Using Interactive Video to Drive SaaS Customer Engagement

By: Andrew Brooks, Board Member, Mural Consulting

One of companies I sit on the board of, Mural, provides high touch customer on-boarding, facilitated product adoption, on-going customer service and high impact engagement campaigns for SaaS and cloud product companies.

A critical challenge for any proactive outbound customer contact campaign is how you ‘break through the noise’ and convince a busy customer to engage with you, even if what you’re offering is free support, education and assistance which will materially enhance the value they are receiving from a product or service for which they’re already paying. Direct phone calls are generally ignored. Cold email can backfire if you clutter an inbox. In product calls-to-action might miss the mark or hit the wrong audience.

At Mural, in working with a large SaaS provider on a proactive outreach campaign to their customer base, we turned to leveraging interactive video powered by Mindstamp to help us stand out and drive results. Our goals and reasons for using an interactive video in the proactive outreach campaign were a couple fold, including:

1. Video is obviously one of the most powerful content formats available. Data shows that 72% of consumers prefer to watch videos for product/service awareness rather than reading text. A 2018 Forbes article clearly demonstrated that video was the most effective way to connect with an audience. So we knew we wanted to leverage video at the heart of delivering our message.

2. As part of that, we wanted the video to be an immersive experience. We knew stats demonstrated that interactive video content resulted in 32% more memorable videos. Wyzowl found that "creating a game-like experience that grabs and keeps a user’s attention and results in a 591% lift in user activity."‍

3. Mural wanted the call-to-action to exist directly in the video. In this case that was to schedule 1:1 time with a Mural resource to review the customer’s use of the SaaS product and provide guidance, training and feedback. The appointment scheduling tool would be available at any time during the video through a simple interactive click.

As a result, Mural created a video that leveraged a number of Mindstamp’s interactive features and capabilities to arrive at the desired result.

A series of questions were embedded in the video with the answers activated by hotspots that required a click to progress the video. Essentially the viewers were asked about their use of the product, their interests in specific features, if and how they used competitive products and were they aware of certain stats and industry trends.

Based on each viewer’s click on a given answer, video branching kicked in to guide the viewer to a specific section of the video that further explored a topic of interest, or asked a few follow up questions on a given topic. Through that branching, the video immediately became more engaging as the content was instantly tailored to the viewer him or herself.

Under the covers, the video was using variables to create a tracked ‘score’ of sorts for the viewer that would drive a personalized ‘next step’ recommendation at the end of the video. Automatic video navigation kicked in to take them to a portion of the video that spoke to their specific needs based on how they responded.

At the end of the video the viewer could download a report with their answers and a set of recommendations directly from the video itself, assembled real-time based on their interactions.

Finally, as noted, with a simple embedded button, an HTML control would pop up to allow the viewer to schedule a proactive help session with one of Mural’s agents. This way, the video capitalized on viewer interest whenever it was at its peak, without forcing them to continue to the end if they knew they were ready for support.

The video was distributed via email and as a link directly in the product’s admin portal, and using personalization could include a video title that included the customer’s name to make it feel targeted and directed.

Mural has delivered hundreds of proactive support sessions on behalf of this SaaS provider. In each session the viewer knew the Mural agent was coming in with critical background and knowledge to maximize the value of the session. Given the success, the team is actively looking for new products and companies where interactive video can become a critical part of the customer engagement strategy.