I normally don’t post such short posts, but wanted to share this tweet from eBags co-founder Peter Cobb that just popped up on my feed:

Happy Selling!

In my previous post regarding Product Video ROI I spoke to the need for video to be accompanied by a plan to drive traffic to that video - page views by far have the strongest impact on positive video ROI. We often speak of the ‘conversion lift’ video provides, but let’s not forget we’re talking about converting visitors to customers. ‘Visitors’ are the foundation of that equation. Video may lift your average conversion an astounding 200%, but 200% of nothing is nothing.  In order to have your video contribute to the bottom line, you need eyeballs on that video.

The good news is that of all the factors that contribute to video ROI, page views are the easiest for retailers to influence. There are two primary ways to achieve this.

First, put the video in the path of your customer. Just as brick and mortar retailers like Blockbuster or Best Buy force you to weave through a product-laden maze on your way to the checkout counter, online retailers have an opportunity to place video in multiple places throughout their sites and leverage existing customer traffic:

Home Page: Many retailers use the primary real estate on their home page to display a large graphic or Flash ‘promotion’ featuring specific product or a promotional theme (e.g. Spring Fling). The content of this promotional real estate often features high quality product imagery. Why not take that product imagery to the next level? Leveraging video in this space not only puts that video in front of a high number of visitors, but also provides the opportunity to create a ‘wow moment’ for first time and repeat visitors.

Search Results: With a high percentage of users navigating to product via search, the search results page represents a great opportunity to engage users with video content.  Many savvy retailers already display  ‘product ratings’ along with product thumbnails and provide a sort option that allows rated products to float to the top of search results. Why not provide a similar video indicator and ‘sort by products with video’ option? You could even take it  a step further and offer a search result set that returns a grid of small video players. While this approach is somewhat radical, it would allow the user to compare and explore product from the search results page, saving them the drudgery of constantly switching back and forth between search results and product detail pages. One of Drugstore.com’s top performing affiliates, Spreety is trying this already approach (http://www.spreety.com/Fun-Beauty-Infomercials.aspx)

Product Details Page: This is the most obvious, common, and valuable location for product video, but why is it that many sites with video only provide an often too-subtle  ‘watch video’ link that spawns a pop-up window or layer? If product video provides better conversion than static product photos, shouldn’t the video serve as the default product imagery? If you’re not ready to have the video as the centerpiece, at the very least make the video link as obvious and intuitive as possible.

Category Pages: Similar to the home page, category pages often include several ‘featured products’ or category-level promotions. If your ‘featured products’ are important enough to promote on a category page, why not maximize the experience with video of those featured products?

Landing Pages: If you are utilizing landing pages for paid or natural search, you’re likely going to attract both first time visitors and/or highly targeted visitors looking for a specific type of merchandise. This presents an excellent opportunity to not only set a great first impression, but to provide engaging video content targeted to a users specific area of interest.

Sweepstakes: Many retailers use sweepstakes to help drive email collection and customer engagement. In a typical sweepstakes experience, the user is willing to pay some ‘price’ for the chance to win something, usually by providing their email address or demographic data. Why not use that willingness to have them interact with your product video, and potentially pick up some video-related sales? Since most videos are already delivered in Flash format, it’s easy to couple them with Flash functionality. For instance, imagine a sweepstakes for a Jewelry retailer where users get to ‘pick an assortment’ from a collection of 20 products, each with their own product video. Only one winner will be selected, but hundreds if not thousands of users would interact with your video content.

Product Recommendations / Related Items: If you’re offering product recommendations or related items, consider including a ‘watch video’ link for each recommended product, and giving products with video a higher relevance ranking.

Other On-Site Destinations: There are a number of other on-site areas to consider for video content integration or ‘watch video’ links: confirmation emails, order history, RSS feeds, product wish lists, email a friend, product comparison, and the shopping cart to name just a few. Think about every place you show a product image or thumbnail. Each of those locations is a potential candidate for video content. Also consider looking at the most popular ‘paths’ people take through your site and placing video content accordingly.

