Lenovo Attracts More Video Watchers—and Learns More About Them—with Vidyard

Prior to 2015, technology manufacturer Lenovo was in the dark about the effectiveness of its video content. Relying on a platform that delivered only generic analysis of its marketing videos, Lenovo got basic details such as the number of people who watched a video and generalized demographic data but little else.

Lenovo needed to know if the videos were doing the job of attracting and winning customers; specifically, it wanted not only a better way to track their performance but also a way to link them to its marketing automation systems. It got that and more from video marketer Vidyard, which has provided Lenovo with deeper insight by delivering analysis at the level of individual watchers.

“What Vidyard allows us to do, more than just manage our video content, [is] it gives us insight into the watching behaviors of our contacts,” says Michael Ballard, Lenovo’s demand generation manager. “No one else at that time could provide that kind of value and information into our systems, and what that allowed us to do was not only gain additional intelligence, but [also] to use video as a content platform in a way that allowed us to validate our ROI and spend on that content.”

Lenovo experienced particular success with Vidyard during its 2015 holiday campaign. Running through the week of December 14, 2015, the campaign saw click-through rates increase nearly fivefold compared to previous campaigns, and open rates increase by 400 percent compared to previous campaigns. Additionally, five times as many people opened the emails with videos personalized by Vidyard compared to emails with videos that weren’t personalized.

Furthermore, Vidyard allows Lenovo to use the results of its videos to build marketing automation campaigns. “If you want to do really good video, it’s not cheap, and where in the past we had no way to show true ROI from that, now we can take it down to the individual level, and now that we’re at the individual level, we can kick off marketing automation campaigns around that,” Ballard says.

Although Ballard says he doesn’t see Vidyard as having many competitors, he notes that Lenovo did consider private video platforms such as YouTube and Brightcove. “[Vidyard was] competing against other private video platforms. We could manage those videos internally and have control and maybe some additional analytics, but we couldn’t map it against the individual,” he says. “For us, in B2B, that’s a really important thing, a really valuable thing, to bring to the table. Generic views do nothing for us, but when we can tie it to that person, that’s a whole new realm.”

Ballard says that Vidyard’s employees have also proved to be a valuable resource for Lenovo. “Sure, the platform has been great, there have been a lot of features and such that have been very valuable to us. But it comes down to the people and the relationship we’ve built,” he says. “They’ve been extremely responsive when it comes to customer service issues, they’ve been very willing to be a partner with us, and vice versa. They’re completely open to us as a customer.” —Sam Del Rowe

The Payoff

Since implementing Vidyard's video marketing solution, Lenovo has seen the following results:

• click-through rates for marketing videos have increased nearly fivefold compared to previous campaigns;
• open rates on emails have increased 400 percent compared to previous campaigns; and
• five times as many emails with personalized videos were opened compared to emails with videos that weren’t personalized.

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