9 Rules On How To Make Personalized Videos Work For Banks & Wealth Management Firms

Start With A Goal

Doing a personalized video campaign for the sake of it without having a clear goal in mind is simply useless. A video is not just about beautiful visuals only. Agreed a great design is essential in engaging customers. However, you can script a video that resonates with your customers only by defining your campaign goals. It will help you craft the right user journey and enable you to add the appropriate interactivity in the form of Call To Action (CTA) buttons within the videos.

Goals will help you define the success parameters for your campaign and identify potential roadblocks like unavailable customer data or factoring in things like regulatory necessities. "I want my video views to improve by 2X" or "I want Y% of my users to give feedback after watching personalized videos" etc. are some examples of goals for your personalized video campaigns.

Keep It Simple

Finance is regarded as complex and most often boring! Humans are visual beings and that's where video campaigns can help. Personalized videos can turn complex financial concepts like a portfolio report or an insurance Key Feature Document (KFD) into engaging, easy to understand formats. But, there's a catch. Don't try to stuff all the information present in your PDF or word document into a video. It just does not work! Personalized videos are ideal for providing a summary with only the key points. Also, the explanations in the video need to be as visual as possible.

The same applies even to the passwords required to watch the videos. Keep it simple, say 4 digits of the date of birth or 4 digits of the PAN, NRIC, or Social Security Number. The aim of the password is to secure the videos from unauthorized access and should not be a typing test for your customers.

Go Beyond the Name

There is more to personalized videos than just adding the customer name. Banks and wealth management firms have a lot of data that can be utilized in creating personalized videos that are useful. Only when a video is hyper-personalized can it create a wow moment for your customers.

For example, a personalized portfolio video statement can highlight the key points of an HNI client's portfolio with charts and graphs. Also, based on the client's risk profile personalized recommendations can be offered to each and every client. Similarly, a personalized insurance video will require details like policy type, premium amount, premium due date, etc to name a few.

Design For The Mobile Customer

Most companies do the mistake of designing videos for desktops. While coming up with the content of a video campaign and its visuals, discussions usually happen in meeting rooms. Videos are viewed on desktops or projected on larger screens. Having a lot of screen area to play with, the video ends up having too many design elements. With more than 50% of millennials accessing the Internet primarily through their mobile devices, it becomes crucial that you design videos for smartphones. The video and its content need to be easily readable and understandable on mobile phones. For example, correct font size is crucial for mobile readability, and so is appropriate finger space for CTA buttons. 

Don’t Make Long Videos

People have short attention spans and limited patience. A Gartner study states that the average attention span of a Gen Z user is eight seconds, four seconds less than millennials. Videos do not offer the same luxury as articles or long PDF files that have text-based content. You need to capture the attention of your customers and quickly get to the point so that the entire video is watched. A shorter video will drive action from your customers as most of them will watch the video fully and interact with your CTA buttons.

Don’t Overdo Branding

Companies that over-brand end up overlooking the needs of their customers. The shift needs to happen away from you to your customers and their needs. It is very easy to over-brand videos. For example, if you are putting your company logo on every single video clip, you are over-branding. If every visual in the video is more about self-promotion, then you are over-branding. Overbranding creates resentment toward your brand. Forget engaged customers, it will simply annoy them and turn them away from you.

Don’t Be Personally Identifiable

Using customer data is great for engaging with them and conveying your message, but do ensure that the videos do not contain personally identifiable customer data. This means not revealing sensitive information like account numbers, customer full names, personal information like date of birth, or mobile number. Don't be too creepy when it comes to your video personalization. Be personal, but at the same time don't be personally identifiable.

Don’t Forget to Add A Clear CTA Button

Great CTA buttons are important if you want to go beyond simply engaging your customers. CTA buttons can help you know buying intent in case of new products, get a confirmation if customers have read required documents and understood policy details in case of insurance policies, or simply collect customer satisfaction feedback.

Now the question is which is the right place to show the CTA buttons. Is it right at the beginning or at the end of the video? You might think that keeping CTA buttons at the end might be a risk, what if your customers do not watch the entire video. It might be tempting to place it at the beginning itself. It is unlikely that someone will take action without even watching the video. By having an ideal video duration of not more than 90sec, you can ensure that more often than not the video gets watched, and customers will click on the CTA buttons as well.

Don’t Forget to Analyze The Results

A personalized video campaign is useful only when you can measure its effectiveness. A good platform should be able to provide details like who watched the video, what CTA buttons were clicked etc. With detailed analytics, you will be able to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and improve on it.