Video messaging company Vidyard has introduced the industry’s first hyper-realistic AI Avatars (looks and sounds just like the user) to its Messages platform. Vidyard also revealed that it has secured $15 million in funding led by Export Development Canada (EDC) with participation from BMO Capital Partners and existing investors Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and iNovia Capital. Including this funding round, Vidyard has raised $90.7 million in total funding.
Customers like HubSpot, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and S&P Global use the platform to increase effectiveness and scale outreach when communicating with customers and prospects. And AI Avatars help sales organizations scale all of the stages of the sales cycle and enable marketers to create high-quality and personalized videos while minimizing the time spent recording and editing.
Vidyard’s research has shown that 51% of buyers indicate that they are more likely to make a purchase after watching a personalized video and that personalized videos generate 16x more engagement than static content.
Users of Vidyard AI Avatars only have to provide a two-minute sample video to create their avatars, upload a script whenever they want and wherever they are, and watch the AI Avatar of themselves deliver high-quality / error-free videos at scale. Once created, these avatars can be reused to deliver multiple messages.
Combining AI Avatars with Vidyard Templates for sales and marketing also ensures consistency and accuracy of messaging delivery, even across distributed teams. And users benefit from the full suite of Vidyard video communication features, such as video view notifications, advanced analytics, calls-to-action, and integrations with the top CRM and sales platforms. Vidyard AI Avatars also supports video creation using scripts in 29 languages.
KEY QUOTES:
“AI Avatars will be a game-changer for our sales team, who understand how much more effective video is than text when engaging customers and prospects. Removing the need to sit and record each personalized message, over and over, will not only give our team more time to focus on high-impact sales activities but also gives us the confidence that our message is being delivered and received accurately, consistently and compellingly.”
– Matt Green, CRO of Sales Assembly
“Vidyard is changing the game for sales and marketing professionals and how they interact with their customers. With an equity investment from EDC, Vidyard is creating new opportunities for today’s businesses, enhancing human connections, and providing customers with smart and creative AI-enabled digital solutions.”
– Guillermo Freire, Senior Vice-President, Mid-Market Group, EDC
“Vidyard’s leadership in this market is impressive, and we believe the application of AI Avatars to the hard problem of high-touch communications at scale for sales and marketing will move it even further ahead. There has never been a better time to bring this capability to market, and there is no team better suited to introduce it than the one that Mike and Devon have assembled. We are very pleased to continue to work with Vidyard to support and help guide it through this next phase of its growth.”
– Byron Deeter, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
“Vidyard’s AI Avatars will address a lot of critical pain points for HubSpot users when it comes to making sales videos, including the stage fright associated with recording, the length of time it takes to get their videos ‘just right,’ the difficulty of finding the right place and time to record, and the fact that creating videos is not always a top priority. This will completely change how they approach message development and delivery, along with overall time management, and make it extremely easy for sales teams and marketers to get their messages out in a very personal way.”
– Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot
“Vidyard AI Avatars are the answer to every sales and marketing professional’s dream – personalization at scale – which has, as yet, been almost completely unrealized. By scaling their touchpoints to their customers and prospects, we are significantly lowering the barrier to the use of the high-touch communications tools they need to get the results that power their, and their organizations’, success. It also benefits buyers, who get faster communication and responses from sellers and enjoy a more engaged and fruitful sales process overall. The feedback from recipients in our pre-launch trials has been very positive, with their saying messages delivered by AI Avatars are engaging and effective.”
– Jonathan Lister, Vidyard COO
