The Ultimate Guide to Video Personalization: What It Is and How to Use It

In a world overflowing with content, personalization has become the key to standing out. Your audience now expects experiences that feel tailored to them, not the one-size-fits-all messaging of the past. That's where video personalization comes in.

Personalized video isn't just about adding a name to a screen. With interactive video, you can tailor every part of the experience to match your viewer's interests, choices, and data to make your content feel like a one-to-one conversation at scale.

What is Video Personalization?

Video personalization means adapting the experience to each viewer, based on what you already know about them or information they provide while doing. 

Unlike traditional video where every viewer sees the same thing, personalized video changes dynamically for each viewer. Whether it's inserting text, swapping out call-to-action buttons, or even branching to different video paths, the end result is more engaging, more relevant, and more effective at driving results.

Why Use Personalized Video?

• Higher engagement: Viewers are more likely to watch longer when the content feels tailored to them.
• More retention: When the viewer is more engaged, they will retain more of the material.
• Increased conversions: Personalized call-to-action opportunities produce more results than generic ones
• Stronger relationships: Viewers feel understood, not marketed to. 

Ways to Personalize Your Interactive Videos

1. Templated Variables

The simplest form of personalization is to dynamically adjust the on-screen text, buttons, questions, etc. to use information you know about the viewer. For example, the welcome message:

"Hi {{name}}, welcome to your personalized demo!"

Will become:

"Hi Sarah, welcome to your personalized demo!" 

By using templated variables like this, you can create one piece of content and personalize it infinitely! No more spending thousands of dollars to render a video for each customer, you can do it on the fly with Mindstamp's templated variables.

Other popular fields include company name, industry, location, job title, etc. By utilizing these fields and others, you can make the video feel like it was created specifically for each viewer.

These templated variables can be passed in to the video share link, or can be collected during the experience. For example, you could ask a question within the video "What is your company name?" and store the answer in a variable called company_name. 

Later on in the video, you can have a button that says "Explore solutions for {{company_name}}" which will dynamically personalize based on their previous response. This creates a two-way dialogue where viewers feel more in control of the content and stick around longer.

2. Conditional Interactions

Interactive video allows you to show or hide interactions based on conditions, something we call Conditional Logic. This offers a simple but powerful "if-then" flow for building your experiences.

> IF they said their company size is less than 100 employees, THEN show the button that offers the large company HR guide

> IF they answered a question indicating they were moving from another software provider, THEN ask a follow up question asking which provider

> IF they have purchased a product in the past, THEN do NOT show the first-time customer discount code at the end of the video

Dynamically showing or hiding interactions based on known data ensures that every viewer gets the most relevant call-to-action.

3. Branching Video Experiences

Branching takes personalization to the next level by letting viewers control the flow of the video. Mindstamp offers two types of branching:

• In-Video Branching: Jump to a specific time or section based on an answer or variable
• Cross-Video Branching: Send viewers to a new video entirely that matches their needs

In-video branching is extremely powerful in itself. When a viewer clicks a button or answers a question, you can immediately move them throughout the video to the portion that's relevant to them. 

Imagine if you asked a question "What is your company size?" and they tell you that they have 2 employees. You likely don't want them to sit through the next 3 minutes of video discussing the benefits of your solution for large companies. Instead, you can skip them past that section straight to the appointment scheduling CTA so you can better understand their needs. 

Similarly, in an educational or training context, if a viewer answers a question incorrectly, you may want to take them back to the start of the section that discusses that material. 

Cross-video branching is even more powerful, allowing you to send viewers throughout multiple "Choose your own adventure" video paths. Rather than putting all the content in a single video and skipping sections, you can set up your videos as "modules" that can be strung together and navigated dynamically. 

For example, imagine if you offer both B2B and B2C services for your customers, but those services are very different from one another. Once the viewer tells you which service they are interested in, you can switch them to the relevant video that matches up with their needs. 

One additional benefit to cross-video branching is the ability to swap out the videos individually rather than having to update the original master video. Say you have a video about your affiliate program that is part of a branching experience, but some terms and conditions change. Rather than having one large video that you have to go in, edit, re-render, and update, you can just swap out that single video on the affiliate program and keep the rest of your experience the same.

Best Practices for Video Personalization

• Keep it natural and don't overdo it: Like interactivity, a little bit of personalization goes a long way, but adding too much can make it feel overwhelming quickly.
• Balance automation with authenticity: Personalization should extend, not replace, the human touch that the audience expects and deserves
• Test your experience thoroughly: Ensure that their are no dead-ends and that fallbacks are in place as to not create the dreaded "Hi, $NAME" email situation 
• Respect viewer privacy: Don't feed sensitive data into a personalized video without their consent

Real-World Examples:

• Training: Tailored modules unlocked by job role or skill level
• Marketing: Personalized sales demos with prospect's name and company
• E-learning: Quiz answers shaping the path through the lessons

Getting Started

If you're new to personalized video, start simple by playing with templated variables. Here is a quick overview on how to start using them:

Next, experiment with conditional logic to show or hide interactions based on variables:

Once you've got those down, you can start testing advanced branching and personalized experiences. The beauty of interactive video is that it grows with you, allowing you to start small and expand into complex personalization as you see results.

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Video personalization transforms generic content into experiences that feel unique and relevant. Whether it’s inserting a name, changing calls-to-action, or creating fully branched journeys, personalization makes your video content more engaging, more effective, and more human.