Trello and Squarespace do a great job of explaining specific features within their products while clearly showcasing the benefit those features could have on the users. #### Trust in your business We've said it before and we'll say it again—featuring friendly human faces and voices on camera creates trust within the viewer (it's science). Product videos are super helpful for explaining what it is your product does and how it can help solve your prospect's problems, however many companies forget that focusing only your features is a misstep. Don't lose out on the vital human connection that you can build by putting your employees on screen. People are more likely to understand and believe in your business when they can see the human behind the voice. Plus, using video to communicate with your customers and prospects can strengthen your relationships with them over time, and that type of familiarity can lead to long term brand affinity and success. #### Create a video dashboard to track ROI Phew! Qualitative and quantitative metrics—your left and right brain working together in perfect harmony to understand your video's performance. Now that you know what to look for from both sides of the equation, you should be able to assess the success of your video in more holistic way. However, if you're still looking for a little more help on how to track and report on these metrics, we've got you covered. Easily explain your video's ROI to members of your team with this simple video metric dashboard. We use a dashboard like this here at Wistia to keep track of every video we embed on our site and its performance. Along with each video is a short description of the content, the goal of the video, the main success metric, and any other relevant results or fundings. This spreadsheet serves as a home base for all of our key video metrics. It's a central location that can easily be shared with everyone from our creative team, to our executive team. Need a high-level look at how your videos are performing? Create a video performance dashboard.

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If you're serious about using video to improve your marketing, you need to be track your results in order to understand which videos are working and which ones aren't. Over time, this learning will fuel iterations and new ideas, and those iterations will eventually lead to more learning. So the next time someone asks you how that _____ is performing, you'll be prepared to share the results, and why! What metrics do you focus on when measuring your videos' performance? How have these metrics driven your future video efforts? We'd love to hear about your experience in the comments!

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Using Video Across the Entire Awareness Funnel

2018-05-09T10:28:22-04:00

This post was written by Sherri Powers, Director of Marketing at TechSmith. Using video in your marketing can lead to super impactful results. Chances are, you've come across these impressive Cisco stats before:

It would take an individual more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2021.
Globally, IP video traffic will be 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2021.

As marketers, we know we need to up our game across the board with video gaining such traction online. But where do you start? In this post, we're going to share some ideas for using video across the awareness funnel, so that you can start doing better, more effective marketing. But first, let's review which funnel we're talking about here. At TechSmith, we follow the "Five Levels of Awareness" that Eugene Schwartz coined in his book, Breakthrough Advertising back in 1966. He broke down prospect awareness into five unique phases: Here's what each stage looks like from a consumer perspective:

Unaware: Consumers are unaware they have a problem or need
Problem Aware: Consumers are aware they have a problem, and need a solution
Solution Aware: Consumers are looking for proof that the solution works
Product Aware: Consumers are looking for specific products that provide the solution
Most Aware: Consumers have bought your product and want next steps

Lucky for us, videos are a particularly great medium for top of funnel engagement, so incorporating them into your marketing strategy is key. Let's take a closer look at each stage of the awareness funnel and identify some types of videos that you can create for each phase! ### Stage 1: Unaware When consumers are in the unaware stage, you should provide them with content that helps them understand a pain point or problem they currently face. Keep in mind that your goal should be singular and specific in each phase—capture their attention with the expectation that they will then move on to the next level.

"Keep in mind that your goal should be singular and specific in each phase—capture their attention with the expectation that they will then move on to the next level."

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Regardless of where you’re targeting this audience, it’s worth noting that many people will have their sound turned off when consuming your content. On Facebook, for instance, 85% of videos are watched without sound. Here's an example of a video we used recently to help promote one of our blog posts. In this video, we overlaid text captions instead of using a voiceover so that folks could follow along without sound and still understand the message.
After watching this video, the viewer should understand what they're missing out on when they don't use a screen capture solution. This should help them understand they have a problem that needs solving. You can learn more about this particular stage in the awareness funnel in this blog post. ### Stage 2: Problem Aware Consumers in this stage of the awareness funnel are in research mode. They know they have a problem or a pain point, and they're on the hunt for a solution. In this phase, you can start introducing high level solutions, but remember, don't tout a specific product yet! However tempting it may be, your audience isn't ready for your product at this stage, so don't highlight all of your key features in the videos you create (not yet, at least!). Your target audience will be looking for content that answers the question "How do I solve this problem?" not "How does product X solve this problem?" As such, these videos should showcase solution-based concepts—engaging educational videos can do wonders for your brand, so always make sure you're providing value! Here at TechSmith, we created a video that highlights how customer service can actually be improved with a screen recording—check it out:

If someone in the customer support field watched this video, they might be inspired to use video on their team communicate in a more human way. Check out this post for more examples of how you can use video in this stage of the awareness funnel. ### Stage 3: Solution Aware At this stage of the funnel, consumers have a pretty good idea of what solutions are available to them and are now looking for confidence building indicators that they're on the right track to solving their problem. In other words, they still need more convincing—and that's where video comes in to the save the day! Video is a such great tool for engaging consumers at this stage because of its power to build credibility and establish trust.

"Video is a such great tool for engaging consumers at this stage because of its power to build credibility and establish trust."

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When deciding what type of videos to create, do some research around the key terms your audience is searching for in relation to your solution or offering. Then, create content that can help explain or demystify that problem. In the example below, we break down some common video editing terms that folks who are newer to video editing might be less familiar with. This particular video served as a teaser for social media that pointed to a blog post that covered the topic in-depth. ### Stage 4: Product Aware Full disclosure: as marketers, this is the funnel stage we often jump to too early, so beware! Remember that consumers need to be bought in on the solution before they can start evaluating providers. Now that your viewers have passed through the first three stages of the awareness funnel, they're finally ready to start engaging with your products and services. This means it's time to start showcasing your videos and letting your viewers get to know your product. Customer testimonial videos work really well in this particular stage, as they can help build confidence in the consumer, giving them a better idea of how other businesses succeeded with a given product or service. Our video team here at TechSmith created this polished customer story video that showcases how our product helped Integrity Data, a payroll software service, engage better with their clients.
High-quality testimonial videos often have many of the following key components:

Showcases real customers who are representative of your audience
Presents a specific problem that your product can solve better than anything else
Backs up promises with evidence
Demonstrates key benefits in action

### Stage 5: Most Aware You did it! You got a prospective customer through the funnel and they’ve finally purchased your product. But don't be mistaken—your use of video to engage video doesn’t stop there. Video, GIFs, screencasts, and other media are fantastic tools to utilize for onboarding so your customers can start using your product successfully. Creating video tutorials is one way to onboard your new customers efficiently and in a delightful way. Whether your product is super easy to learn or a bit more complex, video can help make getting up to speed easy. Plus, using video at this stage can help your customers feel more connected to the brand and product they just decided to invest in, so it's a win-win!

"Creating video tutorials is one way to onboard your new customers efficiently and in a delightful way."

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For this stage of the awareness funnel, we created a series of short videos to help our customers understand the ins-and-outs of our video editing product, Camtasia. In these videos, we covered key features while trying to keep our videos short and sweet. Our goal was to make it easy for customers to work through the onboarding one topic at a time, instead of watching one long video that covered everything. You can check out some of our tutorials here to get inspired. Remember that this is the time where your customers are most excited to get to know your business and brand, so give them the tools (and videos) they need to succeed right from the start! ### The right content at the right time Using video throughout the entire awareness funnel is a must for marketers. Begin by understanding the goals of each phase of the funnel, and then create content that speaks directly to your audience at that specific stage of the journey. Ultimately, you want to create content that makes the consumer feel confident in both your product and brand. Thankfully, video help you keep those viewers engaged and moving through each stage of the funnel!

