Have you been wondering how to send a video by text?
If so, you have come to the right place. In this post, we are going to discuss how you can send a video by text and better connect with your prospects and customers. Whether you are a solopreneur, a sales professional, or a CMO at a large corporation, you can use the tips and tricks in this post to better connect with your intended audience.
Table of Contents
The Power of SMS Messages
The Key When You Send a Video By Text
Why You Should Embrace Conversational Marketing
How to Send a Video By Text: Some Best Practices
Use Two-Way SMS Programs
Lead With Value
Use Video Landing Pages
Consider Adding an Image
Embrace Tracking and Analytics
Leverage Conversational AI
How to Send a Video By Text With Dubb
Building Strong, Real Relationships
The Power of SMS Messages
SMS messages (commonly known as text messages) are some of the most effective ways of connecting with people.
The reasons are quite obvious. All of us have a phone in our pockets or purses. It is our preferred way to communicate with friends and family.
All we need to do is look at some statistics. On average, we spend about four hours and 25 minutes on our phones per day. The average person sends and receives more than 85 texts each and every day. From a sales perspective, one study showed that the average click-through rate for SMS campaigns was more than 36% higher than for email, social media, or display ads.
Simply put, SMS messages are ubiquitous in our personal lives. And in our professional lives? They can be just the things you need to build stronger relationships with prospects and generate more sales.
Granted, you don’t have to solely rely on SMS marketing. It can be part of a broader marketing strategy that
The Key When You Send a Video By Text
When we are talking about how to send a video by text, it’s inevitable to take a granular approach. Before we do this, however, I want to mention one specific key that you will want to keep in mind.
Specifically, I’m talking about the value of brevity. The last thing that people want to receive is a lengthy text message. Who wants to read that much information? But not only that, your carrier (or the recipient’s carrier) may actually block your text message. Even if you wrote the best possible SMS message, all of your work could be for naught.
So what can you do instead? You can embrace conciseness. You can do everything you can to make your text messages as short and impactful as possible. While I’m not saying that you need to be overly short or compact in your text messages, I encourage you to be as concise as you can be. By embracing brevity and including as much value as possible in your text messages, you’ll find that your audience members will thank you.
Why You Should Embrace Conversational Marketing
When you are thinking about how to send a video by text, you’ll always need to think about how you are going to embrace conversational marketing.
If you haven’t yet heard of the idea, conversational marketing is the idea of your message not being a single, silver-bullet message that will drive a conversion. Rather, it’s the idea of engaging with the other person on a human level. It’s about asking innocuous, value-oriented questions to both (1) engage with them and (2) understand if they are fit for your product, service, and/or company.
Ultimately, you want to see if they are qualified for what you are selling. You want to do so, however, in a way that doesn’t appear too salesy at the beginning. For instance, it’s not a great idea to send a single text message blast with a link. Sure, you may get some people to click on the link and check it out. That said, you probably aren’t going to build long-term relationships with these individuals. Your audience isn’t going to all click on the link, purchase your product or service, and help you get rich overnight.
Remember that you are building a relationship. You must be patient when engaging with your audience members. You must ask them several qualifying questions to determine if you can even help them. When you gauge that they are interested, you can then send them a link about your product, service, and/or company.
How to Send a Video By Text: Some Best Practices
With this background in mind, let’s now talk about how to send a video by text.
Use Two-Way SMS Programs
One of the first things that you’ll need to do is ensure that you are using two-way SMS. Before you send your first text message, you need to confirm that your software lets you send and receive text messages.
This is a critical point. There are plenty of services out there that let you send one-way SMS messages. While this may be useful in some circumstances, it is much less useful in the sales and marketing context. If an individual responds to your text with a question, for instance, you won’t be able to see that question. Therefore, you won’t be able to advance the relationship. That text message will go into the ether and result in a damaged brand.