Second, push your video assets out to every external channel available! Up until now we’ve discussed leveraging video content once the customer has already ‘entered the store’, but what about reaching potential customers where they ‘live’?

Email: You can’t get much closer to a customer than their email inbox. By providing you their email address, they have given you permission to put your content and brand right next to messages from family, friends, and coworkers. It’s no surprise then that well executed email campaigns that leverage proven best practices perform extremely well. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to include links to video content in every email you can. Provide video thumbnails and a prominent ‘play video’ link, and you will get increased click-through and email-related conversion. Combine that with a strong segmentation and/or targeting approach, and your results will be even better.

Affiliates: It always makes sense to provide your affiliates with the best product information possible. This definitely includes any video content you have. Unfortunately not all of the leading Affiliate natively support the provisioning of video to your affiliates, but with a little effort and outreach, solutions can be found to make your video assets available.

Video Sharing Sites (i.e. YouTube): This approach is already well known but worth repeating. Sites like YouTube are a great destination for your video. Assuming you tag the content appropriately, you create the opportunity for potential customers to find your video content, click through to your site, and make a purchase. Just make sure to include a watermark, video open, or video close with your URL and include a link to your site in the video description.

Social Networks: Also fairly well known but worth repeating, social network sites like Facebook or MySpace are a good destination for your video assets. “Fans” of your brand will visit your profile, watch the videos, and may be enticed to visit your site and make a purchase. Also consider reaching out to advocates of your brand and providing them URL-branded video content for their blogs or “Brand Fan Sites”.

In a report finding that I didn’t find too surprising, David Daniels from Forrester Research unveiled a stat every email marketer will want to take note of: incorporating video into email marketing campaigns can increase clickthrough as much as 2X - 3X. Not since the advent of HTML email support can I recall a single innovation able to drive campaign response so broadly in email, aside from list segmentation and message personalization, which of course remain key drivers in overall email marketing success.

This February, I delivered a presentation on video in email along with Peter Horan, CEO of Goodmail Systems at the EEC conference in Scottsdale, AZ. We also did our first ever VCC TV vlog piece highlighting the state of video and email marketing here should you wish to see it.

In covering the topic this time around, I thought it would be useful for our readers to see an actual example of video IN email, so I have embedded a video email enabled player below. In full disclosure, the player is developed by my company, Liveclicker, but I couldn’t find another player example to embed in the blog so you’ll have to forgive the reference and understand I’m not going for a plug opportunity here - that would be very “anti VCC.”

To send yourself a video email, click first on the “share” button in the lower right hand corner of the player (next to the green “Buy” button), then type in your own email address. The video you will receive in the email is a video GIF, with some optimization done on the back-end to account for different email clients, file size, palette, framerate management etc. It should render in any email client with the exception of Outlook 2007, which will only display the first frame:

What makes video GIFs so interesting, from my point of view at least, is that they stream immediately in the email client, despite the relatively large file sizes. And since the files are GIFs, they don’t cause deliverability issues - at least none we’ve observed in A/B testing. Of course, a video GIF still isn’t “real” video in the sense that marketers can’t incorporate audio, and due to the fact there are limitations on the frame rate and palette due to inherent limitations of GIF technology. Goodmail Systems presently offers the only “real” video in email option. Right now, it’s available only at AOL, though Goodmail explains it will be adding more ISPs soon. My own personal belief is that the video GIF technology can serve as a nice “appetizer” for email marketers seeking to incorporate video into campaigns at lower cost, and across all major email clients - perhaps before deciding whether to plunge all the way into true video in email. Time will tell though how broadly the technology is actually adopted in the market.

I would be curious to gather reader reaction to video GIFs and the state of video in email generally.

Happy selling!

Last Thursday, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Rob Hughes from Brewster Inc., which operates VacationsCanada.tv among other properties.