Sherri Powers is responsible for the success of TechSmith’s marketing activities, including the development and delivery of the marketing strategy, marketing tactics, and external communications relating to TechSmith’s brand and product lines. Sherri has over 10 years of experience working on strategic marketing programs within the video communications industry. For ideas, inspiration, and information on video editing and more, check out the TechSmith blog.

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Technical Tips for Using Video and Email Together

2018-05-04T15:30:06-04:00

So, you’re using video and email together—that's great! You already know all the benefits of using video throughout your email campaigns, like how using a video thumbnail can increase your click-through rate and help your sales team close more deals, but have you ever thought about the technical side of things? Are there any risks to using video in email? As the email marketing manager here at Wistia, I'm here to fill you in on all of the need-to-know, nitty-gritty details of using video in email together the right way.

### Be mindful of file size When creating beautiful emails, there's always a risk that your file size will get too big, resulting in your email being clipped by the email service provider. For instance, Gmail might think your email is too long or potentially spam, so half of your message won't display or will end up loading slowly. And who wants that experience? To avoid this formatting faux paux, be sure to keep your email under 102kb. And if you're using Wistia? We’ve got your back—our easy, pre-generated code has been trimmed down to be as light as possible so you can fit your video thumbnail into your message, problem-free. Wipe that sweat off your face! Looking for some other tips on email size and load times? Our trusted friends at Litmus have you covered in this Q&A! ### All devices are not created equally Email coding is hard. That’s my opinion, and also a fact. Most of the styling available on the web isn't supported by email clients, and there are hundreds of clients around the world that have different standards. Not to mention, images can render differently depending on whether it's being viewed on a Mac or a PC. Sounds like a nightmare, right? It's for this exact reason that render testing is absolutely critical to sending out a successful email. Regardless of whether you’re using video in your email or not, you need to be testing your emails in a tool like Litmus or Email on Acid, and in real life. Digital renders are amazing, but if you have access to real devices, use them.

"Digital renders are amazing, but if you have access to real devices, use them."

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I always have my phone by my side to test how our responsive code is working (or not working). You may catch a strange issue in real life that you could've missed while clicking through 20 different preview links. The bottom line is, you're better safe than sorry, so test away! ### You can't please everyone, let it go From the graphic designer on their brand new 27-inch iMac in Apple Mail, to the financial advisor checking on a Samsung phone in the Gmail app, email knows no bounds. That means your message won't always look great for everyone, on every platform, all the time. And that's OK! You'll drive yourself (and your developer) crazy trying to optimize for every email client and scenario. Instead, take a look at your database—determine what clients and devices most of your viewers are reading your emails on, and optimize your emails based on that. Are your target customers millennials with iPhones? You know where to focus your optimization efforts now. Easy peasy.

Email service providers like HubSpot, for example, will usually include a tool on their platform that can help you determine where most of your users view email. However, if you want to go old-school, you can export your contacts and then search by domain names. Keep in mind that this isn't an entirely reliable method, though, as you won’t get any you device info, but it’s a place to start. Are 70% of your customers reading your emails in Gmail and on desktop? Great! Optimize for both, and do the best you can for the remaining 30%. ### The UX may be better, but your stats won’t be Let me put it bluntly—inline video playback is awesome. It brings us one step closer to interactive email design, and allows the consumer to play your video directly in the confines of their email client; no need to click through to your site. The video is right there. Pure magic. If that all sounds too good to be true, it's because it is. There are definitely some cons to inline playback, the first being driving traffic back to your website. If someone can get all of the information they need in your email, they may not ultimately click through, which is one of the primary goals of a typical email campaign.

And while you could argue that this is a better experience for the customer, using inline videos may cause your site metrics to drop. Second, when you share your video inline, you aren't able to generate any video stats from your content. All that data you know and love from Wistia like play rates, average engagement, heatmaps, etc? Poof! Gone. If you’re a data junkie, you may want to steer clear of this functionality. ### Ch-ch-changes—keep your eye out for OS updates We live in a world of ever-changing technology. When it comes to the speed of your internet or your car’s ability to drive itself, advancements can seem pretty cool on the surface. But when it comes to email, these changes can have massive implications, so keep your eyes and ears out. For advanced features like video backgrounds, inline playback, and interactivity, you have to be ready to adapt. Operating systems can change monthly, or even daily, and at any given time Apple may decide they no longer want to support CSS animations (which power animated backgrounds). Stay in the know to get ahead of these changes, and always code fallback logic to help your emails look their very best.

"Stay in the know to get ahead of these changes, and always code fallback logic to help your emails look their very best."

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### Use your powers wisely When using video and email together, it's important to consider your overall marketing goals, the technical limitations you may encounter, and the overall user experience. Email can help you get more eyes on your fresh video content, and the promise of video can help entice folks to open your email or even click through to your blog post. When executed properly using video and email together is a beautiful thing! Just make sure your use is strategic and intentional, and above all else, keep these technical tips in mind before the next time you hit send!

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Give Your Viewers More Control with Interactive Captions

2018-05-09T10:48:32-04:00

Your team takes weeks to conceptualize, script, film, edit, and release a marketing video. It tells your brand story, helps launch sparkling new features, and expands your audience reach. But what if your viewers can't turn on the sound for your video because they're at work or on the subway? Or listening to audio isn’t accessible to them? And what if you have webinars, long product demos, or a video beyond 5 minutes in length, which can tend to cause a drop in engagement? In the past, it's been nearly impossible to provide a way for your viewers to search and explore within your embedded video...until now. Introducing Interactive Captions from Wistia. ### A more inclusive, engaging video experience Interactive Captions offer a new and improved experience for your viewers, giving them the option to scroll through, search, and select parts of your video to jump to—all directly from the captions. Giving your viewers the control to interact with your video content is not only a step toward a more inclusive video experience, but also it can have a big impact on engagement. Ready to see how it works firsthand? Go ahead and give it a whirl using this video. Hover over the play bar and click on the “CC” icon, and then click "search video."

Want to see Interactive Captions in all their glory? View this video on a desktop computer; as Interactive Captions do not currently work in mobile browsers. Speaking of engagement, getting people the content they care about as quickly as possible is key for amplifying this metric. While your average engagement rate might drop a bit with people searching and jumping around, you'll quickly learn which parts of your video are the most interesting or applicable to your audience based on the spikes in your engagement graph. But wait, there's more! Captions carry even more value outside of the viewing experience—they also bring with them a ton of SEO benefits, making it easier for people to discover your videos online. Because most online media isn't captioned, there's a huge potential for growth via keyword strategy, which you can learn more about in this post. ### How do I get captions on my videos? We've been working behind the scenes to make this process as quick and easy as your budget will allow, along with adding new options for ordering captions right within your Wistia account. Simply click into the Customize panel and select the Captions settings area. - Upload your own—If you already have captions, simply upload the SRT file! - Computer-generated captions—You can also get captions at a moment's notice for a small investment. At $0.25 a minute, your videos will be captioned quickly and affordably with computer-generated captions. And while they won't be perfect, you'll still have the ability to review and edit them before they go live. All in all, computer-generated captions are a way better alternative to not having any at all. - 99% accurate captions—When getting every word, name, and phrase exactly right is just what your brand needs, you can purchase captions that have been carefully transcribed by a real human for $2.50 a minute. Within four business days, they'll be ready to go, giving your video an extra human touch. - 99% accurate rush captions—When your time is limited and accuracy is required, this is your go-to option. Error-free captions within one business day at $4 a minute? Your videos are going to like the sound of that. Regardless of which captioning journey you choose, you're setting up your marketing videos for further success by taking advantage of one of video's most unsung heroes. Three cheers for Interactive Captions!

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Your Videos Should Have Captions—Here's Why

Adding captions to your videos is a simple way to ensure that everyone who wants to consume your content can do just that.

