Marketing automation platform Act-On Software is giving its users a way to turn their branded video into leads.
Through an integration with video marketing platform Vidyard, Act-On will enable its users to track the video viewing habits of its (potential) customers across multiple channels, leveraging the info for sales. The integration provides data on which content they watch and for how long, as well as optional lead generating features such as calls to action, forms or email gates. All the information generated from these actions can be fed directly into CRM systems or other contact databases in order to move prospects through the sales funnel more effectively.
Here’s what a contact’s viewing history could look like within the integrated system:
“With the Vidyard integration, our customers now have the ability to see which videos their prospects are watching and use that data to better nurture and convert customers,” says Atri Chatterjee, chief marketing officer at Act-On. “It’s about giving our customers access to the right data to make smarter marketing decisions.”
Video has consistently ranked as one of the most engaging pieces of content a company, (especially one with a B2B focus) can produce. Product demos and features can easily be summed up in a quick, well produced video. It makes sense that Act-On would start offering this type of video tracking to its clients, who are small and mid-sized firms who can’t afford to set up their own in-house tracking systems, or host the videos on their own servers. With Vidyard, they can now track the performance of their videos across YouTube, social networks optimizing their content for maximum engagement.
What’s surprising is that a platform like YouTube hasn’t done more to build out lead generating features. As the single biggest video hosting platform, you would think that would be a huge revenue generating opportunity for it, but other than annotations and display ads, YouTube is still a fairly basic tool for advertisers. Even Facebook has been offering call-to-action buttons for free on videos uploaded to its Pages.
For B2B and tech firms, this integration gives them a powerful (and affordable, compared to Adobe and Salesforce) opportunity to retarget people who view their online content, and we can expect to see more sophisticated lead gen features being built out for online video in the coming year.
