Zapier tutorial: how to make personalized videos from spreadsheet

How to Make Personalized Videos from a Spreadsheet

Josías De La Espada
This Zapier tutorial will show you how to make a personalized video for every customer, product or occasion with Google Docs Google Sheets (Spreadsheets) and Sezion.
But first, why are videos an important tool for every marketer? Well, a video can be an effective channel to reach customers, but its limitations may have held you back in the past. Making one video is easy; there are several tools that can help you with that. But making hundreds or thousands of videos requires a lot of time, money and expertise, only available for big brands. So, why do you want to make more than a few videos? Well, from a marketing and communication perspective, consumers are really only interested in brands, products and services that talk directly to them. Does this make sense to you? How can you create effective video messages for every product, customer or occasion? Personalized marketing videos is the answer.

Benefits of using personalized videos as part of your marketing strategy

How can you make personalized videos from a spreadsheet?

One of the main tools for every marketer is a spreadsheet. We use it all the time. Did you know that almost all the data in your website, CRM, CMS or even your email campaign lists can be exported to a CSV or a spreadsheet? Yeah, yeah… Ugly rows and columns with a lot of information and data-driven decisions formulas, but huge results! We manage almost everything with spreadsheets!
Automatically generate personalized videos from any content feed
Zapier is all about making every marketer’s life easier. It gives you the power to integrate Sezion with hundreds of other apps to automate your work; automated video creation with Sezion and Zapier. One of my favorite apps is Google Docs Google Sheets. Can you imagine making personalized videos for every contact from your email marketing software? How about automatically generating videos for every product from your ecommerce CMS? All we need is to export that data to a spreadsheet. Making a batch of unique videos featuring text from a new spreadsheet is pretty cool, uh?

What kind of personalized videos can you make with this Zap? Here you’ll find a few ideas:

  • Send personalized videos in your email campaigns in order to better connect with your customers.
  • Automatically make a video for every product you sell to drive sales conversions.
  • Accelerate customer engagement with data personalization within your videos.

Zapier video tutorial to make personalized videos from a spreadsheet

By doing this, when a row is added in a specific Google Spreadsheet, Sezion will automatically make a video containing the information from the chosen columns.

The Zapier concepts you need to learn

What are triggers and actions:

Triggers and actions are simply events. They can be things like a “new post” or a “new comment”. A Zap combines triggers and actions — whenever the trigger event occurs, Zapier automatically completes the action for you.

Google Docs Google Sheets Triggers:

  • New Worksheet: Triggered when you create a new worksheet in a spreadsheet.
  • New Spreadsheet: Triggered when you create a new spreadsheet.
  • New Spreadsheet Row: Triggered when a new row is added to the bottom of a spreadsheet.
  • New Document: Triggers when you create a new document.
  • Updated Spreadsheet Row: Triggered when a new row is added or modified in a spreadsheet.

Sezion Actions:

  • Create Video: Creates a new video with the data sent by the trigger.

Automated video creation with Sezion and Zapier: personalized video example combining Google Docs Google Sheets Triggers with Sezion Action

When Zapier combines Google Docs Google Sheets and Sezion, Sezion instantly makes a video. Within your Sezion account you can choose where you want that video to be uploaded. The common choice is YouTube (it’s really easy to add your YouTube Channel to your Sezion account), but with Sezion’s API you can send the generated videos to any video hosting provider.

This is an examples of a personalized video created with Sezion’s integration with Zapier, with inputs or data coming from a Google Docs Google Sheets:

What information Zapier asks to make videos from spreadsheets?

First, you’ll need to connect your Google Docs Google Sheets and Sezion account to Zapier. Learn how to connect your Sezion account to Zapier.

Once you’ve done that, it depends on every trigger, but it is really easy to set up. Here you’ll find the Zap Google Docs New Spreadsheet Row to Sezion Create Video, but you can create your own. If you want to make a video for every new row within a spreadsheet from Google Docs, then Zapier will ask you to choose the following information:

Filter Google Docs Google Sheets Triggers:

Zapier: Filter Google Docs Triggers

Filter Google Docs Triggers – Zapier

Only trigger a “New Spreadsheet Row” from Google Sheets when…

  • Spreadsheet (required).
  • Worksheet (required): You *must* have column headers and at least one entry in your spreadsheet to view the available fields below. See here for more information.
  • Add filters based on other Google Docs fields to only allow some items.

Match up Google Sheets Row to Sezion Video

Zapier Turorial: Google Docs Spreadsheet to Sezion Video

Google Docs Spreadsheet to Sezion Video – Zapier

Template (required):

The Sezion Video Template which will be used to create the video. You’ll see a list with your video templates. Depending on the template you choose, Zapier will automatically show you the Dynamic Media from Sezion that every template has.

Dynamic Media within Sezion are the different elements (texts, images, audios, videos) in a template that are variable and can be different in every final video. That’s what makes a video personalized. In this case, the inputs or data coming from Google Sheets (for example: a product name, image URL or clients name), that will be shown in the final generated video. Learn how to use, install and create a Sezion Video Template.

Video Title (optional):

The title for the video. Zapier gives you the option to insert a field coming from your Google Sheets. You can combines those fields with typed text. For example: Mike (“name” column in the worksheet), 2015 is a year full of challenges (typed text).

Video Description (optional):

Any information that will appear as a description for the video. As with the Video Title, Zapier gives you the option to insert one or several fields coming from Google Sheets. You can also combine fields from the worksheet and typed text.

We wrote an article about how to write effective YouTube description to improve SEO, so we got your back :-). Good video descriptions help your viewers understand what they’ll be watching and it gives search engines an overview of the video.

Dynamic Media (required):

Zapier, Dynamic Media from Sezion's personalized video template

Dynamic Media from Sezion’s personalized video template – Zapier

Every personalized video generated with Sezion has Dynamic media. Dynamic Media helps you create a batch of unique videos featuring text from a new spreadsheet row, CRM contact or WordPress post. If it’s an image, video or audio it has to be a URL. In the video example I only used one Dynamic Media: the name field from the spreadsheet, using the “insert field” option mentioned before.

Start using this Zap now, it’s free!

  1. Create a free Sezion account.
  2. Create a free Zapier free account.
  3. Create your first zap with Sezion.
  4. You’ll find Sezion in the “Action” site. You can now automatically generate videos based on real time data from Google Sheets.
Using Sezion services with Zapier takes up to 5 minutes. So what are you waiting for?
Please, share your ideas on how you would use Zapier to automatically generate videos from a spreadsheet!