The Wistia Guide to Being on Camera

2018-05-09T12:23:14-04:00

Raise your hand if you want to star in your company's next business video! Chances are that unless acting was a missed calling of yours, your hand probably isn’t shooting up into the air. In fact, the mere thought of being on camera might even cause your palms to sweat. For many marketers, being in front of the camera isn’t as easy as it sounds. When it comes to mustering up the courage to star in a video at your business, most people need a little help in order to nail their performance (and feel comfortable while doing it). That's why we’ve written this guide all about being on camera. Next thing you know, you’ll be walking into the studio with the confidence of Brad Pitt. From addressing and understanding the science behind your stage fright, to learning what colors are most flattering on camera, you'll walk away feeling more assured and ready—even eager—to get in front of the camera! Here's what we'll cover (click to jump down to the section of your choice):

The marketing benefits of being in a video
Why being on camera is scary
Getting comfortable with your script
Nailing your on-screen performance

Tips for those behind the camera

But before we get started, make sure you download our camera-ready checklist. Bookmark it, print it out, or hang it on your wall. Give this list a run-through ahead of your scheduled shoot and watch those nerves dissipate!

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### The marketing benefits of being in a video What if we told you that showcasing the people who work at your business is actually a strategic tactic marketers can use in their videos? And what if we told you it was proven scientifically? It's true! The warm, friendly folks who work at your business—not actors—are the best people to feature in your business videos. Your viewers are more likely to trust your brand when you're able to share information in an authentic way with video. Learn how featuring real people in your videos has a psychological impacts on your viewers:

"Your viewers are more likely to trust your brand when you are able to share information in an authentic way with video."

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Why Videos Featuring Humans Are Easier to Trust: It’s easier to understand and trust your business when viewers can see the human behind the voice in your video. When you take the time to consider all the aspects that contribute to this phenomenon, you'll be better equipped to make a video that connects with your audience. In this post, we take a closer look at the science behind speech perception, how it relates to trust, and how to make your next video more convincing. Your Business's Videos Should Include Faces. Here's Why: Ah, the brain. Such a complex part of the human anatomy. As it turns out, your brain is hardwired to respond to human faces. From the moment you're born, you constantly seek out faces with the hopes of understanding social cues. In this post, we explain why the brain loves faces so much, and how you can use this to your advantage in future videos. Web Psychology and Video: An Interview with Nathalie Nahai: We talk to Nathalie Nahai, a web psychologist, author, and host of The Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast, about the link between behavioral sciences and the digital space. From the biggest mistakes businesses can make with video, to tips for getting in front of the camera, Nathalie covers it all. ### Why being on camera is so scary In order to succeed in nailing your on-screen performance, it's helpful to understand why it's so scary to be on camera in the first place. The truth is, it's human nature. The intense nerves people often feel in front of the camera are one of the most common reasons they don't want to make videos in the first place. But by understanding where this fear comes from, you'll be able to rationalize that terrified gut-reaction a little bit better. Here are some posts that can help you zen-out and put it all into perspective: Why We Get Stage Fright When We Turn on the Camera: If you dread getting up on stage, talking in front of large groups, or even standing in front of a camera, you’re not alone. From a scientific perspective, when you start to feel anxious or get stage fright, you're not just simply forgetting your lines—your brain holds you back from even thinking of the words. Here, we break down where this fear comes from and provide a few pointers for overcoming those fears and delivering your best performance. Say What? Why Your Voice Sounds So Weird in Videos: "Is that really what I sound like?" We’re betting that you, like countless others before you, have uttered that exact phrase at some point. Why is it that what we think we sound like and what we actually sound like are so different? You guessed it—our brains are playing with us again. Learn the science behind those perplexing tricks in this auditory deep-dive. The Science Behind Why Your Gestures Look So Awkward: It's hard not to be your own worst critic when it comes to viewing yourself on camera. When you watch the take you just shot, it's all-too-common to feel horrified by what you've just witnessed. Instead of letting those awkward gestures overwhelm you, you can learn how to use your body language to make yourself feel more confident on camera. Better performances are within reach! ### Getting comfortable with your script What's one overlooked facet of performing for a video that can contribute to those pesky jitters? Familiarity (or lack thereof) with the script. Whether or not you're actually responsible for writing the script, it's crucial that you feel comfortable with the tone and flow of the words you're responsible for delivering. Giving the script a quick once-over before it's time to shine is rarely enough to feel truly comfortable with your delivery. Thankfully, these posts can give you a much needed confidence boost when it's time to perform:

"It is crucial that you feel comfortable with the tone and flow of the words you're responsible for delivering."

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The Table Read: Reading your script out loud before heading into the studio will not only save you time, but it’ll also help you feel more confident in your performance well before you hit the record button. Here are our best tips for conducting a productive table read, including how to edit your script to sound more natural on camera. Wistia's Scripting Tips: Many companies describe scripting as a big pain point in the video production process. And it's true—there’s a ton to consider when writing a script. One component to script writing that can make all the difference for the on-screen performer is the type of language that's used throughout. Keep it clear, conversational, engaging, and avoid buzzwords. This guide will help you get the ball rolling on a script that suits your brand's tone of voice. ### Nailing your on-screen performance Once you feel comfortable with your script, it's finally time to do the darn thing. At Wistia, we're firm believers that being on camera is all about being yourself. After all, your viewers will be able to tell if you're over-acting (think flailing hands) or under-performing (think glazed over zombie-face). Delivering your lines in a way that’s both natural and engaging is a key component of being on camera. These blog posts will give you a better understanding of how to give a performance that's just right: Creating an Authentic On-Camera Persona: Keeping it real on camera is easy—said no one ever. That's why creating an authentic on-camera persona is fundamental for conveying the right message to your viewers. In this post, we share eight go-to tips for establishing a voice that will make both you and your audience feel comfortable and confident. Bringing the Right Energy to Your Videos: Finding the right balance between giving it your all and not giving enough can be tricky. Too little energy and you’ll come across as disinterested and boring. Too much energy and you run the risk of coming off as disingenuous, or worse, scaring off your audience. Play around with our interactive energy slider and watch how varying levels of energy can impact the viewing experience. Get Loose—Being Yourself on Camera: None of us at Wistia are actors, and for many of us, it's taken a lot of time to get comfortable on camera. Luckily, anyone can get through their first video shoot with some proactive coaching and words of encouragement. Ultimately, the key to a natural on-screen performance is to not take yourself too seriously. Watch our video for a bunch of ideas for getting loose on camera! ### How to look great on camera One crucial component to being on camera is looking (and feeling) your best. Often, these notions are closely intertwined: If you look good, you'll feel good… and feeling good leads to a more natural on-screen performance! When it’s time to step in front of those bright lights, there are a few easy tweaks you can make to both your physical appearance and physical environment that will help you maintain your already flattering aesthetic on screen. Check out these super-actionable tips for looking great on camera:

"If you look good, you'll feel good… and feeling good leads to a more natural on-screen performance."

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Dressing for the Camera: Most people have a hard enough time deciding what to wear on an average day, let alone what they should wear in front of the camera. Ultimately, if the goal of your video is to engage with your audience, your wardrobe choices should help you achieve that goal, not distract your viewers. Here are some ideas for choosing an outfit that’s equal parts flattering and appropriate for the big screen.

