Monday, December 28, 2015

The 2015 Wistia Rap-Up

2015 was a year of rapid change here at Wistia! As we’ve added a bunch of people to our team (we grew from **27** to **56** people over the course of this year), we’ve had the opportunity to get to know some amazing new people inside and outside of our walls and to work on lots of exciting new projects. **85,902** video marketers (a.k.a. all of you!) uploaded **over 4 million** videos to Wistia over the course of 2015, receiving **1,099,259,978** plays. That’s a lot of videos! Per Wistia tradition, we recorded a video *rap*-up of the year…

 
We also wanted to share some of the things we’ve been working on and sharing throughout the year, in case you missed anything! ### January - The new Wistia Status Page launched to keep customers updated on the status of our systems. - We introduced some new keyboard shortcuts to the Wistia app. - Chris and Trevor shared their lighting philosophy in the Lighting on the Fly guide and a live video AMA. ### February - Emily joined the team. - We threw a Friday the 13th party in our Cambridge office. - Meryl wrote about fostering better internal communication with video. - The Wistia camera cart made it easy for more members of the team to shoot video spontaneously. - Wistia’s BetaPugs beta tester program launched! ### March - Bobby and Lauren joined the team. - Two schools, Loomis Chaffee and Concord Academy, shared their video strategies. - Animoto’s Tom and Stevie shared some inspiring video production tips in their AMA. - We announced a fully native Google Analytics integration with Wistia. ### April - Anders, Camille, Kelsey, and Leo joined the team. - We launched our new Learning Hub and Library and wrote about why we made the changes. - We interviewed Sarah Green of Harvard Business Review… about how to conduct better interviews. - Things got kinda silly when we talked to Dollar Shave Club and MaryBeth Makara of ImprovBoston about using humor in branded content. ### May - Ron joined the team. - Timeline Actions, including email collectors, calls-to-action, and Annotation Links, launched, along with improved video analytics. - Adam Lisagor of Sandwich Video shared the creative process behind his iconic product videos. - We launched a guide to hiring an in-house video producer. - The second annual WistiaFest brought 300 video marketers to Cambridge! ### June - Gordie, Jonah, and Karla joined the team. - Multilingual captions, a new Trends page, and new video quality settings launched. - We made a video about choosing a video backdrop. - MailChimp shared their branding insights in a live video AMA in the community. ### July - Abby, Andrew, and Neil joined the team. - We made some data-driven conclusions about increasing your video play rate. - We collaborated with our HubSpot neighbors on a guide to video and social media. - We traveled to Seattle to learn and hang out with the Mozzers at MozCon. - We released a new album of free background music tracks by the ever-talented Dan Mills. ### August - Jenny joined the team. - We celebrated our Enterprise plan launch with an all-hands-on-deck, single-shot parade video. - We launched some improved tools for managing your video library. - Our friend Julian Moiwai of ZVRS shared some crucial suggestions for making your video content more accessible. - Meryl wrote about using B-roll to level up your video production. - The month without a social media manager necessitated some scrappy collaboration. ### September - Erika, Margot, Ryan, and Tom joined the team. - We hung out with HubSpot at INBOUND in Boston and traveled to the West Coast for Dreamforce. - Chris and Trevor documented our process for shooting videos of laptop screens. - Our new login page launched. - Andrew wrote about how to incorporate video in your user onboarding. - Chris shared Wistia’s company values and how they were developed over time. ### October - Aaron, Anthony, Jay, and Mike joined the team. - Chris wrote about how Wistia ditched a “flat” approach and opted for structure. - Our Non Sequitur Fridays series moved to a new, separate location. - ThoughtWorks shared their tips for recruiting with video. - We hosted our second-ever company-wide hackathon, The Hackening, and built everything from a bathroom speaker system to an office phone booth. ### November - Alicia, Dave, Luis, and Naike joined the team. - We launched our guide to video and marketing automation. - We talked marketing automation and shooting video solo in the first #WistiaChat conversations on Twitter. - Ezra explored how to incorporate video data in your overall marketing. - Video SEO got simpler and more effective with the launch of the new Wistia standard embed. ### December - We got familiar with how Zendesk, Wipster, and Litmus use video to build relationships. - We chatted with Unbounce about their latest educational video series. - We hosted our first live video #WistiaChat hangout, featuring Daniel Loeschen, Enget Dang, Jessica Webb, Steven Howe, and Bart Buerman as guests. **See you in 2016!**


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Thursday, December 17, 2015

The Familiarity Principle: Building Relationships With Video

Every marketer knows that just getting product exposure is hugely important. It’s a scientifically proven phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Zajonc was the first to demonstrate, in the lab, what he coined the familiarity principle: when people are repeatedly exposed to certain stimuli, they come to develop a preference for them.

 
“How you like me now?” For instance, in one study, college students were exposed to previously unfamiliar tropical fruit juices and asked to judge them. The researchers found that the students rated the juices in proportion to how frequently they were tasted. It was mere exposure that had these students developing preferences—the basis of the familiarity principle—and it works the same way with marketing. Product placement is the primary avenue through which marketers have accessed the power of the familiarity principle, but we actually seem to be hitting a point of diminishing returns when it comes to its effectiveness. The problem is one of overexposure: now that we’re all constantly bombarded by images of products and advertisements, marketers need to do more to actually stand out. That’s why it’s time to start thinking about cutting through the noise. You can’t just hide behind your product. You need to step up your familiarity principle game and get face-to-face exposure with the people that you want to reach without overstepping your bounds. The underlying psychological mechanism is still valid—you just have to access it properly. ### Building a personal connection Companies have found all kinds of ways to break through the noise and reach out to consumers on a personal level. General Mills, for example, appears to have taken advantage of the height of their target demographic when it comes to selling cereal. When a parent and their child are wandering down the cereal aisle, they’re bombarded from both sides by images of cheesy mascots beaming down at them. A Cornell lab found that brand trust was 16% higher and brand connection was 28% higher when the Trix rabbit made eye contact, and though it sounds strange, participants in the study also indicated that it made the cereal taste better. The same phenomenon, in fact, has been used to make Facebook ads more effective, in pop-up holistic health experiments, and to help public speakers connect with their audiences. Eye contact cuts through the noise and suggests trust, friendliness, and a sense of humanness. It’s a very powerful technique, but we can push even further into the realm of human connection if we take advantage of an even more powerful tool: video.
“Eye contact cuts through the noise and suggests trust, friendliness and a sense of humanness.”
### Scaling the personal connection with video A lot of companies start out forging deep connections with their customers by doing things that don’t scale. Whether it’s handwriting thank you notes or calling to check up on their customers, some of the projects that startups take on to build this kind of human connection with their users cannot be sustained over the long term. As companies grow, however, this personal connection always seems to be one of the first things to disappear. Not enough time. Not a high enough priority. Whatever. One thing I’ve learned at Wistia is that it is very possible to scale the human side of your business. The reason that handwritten notes are great is because they have that personal touch, but over time that personal touch is also what makes it nearly impossible to scale. You can’t spend hours a day writing little notes to your customers. But videos also have that personal touch. Because of the depth of the medium, you can express the full range of human emotions, explain things in great clarity, and generally appeal to the viewer’s humanity. And, best of all, one video can speak to thousands of customers. ### Case study: Zendesk When Zendesk realized that the phrase “Zendesk alternative” was starting to get real traction on search engines, they decided that they wanted to get their name into that stream of results. “We knew that people searching for Zendesk alternatives were probably familiar with our brand already, so we wanted to show them why we’re a great company to work with,” said Creative Director Matthew Latkiewicz. “We hoped that if we gave them something tongue in cheek, it would be hard for them to be mad.” It comes back to the familiarity principle: they wanted to take advantage of its effects and promote a friendly vision of their brand without having it come off the wrong way. After all, these people were not sold on becoming Zendesk customers. Yet. The challenge was to show them something endearing and valuable that might make them change their minds or even share it without breeding contempt. Thus was born Zendesk Alternative, a down-on-their-luck Seattle grunge rock band:

