How We Created 450+ Personalized Videos in 1 Week (And You Can Too)
1 Week: 450+ Personalized Videos
I'd like to do one animated wrap-up video per customer in the style of Spotify Wrapped. What do you think? Crazy or cool?
As 2023 came to a close, the Superside Customer Success Team wanted to make their year-end message personal, very personal by sending each customer—all 450+ of them—a custom video.
While personalized video is a go-to tactic to boost engagement, the only sticking point was the timeline. It was already early December and they had to get the videos out to customers before everyone left to enjoy the holidays.
Time was of the essence, but so was expertise, experience and seamless collaboration.
Crazy, cool—a bit of both?
450+ personalized videos in a week? It's completely possible.
Here’s how the Customer Success Team enlisted the help of Supersiders Esteban Guerrero, Associate Creative Director of Motion Design and Graeme McCree, Creative Director, Sales to make it all happen, efficiently and effectively.
Not only did they get this done, they used their expertise and best practices to ensure agility, flexibility and, most of all, time-savings.
Learn how they completed the project 90% faster than a similar project would traditionally require.
Start With a Plan
One of the first things that we ask is to be able to plan.
When the Customer Success Team reached out to Guerrero, his first order of business was to plan the specifics:
- The components of the main template
- The data to be personalized
- Best-practice workflows
The video template
Since static customized text was a logical, time-saving strategy, the template used motion design and 3D illustration to add interest, energy and a signature Superside vibe.
The variable data
Once the components to be personalized—company name, number of projects and the creative service used most often—were defined, Guerrero had to select efficient tools and processes to customize each video.
Resources and workflows
As part of the ongoing exploration and optimization of Superside's motion design services, Guerrero had identified a specialized After Effects plugin for customizing text earlier in the year, which meant he already had a headstart on his roadmap.
Divide and Conquer
For this project, we needed the surrounding elements to be animated very beautifully.
Allowing for the creation of the video template at the same time, McCree led the template work while Guerrero focused on the personalization.
Balancing creativity and common sense
McCree knew he wanted the template to be a friendly, warm and engaging extension of the Superside brand. But, he also had to keep the quick turnaround time in mind.
Choosing the most simple, but effective approaches, the template included a motion design as the background for the personalization with a 3D animation as a transition to Hofer’s self-recorded message.
Although motion, 3D animation, desktop recording and assembling the template itself all required different specializations and software, McCree simply tapped into Superside's carefully curated, global network of design talent to keep everything on track.
Sticking to the story
A storyboard helped with visualizing how the personalized text and animated template worked together.
Speaking of teamwork, the storyboard itself represents the efforts of Design Director, Don Borjas, Designer Devin Terry and Creative Lead, Sam Newdigate.
Borjas built the storyboard and ensured brand consistency, Terry did the motion and animation and Newdigate wrote the script. As they collaborated, they also tapped into the greater Superside network whenever they needed further specialized skills.
Testing and optimizing
Clients are often concerned that their videos might be too complex for a rollout like this. A lot of times, it's simply a matter of talking it through and taking advantage of all the expertise Superside has to offer.
Before the personalization could be applied, Guerrero tested the variable data, manually copying and pasting the content into the template to ensure everything was working before creating 450+ versions.
When testing identified that several company names were long enough to require multiple lines, Guerrero quickly jumped in and wrote custom code to dynamically adapt long names to run across two lines.
To further save time, any sections of the videos that didn’t require customization were pre-rendered, taking the final rendering time for each video down to 12 minutes.
Given that even short videos, especially ones with animation, can take hours to render, every minute saved has a huge impact, especially when you’re creating hundreds of versions.
Tweaking the code and shortening rendering times may seem like a given. However, depending on who you're working with, many partners or vendors would likely charge additional fees for these services.
Oh sheet! It's a spreadsheet
Truth: Sometimes even creatives use spreadsheets. In the example below, Guerrero analyzed the longest, shortest and average number of characters required for each personalized field, determining which text to include and pinpointing variations in how these items would appear on screen.
Pressing Play
When the files were ready, the Customer Success Team sent each customer an email wishing them well and sharing their customized video.
Can you spot the 3D animation? We'll give you a hint: "We're obsessed."
How did we make it easy to share these videos via email? We planned for that too. Each video had its own landing page with a unique link (URL) for each version that could be pasted into the emails.
And The Customers Went Wild...
As soon as the emails with the videos went out, the reactions started flowing in. Everyone was delighted with the spirit of goodwill and the creativity of the videos. Even many inactive customers re-engaged and took notice.
Make Your Own Videos
Whether you have an experienced in-house team, are just getting started or are somewhere in between—Superside's end-to-end video services can help you get the video you need, when you need it.
Every in-house team is different, which means everyone has varying levels of experience, expertise and capacity. It's also exactly why all of our creative services, including our video, motion and 3D design, are adaptable and modular.
Whether you need end-to-end production or targeted assistance in one specific area, we can jump right in and help you reach your goals.
Our international network of world-class video experts is available on-demand for personalized video, customer testimonials, brand videos, ads and more.
Michelle enjoys learning from and empowering ambitious marketers and creatives focused on scaling design and fueling growth.🚀 With more than two decades of experience, she’s worked at both agencies and in-house teams at companies of all sizes in the United States and Canada. She began her career as an advertising copywriter, remastering these skills as a content marketer and becoming a subject matter expert on everything from frozen pies and financial statements to SaaS and now CaaS. Connect with her on LinkedIn.