• by Jess Nelson , June 1, 2016

Salesforce continues to roll out new product integrations to expand its cloud partner ecosystem, unveiling a formal integration with video platform Wistia on Wednesday that leverages video content as a B2B sales and marketing tool.

Wistia provides a video hosting and analytics platform that empowers marketers to track Web video viewers and rate their level of engagement. Wistia customers can measure the success of an individual’s viewing session, as well as gain valuable customer insights including geographic location, organization and IP address.

With Wistia’s integration into the Salesforce cloud partner ecosystem, businesses can now capture and increase leads by leveraging video as a sales solution. Triggered workflows notify sales representatives once a prospect has watched an entire video, spurring further personalized marketing outreach with ongoing new material

In addition, video engagement analytics and customer behavior history help Wistia customers identify which prospects are most engaged and likely to convert to a sale.

“As more businesses adopt video, they see the power it has to connect people," says Chris Savage, chief executive officer and cofounder of Wistia. "Making businesses more human and authentic reaches far beyond just marketing to training, support, hiring and -- critically, in regard to today’s announcement -- sales. With this integration, we’re making it possible for sales teams to use video data to drive valuable conversations and close more deals.”

Wistia for Salesforce also features an easy-to-use interface for video integration into email marketing newsletters. The company provides a host of email marketing templates that can be easily expanded with video content, such as product videos, demos and personalized video voice mails.

Video is a powerful addition to email marketing campaigns, and studies point to video’s relationship to increased customer engagement. Email click-through rates increase by an average of 200% to 300% when a video is included in an email, according to Forrester, and a study by Eloqua pointed to a 75% decrease in email unsubscribes when a video was included in a welcome email.