 
Other companies might have used that video to explain the benefits of their product over its competitors to show curious consumers why they don’t want an alternative after all. Zendesk, on the other hand, crafted a storyline based around the idea of Zendesk’s CEO purchasing a grunge band, commissioning them to write a concept album about customer service, and subsequently putting the lead singer in a moral dilemma about his artistic authenticity. It’s a gripping, funny narrative that gives you a great sense of what the people who work at Zendesk are all about. They’re creative, imaginative, and they have musical talent! All in all, they’re awesome, and you should feel comfortable and confident working with them. When a company grows to the point that searching its name in quotes with “alternative” tacked on is relatively common, it’s time to remind people why they came to you in the first place. It’s not all about price, or features: it’s about the personal connection that they feel when they think of your company, and that’s what the Zendesk Alternative video was all about demonstrating.
“It’s not all about price, or features: it’s about the personal connection that they feel when they think of your company.”
And it looks like it’s succeeded, because when you search for “Zendesk alternative” today, this 90’s grunge rock band comes up as the fourth result. ### Case study: Wipster Wipster is a video editing and review software that allows you to comment on and annotate individual frames and events on the fly. It’s for production companies and individual videographers who are collaborating either with their teams or clients and need to get quick, productive feedback on their work. It sounds boring, but Wipster’s actually taken a process that used to be horribly tedious and turned it into a workflow that’s simple and even fun. To demonstrate that core value, it’s easiest to use the very thing that Wipster’s all about—video. They did just that. They shot a 30-second product demo and made it the first thing you could interact with on their homepage, going for maximum exposure. But they also went the extra mile and made a video unlike any you’ve seen before.
 
Rollo Wenlock, Wipster’s founder, stands in the center of the frame, looking into the camera, and he explains what the product does. But he’s not alone; behind him, dancers race in and out of the shot at his whim, the music is adjusted, and whole parts of the script are cut as a friendly editor deems them “too boring.” It’s engineered to appeal to the familiarity principle. Not only do you get to be face-to-face with the CEO and founder of the company, but the cloying or overbearing parts of the video are literally edited out before your eyes. It’s a short and sweet 30-second video designed to show you what the product does. But it also creates that human connection. CEO Rollo Wenlock is personable, funny, and clearly devoted to his product. You get the sense that he wants you to use it, and that he wants you to succeed. ### Case study: Litmus Litmus just raised $49M in October, and they have a lot of expansion ahead of them. To get the best candidates possible for all the openings they have now, it’s more important than ever that they help people understand what Litmus is all about. People need to feel, when they see your job ad, like they might fit in and belong at your company.

 
Your average text-based ad on Indeed or Craigslist tries to give some description of what your business is like, but it’s always going to fail. Why? Because so much of what makes your workplace unique is intangible. With video, you have a really powerful tool for conveying what a workplace is like without having to use a single word. Make no mistake: A job ad is not that different from a product you’re trying to sell, and you need to make sure you’re giving a comprehensive, 360-degree picture of the precise opportunity you’re putting out there. Litmus’s video is simple in its execution—just clips of their employees going through different parts of their days, set to music—but it says a lot. Where other companies might talk through the perks they offer, or show each one off in detail, Litmus takes you through everything in a kind of whirlwind tour. The familiarity principle kicks in again. By showing you the members of the Litmus team going through different parts of their day, the video shows you that the company feels like a community and even makes you feel like a part of it. By the end, you don’t feel like these are strangers; you feel like they might well be your coworkers. ### Stepping up your game Scaling the emotional, human side of a business is difficult. If you try to craft a genuine relationship with your customers, you’ll often find that you have a hard time quantifying what you’re doing. Attribution models are not yet a total science. You rarely have any way of knowing whether a customer converted because of a phone call or a handwritten note or a personalized email. Video, and Wistia in particular, changes that. With video, marketers can get a deep understanding of how the familiarity principle is playing into their conversion rates—it’s all in the metrics. From minutes watched to where viewers stopped watching to where they clicked through, these new tools can help marketers not only identify valuable leads, but also comprehend what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong.
“With video, marketers can get a deep understanding of how the familiarity principle is playing into their conversion rates—it’s all in the metrics.”
Some companies are more up to speed on this technique than others, and they’re already seeing the benefits. Using a scalable method of creating human connections means not only finding the touchpoints that create converting customers, but understanding how it’s done and having the data to prove it.
BLOG » STRATEGY
Be (Super) Human
These five companies are using video to show the human sides of their businesses.


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Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Our First Video #WistiaChat: Learn From the Experts

The first video #WistiaChat was so much fun! We had a blast chatting with video marketing experts from around the world—all a part of our Wistia Community. We talked about video marketing strategy, SEO implementation, marketing automation, and everything in between. Our guest speakers were Daniel Loeschen, Enget Dang, Jessica Webb, Steven Howe, and Bart Buerman. You can read more about them in this Community thread. Missed the chat? No worries, you can watch the whole recording!

