Inbound marketing and sales software provider HubSpot, and video cloud-based solution provider Brightcove, recently announced a partnership that will help customers of both Boston-based technology companies derive more targeted video analytics.
“People want video everywhere,” says Paul Casinelli, senior director of product marketing at Brightcove, “that’s how people communicate today.”
Marketers don’t have deep insights into how people engage with lead-generation content, Casinelli argues. Take whitepapers, for instance. Marketers may know who downloaded their whitepaper, as well as the prospect’s email address and job title; however, they don’t have a clear view into how much of the whitepaper the lead consumed or which subject areas he engaged with the most, Casinelli explains.
A similar insights gap exists with video. While Casinelli says marketers can track aggregate video metrics — such as the total number of videos watched or the overall percentage viewed — he considers many of these data points “vanity metrics.”
This new HubSpot-Brightcove alliance aims to provide better analytics in both areas.
When a potential customer fills out a custom, in-video, HubSpot form to watch a particular video, HubSpot and Brightcove can capture who that person is, and track his individual consumption habits — including what video player he used to watch the video, how much of the video he actually consumed, and what video topics he seemed to gravitate towards the most.
Tying this behavioral data to a specific person, Casinelli says, can help marketers with lead scoring and marketing automation. For instance, marketers can track whether a prospect watched a video long enough to see a particular product demo or call-to-action, he says, and follow up accordingly. Or marketers can assign lead scores, based on the percentage of video consumed, he added, and better inform sales associates which topics individual leads are interested in.
“We basically get you their video fingerprint,” Casinelli says.
One of the biggest challenges marketers face when leveraging video is just getting over the intimidation factor, Casinelli says. However, he urges them not to get overwhelmed. After all, he notes, there are several agencies, vendors, and freelancers who can assist in the production and editing processes. He also encourages marketers to start testing their video marketing effectiveness with demand generation campaigns.
“It becomes a relatively low-risk way to prove out the value, so that you can make a deeper investment,” he says.
