Interactive Video Postcards – The New Way to Communicate

The latest emerging trend for marketers and communicators is something called a “video postcard”.  This isn’t something you send out in the physical mail—it’s a postcard you email to people or embed into a website or portal.  Instead of a static picture to catch someone’s attention, you have a video that is surrounded by company branding and interactive “calls to action”.

It might sound a little complicated, but it’s actually incredibly simple and easy to execute.  You don’t have to be a programming wizard or fluent in technology language to create a cool and engaging video postcard.  Flimp Media gives you the technology and tools so that you can create your video postcard by dragging and dropping items and choosing colors.

Why are they called Interactive Video Postcards?  Have you ever watched a TV commercial for a new pair of sunglasses or a new kind of lipstick and thought to yourself, next time I’m out shopping, I should get that! . . . but then you forget all about it.  If you were able to reach into the TV, grab the product and pay right away so you don’t forget about it, you would do it, right?  Well, we haven’t made a TV that can do that, but Interactive Video Postcards do something similar.  There are convenient links that associate with the video on the postcard so that, when someone is watching the video, they can click on a link to learn more, or sign up.

Here’s the best part: marketers and communicators can get detailed video viewer tracking and video analytics on these video postcards.  It’s the easiest way to measure your success—you get detailed viewer engagement, response and sharing activity.  That’s a lot of useful information to make sure you’re marketing generates a strong ROI.

Not only can one send out better targeted video marketing efforts, but communicators are using interactive video postcards to effectively educate employees on different topics.  According to Flimp Media’s Employee Benefits Intelligence Report, more than half of employees today feel that their available benefits are poorly communicated to them.  On top of that, a recent Guardian report finds that employees who are much more confident in their benefits choices are much more likely to be satisfied by their decision and give their employer a higher, positive rating.  That would be the case for any information and decision an employee needed to make, right?

Here’s the secret: employees aren’t excited to read a lengthy packet of information that is text-heavy—they want to understand the information easily and in less than a few minutes.  The best way to achieve that is through an engaging video that combines graphics and a spokesperson to get all the information clearly communicated, and then have links right next to it so whatever action that is needed can be completed easily and conveniently.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota decided to give video postcards a shot.  Their main goal was to improve the employee engagement rates for the benefits open enrollment, but also to reduce reliance on printed materials, improve their measurement capabilities and streamline the open enrollment and communications process on a whole.  Ninety-nine percent of employees who viewed the video postcard watched the entire video, and an astounding 152 percent of those viewers clicked on the related links to enroll or learn more.  Those are exciting numbers!

Rebecca Barnes, owner of Capital Ideas—a marketing agency, used video postcards for clients as an “effective and simple solution for launching video email marketing campaigns.” Even though the majority of their email lists were purchased, their first two campaigns experienced over a 20 percent response rate.  They believe they “never could have achieved these response rates with regular email marketing.”

So, if you’re looking for a new way to communicate interactive video postcards are starting to become the chosen way to give information to employees that excites them and engages them. . .  instead of putting them to sleep.

 

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