 
### Make your customers the stars Across the board, folks in our chat use customer story videos to market their products. Shooting stories allows you to promote your product through customers who’ve succeeded in using it. These videos give prospective customers relatable content, and help them identify with current customers using your product. You can watch Daniel Loeschen’s video of their customers, McClure’s Pickles (yum!) below.

 
Shooting customer stories also allows you to collect other amazing footage, such as company B-roll that can be used in future videos and short testimonials. Video content is a great way to keep your customers engaged with your brand. It’s also an effective way to capture visitors’ attention. We love creating video content for our community members at Wistia, and the larger video community around the world. How do you create video content? You can hear what our panel said about their video marketing strategies in this section of the chat. ### Never stop learning We all have our marketing fails. Learning from our mistakes makes us better marketers, and admitting our mistakes gives us the opportunity to ask for advice from those who have been there. What was a marketing mix up that you learned from? Let us know in the Community, and hear all about our panelists’ mistakes in this part of the chat. Jessica Webb and Daniel Loeschen spoke about personas, and how waiting to create them for their contacts was a costly mistake. Laying out personas for your audience creates a clear map for your marketing strategy, so you can spend time creating the most valuable content you can. How did you start your persona creation? Let us know. ### 2016 is all about video We all agree—quick, real-time, and approachable video is coming up in 2016. SnapChat, Periscope, and Meerkat put real-time video on everyone’s phone, and we believe companies will soon be inspired to create more videos as part of their content marketing and social media strategies. An overwhelming amount of #WistiaChat-ters said mobile video and quick reaction times will be key in 2016. Wistians like Dan Freund are making timely professional quality video a reality by editing on mobile through apps like iMovie for iOS. You can hear more about what our panel predicted for the new year in this part of the chat!
COMMUNITY
Join the Community!
Ask your own questions and learn from our friendly crew of marketers and video producers.


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Thursday, December 10, 2015

Why We Built an Untrendy Company

Wistia has never been flashy or cool. The tech press has never been interested in us, and we never scored the blue chip Silicon Valley investors. The truth is, not many people grow up with the dream of helping companies host their business videos. Okay, fine. I’ve been dreaming about video hosting since I was four. Just look at that scheming smile. But seriously, it was in being untrendy that we found our best opportunity. We carved out our niche behind the company in the limelight, and avoided becoming the focal point of attention ourselves. It’s strange to say, but one of the biggest reasons for our success is simply that we were able to work on something so “uncool” for such a long time. Call it inner beauty. ### Location, location, location Wistia’s first office—after we moved out of Brendan’s bedroom—was in Lexington, Massachusetts, about thirty minutes outside Boston. It’s a town with a lot of history: The first shot of the American Revolutionary War was fired there, and in 1955, the Air Force and IBM chose Lexington as the test site for a prototype computer designed to control a national air defense network. But in 2006, it was a pretty unlikely spot for a startup to emerge. Our office wasn’t a former pencil factory with exposed brick and lofted ceilings. It wasn’t a co-working space where we worked side by side with other startup aspirants. It was a nondescript office park with a big parking lot and harsh fluorescent lighting inside. Our neighbors weren’t hot social-mobile-local apps, freshly graduated from a prestigious startup accelerator. They were accountants, doctors, and insurance agents. There were no glitzy launch parties around or tech journalists to pitch, no conferences to attend, no distractions whatsoever. We were completely shut out of that world. At the time, I was worried that we weren’t famous or lauded, but now I’m grateful for our time in solitude. When we first started Wistia, we were incredibly immature and inexperienced. We needed time and our own space to make mistakes, learn from them and improve. In fact, I’m convinced that if we had been handed $1 million and plopped in the middle of San Francisco, we would’ve bombed, and Wistia would not exist today. Working outside of any kind of startup nexus meant that we had to build up our business doing things that no Silicon Valley startup would be caught dead doing. We took credit cards over the phone! We made cold calls! We did all the old-school business stuff that everyone now tells you is a bad idea—and it worked for us.

“Working outside of any kind of startup nexus meant that we had to build up our business doing things that no Silicon Valley startup would be caught dead doing.”
Our time in Lexington is where we cut our teeth as entrepreneurs and grew as a small team. We’re still reaping the benefits of having that time etched on our company culture today. We avoided getting influenced and confused by the latest startup trends, and we were forced to think for ourselves. We had to put our few customers first. And we made work fun for ourselves and became incredibly tight-knit and reliant on each other as a team, because all we had was each other. ### Hustle, not hype Over the first 4 years, we raised $1.4M in seed investment from Boston-area investors, but we’ve been profitable for 5 years now. From early on, when faced with the choice, we elected for profitability over growth. Even after we raised money, we hardly spent it. 5 years into the life of Wistia, we were still only a team of 5. What drove us to profitability was that our fear of failure exceeded the appeal of taking a moonshot at hyper-growth. We just really, really wanted the business to survive and we really, really didn’t want to fail. We were willing to do an insane number of things per person to keep the lights on. Psychologically, I admit that it was tough to have peers who had raised money walk into an event and talk about their massive team growth as a barometer of success. We couldn’t get the press interested in us because people assumed that we couldn’t possibly be doing well with such a small team and without having raised subsequent rounds of funding. But that time forever defined our approach to work and our relationship with money. The profitability constraint made us achieve growth by being more creative and more scrappy, instead of getting good at spending money. We got good at doing more with less. That helped us grow so much faster and do more with less, even when our years of profitability started to add up. ### Avoid the popularity contest When consumer apps become successful, it means popularity and fame for the founders. But they also have to be popular to be successful—it’s inherent to the project. Consumer products need millions of users just to be interesting. With Wistia, we were able to build a business right from the beginning, with just a handful of customers. We structured our incentives to guide ourselves into building the right business over the long term. Think about YouTube. Their incentive is to drive more views on their own videos because that lets them serve more ads, which is where all of their revenue comes from. Or Vimeo. Their incentive is to drive user transactions to their iTunes Store-like marketplace because their revenue comes from charging for on-demand video rental and purchases. Our pricing plans tracked our customers’ business success with video. Customers paid for increased bandwidth and more videos to own the entire video experience from analytics to lead capture. That meant making sure our customers got credit for their awesome videos and the results they generated, because for us to succeed, we needed to put our customers above everything else. We meet inspiring customers every year at WistiaFest. Our business model wasn’t flashy, but it put us squarely in YouTube’s blind spot. It made it possible for us to sidestep getting crushed by them, and it gave us the space we needed to flourish. ### Inner beauty This company’s come a long way, from two kids in a bedroom to a company of sixty in Cambridge, and along the way, we’ve paid real close attention to nurturing the kind of culture that would attract good people and make them feel like they were doing something worthwhile at Wistia. Right, there’s not much that’s inherently trendy about business video hosting. But there’s a funny thing about less flashy business ideas—push through, survive, and then thrive, and it’s your company culture that’ll become what’s most attractive about your business. As Peter Thiel put it—a startup is “the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.” A startup worth being a part of is all about the people, the fun you’re having, and the experiences you’re sharing.
“But there’s a funny thing about less flashy business ideas—push through, survive, and then thrive, and it’s your company culture that’ll become what’s most attractive about your business.”
After all, a company culture that shines isn’t about buying the best perks you can afford or designing the sweetest about page for your website—it’s about the adventures you’ve been through together as a team and the adventures to come.

