It’s an exciting time for organisations as they can can now bring together their first-party data, existing assets, and assets from third parties to create thousands of bespoke, data-driven videos in minutes.
We showcased how to do this recently at an industry event, using Shotstack and Make. Below is a quick outline of what we did and how we successfully brought it all together.
Objective
Our objective was to create a personalised “newsreel” video for event attendees that would be programmatically created and then automatically sent to them each morning of the conference.
Each video would be personalised specifically for the individual, with relevant news, insights, and recommendations based on the first-party data we collected from them. Consequently, no two videos were alike.
Here’s an example of one of the videos that was created:
How We Did It
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We created our template in the Shotstack Studio, adding in merge fields (similar to those used in emails) where we planned to insert personalised content. This not only included the recipient’s name, but also the content type, imagery, and gifs. With Shotstack, most elements of a video can be customised using merge fields.
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We built a registration form in HubSpot, where attendees could sign up for their daily newsreel. The form requested the following information:
- Their name
- Their city
- Their favourite food
- Their preferred type of news
- Their favourite form of entertainment
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We used Make to construct the flow that brought together the first-party data, external data sources, and triggered Shotstack to create the video.
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We utilised a variety of APIs to populate the content in the video based on the information provided in the registration form:
- WeatherAPI.com: This was used to showcase the weather in both Las Vegas (where the event was held) and the hometown of the attendee.
- Newsdata.io: This was used to select a relevant article from that day that matched their preferred type of news.
- OpenAI GPT: This was employed to condense the long-form article into highlights that would then be added to the video.
- Yelp API: We selected a relevant restaurant in Las Vegas that matched their favourite food. We ensured to only showcase restaurants with a rating of 4 stars or higher on Yelp.
- Ticketmaster API: We displayed “What’s On” in Las Vegas that night, matching their favourite type of entertainment.
- Giphy API: We ended the video with a gif because, who doesn’t love a gif?
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After all the information was pulled through from the APIs, it was sent to Shotstack for processing and creating each individual video.
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We created a bespoke landing page for each contact where the video was hosted.
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Each morning, we sent them an email via Gmail containing a link to that day’s personalised “newsreel”.
The entire process of creating and sending these videos daily took just a few minutes. Attendees received relevant and engaging content each morning, creating a real buzz about what is now possible with video.
Take a look at the entire flow in action, showing you just how quick it is to create bespoke, data-driven videos with Shotstack and Make.
I’d love to hear what you think, and I’m interested in learning how you could use similar videos in your organisation.
