How To Make Video Personalization Your Membership Superpower

We’ve all heard it: personalization is critical to maximizing online engagement. Digital marketing tactics that make the person on the other side of the communication feel understood overperform. And that’s true for all digital marketing tactics from email to video. That’s because your members want to engage with real people, not with your organization.

Video personalization can include everything from hyper-personalized video content created for a specific person, account-based videos targeted at specific organizations or teams and community-driven videos that, despite not naming an individual or an account, take an authentic approach that humanizes your association’s marketing channels and makes your communications feel more personal.

Why is video personalization valuable for associations?

Video personalization is a valuable engagement tool that empowers the association to make the members the heroes of the organization’s story. While there is a time and a place for heavily-polished brand-authored video content, authentic member-driven video content is more personal, more engaging, and higher performing. 

Plus, co-creating personalized video content with members amplifies your team’s ability to produce quality video content at scale, so you can do more with less. The personal stories that your members tell will be far more engaging than anything your marketing team could write up.

3 ways to engage members with video personalization

Many association leaders see video as expensive and time-consuming to produce. And, for heavily polished pieces that’s definitely true. But, co-creating video content with members is simple when you focus on authenticity and personalized messages. 

Here are three examples of simple-to-execute video personalization tactics to drive engagement:

• Sharing key takeaways from events
• Welcoming new members
• Advocating for a cause

1. Sharing Key Takeaways from Events

Events are a great way to engage with members, but engagement cannot stop after the curtain closes. To create engagement that extends beyond the day of the event and lasts all year long, associations need to empower members to continue the conversation. Video personalization is a great way to achieve this. 

At their Marketing Membership & Communications Conference, the American Society of Association Executives asked members to share their key takeaways from the event sessions. Within days of the event, they created a montage video showcasing these member takeaways that they used to personalize their post-event communications. Here’s how that video turned out:

2. Welcoming New Members

Make new members feel welcome by incorporating personalized video messages from existing members into the emails and webpages the new members will see. For example, co-create a video montage with veteran members, sharing thier experience with the association and how being a member has impacted them. 

To further personalize this type of video content, have staff record quick, 10-second hyper-personalized videos welcoming new members by name. Add that clip to the start of the video montage from veteran members for an even more personalized welcome.

3. Advocating for a Cause

Video personalization is incredibly powerful for association advocacy. That’s because legislators are far more likely to respond to a video message from a constituent they represent than a generic video from the organization. 

The California Primary Care Association co-created personalized videos with members in specific districts to encourage their legislators to act. Watch the replay of our conversation with the Associate Director of eLearning at CPCA to learn more about how they did it. 

The Alzheimer’s Association took the same approach to advocate for Congress to pass the ENACT Act. In just two weeks, they gathered more than 300 personalized video messages from advocates across the country. Hear what Christopher Masik, Director of Advocacy at the Alzheimer’s Association said about the campaign:

What should association leaders keep in mind when co-creating personalized videos with members?

When co-creating personalized video content with members, here are a few simple tips to keep in mind:

• Start with your goals. Video personalization itself is not a strategy. Look for opportunities to improve your KPIs with video and focus there.
• Authenticity is critical. Avoid scripting the video content. Instead, coach members to create the high-quality videos you need by offering talking points, time limits, and guidance on lighting and sound.
• Don’t forget to secure digital rights to the user-generated video content you collect.

Overall, personalized videos are a powerful tool that not only helps create content and drive engagement but also forms authentic connections between your organization and members.