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Tuesday, December 8, 2015

A/B Test Your Videos. Here's Why.

We’re constantly testing copy, images, and designs, and measuring their impact on conversions. But sometimes, video gets a “set it and forget it” designation. At Wistia, we’ve been guilty of this oversight from time to time, but recent tests have convinced us to pick up our game. We should be measuring our video’s impact and iterating continuously. Video is more compelling than anything static on your website. It’s a medium that greatly impacts how viewers feel about your brand, and it can motivate those viewers to take action. Failing to measure and track its impact is a huge mistake. ### Video onboarding We’re a SaaS company. Without new users, we don’t grow. That’s why we’re constantly asking ourselves, “How can we help our new users be successful?” Throughout onboarding, we aim to connect, teach, and inspire, and video is a big part of our strategy. We have the benefit of having a lot of new users sign up for Wistia each day, so small tweaks to our signup flow can have big ripples in our business. Lately, we’ve begun to dig into which videos are most effective in motivating our new signups to use Wistia. ### Deciding to test Because we have so many new users every month, we could test and measure the impact in the data relatively quickly. Right after a visitor signs up for Wistia, they’re sent to our “Welcome to Wistia” page: Uploading your first video is the main call to action for new signups. The first version of this page featured the “Wistia in 5 Minutes” demo video. It’s a video that reinforces our value prop, explains our most popular features, and serves as a warm and fun welcome to our software. Overall, the page and the video performed pretty well, but we kept wondering, “Could we inspire more people to use our product with a different video?” #### A data-driven hypothesis The original video on the welcome page was 5 minutes long. We thought the content was super helpful and engaging, but over time, the data suggested otherwise. The video play rate was 18%, and our engagement rate was 54%. Additionally, there wasn’t a clear call to action in this video. Since our goal for the page was to get new users to upload their first videos, we decided to experiment with the video content and add a CTA within the video to improve our conversion rate. Spoiler alert: we were right. But our work was far from done. At an 18% play rate, we weren’t getting enough eyeballs on the video. Normally a 54% engagement rate isn’t too shabby, but we suspected that those who only watched the video up until this point didn’t get the whole message. They were missing a lot of the meat. We had 2 options. We could edit the existing video to create something slightly different, or design something totally different. Usually, drastically different designs produce drastically different results, so we decided to take a home run swing. - We figured that we could increase our engagement rate by creating a shorter video (around 2 minutes). - We decided to swap out our customer success team with our co-founders to underscore the importance of the message. - We added a clear call to action to the end of the video to drive more users to engage.
“Usually, drastically different designs produce drastically different results, so we decided to take a home run swing.”
We hypothesized that by making these changes, we could increase the percentage of new users uploading videos by approximately 10%. #### Hypothesized results ### Running the test Based on our hypothesis, we designed a video that was short and sweet (to increase engagement). We also decided to doubly reinforce our main call to action for the page. In addition to including a clickable CTA at the end of the video, we wrote, “so create a new project, and upload your video,” right into the script.

 
The upload rate was the metric we chose to measure the success of the test. We used the sample size calculator from Optimizely, and determined how long it would take to run a proper test with a pre-determined confidence interval. Then we showed 50% our new signups the control video (the original) and 50% our variation (the new video). ### Results To our surprise, our original video won the test. Our fancy new video actually decreased our uploads by 3%. While a 3% decrease isn’t an earth-shattering loss, it’s definitely not the 10% lift we were hoping for. Interestingly, some parts of our hypothesis were correct. Play rate increased by 8% and our engagement went up a whopping 30%. We were pleased by those results, but those were input metrics. We didn’t achieve our main goal.
“Our fancy new video actually decreased our uploads by 3%.”
#### Taking a deeper dive We were even more shocked when we looked deeper into our app usage for new users who had seen the variation… The percentage of users who used the Wistia customize functionality decreased by 5%, and the embed rate decreased by 3%. What a disaster! A 3% decrease might not seem like a lot, but with a high volume of new users, it produces a costly ripple in our business. Less people embedding videos on their website means less active users. Less active users means less potential customers down the road. On the flip side, a 3% increase could represent a significant bump in our revenue per year. ### So, what’d we learn? Our existing 5-minute demo video was more convincing than we thought. Maybe that’s because our new users don’t fully understand all of the Wistia features when they sign up. Maybe they just didn’t like the actors in the variation. No matter the reason, our new users were more likely to upload a video (and use more Wistia features) after they watched the 5-minute demo. But the variation video did receive a much higher engagement rate. If only we could capture the best of both worlds and increase our play rate and engagement rate in our 5-minute demo video. Hmm… ### Follow-up tests As the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, pick yourself up and test again. After sharing the results with our video team, we decided to make some changes that we hoped would increase all of our metrics. Here’s the breakdown: Play rate: We removed the “Wistia in 5 minutes” text on our thumbnail. Why call attention to the length of the video and distract from friendly faces? Engagement rate: We edited the video to be shorter—around 3 minutes instead of the original 5. Upload rate: By making the changes above, we’re hopeful our main metric will improve. In case you’re curious, the most recent version of the edited demo video is below. Stay tuned for the results!

 
BLOG » STRATEGY
Onboarding New Users With Video
The best onboarding videos demonstrate your product’s benefits and answer your users’ most pressing questions, so they can hit the ground running.