Look Great in Your Next Webcam Video: You want to look and sound professional in all the videos you create, right? Well, if you're using a webcam to record yourself, you may have noticed that webcams aren't exactly flattering. However, with a few simple tweaks, you can significantly improve how you look. In this post, our video producer walks you through some hot tips for looking your best on a webcam. 6 Quick Tips for Looking Good on Camera: Solid colors or patterns? Makeup or no makeup? These are all common questions we’ve fielded from on-screen talent. Luckily, there are some best practices that will have you looking and feeling your best on camera. ### Tips for those behind the camera If you happen to be the lucky one behind the camera, we've got some suggestions for you, too! Helping your subject build up their on-camera confidence is vital for landing successful takes, so it's in everyone's best interest to help them feel right at home. Above all, do your best to establish a nonthreatening video environment. When you make your subjects feel good, a stellar performance will follow. Follow the advice laid out in these posts, and you'll have people begging to be in your company's next video: How to Direct Non-Actors in Your Next Video: At Wistia, we're all about making businesses more human, so we like to encourage everyone in the company to get in front of the camera at one point or another. However, that can be a challenge for many businesses just getting started with video. That's why we put together this guide on directing non-actors (AKA your coworkers!) so that they can nail their next performance. Check it out, then share it with your teammates! Educating Employees about Being on Camera: Don't just take our word for it: Bamboo HR's video team put together this helpful video that covers all the key points for being on camera. They even email the video to every employee they schedule a shoot for, so that when they're on set, the subject feels more confident about the entire process. Talk about efficiency! ### Step in front of the camera today With all of these tips now in your back pocket, you can feel empowered to take on your next big video shoot. As is the case with so many things in life, the more you do it, the more comfortable you'll feel. Practice makes perfect, so push yourself out of those cozy comfort zones and volunteer to star in the next video your business makes. You've got this!

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Common Marketing Challenges (And How to Solve Them with Video)

2018-05-03T15:04:09-04:00

It’s no secret that video has become a cornerstone of today’s marketing landscape. Some might even argue that video is the cornerstone—the #millienialpink of modern marketing, if you will. According to recent research from Buffer, 85 percent of businesses would like to create more video content in 2018. And if those businesses actually follow through, that means the demand for video will only continue to grow. If that last statement made you wince, cry uncontrollably, or even flip a table—don’t worry, we totally get it. You don't want your business or your career to fall behind because you don't know how to get started with video. Right about now you're probably thinking, "How can I invest the time, energy, and budget needed to make a video when I'm already strapped for those resources to begin with?" As a marketer, the sheer thought of adding yet another item to your to-do list can be headache inducing. In this post, we’re going to walk you through the challenges most marketers often face and how video can actually help you solve those problems, all while doing better marketing. ### Marketers don't always have a big budget You asked for an increase in your budget this year, and the answer was a resounding "no." Bummertown, USA. So, how are you going to invest more in video with limited cash? Despite common perception, a small investment in video can actually lead to some pretty impressive results. Plus, once you start seeing that ROI roll in, you'll be able to make the case for added investment when it comes time to negotiate next year.

"Despite common perception, a small investment in video can actually lead to some pretty impressive results."

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Choosing the right type of video to create is super important when working on a small budget. If you can only invest in one highly produced video this year, make it count. From the marketing perspective, here's an example that highlights how one video could be used across your marketing efforts to impact your results, even on a shoestring budget. Let's pretend your team created a guide that will serve as your flagship piece of content this quarter, complete with a produced video. Here's how you could repurpose and get the most out of your video to help reach your marketing goals:

Include a video thumbnail in your team's email signatures to help promote the guide
Share the video with your sales team so they can use it in their outreach efforts
Break the video down into several smaller, more digestible videos for new blog posts
Create a vertical version of the video for Instagram Stories
Create a version that's less than 10 seconds long for Twitter or LinkedIn
Use the video in a Facebook or Instagram campaign
Share the video in your community and use it to spark discussion
Feature a video thumbnail in your email send to increase click through rates

Obviously these tactics will vary depending on the type of video you create, but hopefully you can see how easy it is to make that one video work really hard for you and your team. Now, from the production perspective, if you're interested in making your videos in-house, there are a few budget-friendly ways you can get started. Let's break it down! #### Creating videos on a small budget If you’re trying to make a feature-length film, then video production costs can start to climb pretty fast. But if you’re like us, and you're interested in creating smaller, snackable videos (we love snacks) on a budget, consider these low-cost, high quality investments: Use the camera you already have—your iPhone
Apple has come a long way since introducing video recording features with the iPhone 3Gs. The newest iPhones can shoot stunning 4K footage (seriously, we’re not kidding). What’s more, if you pair your iPhone with a good old-fashioned tripod and an external microphone—the same phone you use to Google the heck out of #beychella—you can capture some really impressive shots. Still skeptical? Check out our guide to shooting video with an iPhone and learn how to produce professional-looking video like a boss. Build your own lighting kit for under $100
Good lighting is the difference between poor, meh, and high quality video production. But “good” doesn’t necessarily mean complicated or expensive. At Wistia, we've adopted a minimalist and flexible philosophy for lighting videos that any business can get started with today. Pair that with our down and dirty DIY lighting kit (shout out to Home Depot), and you'll be well on your way to making beautiful videos without breaking the bank.

### Marketers are short on time Remember Becky? Becky left your company a few months ago to explore a new opportunity, and ever since then, you've been picking up the work she left behind. You've absorbed her responsibilities for the "short term," but there's no end-date in sight. Sound familiar? For many marketers at small businesses, taking on additional work and wearing multiple hats is just part of the job. So naturally, adding video into your marketing strategy seems damn near impossible from a time perspective. But that doesn't have to be the case!

"For many marketers at small businesses, taking on additional work and wearing multiple hats is just part of the job."

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Marketers often assume that creating video always means a long, arduous, drawn-out production process full of takes, retakes, and many hours in an editing room. And while that may be true for the Spielberg's and Scorsese’s of the world, nowadays, viewers are craving that short-and-sweet, casual video content more than ever before. With channels like Facebook Live and Instagram Stories growing more popular by the day, not only is the dreaded video production “process” substantially reduced, but businesses are well-positioned to give the people what they want by keeping things more organic! If you want to use video in your marketing efforts but are short on time, here are a few areas where less produced videos can work wonders:

Video replies to questions your audience asks on Twitter
Interviews with experts in your company or field on Facebook Live
Blog post recaps or educational videos in response to questions posted on Quora
Special announcement videos recorded with just a webcam
Product update videos from your head of product shared on your blog
Weekly video series about relevant topics in your industry
Videos embedded in blog posts that explain complex or highly visual topics
High-level blog post overview video for social media

Here's an example of a video we made with just a webcam that gave an overview of a recent blog post. We got 3,700 views on this video, and it only took 3 minutes to make!

Believe it or not, these videos that require very little production time (we're talking minimal setups and very little editing) can end up being even more human and effective at engaging with your audience than something that took you three times as long to make. Sounds pretty tempting, right? Here are a few additional resources to set you down the right path. #### Tips for making your videos look great, fast According to Go-Globe, streaming video accounts for over two-thirds of all internet traffic and is expected to jump to 82% by 2020. Holy moly! What does it all mean? Well, future producers, it’s simple: if you have a webcam, a Facebook account, and/or an Instagram handle, it’s time for you and your business to start making videos. Here are some tips for getting it right: Webcams are your best friend
Maybe you’re a little camera shy...and that’s fair. Webcams, by default, aren’t the most flattering. But with a few quick tricks, you can significantly improve the look and feel of your video. For one, try adjusting your framing. Position yourself at about an arm's length away from the screen. Next, be sure to always face a light source of some sort. If you have an obvious light source near you (like a window), always keep it in front of you, not behind you. Also, be sure to clean up your space. Offices can get messy, and you don't want to distract your audience with clutter in the frame. Last but not least, be mindful of your audio. Try your best to distance yourself from any background noise. If you truly can't escape your very loud coworkers, then plug in some headphones with a built-in microphone and do some test runs to see if the audio will work. Use a tool like Soapbox to kick things up
If you’re still feeling pretty stuck, this one's for you! We recently launched Soapbox, a free Chrome extension that enables anyone to record, edit, and share high-quality videos in a matter of minutes. Soapbox eliminates all the technical barriers to making, editing, and sharing videos, so essentially, it’s a little video genie. If you're looking to go beyond basic recordings, you can use Soapbox to record both your screen and your webcam simultaneously. Easily present information or add enticing visuals to video with a few clicks. For more examples of how people are saving time with Soapbox, head over to the library and get inspired! ### Marketers don't know what to make As a marketer, you might be the go-to person on your team when it comes to determining the "what" behind a campaign. And for good reason! It's likely that you have a good sense of what will resonate with your audience from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. However, it can start to feel like there are a finite number of topics one can possibly post or tweet about. That same pain is often felt when it comes to video.

