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Since the inception of Hippo Video in 2016, we have been on a mission to revolutionize how businesses and teams use video in their sales process. Our all-in-one video platform has shifted how companies use video by introducing user-enabling features such as sales pages, video analytics, the teleprompter, and a lot more. These unique features not only made us a user favorite but also helped us stand out from the competition.
But our quest didn’t stop there! Like every customer-focused company, Hippo Video is devoted to creating the best video experience for our users and continuously strives to improve their satisfaction. This is why, in 2022, we went one step further in our mission by engaging with our customers to listen and collect valuable feedback, and we encouraged our users to be as critical as possible.
In this blog, we will take you on an exciting journey through the evolution of Hippo Video over the course of 2022 vs 2023, including the lessons we’ve learned as a product. It will be brutal, real, and honest, so get ready for some deep insights. Let’s dive in.
Hippo Video as a product in 2022
In the last couple of years, there has been an increase in the audience that believes in videos for sales. While it’s great news for a product such as ours, our team took the time to speak with our users about their video experiences, and the key observations were an eye-opener, to say the least.
Here are seven key observations we’ve unearthed:
1. Hesitance in creating videos
While we found that businesses were well aware of the power of videos (which is why they purchased the platform), their sales teams often remain apprehensive about incorporating it into their sales process. This might be because many of them either feel unsure about using videos or because they’re still limited to only creating basic webcam or screen share recordings, which can lead to less engagement. These factors may result in teams losing heart and not being motivated to make more videos in the future.
2. Productivity is taking a hit
A majority of the sales professionals we have spoken to recognize the value of using videos to close deals; however, they only use them for high-value deals or specific touchpoints in the sales cycle because they believe creating videos requires a significant investment of time and effort—likely due to a perceived lack of productivity.
3. Limited scope to personalize and scale video efforts
Most of our users felt we needed to improve our video scaling capabilities. They felt recording and personalizing videos repeatedly from scratch for every prospect was taxing and took a toll on their sales teams. Even though they were creating one video and personalizing it for multiple users by filling in their names via merge fields on the video, it lacked the fundamental visual element of video personalization.
4. Prospects were more familiar with our competitors
Sometimes familiarity breeds business. Despite having better video capabilities and relatively low price points, our prospects didn’t know much about us—great for our competitors, but not so pleasant for us. Plus, we also realized that our website needed a complete overhaul to rightly showcase our features, capabilities, and benefits that it could bring to the table as against our competitors.
5. Editing was a hassle
While our Pro Edit feature remains a popular editing tool, we have been receiving mixed opinions about it. Users found it a challenge when it came to making precise trims between frames and adding lower thirds, titles, and transitions between frames. This lack of customization was especially concerning to those who wanted to give their videos an extra bit of flair. Even with our robust editing options, users were unable to find the level of control they needed to truly refine their creations.
6. A basic Hippo Video iOS app
For a long time, our iOS app was missing key features that were available on our desktop version. Since it didn’t have an intuitive homepage, users had to tap on multiple tabs to access the video recording feature—a tedious experience compared to the streamlined desktop version. Furthermore, screen recording—a highly requested feature by our iOS app users—was not yet available. This ultimately hampered the user experience as they had to make do with basic functionality.
7. Lack of contextual tracking of videos
Finally, the ease of tracking the analytics of videos previously sent out needed improvement. Users had to either remember campaign names or manually search through emails to find them due to the lack of a central hub that could reflect the video analytics in one place. It was an ineffective way to track videos, especially when they wanted to track multiple videos. It took up their time and resources, leaving them unable to get the complete picture of their video performance easily and quickly.
Self-reflection is pretty deep eh? We feel you! Let’s change up the beat and get to the good part where we present to you all the amazing features that have been keeping us up at night.
It’s showtime!
A new and improved Hippo Video in 2023
As a customer-first video platform, naturally the next steps we took upon collecting the customer feedback was to get to work and fix all the gaps identified. Our new focus was not just to perfect each feature, but to start right from the ground up – including the repositioning of our messaging.
Let’s look into each of them in detail:
Starting from the basics: Core Messaging
From 2016 up until 2022, our messaging has remained consistent: a video platform that lets our users easily create, host, and share videos. However, since we have extended our capabilities further with new and enhanced features, it was time to reflect them in our messaging. The new messaging encapsulates how Hippo Video empowers sales teams to quickly and easily create highly personalized, engaging videos at scale (for different scenarios and touchpoints).
So what is our current messaging?
Hippo Video, an interactive video CX platform that enables sales reps create and share personalized videos at scale to increase engagement.
The feature enhancements and additions we’ve made in 2023
Our features can now be broadly divided into two categories:
- For improving productivity
- For enhancing product usability
Let’s look at these in detail:
For improving productivity
Features that fall under this category are those designed to close the gap that sales teams felt needed to be improved to scale their video creation. With these features, they can now put together videos in record time, allowing them to scale their video creation quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, with the added ease of creating videos, sales teams can use them at every stage of the sales process and personalize them in great detail without any hassle, as opposed to using them selectively.
