Measuring Video Success
Nowadays video is being used across businesses in the form of personalized video email marketing, throughout sales processes, customer service, and more. There’s something authentic in sending and receiving a video message, displayed on top of sophisticated video email templates with call-to-action-buttons that drive your audiences next steps. But what good are these videos if you can’t measure their success?
Personalized vs. marketing videos
First, it’s important to differentiate two types of videos we’re discussing. Marketing videos are what you traditionally think of – these are sleek, high quality, scripted, and well thought through. You often find these posted on social media or included in the form of a video newsletter or email campaign. They appeal to a mass audience and are created to educate, inform, and boost brand awareness.
On the other hand, personalized video messages serve a much different purpose. Personalized videos are short, one-off videos designed for an individual or small groups, and therefore, are highly personalized. Oftentimes, these videos are used for sales, customer service or recruiting, and are sent via email or text. These videos do not require hefty budgets or technical gear, all you need is a webcam on your smartphone, tablet, or computer. Don’t worry about perfection – the intention of these videos is to be real and relatable, delivering your message how you would in person.
So, in order to measure the success of your video, it’s important to understand your video’s context.
Measuring conversions
Initially, you want to assume that all video drives conversions. But this isn’t always the case.
To measure conversions, you need to determine how many people that watched your video, ended up making a purchase. More sophisticated methods track the same user over a range of sessions to see if they come back and make a purchase at a later date. In other words, this is an assisted conversion.
Measuring the success of your videos by strictly looking at conversions makes sense for product and sales videos. However, when you only rely on conversions for all videos, you’re basically saying that each video you create is a product or sales video.
But video is much more than this.
Here, you’re leaving out the videos that sparked a great conversation between friends and coworkers. Or, the personalized video that wished your client happy birthday and made their day. These videos don’t necessarily lead to conversions – but they have just as much of an impact on your business.
Measuring impressions
Marketing videos aim to build your brand, educate others on your product, and share your story. A lot of times it’s these videos doing all of the dirty sales work.
The best way to measure these types of videos: impressions. Impression-based measurement evaluates the number of people your video has reached. This metric helps to calculate market penetration and brand awareness.
A more sophisticated method of calculation involves counting only the views that lead to a certain quality threshold. For example, watching more than 15 seconds of the video. These are considered engaged views. The more engaged views means the more people are watching and resonating with your brand.
But, just as we mentioned earlier – you can’t treat (and measure) every video like a viral social video, or else you’ll be lacking on the conversion side.
Which metric should I use?
Now that we’ve covered the two main metrics used to measure the success of videos, which one should you choose?
The metric you should be using is time watched.
By focusing on the amount of time your viewers spent on your video, you’ll know exactly what your audience finds meaningful and interesting. It will reveal what kind of content and information you should focus on for them to voluntarily engage with it.
Here at Covideo, we’ve come up with an easy way to track video views. Viewer reports allow you to see how many times your video was watched, who watched it, and what parts were watched multiple times. Another added bonus? You get insight into which call-to-action buttons were clicked on as well, so you know where your audience went after viewing your video.
Creating a strategy that incorporates both marketing videos and personalized videos allows you to reap the benefits across all dimensions of your business.
Start seeing success with video
For more information on video email best practices or video email marketing services – contact us and we’ll connect you with a video strategist from our team. Or – get started on your own with our Start a free trial.