"However, it can start to feel like there are a finite number of topics one can possibly post or tweet about. That same pain is often felt when it comes to video."

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Not knowing what types of videos to create can hold people back from actually getting started with video at all. Oftentimes people think they have to begin entirely anew, reinventing the wheel, or coming up with the most novel video concept ever—and that just simply isn't true. In fact, the best way to begin experimenting with video is to start by cataloguing the assets your business already has. What kind of content do you currently create? What content could you build upon, enhance, or repurpose with video? Here are a few fool-proof ways to generate ideas for videos:

Do a data-dive and find out which blog posts currently get the most love. These could be great jumping off points for video, as they could inspire bigger ideas for a campaign or video series.
Look for holes in your current online presence. Are you sharing videos on Facebook but not on LinkedIn at all? Thinking about the platform first could help you come up with idea for video content with the audience in mind.
Ask your sales team what prospects want to know more about. You might learn that folks want to see some examples of businesses succeeding with your product before they purchase, which means customer testimonial videos could be in order.
Look at what your competitors are doing. Are your competitors meeting the needs of your audience in a way that you aren't? Think about how you are uniquely positioned to serve your audience in a more helpful way than your competitors, and execute with video.
Do some keyword research on Google or YouTube. Begin searching for keywords and see what comes up for popular search terms. This can give you an idea for the demand for a particular topic, and could inspire some new video content.

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Getting the Video You Want: 3 Must-Have Video Worksheets for Every Marketer

2018-05-04T16:36:31-04:00

As a marketer, you already know that video is a key component of your marketing strategy. You might know exactly what kind of video you want and where it will be used, but communicating that vision with your team is crucial to success. So, everyone's pumped and ready to take the plunge...but where should you begin? When it comes to video, it's super important that you know how to ask for what you want so that you end up with a final product that suits your marketings needs. At Wistia, we've created thousands of videos that have been used on our website, for promotional support, in email signatures, content teasers, product updates, customer testimonials, and more. Heck, we've even make yearly rap-up videos. And in our experience, strong communication between the marketer making the request and the team producing the video is essential to ensuring you get what you asked for—and so everyone stays happy. That's why we're super excited to share 3 helpful resources every marketer can use to effectively request and manage their video projects. Nail these things, and you'll be on your way to building up your video arsenal with exactly what you need for your marketing campaigns. Download these free assets and get started today—easy peasy!

Project Brief
Project Specs
Process and Terms

### 1. Assembling your project brief You have a ton of great ideas, and you know exactly where and how the video will be used. Great! Now it’s time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in a the form of a project brief. You may be thinking that you don’t need a project brief or that it’s going to take too much time to write—don't underestimate the power of the brief. The project brief is a key component to any successful video project as it determines the direction, outlines the goals, sets the timeline, and identifies the key stakeholders. A project brief shouldn't take you too much time to write—after all, it’s called a brief for a reason! For your first brief, try not to spend more than 30 minutes getting everything down. And, if you standardize your template, it should take you even less time when you sit down to write the next one. Regardless of how long it actually takes you to get this done, rest assured it’s time well-spent. Your whole team will be thanking you for formalizing the request in such a digestible format.

"For your first brief, try not to spend more than 30 minutes getting everything down."

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Of course, not all projects need a brief. If you're looking for an edit or a new version of an existing asset, you may simply want to field a request on a Trello board or via email, depending on the process at your business. That being said, any project that is the first of its kind or has the potential for high reach and impact should be grounds for a formal brief. #### Here are some key components to include in your project brief:

Business challenge: What is the the singular business need or problem you are trying to solve? Make sure this is clear and succinct. Everything should ladder up to this one question.
Who’s the target audience: Define who will be consuming the video content and identify their pain points.
Goals and objectives: What does success look like? This may include softer metrics for success (like brand affinity) or more measurable metrics for success (engagements, lead captures, clicks, etc). Also, include any benchmarks or results from previous videos that the team should be aware of.
Creative considerations/discussions: This is a great place to make suggestions to the video team. The team is looking for guidance, but you also want to give them the flexibility to be creative and think outside the box.
Mandatories: This is where you put the non-negotiables, like the video must contain the company logo or a call to action. Also include information about whether or not it will need to optimized for a particular device like desktop vs mobile.
Next steps/timing: At a high level, outline next steps and timing: the kick off, the scripting process, timing for video production, expectations for feedback or rounds of review, delivery of final video, and launch. Again, keep this high level—a more formalized timeline should be kept in your preferred management tool of choice to ensure that you stay on track.
Inspiration: This is one of my favorite sections, as it forces you to look at how other brands are approaching video in their marketing, and can provide examples for the concepting in the pre-production stage. Wistia’s Customer Showcase is a great place to look for inspiration. Price Intelligently, Bamboo HR and Casper are all doing a great job of using video in their marketing, so be sure to check out those companies for some fresh ideas.
Approval process: You’re almost there! Identifying the approval process, and who the key stakeholders are at each stage, ensures that the project keeps moving along. Nothing’s worse than getting to the finish line only to have a project kicked back from someone weighing in at the last minute. Be clear from the start who needs to provide feedback and approval, and at what stage, so there’s no surprises.

So, what are you waiting for? Download the free template and get your ducks in a row!

Download the brief

### 2. Pulling together your project details You have your project brief in hand and you’re feeling really good about this video project of yours. But in order for the brief to do its job, it needs to be followed up with an outline of your project's specs. This is typically a list of requirements that the video team needs to know before they start the pre-production. Without an accurate spec sheet, the process of producing or editing a video can be chaotic, and may even result in lost time (or even revenue). That's why we believe it's best to deliver the specs with the project brief or immediately following the kick-off meeting. The specs sheet is also a crucial component to this process—it'll help you efficiently execute on your project while making it crystal clear to the video team what you're asking for.

"Without an accurate spec sheet, the process of producing or editing a video can be chaotic, and may even result in lost time (or even revenue)."

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For example, if you're requesting a video for your homepage, it will need to work within the confines of the page, including the overall color palette of the page design. Or, if you're requesting a video for paid ads on Facebook that are only being delivered on mobile, the video should be shot in a square format and will need more visual captions. Provide all the technical details necessary so the video can do what it needs to, from living on a website, to being shared with a client in the right format, and you'll be in great shape! #### Key video spec sheet components:

Summary of project: At this point, you've already had a kick-off meeting and have reviewed the project brief with your team, but it doesn’t hurt to reiterate why you're requesting the video in the first place. You can even link back to the brief if the team needs more background!
Marketing purpose: Where will the video live and how will it be used? Will it be a homepage overview video, a teaser for social media, a piece of supporting content on a blog post, or perhaps even a video you'll use as an ad on social networks? Make it clear what the main the purpose of this video will be.
Technical requirements: Include file format, size, aspect ratio, and resolution, and any other technical details the video team will need to know in order to effectively plan the production (or also keep in mind for post-production!).
Add-ons: This is where other additional details should live, like if you need a companion banner, supporting text, multiple formats for different channels, or other customizations.
Deadline: Is there an external force like an event or scheduled launch that's driving the due date? The video team will likely need to back track into a production schedule based on when you want the final video delivered, so don't forget to add this crucial component to your spec sheet!

Ready to start fleshing out those video specs? Download this template and start communicating with your video producers more effectively.

