By Jim Dicso In many ways, marketing and selling luxury goods is similar to marketing and selling other consumer brands, with a few important caveats. If a company is promoting toothpaste, for example, it must hone in on the customer’s greatest concerns, questions and needs. The toothpaste brand must consider its competition in terms of product and price, and it must make itself visible in the places most popular with its prospects. Those things are all true for luxury brands, as well, but these marketers have an added challenge. Unlike toothpaste, luxury goods are both high-value and optional. The cost of converting a browser into a buyer in the luxury market, especially online, is higher than mass-market consumer goods. To offset this challenge, luxury brands can implement intimacy strategies that deliver unique, personalized experiences to both prospects and customers. To provide this level of engagement, brands can leverage smart video technology to make a significant impact on the way shoppers respond to the brand, products and which purchases they decide to make or forego online. Personalization key to customer intimacy After a luxury brand develops a strategy to provide personalized customer engagement, it needs to characterize a strategic, long-term, brand-oriented plan for how to deliver a personalized video experience. Each initiative needs to start with a defined set of success criteria and measurable metrics. The beauty of a personalized video engagement strategy is that a luxury brand can focus on most critical engagement points. For instance, a brand can engage prospects via online video ads which targets Web site abandoners to drive conversion. The brand can engage new customers following the placement of an online order to minimize returns, avoid remorse and upsell, while also improving the initial onboarding and product education experience to ensure activation and adoption of premium services. The brand can focus on creating stickiness by using personalization to move customers between segments to capture more value per customer. Whether the luxury brand focuses on segmentation or personalization to deliver the best personalized experience, brands need access to real-time data about past purchases and current behavior. Video is the most compelling medium for leveraging that data for personalization, but brands have traditionally found it cost-prohibitive to produce online videos at scale, let alone make them personalized to the individual. Luxury shoppers demand compelling experience Consumers buy luxury items for a variety of reasons: entertainment, reward and status. Before making such an investment, most consumers still feel the need to see the product up close. If they cannot touch it, they should be able to evaluate it from various angles and get a demonstration, if appropriate. Smart video strategies let brands meet those needs, as well, and personalize the way they do it. For example, visual segmentation lets companies choose from multiple video background options that reflect unique customer personas. An electronics persona gives a different look and feel to the video than a fashionista persona, for instance. In terms of merchandising, the smart video can incorporate one upsell recommendation for the young professional customer and another for the soccer mom. Additionally, smart videos know which customers are repeatedly bringing business to the brand. The videos for those visitors can include incentives, such as, “you’ve earned special rewards.” Alternatively, the video might include a “welcome back” message for a previously loyal customer who has stayed away for some time. Smart, automated, personalized video creation relies on storyboards that incorporate segmentation and personalization data about each potential viewer into a library of scenes that are selected based on the status of the viewer. The result is an online video that feels as if it were created specifically for the one consumer who has decided to watch it. THE COST OF acquisition is high for luxury marketers. To offset this challenge and differentiate from the competition, customer intimacy is a compelling strategy. By engaging with customers based on segmentation or personalization, smart video technology can deliver an engaging experience that satisfies consumers and achieves higher conversions. Jim Dicso is president and chief revenue officer of SundaySky, New York. Reach him at jim.dicso@sundaysky.com.