Why and how to fully customize all your video call links

What do your video calling invites look like? When you reach out to someone, are your meeting links a bunch of numbers? Like this:

Even company-branded links get clunky. Despite a company subdomain, the specific meeting rooms you and your teammates set up are not branded, or personal:

It’s an odd detail how out of step video calls links are with today’s emphasis on branding, design, and customer engagement. Whether you’re a business always working to be both buttoned up and welcoming to customers, or you’re developing your own personal brand, your brand and design matter.

“Branding” sometimes gets confused with big (or inauthentic) spending. In 2016 companies in the US alone spent $600 billion on branding, per the Association of National Advertisers.

Yet an effective brand isn’t about a big ad spend. Michael Eisner, who as CEO of Disney was steward of a truly iconic brand, once said:

“A brand is the product of a thousand small gestures.”

It’s knowing who you are, and infusing your work with your values.

Building brand, with purpose and details

Our own customers enact their mission every day. They’re startups, SMBs, creatives, remotes, and customer-focused teams who bring a sense of purpose to their work. They’re interested in building great products, and providing a great experience for their customers.

They’re attentive to the details, whether in responding to customers or in executing their product vision.

They go out of their way, for even small details to truly reflect who they are.

Your invite on a calendar should reflect you

Our team at Daily.co makes a new kind of video calling. When we relaunched our free service last year, we looked at why our users do video calls, and how we could give them the best possible tool.

One key aspect of video calls, for SMBs and startups, is the personal connection. On every call, you’re connecting and representing yourself and your work. For example, if you’re talking with a prospective customer, you get the chance to make your own case on a video call. Doesn’t matter how much a competitor is spending on advertising. The meeting can be your chance to close the deal.

It’s odd then, that video calling links can be so impersonal. Often off-brand, and regularly clunky.

Simply, when guests look at their calendar, at a link you send them, your links should reflect you:

• You should be able to brand and customize your link
• Your link should sound human. No odd numbers (unless you specify that!)
• If you’re on a team, teammates should be able to customize links, on the company brand. No sticking teammates with numerical strings.

So here’s what we built

We started with the idea that your Daily.co video calling links are fully customized. Both subdomain and room. So you’re on-brand. Your links are more personal and friendly.

• What this means is solo entrepreneurs can fully customize links
• For teams, colleagues can have their own personalized links on the company subdomain

If you’d like to see the whole setup now, this video clip shows how quick the whole process is, for free:

Easier, on brand, and more effective

For more background: At Daily.co, our goal is to make video calling an easier, better experience. (Our background in video conferencing goes back many years, designing new tools for Fortune 100 companies.) Using new tech and emphasizing design, we’ve built much simpler, more personal calls.

Daily.co is the only 1-click video calls with 50 people, free dial-in and team locks. It’s entirely free in your Chrome browser. (We also make a hardware product, Daily.co TV. Previously, our team was known as Pluot.)

When we started designing Daily.co, our software already was easier and faster as 1-click. But we felt invites weren’t just about fast links. We wanted Daily.co to tap into that key strength of video calling, of a personal connection.

The whole personalization flow also had to be effective. We knew we had to avoid key pitfalls:

• Too expensive
• Hard to set up
• Disorganized

Too expensive is pretty obvious. We also didn’t want users to have to download or install anything. Not only do you just click to join calls in Daily.co, you also can create and customize links in seconds. There’s no puzzling software.

Finally, we wanted to provide a solution that grows with our users. As neat as one personal URL is, that quickly breaks down, especially in a team setting. Many companies opt to brand their subdomain for video calls. As important as company branding is, so is supporting the work of everyone on the team. It’s frustrating to have to share one company link. It’s counterproductive if your specific meeting room on the company link is a bunch of numbers.

Takeaway:

Teammates should get their own links. No more random links. And no more sharing links.

Why you personalize your links

With Daily.co, you set up your own custom subdomain, and then you can create unlimited custom links on that subdomain. Use cases include sales demos, user interviews, team meetings, and more:

• For example, the design lead at an SF startup has his own URL. When he interviews customers for input
  https://your-team.daily.co/design
• At another company, a customer support teammate takes a different approach. She sets up her own URL, and then personalizes meeting rooms for customers.
  https://name.daily.co/customer-name

The easy signup flow

Again, here’s the video clip that walks through a signup. Here’s the signup, in 3 easy pics:

Step 1: Sign in with Google or email

Go to Daily.co and sign up with any email, or your Google login.

Step 2: Name your subdomain

Step 3: Name specific meeting rooms

In your dashboard, simply add and customize a meeting room link.

Example: For a sales demo, create a room like “hello-customer” or “welcome-board”

Option: Invite teammates

Simply send your team link, to invite colleagues to your team. Authorized teammates then can create meeting rooms on the URL.

Here’s to making video calling better, in every way

What we’re excited to support, with Daily.co personalization, is a tool that helps you represent yourself, and your work, more effectively. What we aim for is making your calls better, down to the details.

Cheers, and here’s to simpler, more personal video calls!