Let’s look into these productivity-enhancing features:
1. Video Flows
For our video-savy sales reps who have been tired of wasting time recording the same video content over and over again, our Video Flows is just what they need. All they need to do is pick a template that fits their use case, record a personalized introduction, upload a pre-recorded video, and then add either another pre-recorded outro or record a new one. Once done, they can hit “Save”, and the three separate videos will be seamlessly stitched together to create an impactful video in just minutes.
To take it even further, account admins can build their own customized template flows based on their business demands and standards to ensure that the videos remain consistent. That way the admins and their team members don’t have to start from scratch every single time!
Key standout features within video flows
a.A wide array of pre-built templates
We have templates for every sales stage and use cases that sales reps can use to get in front of their prospects and customers. From prospecting, deal progression, follow-up, closure, sales enablement, account management, marketing, greeting, we have it all.
b. Personalize background for every video, effortlessly
What better way for sales teams to impress their prospects than by using a personalized video background for every conversation? With the help of AI, sales teams can now customize video backgrounds for hundreds of prospects with a single click. Simply copy and paste the URL of the prospect’s LinkedIn profile or company website and hit “Save.” Voila! The video is ready with a stunning and personalized background.
2. Humanize AI
For sales teams looking at scalability but not wanting to put in any effort, we heard them. Humanize AI is a revolutionary new tool that eliminates all manual labour in the creation of a personalized video campaign. All they need to do is send the Hippo Video team one original video campaign and a CSV file containing the names and email addresses of their recipients. Humanize AI will then generate hundreds of unique voice-personalized video greetings as the intro and stitch them with the main campaign video so that each recipient can feel like the message is tailor-made just for them. Now keeping prospects engaged and the business thriving is possible with this next-level AI technology.
3. AI Editor
Video editing is a tough cookie for most sales reps isn’t it? Not anymore! Our AI Editor is all set to change the video editing process for good. All it takes is clicking on the “AI Editor” tab after recording or uploading a video. The AI Editor will then transcribe it into text, allowing them to easily cut out filler words, unwanted lines, and gaps, just like they would edit a word document. Now they don’t have to painstakingly edit each frame to ensure everything looks perfect. Similarly, they can add titles, lower thirds, transitions, and interludes by entering the required text in the column provided, and voilà! A pro-liked edited video is ready.
4. iOS app version 2.0
With many of our customers recording videos on-the-go, it was high time we gave them the best video experience, even on our mobile app. For this reason, we did a major enhancement to our home screen, and now they can access all five features of Hippo Video: teleprompter, video flows, screen recording, import, and Siri shortcuts—all in one place! No longer do they need to navigate through multiple screens or taps—two taps are all it takes to quickly launch any feature. This makes the video-recording experience simpler and faster than ever before.
The addition of Siri Shortcuts means that they can control their Hippo Video app with just a voice command—no more wasting time navigating through menus, thus improving productivity.
This groundbreaking update of our iOS app version 2.0 brings together convenience and productivity-enhancing features such as screen recording, a new home screen, and Siri shortcuts.
For enhancing product usability
We’ve put a lot of effort into improving the usability of our product, making sure that our customers have a great experience when using it. To achieve this, we’ve implemented some innovative elements – like shares and tracking, and the ability to tag items.
With shares & tracking, our users can get a comprehensive overview of all their previously shared assets in a central hub. We have included clever filters such as context name, last activity on, medium of shares, pages viewed, video watched and replies, so it’s easier to monitor video performances in a snap. And if they’ve used videos in a sales page, they can get detailed analytics here almost instantly to see how well it has done.
With such detailed information at the fingertips of our users, they can easily identify which forms of content are most engaging with their target audience, allowing them to tailor future campaigns.
6. New tag implementation
Organizing a large repository of digital content is critical isn’t it? Tags to the rescue! Now our users can easily manage all their assets by simply creating a specific tag for each of them. The benefit? Instead of searching through multiple subfolders and trying to remember the exact file name, they can now find every asset with tags. That means they can now save the tags as videos, sales page templates, images, documents, pdfs, etc., and all corresponding assets will instantly appear. Moreover, admins can also create specific tags for each team to ensure all assets are organized and accessible.
Our users are talking!
Our customers have been instrumental in helping us reach incredible success in 2023. Their honest reviews have played a major role in allowing us to improve our products and services, and our users are thrilled with the advanced features that come with our new upgrades. We want to highlight two specific customer reviews today.
Jay D Miller from Faultline Sales
This review is special because Jay D Miller took to social media to express his appreciation for Humanize AI, even before the feature was officially released. His post on LinkedIn quickly gained traction, prompting excitement from many, including competitors in the industry.
Atrium Hospitality
Atrium hospitality has been using videos across their multiple hotel chains and saw an impressive 60% surge in video creation thanks to our intuitive video flows – a huge success that has led them to utilize it even more.
Conclusion
The Hippo Video team consistently outdoes itself by putting customer feedback first. Together Hippo Video in 2023 strives towards our mission of revolutionizing the way businesses use video. The journey doesn’t stop here, as we will continue innovating and creating groundbreaking features that will help our users get the most out of their video strategy. Try Hippo Video for free today if you haven’t and see what the deal is all about.
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