An important note here. If you do use a one-way SMS program, two words that won’t be ignored are “stop” and “unsubscribe.” This exists at the service provider level, so you won’t keep texting individuals if they use one of these words.
But that is assuming that you are using a one-way SMS program. In the end, make sure that you are choosing a provider that offers two-way SMS. This means that you’ll be able to have real conversations with your audience members and get them that much closer to a sale.
Lead With Value
This is a key principle whenever you are creating content for any sort of audience. Whether the audience member just heard about your business or is this close to purchasing your product or service, you want your video text messages to be full of value.
Value can mean many different things. For instance, it can be sharing your thoughts on recent industry news. It can be showing off a new feature for your digital product or service. It can even be an entertaining catch-up video with a key prospect.
Whatever you choose, make sure that your video text message is packed with as much value as possible. You will make your audience members happier and get that much closer to making a sale.
Use Video Landing Pages
Now, I want to talk about one of the most important parts of how to send a video by text. It centers on video landing pages.
But let’s take one step back. What are video landing pages?
Essentially, video landing pages are central hubs for each of your videos. On your video landing pages, you will have your specific video prominently displayed and then a series of call to action buttons below the video.
Call to action buttons are what make video landing pages shine. They lead your prospects from point A to point B. Once your prospect clicks open the video link in your text, they will arrive on the video landing page. Once they watch the video, they can click on one of the call to action buttons and learn more about your company.
There are plenty of different call to action buttons that you can use. Some of them include:
- Scheduling a call on your calendar: This is a great way for your audience members to get in touch with your company. After viewing your video text, they can quickly find an available time on your calendar and book a time to speak with you. It’s a great way to find new leads and introduce them to your company.
- Completing a form: If you want to learn more about your audience members, this is a good call to action choice. You can include any type of field that you would want. To entice viewers to complete the form, I recommend you offer some type of lead magnet (like a free eBook). It lets you offer value upfront and get the viewer’s information in return.
- Replying with video: This is one of our favorite calls to action. Here, you can have your viewer reply to your text video with a video of their own. This is an easy way for your viewer to respond and it helps you gather video testimonials (which are fantastic forms of social proof).
- Visit a website: You can program a call to action button to have the user visit virtually any website that you want. This is the most versatile call to action option and one that you should consider using.
- Make a purchase: This is a call to action option that we all like. You can program a button to lead your viewer to a purchase page. While this is a more enticing call to action option for those at the bottom of your sales funnels, it can also work for other prospects.
Video landing pages with strong call to action options can be a game-changer for your text videos. I wholeheartedly recommend that you use both of them when you are sending a video by text.
Consider Adding an Image
One thing that you may want to consider when sending a video SMS is including an image in your text message. This can include things like still images, animated GIFs, or any other image that conveys some sort of value. An image is yet another way to show how your video is going to create some type of value in the viewer’s life.
A key warning here, however. You may not want to include an image in the first text that you send to a prospect. The block could come from the carrier itself or your recipient may decide to immediately block further messages from you.
So what can you do? I recommend that you ask for permission before sending an image to your recipient. This may seem strange, but it is a good practice of permission-based marketing. Sure, you may get fewer clicks or views if you ask permission from your recipients. It may hit your ego. But at the same time, your conversions will be higher.
Embrace Tracking and Analytics
Tracking is an important part of creating any type of digital content. Whether you are creating a blog post, video, podcast, or something else, you’ll want to see how your audience is reacting to your content.
As you can guess, tracking is an important part of how to send a video by text. After all, if you don’t know how your audience is reacting to your SMS messages, you won’t be able to send more effective messages to future prospects and audience members.
Ultimately, you will want to know who is opening your messages, clicking on your links, watching your videos, and interacting with your call to action buttons. This is why you want to invest in a video text messaging platform that offers both macro and micro analytics. You’ll want to get a good look at how your video texts are performing with your audience at large and with individual prospects and audience members. This data will help you better interact with both cohorts and help you get closer to more sales.
