By Rich Huff, Senior Analyst, Madison Advisors

Madison Advisors has just completed a market study exploring the emerging interactive personalized video (IPV) landscape. Dynamic video represents the latest expansion in customer communications and should now be considered an important element in any organization’s customer communications management (CCM) strategy.

The five participants in this study included BlueRush, Doxee, Idomoo, O’Neil Data Systems (ODS) and Precisely.

With the increased adoption of mobile communications and broadband access, streaming video has entered the mainstream and offers a compelling new channel for customer communications. Video enables organizations the opportunity to guide customers through complex processes, such as healthcare enrollment and retirement contribution onboarding, providing a more enticing mechanism to present rich data and keep customers engaged.

IPV solutions generate unique videos customized to each recipient with live data, such as account balances, purchase histories and selection options. The interactive aspect of IPV distinguishes these solutions from traditional creative packages that offer static or personalized videos. IPV solutions connect to corporate data sources in real time in order to present the most current account information to a customer and utilize that data to present different content and selections to the viewer.

In addition, IPV solutions enable organizations to collect data from the viewer. During the video, viewers can make choices regarding the content, update contact information or request changes to their accounts. The IPV solutions track user selections and pass updates directly to the corporate data sources. These solutions present viewers with a call to action – update personal information, sign up for a new service or make a purchase – and direct the viewer to engage immediately.

During the Madison Advisors assessment, each participant provided several strong use cases for IPV. The most compelling use cases involve complex documents and complex customer relationships. The visual medium enables organizations to guide customers through a renewal or onboarding process. The experience is personalized for each customer and easily engages customers in the process.

All of these companies ranked well in Madison Advisors’ Vista analysis, which involved assessing both functionality and corporate strategy. Each company takes a different approach to IPV and it is important for organizations to find a good match. One important thing for organizations to consider in selecting a vendor is how much help they will need developing and maintaining CCM campaigns using IPV.

As the market matures, IPV will become an integral element of CCM. IPV enables organizations to deliver timely and relevant video content to customers, leveraging customer data to control the presentation of various options to customers. The technology also gathers feedback on the choices customers make within the dynamic video stream. These systems track changes requested by customers, as well as choices customers make regarding which parts of the overall video they decide to view. This feedback enables organizations to change the presentation and make changes to future communications throughout the customer lifecycle.

Since the IPV vendors offer differing approaches to implementation, it is wise to engage a trusted advisor that understands the capabilities and landscape related to your CCM strategy and can assist in aligning your business priorities to the appropriate vendor relationship. This helps you effectively improve your customers’ experience with your organization. Madison Advisors works with clients to understand their specific internal business requirements and utilizes market intelligence to align best-of-breed solutions providers to those requirements. We also assist in guiding you through an informed decision-making process that maximizes return on investment, creating real, tangible business value.