The SmartVideo Blog

Last week I attended Forrester's Forum for Marketing Leaders in Los Angeles, focused on strategies for leveraging big data to better manage marketing communication programs in a world where half of adults globally will be perpetually connected to the Internet by the end of 2013, as Forrester predicts. The bottom line: every moment is a chance to connect and service customers. The opportunities for creating brand affinity and value are truly boundless in this hyper connected, hyper personalized global techno-village. However, these opportunities simultaneously carry an overwhelming capacity to bombard and frustrate customers and brands managers alike, who fail to properly plan and/or harness the great power of data-driven communications.

If you read our 2012 State of Online Video Report, then you are familiar with our 2013 prediction that CMOs will enhance customer experience and engagement strategies with smarter applications of personalized video. But let me give you a deeper dive into additional predictions for online video technologies that are sure to prosper in the coming 12 months…

At SundaySky, we’ve cultivated the two unique ingredients which make SmartVideo more engaging and effective than traditional video -- personalization and relevance. By incorporating these elements into marketing strategies, brands are better able to target the right customers at the right time with highly relevant promotions, products and information.

I just returned from two days at the Forrester Customer Experience Forum where leading industry speakers shared thought-provoking ideas and powerful content. Simply put, this event helped solidify my view of the future where the customer is at the center of competitive strategy for the leaders in every industry. In fact, Harley Manning of Forrester shared a graph that compared 5-year total return of customer experience leaders (up 22%) to customer experience laggards (down 46%) to the S&P 500 (down 1%). Clearly, companies adopting a customer-centric strategy are already proving that we are in the “Age of the Customer.”