Download the sheet

### 3. Understanding the production process and terms Whether you have an internal video team, or you're using an agency to produce your videos, it’s super helpful to know a bit about both the production process and the common terms video producers tend to use when shooting and editing. That way, both parties are on the same page, speaking the same language. Before we get into each individual stage of the production process, let's get a better understanding of the terms video producers use so we can talk the talk. Focal length, lav mic, jump cut, mo-graph...mo-what? Download this video production glossary and start talking like a pro! Share this one with your marketing teammates—trust us, your entire team will thank you later.

Download the glossary

#### Three key video production stages: ##### 1. Pre-Production It’s all about the planning. Without proper planning, the actual production of the video could run over time, over budget, or could even miss important details outlined in the brief or project spec sheet. Your hard work could be in serious jeopardy if this step isn't thoughtfully planned. This is also where you'll develop and agree on a concept, plan the location (will it be shot in the office or somewhere else), cast the talent, and write the script. You may even be asked to take a crack at writing the first draft of the script yourself. If you feel stuck on the first line, try to work out the rest of the script and come back to this later. And of course, you can always refer to our guide to scripting for some helpful pointers as well.

"You may even be asked to take a crack at writing the first draft of the script yourself. If you feel stuck on the first line, it might be best to work out the rest of the script and come back to this later."

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And since we're talking all things video production, let's hear from our very own Principle Video Producer, Chris Lavigne, about each stage of the process.

"Coming up with a video concept and script is the single most important part of the pre-production process. There are many ways to approach the process, which involve varying levels of collaboration. I highly recommend leaving the pre-production phase with a script that's locked-in. Make sure that all project stakeholders have been given the opportunity to weigh in on the language used the script. Confirm that the message of the video is clear and in-line with the marketing goals.

When everyone feels good about the language of the script, gather the talent ahead of the shoot to read the lines out loud. Use this time to fix any tricky word combinations. When you're all finished and feel great about your script, you're ready to head into production!"

##### 2. Production It’s go time! This is where the video producer shoots the video and creates all the elements that will be a part of the finished product: graphics, animations, music, sound, etc. And, this is also happens to be where the terms get technical pretty fast (at least for most marketers). Depth of field, cine camera, ambient sound, and head room, for example, are a few terms that start to come into play. This shared language helps producers communicate with one another about how they want the shot to take look and ultimately take form. It's right about here where the marketer or video requester typically takes a step back and gives the video producers some room to do their thing. Sit back and relax while the video starts getting pieced together!

"As a director and video producer, I make sure that I am in control of the shooting environment and that I always keep the talent in mind. One way I do this is by limiting the amount of people in the room during the shoot. Keep only the people essential to the production of the video on set and kick everyone else out. Sorry, marketers! :)

It may seem unfair to kick people out of the room, but ultimately it's about making the person on-camera feel comfortable. This is what will lead to a natural and authentic performance in the video."

##### 3. Post-Production This includes anything that happens after the shoot, like editing, adding a voiceover and motion graphics, or versioning out your video. Producers will start with the rough cut and edit from there. This initial video will also serve as a template or model for any additional cuts or versions that will be created. You can make simple edits to your script when you use a voiceover at this stage without having to shoot the video again, which is a nice back-up option to have!

"A lot of the time, post is where the magic really happens. Things like music, edit pacing, and motion graphics can have as much of an impact on the final video as the script and production do! Oftentimes, finding the right music track is the most difficult part of the editing process. This is what inspired us to create music to give out to our audience.

When you're looking to find music for your next video, check out some of the free music that our Creative Director (and my partner-in-crime) Dan Mills composed for you to use!"

### Communication is the key to collaboration With these three planning worksheets in hand, you'll be more prepared than ever before to communicate with video producers, whether they're in-house or at an agency. This also means you're one step closer to building your brand, growing your business, and reaching your marketing goals—all with video! Keep up the good work.

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DIY, Contractor, or In-house: Setting Your Business' Video Strategy

2018-05-04T13:11:40-04:00

So, you’ve been talking to your marketing friends and you've started to realize that this whole "video" thing isn't going away any time soon. You find yourself up at night, watching other brand’s product videos, thinking about how it's time for you to really get into video. But you're scared. Is it too soon? What if it doesn’t work out? Is your vision just clouded by all that exciting camera gear? What if your parents don’t like even like each other? OK, we're getting carried away here, but you get the picture. One of the most common challenges managers face when deciding how to resource a new initiative, is whether they should try to do it themselves, hire an agency, or bring someone on full time. Luckily, when it comes to video, we've got some pointers that'll help you navigate this decision without wasting too much time or energy. Let's dig in! ### Taking matters into your own hands ###### Pros: Low-cost, authentic results, great long-term investment, convenience, empowers your team ###### Cons: Time intensive at the beginning, learning curve, lo-fi results not well suited for all brand touches It might seem annoyingly obvious, but first, ask yourself how many and what types of videos your business currently needs. Do you need to create some videos that answer commonly asked support questions? Are you looking to onboard new employees internally with video? If you're considering investing in any of the aforementioned videos, we’ve found that these types of “lower-stake” videos don’t necessarily need super slick deliverables. Plus, there are plenty of free tools out there that can help you get it done well without emptying your pockets (wink wink, nudge nudge, Soapbox). So give it a go yourself! Set aside some time to read up on the many DIY resources you have right at your finger tips—the internet is a beautiful thing. Find some coworkers who may already have photography or video experience. And remember, regardless of how bad that first video comes out, there's always something to be learned about the process, your brand, and what you actually want to achieve with this type of content.

"Set aside some time to read up on the many DIY resources you have right at your finger tips—the internet is a beautiful thing."

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That said, we totally understand that not every team can devote this amount of time to tinkering and experimentation (especially if you aren't familiar with some basic video principles). But luckily, you have two more options to consider, which we'll get to next! Doing it yourself? Here are some questions to ask before you commit:

Do you have basic editing software or access to other helpful tools?
Does anyone at your business have an iPhone X? We're talking Portrait Mode, peeps.
Is there a clear owner of this initiative? Who will have the final say?
Who will represent your company on camera? Are they willing to participate?
Are there parts of your business that could benefit from quick, lo-fi videos?
Last but not least, is there room to try and fail?

### Hiring an agency or contractor ###### Pros: Low commitment, video gear supplied by contractor, high quality video output, process is taken care of end-to-end ###### Cons: Multiple videos gets expensive, additional edits cost money, less spontaneity, takes time to find and manage Video can have a pretty outsized impact on how customers think about your brand. So if you’re looking for someone to create a ton of public-facing videos, you need to make sure whoever you bring in is fully aligned with your business, from company values to tone of voice. Creative agencies that specialize in marketing videos have popped up everywhere lately—heck, there’s probably someone living in your apartment building right now that works at one. Pick an area of your business where a video could have a big impact, and then work with an agency to make it happen. The agency approach might require a decent financial investment, but experienced video professionals can help you understand the needs and wants of your company quickly. And of course, you'll end up with a high-quality asset!

"The agency approach might require a decent financial investment, but experienced video professionals can help you understand the needs and wants of your company quickly."

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If you're thinking, "This sounds great and all, but hiring an agency really isn't in the budget." Never fear, you've got options. The combination of inexpensive video technology and a generation of people who had iPhones by high school, means today’s creative marketplace is flooded with young, hungry videographers. Try reaching out to local universities with production programs to get in touch with recent alumni. Find some local bands with high quality music videos—they most likely already have a pulse on the budding production scene in your area. And last but not least, don’t underestimate the wedding videographer your cousin just had at their reception! Whether it’s an agency or a recent college graduate with a DSLR and a drone, the freelance route has far more reward than risk. If the video turns out great, that's awesome! You can collaborate on another project with that person. And if it doesn’t? Well, you didn't invest too much time and money into this one video, and chances are, you learned something new about what your must-haves really are when it comes to video. Going the contractor route? Make sure you have answers to these questions first:

What budget are you working with and how flexible is it?
Who is your target audience and what do you need this video to accomplish?
Have you established brand guidelines to help contractors speak in your “voice”?
Do you have a clear goal in mind for this video? What does success look like?
Where will this video live—on your website, social channels, landing page, etc.?
Who is going to own the communication with the vendor?
Do you have a clear timeline for when this video needs to be delivered?