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Thursday, December 3, 2015

5 Lessons Learned from Tweet Testing

I spend a lot of time tweeting. As Wistia’s social media coordinator, it’s the most tactical part of my job, from writing copy and scheduling tweets, to creating compelling images to accompany them—Twitter accounts for a pretty significant portion of my day. When I joined Wistia a few months ago, I decided that we should be tweeting more. I changed our strategy from one that felt somewhat organic, to one that functioned like a well-oiled machine—two tweets per hour from 9 am – 6 pm, with about half of that frequency on weekends. After a couple of months, I noticed that our numbers were trending positively across the board. Success! Time to sit back, relax, and turn on autopilot. ### Now, let’s throw that plan out the window. Truth be told, that got boring, fast. One day after feeling particularly complacent and uninspired by our Twitter feed, I asked myself, “Could we be doing an even better job at this?” The answer was… well, maybe… probably. Yes. So, I decided to run some tests over the course of two weeks to determine how frequency and timing of tweets affected our overall engagement on Twitter. The findings from these two weeks would then influence our strategy moving forward. ### Methodology #### Week 1: The Normal Nancy One tweet per hour from 9 am – 9 pm = 12 tweets per day. Compared to an average week, which was two tweets per hour from 9 am – 6 pm = 20 tweets per day. After a week of tweeting only 12 times a day, our Twitter stats were trending downward in a number of areas, however not by much. The number of link clicks and retweets we received was only slightly lower than average, despite tweeting much less often. Our impressions dropped significantly from roughly 22.2K per day to a measly 15K. Engagement, on the other hand, fared a bit better. We had more likes, replies, and a higher engagement rate than average, but yet again, not by much. #### Week 2: The Insomniac One tweet per hour, 24 hours a day = 24 tweets per day. Compared to an average week, which was two tweets per hour from 9 am – 6 pm = 20 tweets per day. From a strictly quantitative standpoint, the Insomniac week blew the Normal Nancy week out of the water. We nearly doubled our average likes this week and saw a significant increase in link clicks and retweets. Our engagement rate, along with our average impressions per day, also increased. During the Insomniac week, we exceeded all of our normal weekly averages, except for one: replies. 3 retweets and 7 likes at 2:12 am. Who knew? So, what does the fact that we got less replies this week tell us about the type of conversations we’re having on Twitter? When it comes to determining your tweet strategy, it’s important to ask yourself what your goals are, as they will likely affect how you define success. ### What We Learned: #### 1. Tweeting constantly will get you nowhere. The old saying “If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say anything at all,” applies to Twitter in a big way—just replace the word ‘nice’ with 'valuable.’ You can spot an inauthentic Twitter account from a mile away. Queueing up several tweets an hour, every hour, two weeks in advance isn’t going to necessarily increase the number of likes, retweets, or replies you receive. In fact, it’ll probably do the opposite.
The old saying “If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say anything at all,” applies to Twitter in a big way—just replace the word 'nice’ with 'valuable.’
Monitoring real-time activity and being responsive is crucial. Knowing when not to post is a huge part of managing a social account, especially Twitter. We learned that by tweeting less frequently (one tweet per hour versus two) and by tweeting over a longer period of time, you can actually encourage engagement. #### 2. Don’t make too many assumptions about your audience. Lots of folks like to use Twitter at work as a way to take a quick mental break, or to check in on what’s happening in the world. Or, at least that’s what I thought. As it turns out, some of the most unexpected times of day proved to be the most successful for engagement. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s true! Out of our top 20 most-engaged with tweets during the Insomniac week (when we were tweeting 24 hours a day), 15 of them happened after 6 pm, many of them occurring between midnight and 2 am. One explanation for this could be that we have an international audience who’s active at that time, or perhaps some people just like to cruise Twitter during the wee hours of the night. Alternatively, it might have to do with what other people are doing (or aren’t doing) at that time. If there’s less tweet-noise at 2 am, there’s a greater chance your tweet will be seen and interacted with. #### 3. So many variables – it’s not an exact science. Someone will always be shouting a little bit louder than you on Twitter. It’s just the nature of the beast. On any given day, world events from politics to pop-culture can literally take over the space, so be lenient and set realistic expectations. While there are always factors you can’t control, there are a few aspects that I, personally, could have better managed. During the first week of testing, we held our TweetChat, #WistiaChat, which drastically affected our weekly averages. Our stats were tainted. Luckily, I was able to manually delete these tweets from our data, recalculate all of our averages, and subtract any likes or link clicks garnered during that period. If I could go back in time, I would’ve picked a different week altogether to save some time and effort. Can you say #lessonlearned? I can. #### 4. Be wary of your stats. Awesome, you got a bunch of likes on a hilarious .gif! While this might look great on your weekly social report, what did you really accomplish with that tweet? What type of content are you promoting? This is another key factor that could affect your numbers. If you plan to run a test, try to stick with the same few pieces of content for that period, otherwise your data could be skewed based on the popularity or accessibility of the content itself. Twitter is a highly sensitive space. Sprinkle in a popular hashtag a few times throughout your tweets and suddenly your total impressions are through the roof! This puts a pretty meaningless spike in your data. Much like with lead scoring, you have to place a value on these interactions to understand whether they are actually qualified or not. #### 5. Think about the state of your audience today. Every great brand on Twitter tailors their content to the needs of their audience. These needs often vary depending on the state of that audience. If your brand has an established presence online with thousands or even millions of followers, then your goals are going to look drastically different than those of a brand that just hit their 200 follower mark. The bottom line is that there’s no one-size-fits-all measure for success on Twitter. I was under the impression that changing how often we tweeted and when would have a dramatic effect on engagement. And the truth is, it really didn’t! Our engagement rates consistently hovered between 0.9 - 1.1 % over the course of these tests regardless of what we did. If the simple fact is that those two metrics don’t really affect engagement, then at least now we can cross them off our list and try to determine what will. ### Now what? Keep testing. Running tests is like eating chips—you can’t have just one. Our next set of experiments will look at how language (straight-forward versus flowery) affects overall engagement. What are you waiting for? You’ve got nothing to lose. Start experimenting with Twitter!

