Have you and your colleagues been searching for an easy way to leverage video email marketing for sales in your business? If so, you are definitely on the right track. While video email marketing is powerful in and of itself, it can be especially powerful if you are using it in a sales context. Through the power of video email marketing, you can move your prospects from the top of your sales funnel to the bottom of your sales funnel. You can ultimately increase your conversion rate and hit the sales targets that you have been trying to hit.
For these reasons, video email marketing for sales can be tremendously exciting. Yet for all of this excitement, it can be intimidating to get started. You may not know how you can get started and save some valuable time in the process. Even if you have already started, you may be looking for more ways to efficiently execute your video email marketing for sales strategy.
Because of this, I have several objectives in this post. I’ll be talking about some really important topics related to video email marketing for sales. Those topics include how you can create videos, how you can share videos, and then how you can take advantage of data to better understand how you can optimize the entire process. At the end of this post, you will have a great idea of what video email marketing for sales is and how you can leverage it in your organization.
This is a really important topic, so I’m excited that you’re here. Let’s get right into it.
Table of Contents
Breaking The Invisible Wall Between Sales and Marketing
What Is Video Email Marketing?
So Why Should I Use Email in Video Marketing?
Studies Show That It Is Effective
The Types of Videos That You Can Create
Focusing on Optimizing the Email Campaign Funnel
Ways to Distribute Your Videos
Using an Existing System with Dubb
If You Don’t Already Have an Existing System
Embrace the Power of Automation
Some First Principles to Keep in Mind
Focus on Creating Value For Your Audience
Don’t Hesitate to Outline or Write a Script
Make the Most of Your Video Landing Pages
Perfection is the Enemy of Progress
How Dubb Can Help You With Your Video Email Marketing Work
Dubb’s Chrome Extension and Mobile App
Breaking The Invisible Wall Between Sales and Marketing
Before getting into some of the nitty-gritty details on how to leverage video email marketing for sales, I want to briefly discuss a problem that tends to occur in all types of organizations. That problem has to do with an invisible wall.
Historically, there has been an invisible wall between sales and marketing departments. This is especially true in larger companies or organizations. The wall causes poor communication and even some resentment between individuals in both departments. Whether it is due to fierce competitiveness, ego, or something else, this invisible wall is a real thing that affects the day-to-day operations of your company.
Ultimately, this type of invisible wall is really unfortunate. At the end of the day, we are all on the same team. We have the same goals. This wall, however, slows us down. It makes it much more difficult for the sales team and marketing team to work together to help the company grow.
If you really look at it, the sales and marketing departments have the same overarching goals. Those goals are to help the business grow. Whether that comes in the form of more sales, more brand awareness, or something else, growth is the name of the game.
This is especially true when talking about video email marketing for sales. Technology plays a large role in breaking down that invisible wall. In fact, technology creates more alignment between the sales and marketing teams. Now, both sales and marketing departments can work together to understand the customer journey. This is true on both a one-to-one basis and on an aggregate basis.
By leveraging the power of technology, both sales and marketing teams can make better decisions. They can better determine how to move prospects down their pipelines and generate more sales. In the end, it helps any sales and marketing department more closely collaborate. It helps them more efficiently accomplish their goals. And ultimately, technology helps their business achieve the growth that it desires.
I encourage you to keep this in mind when you are thinking about video email marketing for sales. On one hand, there may be this invisible wall that is preventing your current sales and marketing departments from properly collaborating. But on the other hand, you can rely on technology to bridge this gap. A tool like Dubb, for instance, provides your sales and marketing departments with a wealth of tools to leverage video email marketing for sales. Whether you use some or all of those tools, you can rely on Dubb to break through this invisible wall and help your colleagues effectively collaborate.
What Is Video Email Marketing?
With this understanding, I’d like to take a brief step back. If you are brand new to video email marketing, I think it’s crucial to have a baseline definition of what it is. By ensuring that we are all on the same page, we can more easily talk about strategies and ways that you can incorporate video email marketing for sales into your overall sales process.
Simply put, video email marketing occurs when there is an email that uses video technology. It seems simple enough, right? While on the surface it seems simple, there is a key caveat here. Not all video email marketing efforts are created equal.
To illustrate this, let’s look through a few examples. One of the most primitive ways to leverage video email marketing is through an attachment. Specifically, what some people do is create a video message, include any text as necessary, address that email message to the intended recipients, and then attach the video to the email.
Ultimately, we at Dubb would give this strategy an “F.” Why, you may ask? This method of video email distribution will likely fail because of size limits. Whether it is your inbox or your recipients’ inboxes, you are taking a substantial risk that your video email won’t be delivered. Even if you created the best video known to man, your work may be all for naught because of a simple distribution problem. This is why we at Dubb do not recommend that you attach videos to your email messages. Not only do you run the risk of a rejection or bounceback, but the experience is less than ideal for your viewers.