We also recommend that you have a specific URL for each of your recipients. This is yet another way that you can see how individual prospects are interacting with your text messages. When you are shopping for video text message platforms, don’t hesitate to look for this option. It can help you better track your audience members and help you save time.
Leverage Conversational AI
I wanted to wrap up this section by talking about the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Artificial intelligence is one of the most innovative technologies available today. We are still in the early innings of this technology, yet it is already making substantial improvements in our personal and professional lives.
Conversational AI is especially powerful today. As you probably already know, it comes in the form of a bot that converses like a human. That bot tries to solve common problems that humans experience in their lives. This technology isn’t impossible to implement, but not everyone can build a conversational AI SMS platform. The goal is to broadcast a single message, ask a question, and then manually respond on an extremely personalized basis.
Ultimately, you want your first question to come off as human. This is extremely important because your audience, in all likelihood, isn’t going to spend much time chatting with a bot that actually acts like a robot. You want to craft an opening question to be as human as possible.
For instance, let’s assume you are in the advertising business. You can have the bot say something like, “Hi Suzy, how is your advertising going at company X?” (company X would obviously be Suzy’s actual company). Or you could ask something like, “Have you tried this new type of conversion-focused advertising to get more clients for your business?”
Essentially, what you want to do is set up a hook question that entices them into responding to your text message. Once they do, you can expand the conversation. As you start to learn what they need and what their priorities are, you can better tailor the conversation and better gauge whether you should actively pitch them on your product or service.
Remember: the last thing you want to do is pitch your audience members too early on. Doing so will likely turn them off and kill any chance of making a sale.
If you ask qualifying questions, you will get qualifying answers. By incorporating the human element into your conversations, you will be that much closer to developing real relationships with your audience members.
In the end, the technology is getting better. Chatbots are getting smarter. No matter the platform you are considering, make sure that you are leveraging AI that is as human-like as possible. This may require you to try out a few different AI tools, but experimenting at this stage is worth it.
How to Send a Video By Text With Dubb
By now, you have seen some first principles and tips on how to send a video by text. The great news is that it doesn’t have to be that difficult. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a technical person, you can use so many of the available tools and platforms to help you send your text videos.
For instance, let’s talk about Dubb. Dubb is a video communications platform that can help you converse, connect, and convert your audience members. As a Dubb user, you get to leverage all kinds of tools including the Dubb mobile app, Dubb’s AI assistant IRA, and more.
But for the purposes of this conversation, let’s talk about how to send a video by text with Dubb.
You can send videos through SMS or text message by using the Dubb Android or iOS mobile app. As a reminder, you can find it here.
First, download and install the app, then log in to your account.
If you don’t already have an account, we recommend signing up for an account on dubb.com through a browser either on your mobile device or computer.
Now, here is a video tutorial for sending a Dubb video via SMS / text message:
After you have logged in, click the thumbnail of the video you want to share through SMS.
Next, click the paper airplane icon for sharing option and choose the appropriate SMS / text message application, select the contact you want to send to, and then send the SMS.
As a reminder, videos sent through SMS will direct viewers to the video landing page. Further, all data tracking will work in the same way as it does when you send a video through email.
Building Strong, Real Relationships
One of the coolest things about sending videos by text is that it can be the catalyst for strong long-term relationships with people. Sure, you need to tactfully approach text message conversations. Like I mentioned above, you don’t want to be overly spammy.
But assuming that you are approaching this from a value-first perspective, you will quickly find that sending videos by text can be a fantastic way to grow your business. It helps you nurture new prospects, show how your product or service can change their lives, and help you generate more sales.
We started this conversation with the question of how to send a video by text. Hopefully, by now, you can see how straightforward it is. Ultimately, the future is there for the taking.
If you have any questions or want to learn more about how to send a video by text, I encourage you to contact us. You can also click here to sign up for a free 14-day trial of Dubb’s premium plans.
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