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Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Behind the Scenes of Unbounce's Educational Video Series

Here at Wistia, we’re always trying to think of new ways to create meaningful connections with our customers and generate helpful content. When Unbounce launched the Landing Page Sessions in November, we were impressed that their video series achieved both these goals simultaneously. In this educational series made up of 12 episodes, Oli Gardner, co-founder of Unbounce, breaks down real marketing campaigns and offers his expert advice on what works and what needs improvement. Thus far, with three released episodes, their campaign’s videos have received over 3,000 views and captured over 600 email addresses via Wistia’s Turnstile email collector. The lean production team at Unbounce had their work cut out for them from the onset, but their scrappy tactics kept everything moving forward, even with some unexpected roadblocks. ### The team Oli Gardner, co-founder of Unbounce, lent his landing page expertise and starred in the series. Stephanie Saretsky, Multimedia Producer at Unbounce, concepted the series, managed pre-production, shot all 12 episodes, and edited the footage into sequences. Then, Felix Cha, the team’s videographer, used After Effects to smooth over transitions and add animations and bumpers. Finally, junior campaign strategist Chelsea Scholz managed all of the marketing strategy, from the microsite to PPC to email campaigns. ### The gear - Camera: Canon 60D - Lens: Sigma 30mm 1.4 - Lights: ARRI Fresnel lights - Audio: Sennheiser lav mic connected to the Zoom H1 ### Pre-production The Unbounce team asked their audience to submit their landing pages with explanations of why they wanted to be critiqued. After sorting through hundreds of entries, Stephanie and Oli chose 12 pages and asked the respective companies to send emails and ads related to their campaigns. After deciding on each episode’s theme, they wrote out loose scripts to dictate the general flow of each episode, and began to shoot. ### The shoot With a limited timeline, Stephanie shot all 12 episodes with Oli over the course of three days. “We shot from 12-5 for three days straight,” Stephanie explained. Shots included Oli at a computer, Oli’s computer screen, and occasionally, Oli at a whiteboard. Since the shoot was over a short time period and the series lasts until February, they changed some details accordingly. “We wanted to make the shoot seem longer, and we wanted viewers to know that Oli had more than one shirt,” Stephanie joked. The team started their first day of shooting in the general office space in hopes of creating a casual vibe. When the shoot proved to be too disruptive to their teammates and the “background” audio wasn’t what they expected, they moved to a meeting room for the following days. “Lighting was the trickiest part,” explained Stephanie. “Both the whiteboard and Oli’s glasses posed problems, but we ended up opting for quality audio over perfect lighting.” ### Post-production After Stephanie edited the content into sequences, she passed the videos to Felix, who added effects and overall polish. “Since our episodes weren’t entirely scripted, some of the cuts didn’t match up perfectly,” Stephanie said. “We decided to use interstitial music to denote a change in ‘scene’ and make the change in cuts less abrupt.” After completing a first pass of edits, they uploaded each episode into Wistia and emailed the link to stakeholders for review.


Often, companies seek out external actors and experts to teach their audiences, but odds are, you’re surrounded by capable experts on your team. Why not document their candid advice and offer it up for free (or in exchange for an email address)? Video series like the Landing Page Sessions, while time-consuming to produce, can offer tons of value, while serving as effective lead generation tools. Luckily, with a scrappy and creative production team, a video-centric campaign is well within your reach.
BLOG » STRATEGY
Concepting, Shooting, and Sharing an Effective Business Video Series


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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

How Vooza Uses Video to Grow and Retain Their Email List

Every time we see a company using video well in their email marketing, we do a little dance here at Wistia—nothing huge, just a little two step. The truth is, there are many ways to build out your email list, but some are more effective (and legal) than others. Video is one of the best tools for gathering email addresses because it offers an immersive experience and builds trust and rapport. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t give my email address to people I don’t trust. On the other hand, if I’m convinced that a company will deliver something helpful or delightful in my inbox, then sure, why not? Vooza’s creative business model and witty content have been featured in publications like TechCrunch and the Financial Times, but we decided to focus on how they’re using Wistia’s Turnstile email collector as an integral part of their video marketing strategy. We talked with Vooza’s CEO, Matt Ruby, about how they’ve used video to grow their email list in an unobtrusive way. ### About Vooza Vooza is a video content platform that uses native video advertising to pay the bills, but they also describe themselves as “a video comic strip about the startup world.” Curious what that looks like? This is one of my favorite episodes. It’s about phablets:

 
On Vooza’s homepage, you’ll find a library of episodes to watch. They’ve covered a lot of relatable topics, like “How to Dress at a Startup” and “Power Posing.” After each episode, a post-roll ad plays, then a Turnstile email collector slides onto the scene like a classy zamboni. “Having the Wistia API has been a big win,” Matt said. “Our developers have been able to build post-roll ad functionality and create a custom video environment.” ### Growing an email list with Turnstile “We like using Turnstile for a number of reasons,” Matt explained. “When we embed videos on other sites, our Turnstiles show up and generate leads. It’s great to know that wherever our videos are featured, there will be a way for us to gain a long-term fan when it’s done.” With views and ad revenue as their top priorities, growing their email list is crucial.
“It’s great to know that wherever our videos are featured, there will be a way for us to gain a long-term fan when it’s done.”
Matt explained, “It’s the best way for us to stay on people’s minds (and in their inbox). It’s easy to get lost in the clutter of Facebook, Twitter, etc., so being able to stay in touch with our fans on a weekly basis is invaluable. Email is definitely the best way for us to drive traffic to the videos and interact with people who dig us.” The following video has garnered the highest conversion rate thus far and contributed to Vooza’s growing email list, which is in the tens of thousands and up 15% from last year.
 
### Prioritizing the viewing experience If you explore Vooza’s site, you’ll notice that all of the Turnstiles appear at the end of their videos. Matt and the Vooza team agree that overall, Wistia’s player makes their videos and website less “noisy.” Their decision to place Turnstiles at the end of each video, rather than at the beginning or in the middle, is a conscious choice to provide an optimal experience for their audience. “We’re hesitant to interrupt the viewing experience,” said Matt. “Our episodes and ads have a narrative flow to them.” In the future, Vooza’s engineering team hopes to experiment with building some pre-roll ads, but the Turnstiles will remain as closing curtains. For companies with different goals and priorities, decisions regarding CTA placement in videos will vary. If you’re curious to learn more about how Turnstile placement can affect conversion rate, we wrote a blog post highlighting some of the stats and trends we’ve seen from thousands of videos with Turnstiles in them. ### Consistently delivering delight Capturing email addresses is hard enough, but retaining your email audience and convincing them to engage with your content repeatedly is a whole different challenge. In Vooza’s case, they feature a new weekly episode at the top of every email, and follow it up with funny jokes from Twitter, news about press mentions and contests, and a link to an older episode. This consistent email schedule and format builds trust and anticipation. *I wonder what next week’s episode will be?* The video thumbnail is pretty hard to resist when you’ve learned to expect a quick, hilarious portrayal of startup life. Who doesn’t want to be entertained (and in some instances, validated) for a couple of minutes? **What video marketing tactics do you use to grow your email list? Have you ever used a video thumbnail in an email? Let us know in the comments below!**
LIBRARY » STRATEGY
Using Video and Email Together
Marketing goals, technical limitations, and user experience


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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Build the Company You Want to Work For