Although VacationsCanada.tv isn’t a typical ‘durable goods’ retail site because it exists in the travel vertical, the model Rob and the team at Brewster Inc. have developed around video commerce is not only innovative; it could apply to a wide spectrum of e-commerce business models.  For example, they’ve figured out the following:

- How to maintain a single brand voice across their suppliers and product videos
- How to help fund their video production efforts by working with partners
- How to incorporate SEO techniques into their video presence to drive awareness
- How to incorporate interactivity into the video viewing experience

They’re also a very metrics-driven organization and have demonstrated that ‘video works.’ I found Rob’s opinions and analysis of what makes video commerce tick quite insightful. Enjoy, and as always -

Happy Selling!

Thanks to Jeff Molander, CEO of Molander & Associates for publishing this video interview earlier today with Gordon Magee, Internet Marketing & Analysis Manager at Drs. Foster & Smith.  The section regarding Drs. Foster & Smith’s use of video is 10 minutes, 45 seconds into the video, so you might want to fast forward to view the video commerce section.  Also, thanks to Kristi Treder, Affiliate Marketing Specialist at 4imprint.com for pointing out this video to us.

Happy Selling!

How many times have you heard someone say “The internet is not like television” or, conversely, “Television is not like the internet”? The line between the two is starting to blur, but I think it is much too soon to really know what the final fusion will be like. In the meantime, we have to decide how to stylize our ecommerce videos for use on the internet using what we know from producing for television.

We all grew up watching television and are therefore used to seeing commercials. We all have also seen, at some time or another, an infomercial or longer-format video sales piece (such as on QVC or the Home Shopping Network). To us, these are the models which we begin to base our internet videos on. But if the internet isn’t like television, are we doing the right thing by imitating what we see on television? How should we format videos for use on the internet?

THE DIFFERENCES

When people visit one of our eCommerce sites, they are demonstrating their desire to view products and sales pitches. This is very different from the passive TV viewer who must endure commercial breaks during the more desirable programming. We don’t have to waste time drawing the consumer in – they’re already there. What we do have to do is provide them with what they’re looking for as quickly as possible.

We are also not bound by the time constraints of television. Our messages do not need to be packed into a 30 or 60 second capsule. Depending on the circumstances, you may only need 20 seconds of video to show a product in action. At the same time, we are finding out that people’s attention spans for online video are quite short – 3 minutes can be a long time. Ultimately, we don’t know where the consumer is viewing our site from and therefore we can’t assume that he or she has a lot of time to receive our message.

Then there is the matter of context. Someone sitting through a commercial needs a lot more information about the product or the brand than someone who actively seeks a video on your web site. A television viewer has no idea who the next commercial is going to be for whereas the person visiting your site not only knows where he or she is, but also has all the additional information on the page from which to make their purchasing decision.

And finally, of course, there is the proximity of the viewer to the purchase. Television commercials rely on many tricks…er….tools to enter your subconscious so that, the next time you are driving down the road and get a hunger twinge, you choose FastFood A instead of FastFood B. Someone watching a video on your product detail page is like the proverbial horse that has been brought to the water – now you just have to make her drink.

THE VERDICT

I think it’s clear that we are not bound by the rules of television commercial production. At the same time, we still need to follow time-honored marketing strategies. When it comes to how you are going to present your video(s), ask yourself, “What can I convey through video that I can’t convey in any other way?” Then, let marketing best practices guide your efforts in formatting the videos. Form will follow function. If you want to tell the consumer about your business, then perhaps a ‘talking head’ is what you need. If you want to feature several product types in your video, then maybe you should consider finding a host or personality to walk the consumer through the items. If time and money are a concern, you could try a video slide show with a simple narration.

At FansEdge, our largest product group is apparel and, of that, team jerseys are the most popular. Until recently, our product detail pages contained primary and alternate images of the product, as well as the product description. What was missing was showing how the item looked on a living, moving person. To achieve this, we hire models to spend the day demoing product. Each video is, on average, fifteen seconds long and shows the model making a complete turn and drawing attention to different product details. Each video is a standalone capsule with no intro, no music, and no graphics – just a smiling, attractive model accompanied by a voice over (“Get ready for the Big Game with this Replica NFL Jersey from Reebok!”).

Can you imagine THAT for a television commercial?