### Bringing video in-house ###### Pros: Accountable owners for video, producers understand the company strategy, iterative process, brand consistency ###### Cons: Cost of a salaried employee, creative limitations of a one-person team, gear and studio expenses, daunting hiring process When demand, financial feasibility, and proven ROI align, the decision to hire a video producer becomes a no-brainer. This can especially feel like the case when your work with an agency starts approaching the cost of a full time salary.

"When demand, financial feasibility, and proven ROI align, the decision to hire a video producer becomes a no-brainer."

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Through our own experience here at Wistia, we found that an in-house videographer wasn’t quite a necessity until video quality became super important. That being said, there are plenty of fringe benefits beyond glossy marketing videos that come with hiring an in-house video producer. Compared to a freelancer, an in-house video producer has a more nuanced knowledge of the overall business strategy and brand, a personal investment in the company's success, and a greater level of comfort with the team. When either of our in-house video producers have some extra time outside of working on marketing efforts, we end up producing some pretty amazing internal assets. Our in-house team has also been instrumental in helping our sales, success, marketing, and support teams become more comfortable with DIY video, which is another added bonus of the in-house route. Bringing video in-house? Think about these questions before putting up your job posting:

Do you want this person to build a studio and buy all the necessary equipment?
What types of content do you need—live-action videos, animated video, motion graphics, etc?
What will you be able to bring to the table that will help them to succeed?
Do you want this person be able to act on camera themselves?
Do you have someone at your business that would be able to onboard them successfully?
Is there a particular style of video that your business would like to achieve? Can you articulate that clearly?

### All roads lead to video Regardless of which route you take, it's important to keep your expectations somewhat low at the beginning of your journey. Like any other business endeavor, spinning up a video strategy and establishing a solid brand takes time. Don’t put too much pressure on blowing it out of the water with your first attempts—be prepared to fail and learn! Everyone has to start somewhere, and to prove it, take a look our first homepage video compared to our most recent. (Spoiler: try not to laugh). Our very first homepage video from 2008:

The homepage video we're working with in 2018:

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Say Hello to Sudbuds, the Soapbox Referral Program

2018-04-30T16:38:50-04:00

You know what's cooler than being an early adopter who discovers a new, slick video creation tool? Being the person who introduces that new tool to your friends. Sure, sharing is caring. But that generosity is even better when it results in you getting exclusive swag. Which is why we're super excited to announce the launch of our brand new referral program for Soapbox, Sudbuds. Sudbuds lets you spread the Soapbox love throughout your company and professional network, while getting impeccably designed goodies in return. Those rewards scale with size and value as you introduce more people to Soapbox.

Sudbuds lets you spread the Soapbox love, while getting impeccably designed goodies in return.

The gist is pretty simple—get your friends, family, coworkers, and dogs to sign up for Soapbox using your unique link. For every one that makes a video, you'll get one step closer to receiving a bigger and better prize. Bring on 10 of your nearest and dearest, and you'll be the proud owner of a ceramic Soapbox camping mug. 50 nets you a stylish Soapbox dad hat, 100 gets you a dimmable LED panel light for your desk. And if you can bring on 200 new Soapbox aficionados? Our Principal Video Producer, Chris Lavigne, will build and ship you your very own portable video filming studio: the Soapbox Station. And those are just a smattering of the highlights! Becoming a Sudbud is easy as can be. Register and grab your unique Sudbuds link, then send it out to the world via email, social media, carrier pigeon, or any other distribution method that takes your fancy. When someone signs up and makes their first video, we'll attribute the referral to your account, and you'll be that much closer to your next reward. So get ready to buddy up and start spreading the good news of Soapbox to your entire video-loving community.

By Wistia

Adding Video into Your Sales Outreach in 6 Steps

2018-04-19T16:51:39-04:00

Recently, we ran an outbound prospecting test of 200 leads and found that including video in our outreach efforts led to a 140% higher click rate. Let that number sink in. It's no secret that making a real connection with a prospect or lead can be tricky. After all, you might be the friendliest salesperson on earth, but if the prospect on the other end of the line doesn't even open your email, you're out of luck. One way to overcome this challenge and combat the stigma associated with sales? Start adding video into your sales outreach efforts. Thinking strategically about how and when you want to use video in the buyer's journey can help you create more impactful (and delightful) videos. Let's walk through the process step-by-step so you can start closing more deals! ### 1. Set your goal When you think of video, chances are your brain conjures up images of highly polished Super Bowl ads or sleek Facebook video campaigns. And while those types of videos are great for building brand awareness or increasing reach, their primary goal isn't as granular as sales outreach videos are. Sales videos might not be as glamorous or as polished, but that means you can make a lot more of them and also more easily track their efficacy. Be strategic about what this one particular video should accomplish. Try tying it to a goal that can actually be measured through this medium. There are a number of goals you can achieve by using video in your sales process, including:

Boosting click-through rates
Scheduling more calls
Decreasing close time
Nurturing an existing lead
Introducing yourself to a contact
Improving brand touch

Make sure you choose one key goal from the start so that your analysis can remain focused once your results start rolling in. Now, who are you going to send your video to? ### 2. Choose a contact Deciding who will receive your custom video depends entirely on the goal you chose in step one (aren't you glad you only picked one goal?). For example, if your goal is to schedule more calls, the contact you choose to reach out to will likely be a new lead that hasn't received any communication from you yet. On the other hand, if your goal is to introduce yourself to a contact with video, you'll be passing a lead on to another person on your team, so this lead will already be relatively warm. Look through your CRM and try to determine where your sales process could benefit most from the helping hand of video. We've found that videos are particularly great for prospecting, outreach attempts, reconnecting with cold leads, confirming meetings, or following up with no-shows, but this could easily vary from business to business.

Look through your CRM and try to determine where your sales process could benefit most from the helping hand of video.

For example, Bluleadz, an inbound marketing agency based in Tampa, uses video to follow up with their prospects after a phone call goes well and a proposal has been sent through. Then, they send a custom "Welcome Aboard" video in their next email. By incorporating video into their sales outreach efforts, Bluleadz "...closed 63% of the clients we've sent these videos to, compared to 46% of client's we did not." Check out an example of the type of video they send after their proposal email:

### 3. Brainstorm ideas One of the best parts of making these one-off sales videos is that you don't need a script. Since you should be striving for an authentic, human-to-human connection with your prospect or lead, delivering a natural performance is ideal. Instead of scripting everything out word-for-word, jot down a few notes about your prospect to reference while you're recording. The following key pieces of information are a great place to start:

Name
Location
Role
Goals
Opportunities
Hobbies

Still feeling a little overwhelmed by the endless possibility of videos you could create? We know that one of the biggest barriers to entry when it comes to video is just figuring out what to create. Luckily, we've found that when it comes to sales outreach, these two types of videos are super effective for engaging with your lead. The Video Voicemail: These are short, digestible videos that are usually made on a one-off basis. As a salesperson, you can easily establish your credibility by creating a video voicemail that provides value to your prospect or lead, while also building trust. Check out this friendly little ditty from our very own Erika:

Want some handy tips for a creating a video voicemail? You got 'em:

Keep it under a minute
Explain the reason behind your call
Include a tip or a free resource
Add a CTA at the end
Show their company website
Smile more than you think you should!
Add a dash of personality

The Quick Demo: A quick demo video can help answer a question or highlight a feature. They're perfect for engaging with leads in a more personalized, helpful way. Creating demo videos can also be useful for sales professionals who work in the SaaS space, as selling a product that's not physically tangible presents unique challenges.