Company culture isn’t a fixed thing—it’s a constant work in progress. We have a few big decisions that we want to get right. How should we give employee feedback? What are our company values? How should we structure our organization? We know that decisions around these big questions will have a huge impact on our culture. But there are many smaller decisions that everyone on the team makes every day. They’re easy to overlook when you’re busy putting out bigger fires, but they’re worth paying attention to. Compromise on those decisions, and your company culture will incrementally evolve in the wrong direction until it’s something unrecognizable. Ultimately, it’s these tiny pivots that shape company culture over time. At Wistia, with each decision, we try to ask ourselves a basic question to guide the evolution of our culture: “Will I be more or less likely to want to work here after this decision?” ### Startup founder: question yourself As a startup founder, you want to give your company your all. It’s easy to take the ups and downs personally, and your own self-esteem is often tied to the company. Ironically, it’s possible to put so much passion into your company that you destroy your own culture. As the founder of a company, you’re invested in its success in a way that your employees simply aren’t. That type of investment and ownership is a huge motivator that can overshadow all of the other reasons that you started the business. In the name of “winning,” many founders push too hard. They undermine their team’s ability to do great work by focusing on the short term, chasing trends, and imitating competitors. Passion, when left unchecked, can actually lead to poor decisions that end up compromising work culture. Before you know it, you can create a place where your team doesn’t want to work. And chances are, you won’t want to work there either. #### How we started As founders, my co-founder Brendan and I were green, so we didn’t understand how to manage and lead. Our decisions and behaviors were dictated by preconceived notions of what it meant to be in charge—based off of bosses we saw on TV and in films. - Telling people what to do? Sounds like a boss. - Closed-door meetings and secret office chatter? Just part of doing business. - Having an answer for everything? Check. In our early days, we didn’t treat some of our employees as well as we could have, and we waited too long to solve ongoing problems. As these issues began to arise more frequently, we started to ask ourselves: “If this weren’t our company, would we actually want to work here?”

“If this weren’t our company, would we actually want to work here?”
It wasn’t until we took a step back and looked at our company from a different perspective that we decided that we had to change. Through this lens, decisions became easier to make. - Do we want to work for a company where decision making is hoarded instead of distributed across the team? Nope. - Does executing someone else’s marching orders sound more attractive than creating your own work schedule? Seems like an easy decision to me. We realized that we owned the company culture. Not just because we owned the company, but also because we had to live and work with what we helped to create. When we started paying attention to these seemingly small day-to-day decisions, we felt empowered to build our own, distinct culture based on what we thought an enjoyable work environment looked like. #### Always come back to “why” We’ve been working on Wistia for nearly 10 years. People in the startup world launch 5 companies in the time we’ve been building one. Through our years of ups and downs, we’ve learned that you often circle back to the “why” of your work—especially if you’re a company founder. You ask yourself: “Of all the places in the world I could be working, why do I want to work at this company?” If you haven’t created a culture that you want to work in, you’ll quit. But if you have, and you’re a little bit lucky, you’ll end up with a job you wouldn’t sell or trade. ### Question everything As your company grows, your culture isn’t about the founders. It’s not about the CEO. And it’s not about the early team. It’s about everybody questioning their own individual decisions, and how those decisions shape the environment of the people around them. When everyone asks themselves how their actions affect the company culture, you create a positive feedback loop. Your teammates’ individual values become the values of the company, and over time, you foster a community of people that’s excited to arrive at work each day. #### Fun work Fundamentally, we all hate doing work that we don’t enjoy. We don’t bring our best effort and do our best work when we don’t care about it. That’s why one of our company values is Fun Work. It’s our belief that if you can find a way to make the actual doing of the work more fun, then you’ll be able to do it for longer, and you’ll end up doing a better job. If we aim for Fun Work, then we’re actively putting ourselves in a great position to build a company that lasts. ### Impressive growth comes from impressive culture Fostering a strong company culture is incredibly hard, because it’s a matter of constant vigilance and daily habit—not a one-off fix. By putting your culture first, you’ll make an enormous positive impact on your company’s likelihood of success. Look at the companies in your space that are truly excelling—in terms of both the balance sheet and their employees’ well-being. Behind their accomplishments, you’ll find a strong company culture. So go out and build the company you want to work for. One decision at a time.

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Monday, November 16, 2015

#WistiaChat Round Two: Producing Video on a Team of One

We did it! Thanks for helping make our second bi-weekly #WistiaChat was a great success! We spoke about mastering video production on a one-person team, including which tools to use, resources to bookmark, how to push for video in marketing, and more. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of what was said, shared, gif’d, and advised. ### You’re not alone—being a solo video producer isn’t uncommon. Most of the folks who chimed in said they were their team’s lone video rangers. From video production to editing to animation, many video professionals work alone. If you’re lucky enough to be on a video team, you may be responsible for a specific section, separating yourself from the pack. - “Our whole company @wyzowl is all about making videos! The animated kind. When it comes to live action, it’s just me.” @ToriaPardoe - “Yup, across 12 global offices, I’m the video producer!” @PGKosmal - “My video team is the same as my development team. Me, myself, and I. We make a hell of a cup of coffee though.” @EliteYouTubePro You can see what everyone said about their team numbers on Twitter. ### The right equipment makes the job so much easier. We all have that go-to piece of equipment we can’t live without. We heard some great equipment tips and must-buys from you all. Time to update that holiday wish list! - “Just 1 piece of equipment? It would have to be my ZoomH6 with the capsules.” @NikkiDPQ - “C100 Mk ii. Got it this past Spring—LOVE it. Runner up/Accessory: Rode NTG3. I can’t stand lav audio anymore.” @applehockey - “My @ZoomSound H5. Compact, versatile, provides me with great audio.” @rdubb205 - “Been rocking a Canon 60D for about 5 years now. Fave lens: Sigma 18-35mm f1.8.” @gheedough Get up on all the tools Wistians love on Twitter. ### Sometimes we have to convince others that video is a powerful marketing tool. If you work at a video production agency, you’re probably already in good hands. For those working in other industries, however, getting video recognized as a major player in marketing might take some strategic thinking. Here’s how Wistians bat for video on their teams: - “Prove its worth by showing how it affects sales and customer success. Link video engagement with actions taken on a page.” @inhouseproducer - “”[S]ell the idea of data driven nurturing. show the impact of video content as it pertains to the sales funnel.“ @Philwesson - "Make it, share it, track it. Create stories and engaging content that no-one else in the company can.” @SimpleLampoon - “Starting to dive deeper into a production/analytics system that is geared toward lead qualification.” @rdubb205 See everyone else’s strategies on Twitter. ### Watching others’ videos can inspire your work. We all learn from fellow folks in our field. Watching others’ work allows us to get ideas and inspiration for our future projects. - “Everything @fixingyourvideo and @CalebWojcik have been putting out is wonderful” @KevinKnechton - “Our team loved the video campaign "At Home with RA” by @solarcity. Resulted in 61% increase in customers in a single quarter.“ @IndieWhip - "Just saw this red bull bmx video today. It’s unique and killer. kaleidoscope.redbull.com” @austin__saylor See all of the inspiring videos Wistians mentioned on Twitter. ### There’s a ton of places to go to for support. In any field, a place to turn for advice is crucial to success. Lucky for us, there are many places on the web that can make our lives just a little easier. Here’s where Wistians go when they need a hand: - “@motionographer is a favorite for what’s exciting in the motion space. Constant source of inspiration.” @inhouseproducer - “I love cruising @Videostatic and @likecool for inspiration. Also been known to cruise @sandwich from time to time.” @crlvideo - “I think @unsplash has some of the best free images around, and @videocopilot for his awesome AE tutorials.” @PGKosmal - “Wistia library (obvi), nofilmschool.com, @StoryandHeart, diyvideoguy.com (@CalebWojcik), Planet 5D.” `@matt_uh_lyn` Check out other resources Wistians love on Twitter. ### There’s a lot we wish we’d learned sooner. We all start somewhere, but sometimes, we wish we would’ve started a little further along. If you’re a beginner in video production, here’s an opportunity to take some advice from folks who’ve been there. - “Don’t stop filming. You never know the impact you are doing until people ask you ‘Why did you stop publishing?’” @joseimprime - “Do a radio edit first. Build the story w/ the audio and then focus on the visuals. You can always get more b-roll.” @DianaEMadrigal - “Just because you learned how to do a new transition or fade, does not mean you should use every one you know now.” @EliteYouTubePro Get all the most important tips you need on Twitter.


