How Video Personalization Can Improve your Mood
Reading: 5 mins
A fascinating new study has looked at the different way we respond to text and to video and has concluded that watching a video actually makes us happier than when reading text.
That's good news for marketers looking for innovative ways to reach their customers with video. And it's good news for personalized video which is the perfect combination of psychological impulses to ensure customers engage with ads in a positive way.
This blog dives into the human mind (just a little) and looks at how video personalization benefits marketing on a neurological level and makes us smile more.
The study, which was carried out by B2B DecisionLabs/ Corporate Visions, is worth a read but here's a summary of the key findings (with all the heavier science stuff taken out).
Email remains the way of reaching potential customers, yet the dreaded business inbox tends to automatically create a negative experience and reduces people's motivation to action. Most emails end up in the trash. So how can you make your email stand out when vying for attention is so hard?
To carry out the test, researchers gave subjects the same advertising messages in both text and video form and recorded the way their brains responded as they viewed them - in particular valence (pleasure-displeasure) and arousal (or alertness).
The key results were:
the email inbox provokes a negative emotional experience but watching a video email among several text emails helps the subject transition from a negative emotional state to a more neutral state.
Text-based emails can create a memory trace when they contain specific and concrete language that help readers build mental pictures from the words. But subjects were able to recall video messages much better than text messages and especially recalled specific phrases that matched the title.
Dynamic elements in the video (such as an engaging presenter and sound effects) enhanced the experience.
Subjects tended to skim emails and might miss key information but when watching video, they held their focus on the person speaking, and then moved their gaze to focus where the presenter prompted them to. Video can help you guide the narrative, so your audience pays more attention.
Subjects felt more motivated and less fatigued while viewing video. The dynamic visual and audio elements made it easier for people to process the information and tended to feel more motivated to act on it.
An interesting and unexpected result was the positive response a video of stirring tea. It suggests that when creating videos, room should be left for reflection. Those few extra seconds give them time to process your message and think about it before going back to their inbox.
“The reason why video emails often perform better than text is because our visual system is, by default, drawn to dynamic scenes. We rarely process something that is static in our real lives. We typically process a series of dynamic scenes because our visual system is designed for that. The brain is a highly visual organ, so the more visual things are, the better the attention and ultimately recall we have for those things. ”
The study concluded with four factors to create more effective messaging:
NEUTRALIZE THE NEGATIVE Use video in your emails to move buyers from a negative inbox experience to a more neutral state of mind.
CREATE A CONCRETE MESSAGE Use short sentences and paragraphs, build mental pictures with your words, and match the title of your video to the subject line of the email.
ADD DYNAMIC ELEMENTS Include movement, screenshots, animated gestures, and sound effects to improve the experience and make your message more memorable. i.e., show rather than tell as viewers have stronger memories from video than text.
LEAVE ROOM FOR REFLECTION Add some neutral space to your video to give your prospect time to reflect and process the information you offer.
Photo by Denis Agati on Unsplash
The Psychology of Video Personalization
How do these findings relate to video personalization in particular? An important part of successful marketing is understanding how and why people think and act in certain ways. This study is incredibly illuminating in helping us understand how and why people respond to video more positively - in both mood and action.
“Video has an advantage over text in that it puts us in a more positive state of mind – more receptive to the message and more likely to be motivated into action."
Personalized video is like video on steroids, accentuating the positive responses to video to make it even more powerful in its impact.
“Remember that a person's name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language”
This famous quote by Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the strongest examples of the “Cocktail Party Effect”, whereby the brain can focus on relevant information while filtering out background noise, like when a person homes in on a single conversation at a noisy party. When someone hears their own name, their brain is immediately triggered and pays attention. This familiarity in turn makes you focus and relax, and this is the ideal state of mind to deliver a message to a customer.
This ability to filter out irrelevant information is also an important part of personalization. If you know that the information in a video is customized just for you, it makes you more likely to engage with it as you will find it more interesting. We dislike being overloaded with information and so are more attracted to information that is specific and relevant.
And these are not just theories. They are shown to be true in the results of personalized campaigns where key metrics like View Through Rate, CTR and CTA click rate are significantly increased.
They also create higher engagement rates and conversion rates. E.g., the HBO Europe campaign had an average conversion ratio across all landing pages was 11 times higher than usual.
Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels
“Dynamic elements in the video make them more memorable so the message is more likely to be processed and retained."
The dynamic elements mentioned in the study can also include personalized elements. When you hear (or see) your name, your address or a past purchase, your brain is triggered and pays attention. If the brain more positively to dynamic elements in ordinary video, it is likely to respond even more positively to personalized video elements which are proven to be even more memorable and impactful.
It's also important to be subtly reminded that the content you are watching has been personalized. It works because the viewer is made to feel special, as if they are watching something they know only they can see. So small reminders of this throughout the video keep the viewer engaged and in this happy place.
Conclusion
The human mind is an amazing thing and one of the last unexplored frontiers of our world. But as neurologists and psychologists begin to understand it more, they can begin to put together a clearer idea of how and why we act the way we do. Psychology plays such a crucial role in marketing that this new knowledge can help us create better and more relevant messaging for customers. That is exactly what video personalization aims to do. Putting a smile on our faces at the same time is a lovely bonus.
Danny Holman, Motionlab