Video doesn’t have to be difficult or costly to produce.  Our mission of late has been to help businesses see this firsthand by starting slowly, measuring and then comparing BV (before video) and AV (after video). So, here’s a recently completed example to which many companies can relate: using a video app to drive higher webinar attendance.

Building Engines was eager to try the simple BV/AV test. They were looking for new ways to draw people into webinars and adding video seemed like a cost-effective solution. For them, the goal was simple and easily tested – add a short video promo to traditional webinar promotion (through email) and see if it converts more attendees. So, instead of just sending an HTML email with a registration button, Building Engines included a video promotion with the email.  See below.

By clicking on the video to the right (in the image above), the prospect would go to the following landing page to get a taste of the event:

See the video app for yourself here.

So, did it work? Yes. The campaign kicked off with the email distribution on February 17th, just one week prior to the webinar. The company sent 11,000 emails to their house list, which typically returned a click-through rate of approximately 7%. This time, however, the click-through rate was 13.8%, twice that of its BV distributions. So how did the video app perform in this case? It was quadruple the number of registrants over the prior month and was the second highest webinar ever done by Building Engines. In addition, more than 65% of the attendees were “highly interested” during the actual presentation itself as rated by GoToWebinar’s engagement tool. But don’t just take our word for it. Choose what you would like to hear from Sarah Fisher below as she talks about parts of her first successful BV to AV experience.

Conversion is Key!

MediaPost’s Jack Loechner reported yesterday that 64% of respondents in the GetResponse “2010 Email Marketing Trends Study” didn’t use video emails last year, but plan to use in 2010. Wow, that’s quite a swing. Many will attribute this to general popularity of video, including the continue explosion of YouTube, but the real reason for such a dramatic shift is that video converts. More than 65% of marketers in the GetResponse study believe that video email marketing can have a moderate to significant impact on conversion. That’s impressive.

So how will marketers use video? What stuck out to us was practical application of video for product demos, customer testimonials and product offers. As we’ve been building what we call “video-enabled marketing apps” alongside our customers, we’ve repeatedly seen specific applications like this – what we call “apps,” emerging as important conversion drivers that are being added on to traditional marketing campaigns. Along these lines, we’re also seeing demand for apps that promote events (such as webinars), new content (such as white papers) and new products.

Interest in using video to improve conversion through traditional digital marketing tactics – as well as exploring new frontiers – is why we’re working to create pre-configured apps that step customers through the process of shooting video, adding interactivity (which the GetResponse study doesn’t mention, but we see as critical) and getting the app ready for email distribution and/or uploading to a landing page.

The GetResponse study comes as no surprise to us, but we love seeing metrics that support the value of video for business.