June 24, 2011 — HubSpot, the leading inbound marketing platform and Adelie Studios, an industry leader in online marketing animated video production, were honored to be the recipients of two Telly Awards for outstanding achievement for their original short online videos. The winning videos, from the Captain Inbound Animated Series were selected among thousands of entries for their entertainment and originality.

“It’s not every day you get to work on a series of animated shorts starring super heroes and villains,” said Eric Guerin of Adelie Studios. “It was great to work with HubSpot creating Captain Inbound because they live and breathe strategic content marketing like these videos every day. Winning two Telly Awards for the project was really icing on the cake.”

“Rather than bombard people with cold calls and spammy emails, you should attract them to your company using inbound marketing by creating interesting content and optimizing that content for search, social and mobile channels,” said Mike Volpe, Chief Marketing Officer at HubSpot.  “HubSpot is a pioneer in inbound marketing, and the Captain Inbound videos are an example of the type of marketing which companies should be doing a lot more.”

Founded in 1978, the Telly Awards is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online film and video. The Telly Awards annually showcases the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, interactive agencies, and corporate video departments in the world.

This year, the Telly Awards received over 13,000 entries from all 50 states and countries around the world. Silver and bronze medals are awarded based on creativity and outstanding achievement in a specific category.

About HubSpot

HubSpot, Inc. offers an all-in-one marketing software platform for small and medium sized businesses. Over 4,500 companies in 31 countries use HubSpot software to increase the number of visitors to their website and convert more of those visitors to leads and customers. Applications in the software platform include website management, blogging, search engine optimization, lead management, marketing analytics, email marketing, landing pages, and social media monitoring. HubSpot is also the developer of the popular website analysis tool, WebsiteGrader.com, which has over 3 million users. HubSpot, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Find them at http://www.HubSpot.com.

About Adelie Studios

Adelie Studios specializes in creating animated marketing videos and tutorial animations to promote your marketing message online in an engaging and entertaining format. Adelie Studios producer Eric Guerin has previously won three Telly Awards: one in 2010 for JCSI and two in 2009 for Waste Management and Open Pages. See more animated videos and tutorial animations they have created at http://www.adeliestudios.com.

RELATED LINKS

Captain Inbound Episode 1 on YouTube

Captain Inbound Episode 2 on YouTube

HubSpot, creators of an inbound marketing software that helps businesses get found on the internet, hosted a webinar titled “Beginner’s Guide to Video Marketing”. Although we’ve been involved in online video and animation since 2004, I always like to see what new statistics, tools, tips, etc. I can share with my customers to help them better utilize the animations we create for them. In this post, I put together the “Cliffs Notes” version of the webinar with a few tips and statistics I thought were the most interesting to share with you. If you are interested in listening to the webinar in its entirety, you do so and download the slides from HubSpot’s On Demand Archive of the Beginner’s Guide to Video Marketing.

The first speaker was Maggie Georgieva, an Inbound Marketing Manager at HubSpot. She shared some interesting insights into how HubSpot utilizes video in their own marketing efforts including case studies for sales empowerment, webinars and events for lead generation. They also build brand awareness through podcasts (like their weekly marketing video podcast HubSpot TV) and entertaining videos (such as the Captain Inbound Animation Series we worked on for HubSpot).

She also shared how video screenshots have performed far better than static images or text links in email marketing. She didn’t share any exact findings but here’s some statistics we compiled about using videos in your email marketing campaigns.

Next up Yelena Kadeykina, the Marketing Director of Pixability, shared a few interesting statistics and suggestions largely around video discovery. She stated that 30-40% of video views are the results of search queries and another 30% are the result of social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. Think about that. That means that roughly 75% of online video views can be attributed to a combination of proper tagging and SEO optimizing your video and having a social strategy for your video content.

Jay Wilder, the Director of Product Marketing at myBrainshark spoke next about sharing / promoting videos and the importance of placement.

Jay had some great points and did a fantastic overview of how to use and distribute video on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn. The real amazing statistics he presented were regarding mobile and QR codes. According to Nielsen, mobile video viewership soared 40% in 2011 and the smartphone market grew to a 50% market share. He also illustrated how QR codes “connect the online and offline world” through their ability to show you a product in action. I personally believe that combining QR codes with your mobile video strategy will truly start catapulting video marketing to new heights in the next few years. Particularly for people selling products to consumers. Imagine rather than hemming and hawing in a store over Product A or Product B, if Product B has a QR code taking the buyer to an interactive video experience right there on their phone to answer any questions they may have about it…which product are they more likely to buy? That’s where things are going…the industry leaders are already there.

Last up was Jim Kukral who has worked with companies like Fedex and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. He kept his presentation fairly simple and focused on how to measure video.

One of his points I personally enjoyed was when he talked about how videos on landing pages convert better than traditional text & images. It’s important to remember that people don’t consume content offline the same way that they do online and that is what makes video so effective as a messaging tool.

All in all the presentation had a ton of great content for people new to video marketing as well as some tidbits for someone like myself who has been doing this for a while. One of my favorite quotes from the event was from Jim and it sums up my thoughts on why video is critical to the success of every business marketing online:

“When faced with a choice between a video or a bunch of text – they’re going to choose the video. Recognizing this and building a strategy around it is the type of thing that changes a 1 million dollar company into a 10 million dollar company.”