Hot on Heels of Major Investment, Vidyard Boosts Profile with Marketo Integration

Waterloo-based video marketing company Vidyard this week announced a new integration with the Marketo marketing automation platform.

The new integration, which is available on Marketo’s Launchpoint app store, feeds analytics data about video consumption directly into Marketo’s scoring system.

“It takes video out of the silo,” says Robin Bordoli, vice president partner ecosystems and general manager social marketing for Marketo.

“Video campaigns and metrics have been disjointed from the tools that marketers are using,” says Michael Litt, co-founder and CEO of Vidyard. “Our integration with Marketo is just another step in pulling video data and insights into the critical platforms that are driving marketing efforts, activity and ROI.”

The Vidyard system allows users to see whether a potential customer not only whether a potential customer watched a marketing video, but also whether the watched the whole thing and if they watched it more than once, says Bordoli.

“It’s not just did they watch the video,” he told Techvibes. “It’s deep analytics.”

He says “it’s important because otherwise you’re getting false signals.” According to Bordoli, if a user stopped watching a video after 10 seconds, “that’s a strong signal.”

If a potential customer watches a video several times, they’ll receive a higher score in the Marketo platform than a customer who clicks away after a short time.

While Bordoli says the new integration will be useful for all of their customers, he says it will be particularly valuable for marketers selling “considered purchases” – things like cars, houses and financial products. “It doesn’t happen in seconds,” he says. “Successful marketing is really relationship marketing.”

While the deal was initiated by Vidyard, Bordoli says, “as soon as I met [Litt] I knew it would be tremendously valuable for both companies.”

He’s not the only one saying positive things about Vidyard. In late March the company announced that it had secured $6 million in Series A funding from four investors, two in Canada and two in the United States.

Part of the draw for investors is the company’s strong growth: in January Vidyard’s monthly recurring revenue was higher than revenues for all of 2012.

And interest in Vidyard south of the border is also helping to drive investment in other Canadian companies. Charles Hudson, a partner a SoftechVC, has said that his firm’s investment in Vidyard piqued his interested in the Waterloo starup community and led to investments in other companies, including Top Hat.

According to Bordoli, “What great marketers are is storytellers, engagement leads to action. And, he adds, “if a picture is worth 1,000 words, a video is worth 10,000.”