Check out these tips for making a demo video:

Keep it 2-5 minutes long
Teach your prospects something
Trim the beginning and end
Customize your player color to match your brand

### 4. Create and edit your video Here comes the fun part—creating and editing your video. We've compiled some helpful tips that should make creating your first sales outreach video super easy. Remember, as a guiding principle, always try to be yourself. An authentic tone will come across loud and clear in your finished product, but so will a super cheesy one, so keep it real. Declutter your screen: See all of those pinned bookmarks in your browser? Get rid of 'em! Your audience isn't interested in all the links you have open (or at least, they shouldn't be if they're paying attention), so close all of your tabs and put your computer on "do not disturb" mode. This will ensure that you don't receive any pop-ups that can ruin your screen recording. Position yourself for the webcam: A few small tweaks to your setup can make all the difference. Be sure to put your laptop above your eye line, sit facing a window so you aren't backlit, and make sure you're sitting about an arm's length away from your screen. Start and end the video with your face: This is all about ensuring you maintain that human connection with your prospect or lead. Introduce yourself at the start of your video just like you would on any normal sales call, and then close it out with a friendly goodbye that leaves your viewers feeling great. Emphasize specific points: If you're using Soapbox, our free webcam and screen recording tool, you can use the zoom feature to emphasize key points throughout your video. If there's something specific that you'd like to highlight, the zoom feature will allow you to hone in on a particular portion of the screen recording. For instance, if you're showing how your product works, you might want to zoom in for greater detail on a specific feature.

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Create a custom thumbnail: We also recommending showing a human face in the thumbnail of your video. If you're using Soapbox to create your sales outreach video, show your smiling face in the context of the split-screen layout. This will give viewers an idea of what they're about to watch. The bottom line is thumbnails offer a first impression of your video and can help improve your play rates, so make sure your video has a compelling one! ### 5. Send your email Chances are your primary mode of communication with prospects and leads is email. So why not utilize and optimize this channel for success? Let your recipients know there's a video in the email by including the word "video" in your subject line and email text. At Wistia, we've found that using a thumbnail image with a big play button increased our email click-through rates by 20%, so that's obviously a must-have.

Let your recipients know there's a video in the email by including the word "video" in your subject line and email text.

Speaking of thumbnails, link the thumbnail in your email to the video on your landing page. While embedding your video directly within your email is possible, it doesn't always make for a streamlined experience. Plus, doing so means you strip out any of the data you could be collecting on your video's performance, so stick to a clickable image when it comes to email. Last but not least, try to only use one primary call to action, like, "Watch the video to learn more." You don't want to ask too much of your viewers, so keep it simple and direct! ### 6. Track your success Arguably one of the best things about using video in your sales outreach efforts is your ability to measure success. Here at Wistia, we love experimentation and testing, so we recommend A/B testing your emails with and without video and taking a look at the metrics (number of meetings booked, opportunities created, deals closed, and average close time, for instance) to help you determine how effective your video was in reaching your goal. Plus, if you happen to use Soapbox Pro to create sales videos, you also have access to our Activity and Alerts feature, which was made with this specific use case in mind. When you create a video, you're able to see whether or not someone viewed your video, how long they watched, and whether or not they interacted with your CTA links. Plus, with Alerts, you'll receive push notifications that let you know the second someone watches your video. Here's what that looks like in practice: You'll see the video's thumbnail, its title, the percentage of the video watched during that session (rounded down to the nearest 25%), and the CTA status (whether it exists, and if it was clicked). Pretty nifty! ### Start making sales with video There you have it! Soon, you'll be on your way to creating awesome sales outreach videos that can help you close deals and make more personal connections with your prospects. Remember, the more videos you make, the more comfortable you'll start to feel—don't get discouraged if you need to do a few takes before you really get in the groove. Once you start seeing the positive effects of sales outreach videos rolling in, you (and your teammates) will be itching to make more.

By Wistia

Record, edit, and share impressive videos in minutes, using nothing but your laptop. Install the free Chrome extension, and clean up your act!

Soapbox Activity and Alerts Have Landed

2018-04-25T10:53:07-04:00

For those of you who may be new to the party, Soapbox is the best tool available for creating a quick talking-head video, screencast, or presentation and sending it via email. And if you're in a sales or business development role, knowing how someone reacts to any video you send is incredibly important. It's not enough to get a read receipt and assume the video has been watched: You want to know when someone has watched your video, how much of it they got through, and whether they clicked your Call to Action. In fact, you probably want to be told as soon as someone watches your video so you can jump the gun and send a timely follow-up. All of this is now possible with Activity and Alerts, now live for Soapbox Pro users (yes, that even includes Lenny). ### Setting it up - Upgrade to Soapbox Pro if you haven't already (it's $12.50 per month) on your Account page - Head to the Activity Feed and turn on Alerts (a quick heads-up that this will require you to enable Chrome push notifications from Soapbox) - Click on the Activity Feed in your Soapbox account (or just visit this link to see all of your Soapbox stats) While Activity and Alerts in Soapbox are powered by the same technology as the Wistia stats you know and love, we've completely changed the way your data is displayed. The new setup ensures the information you care about most is right in front of you whenever you check your Soapbox Activity Feed. The UI is deliberately clean and simple, showing you a list of all recent views with a percentage watched number next to each view, which tells you how far someone got through your video. A link icon next to a view tells you whether the video has a CTA, and a green check mark shows you if the CTA was clicked. In the near future, we'll be adding more details to Soapbox Activity and Alerts, giving users insights into how their videos are performing as a whole, not just individually. But in the meantime, we hope this is a valuable first iteration. ### UI and account improvements As part of this release, we've also made a bunch of small but important improvements to the Soapbox Account menu and navigation. You can now see which Google account you're logged in with, as well as access more options for customizing your videos' settings from a drop-down on the right side of the Account page. One last thing: We've added some videos to the Soapbox Help Center, so if you're struggling to get started or just looking for inspiration, head on over to access a bunch of tips and tricks from our Principal Video Producer, Chris Lavigne.

BLOG » STRATEGY

Why Presentation Videos Are the Ultimate Tools for Sales Pitches

The sales world has often relied on slide decks and PDFs to win over new business. But there’s a better way to close the deal.

Our Video Player Just Got a Lot Faster: Introducing Vulcan V2

2018-04-16T09:59:21-04:00

If you've been paying attention, you know how important we believe the speed of a video player is. And why wouldn't we, when Google recently published a study that found as page load time goes from one second to five seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases 90%. Makes sense intuitively, right? Who's got the time for that? Page speed also matters for SEO. For nearly a decade, Google's been using it as a signal for desktop search rankings, and starting in July of 2018, page speed will factor into mobile rankings, as well. Because we're marketers who love video, this has always been a tricky balance. Video is an amazing tool to connect with your audience, but it also adds a lot of heft to your site and slows down page load times. That's why we're super excited to announce our brand new player, Vulcan V2. At 99KB, Vulcan V2 is half the size of our previous player and less than a quarter the size of YouTube's player.

A smaller player (plus the tons of optimizations Luke mentions in the video) means your pages load faster—10% faster, in fact. That's right: We're seeing pages with Vulcan V2 load 10% faster on average than those with our previous player.

We're seeing pages with Vulcan V2 load 10% faster on average than those with our previous player.

We've quietly been rolling out these updates over the last month, and we're pleased to announce that as of today, Vulcan V2 is fully live to all Wistia users. No settings to change, no embeds to update: just a faster, smaller video player. If you add up all of these speed improvements in the context of every Wistia-hosted video, Vulcan V2 is collectively saving viewers of Wistia videos a total of five years of page loading time every month. (Coincidentally, that's about how long it would take to watch everything on Netflix—yes, including credits.)

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Why Every Marketer Should Care About the Speed of Their Video Player

The video player you choose—and how quickly it loads—can have a substantial impact on how many people discover your site.