Thank you so much to everyone who participated in our #WistiaChat! We hope you’ll join us in our Community where we have these conversations every single day. See you there and give us a holler at @wistia and @margotcodes.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Combining Video Data With Marketing Data

To measure and improve your video content’s ROI, I firmly believe that you must integrate it into the rest of your marketing efforts. One easy way to do that is to start combining your video data with the rest of your marketing data. Regardless of how you’re tracking marketing results and which tools you’re using, there’s a way to incorporate video insights into that workflow. That sounds good in theory, but how do you actually do it? Below, I’ll outline 3 examples of what this looks like in practice. ### 1. Track video events as part of your website analytics One basic question we ask ourselves frequently is, “how are visitors interacting with our site?” And more specifically, which interactions are helping to drive conversions? To answer these questions, we spend a lot of time in Google Analytics analyzing our website traffic. Since Wistia automatically passes all video events into GA, we can now report how individual videos influence our funnel and conversion rates. GA’s “audience segments” feature makes this simple to do. At Wistia, we create audience segments for the videos most closely tied to conversion. In this example, we are filtering visitors who’ve viewed our “Why Pay for Pro Video Hosting” video. With this audience segment defined, we can compare the behavior of those who’ve watched this video with those who haven’t. For that comparison, the variables we tend to focus on are: visit duration, repeat visits, and conversion rates. The power of audience segments is that you can define and combine them as you see fit—you can look at visitors who watched video A, didn’t watch video B, and visited your pricing page. Like any other analytics approach, I recommend starting simple and layering on complexity as you go. In addition to creating segments based on video viewing, you can also create segments for viewers who enter their information via Turnstile or click on your annotations and calls to action. ### 2. Compare leads from different sources With Turnstile, you can start to incorporate lead capture as part of your video efforts. Ideally, “video leads” are only a portion of your lead generation activities. Here at Wistia, we collect leads through a free trial of our product, resource downloads (like free music or email templates), webinars with partners, and more.
Instead of analyzing our video leads in isolation, we look at video as one channel among many. In practice, we integrate this data in our marketing automation platform, but the same can be done in Google Analytics, your email service provider, or even just in Excel. The goal is simply to understand where leads are coming from, and the quality of those leads by channel. I would definitely recommend starting broad in your definition of channels and moving toward a more granular approach as required. For example, I suggest grouping your videos into meaningful categories, rather than evaluating each video individually. In the example below, we’ve used very broad categories to define channels, leaving us the option to dig in deeper while also offering a high level look at performance. With all this information in one place, we can see how our videos are contributing to our overall lead generation strategy.We can also compare the videos in our production library with our webinars to see which source is producing the most qualified leads. ### 3. Score leads and notify your sales team Incorporating lead scoring into your workflow is a great way to increase the efficiency of your marketing and bridge the gap between marketing and sales. Most commonly, lead scoring is driven by webpage visits (with more points assigned to high value pages, like your pricing page), resource downloads, and product demos. Adding video events to your lead scoring algorithm gives you another key trigger to measure prospect interest. If you’re using marketing automation, this is now incredibly easy to do. In the example below, we assign 10 points to each lead who watches 100% of our “Why pay for pro video hosting?” video. I’d recommend starting simple, by just adding a couple of your high value videos to your scoring algorithm. Once you have that up and running, you can add a ton more complexity by scoring leads based on where they are in the buying cycle. Taking this one step further, you can also set up real-time alerts for your sales team when one of their assigned prospects is watching a key video. This alert, combined with Wistia’s video heatmap showing which sections of the video a prospect engaged with, gives your sales team a great opportunity to connect at exactly the right moment. There are a lot of ways to incorporate video into your marketing automation, but we hope these examples help some of you get started! Already using video and marketing automation together? Let us know how in the Community!

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Monday, November 9, 2015

Video SEO Just Got Better: Meet Wistia's New Standard Embed

Over the past few months, we’ve been focused on finding ways to streamline the optimization process, and make Video SEO simpler and more effective for Wistia customers. With that in mind, we’re really excited to share that some recent releases have made Wistia embed codes better for search engine optimization.

 
You heard right. Video SEO is back, and the improvements we’ve made are available for all of our customers. We’ve taken the core functionality from our old SEO embed, and developed a new Standard embed that does all of the same work, but it loads faster and more reliably. It also involves significantly less code (which means there’s less risk of losing something while copying and pasting, or breaking a CMS). Go ahead and scroll through the embed codes below. There’s quite a difference! #### The old SEO embed code: “`html

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