Meet The New Wistia: We've Got Fresh Features and Improved Plans

Today, during our special live broadcast, Change the Channel, our co-founders announced that Wistia is going all-in on the new trend toward Brand Affinity Marketing. And now, we’re super excited to share all the updates and features we’ve added to our product to help businesses build stronger, more memorable brands. So, while we’ve kept all the features you already know and love, we’ve got a new streamlined look and more tools to help you grow your business.

Here’s a quick rundown before we get into the nitty-gritty details:

• Wistia Channels: We’ve updated the functionality to make Channels an even more engaging, binge-worthy format for your videos. When you move your videos from other streaming platforms to Wistia, you can ensure your viewers will never be distracted by annoying ads or content from the competition.
• Channel Subscribers: With this new feature, you can collect email addresses right from your Channel, and on our Pro and Advanced Plans, you can automatically schedule an email to notify them when new content is ready. Plus, we integrate with your favorite CRM so you can take full advantage of this valuable data.
• Custom Audiences: Ever wanted to target people on Facebook and Instagram based on how they’ve interacted with the videos on your site? Us, too! That’s why we’re super excited to release this feature that allows you to integrate your Wistia data with your Ads Manager so you can get hyper-focused with your social ad targeting and messaging.

Ready to learn more about the new features we’ve released and all the updates that are happening to your existing plan? Read on. (Spoiler alert: You’re getting more!).

Create captivating viewing experiences with Wistia Channels

We launched Wistia Channels back in February, and since then, we’ve added some super cool enhancements to better showcase your brand and encourage your viewers to watch more of your content. You can now upload your own logo — and if you plan on showing off your next video series — feature an enticing trailer to give viewers a sneak peek of what’s in store. The best part of all? Wistia Channels is now available to try on all plans!

With Wistia Channels, you can easily transform a collection of videos into a binge-watchable, TV-quality experience right on your site. Unlike uploading your content to third-party sites like YouTube, there’s no risk of your viewers being distracted by unwanted ads or related content served up by competitors. Once one video has finished playing, an “Up Next” auto-playing countdown will indicate that the next video is about to start, encouraging viewers to keep watching more. Oh, and it’s also super easy to set up — you can customize the look and feel of your Channel to match your brand with just a few clicks.

Already a Wistia customer? Wistia Channels is now available to try on all three plans:

• The Free Plan includes 1 Wistia Channel to share via public link
• The Pro Plan includes 1 Wistia Channel to share via public link
• The Advanced Plan includes multiple Wistia Channels with embedding on your website

Keep your audience watching more with Channel Subscribers

Once you have your content up and running on your Channel, it’s time to grow that fanbase of yours! With our new feature, Channel Subscribers, you can easily capture email addresses and schedule and send automatic, customizable email notifications to your subscriber list every time a new video is published — right from within Wistia.

Unlike YouTube subscribers and Facebook likes, your subscriber data is owned by you. How does it work? Simply add a “Subscribe for updates” button to your Channel and customize the Subscribe form by asking for a First and Last Name or just an email address. Easily sync your Subscribers with your marketing automation platform of choice to take full advantage of user-tracking and lead qualification tools, and boom — you’re ready to go!

With this feature, you can also send on-brand email notifications whenever you share new videos on your Channel without any extra design or development resources required. You can either automate your email notifications to coincide with new videos being published on your Channel or select a date and time in the future to send out your notification — the choice is yours!

Channel Subscribers is available on:

• The Free Plan with up to 250 Channel subscribers
• The Pro Plan with up to 250 Channel subscribers and email notifications to subscribers
• The Advanced Plan with more than 250 Channel subscribers and email notifications to subscribers

Drive the right viewers to your site with Custom Audiences

Once your Channel is up and running and you’re busy collecting subscribers, it’s time to find new audiences for your content and keep your current viewers coming back for more. With Custom Audiences, you can use viewer data from individual videos on your site or in your Wistia Channel to get super focused with the targeting and messaging for your ads on Facebook and Instagram. To put it simply, you can now retarget viewers with ads based on how engaged they are with the videos on your site, and even find new audiences based on what your current viewers look like.

Take advantage of our suggested audiences and target certain subsets of viewers, like those who have watched more than one video or at least 50% of another. Then, head over to Facebook to see your audiences displayed in your Ads Manager. Then, get ready to start sending better, more targeted ads!

Custom Audiences is currently available on:

• The Advanced Plan

Get in touch with us to learn more about this exciting feature and how it all works.

Put your videos to the test with A/B Testing

Last but not least, we’re opening up our A/B Testing feature to be available on our Free, Pro, and Advanced plans! Put any two video customizations to the test on your site to see which one drives better viewer engagement and discover what resonates most with your audience through our powerful, built-in analytics.

Marketers can now easily see how their content is performing, and discover if one video, customization, or type of content attracts more clicks than another, and much more. The testing possibilities are endless!

A/B testing is available on:

• The Free Plan
• The Pro Plan
• The Advanced Plan

Tools to help you build a well-loved brand

We’re so excited about all the new features and updates to our plans that we’ve been able to share with you today, and hope you’re just as pumped about it as we are! When it comes to making it easier for marketers to be successful with Brand Affinity Marketing, this is just the beginning. We’ve got a bunch of other features up our sleeves that we can’t wait to share with you soon.

In the meantime, be sure to join us for a live discussion about these new features and how to get the most out of them next Tuesday, October 15 at 2 p.m. ET. Save your spot and come prepared with questions and comments, or just tune in to hear what other folks are curious to learn more about!

As always, we’d love to hear from you about how you’re using these new features to grow your brand and your business, so be sure to share your successes, failures, and more with us in the comments below.