Instead of that, you can use higher-end video email technology. As I will describe later in this post, Dubb is a fantastic tool for all of your video email marketing needs. Video email marketing, in its most basic form, is about sending videos through email. However, the term also includes things like automations, sequencing, drip sequences, campaigns, and more. You can find all of those on the Dubb platform. Ultimately, all of these terminologies represent the same thing. That is a series of emails, bulk emails, or a combination of both based on opportunities or timing. So considering that, video email marketing is the ability to leverage video and the data that it provides to drive your email marketing efforts.
So Why Should I Use Email in Video Marketing?
With that baseline in mind, let’s talk about another foundational concept. There is video marketing and then there is video email marketing. Video marketing itself can be done in so many ways, whether you are engaging with your audiences through a television ad, an organic video that you posted on Facebook, or something else.
That said, this post is about video email marketing. So what is it about email that makes it so valuable for our video marketing work? I think it comes down to engagement, comprehension, and conversions.
Ultimately, using video in email marketing is a relatively new thing. Email marketing has traditionally been all about text. That strategy has worked. By writing valuable email content and consistently delivering that valuable content to your audience, you could build a tribe and generate more sales.
Typically, we think of email marketing as something like this. We craft a nicely designed email and broadcast that email to a large audience. In the end, we want to get some sort of conversion at the end of the process. While it may take some time, it is certainly possible if you are sending a text-based email.
But this post is about video email marketing. The great news for you is that video has the potential to amplify the results. Why is that? There are a few reasons.
The Power of Visuals
First, video is a visual method. This is crucial. When humans process visuals, we can do it at a rate of 60,000 times faster than what we do with text. Much of this comes from our evolutionary background. On the savannah, we needed to process visuals at an extremely fast rate for our survival. Out of the corner of our eyes, there could be a hungry predator that is racing toward us. We didn’t need to read text in those times. Instead, we needed to ensure that we could run or fight when we had to.
Even though these skills were valuable for our survival thousands of years ago, you can leverage those skills when selling your product or service. From a comprehension and efficiency standpoint, when someone is watching a video, they will retain more. Whatever problem that your product or service is addressing, they will remember that your product or service can add value. This, thereby, makes it more likely that your viewers become paying customers.
Seeing is Believing
The second reason is that seeing is believing. It makes sense, right? When we see things on video, they become so much more real. This is true of everything from the latest nature documentary on Discovery Channel to seeing your product or service in action. Moreover, it is really difficult to fake things in video. If a customer really isn’t satisfied with your product or service but speaks highly of it, your viewer is going to notice. Your viewer will call BS on that testimonial, which will make it much harder to change their mind and convert them into a customer.
However, if you do have a happy customer speaking about your product or service, that satisfied customer’s words will be an incredibly valuable asset. Your audience will recognize that she is telling the truth and that they should take a closer look at your product or service. When people see these types of things, it becomes social proof. Your audience can picture themselves succeeding with your product or service.
There is a key caveat here, however. In the early days of video email marketing, it may be challenging to get people to watch your video content. However, you need to stay patient and stick with it. Once your audience starts to make a connection with your value proposition, you will see some positive results. Those results will include things like increased comprehension rates and conversion rates. It all comes from familiarity, trust, and repetition. If your audience sees you and your company as credible communicators who consistently add value, they will be much more inclined to follow you.
Studies Show That It Is Effective
Finally, one main reason to combine video and email marketing is that it is shown to be effective. While we can cite things like humans’ natural tendency to favor visuals, companies like HubSpot and Campaign Monitor have orchestrated more formal studies on the power of video in email marketing.
The results are extremely positive. There are several studies out there that are particularly insightful. For instance, some studies have shown that by including the word “video” in your email subject line, you will get a significant boost in your email open rates. This is with nothing else on your end.
Think about it: video is so powerful that just including that one word will make it more likely for your audience members to open your message. Because your audience members likely don’t receive too many video emails, the fact that you are sending a video email, whether it is personalized or not, will certainly attract their attention.
Now, if you are looking at the clickthrough rates on your actual emails themselves, you will find that these numbers are all over the place. Even HubSpot claims that there is an increase as high as 300% on landing pages and campaigns containing videos versus those that don’t contain videos. This is an increase of four times simply because a video was included in the email. No matter what industry or sector that we’re in, these numbers are extremely attractive. They can make the difference between hitting and missing our sales goals for the year.
So essentially, the lift in engagement on opens, clickthrough rates, comprehension, understanding, and efficiency in communicating that information is all found in video. Combined, all of these elements can significantly increase the conversion rates of email marketing campaigns.
The Types of Videos That You Can Create
To this point, we have discussed what video marketing is and why video is so crucial for your email marketing campaigns. Whether you are running your first email marketing campaign or are looking for ways to accelerate your email marketing work, you can rely on video to get the job done.
Now, I want to shift gears and speak about the types of videos that you can create when leveraging video email marketing for sales. This is one of the topics that generate a lot of discussion. After all, you may understand why video is so powerful in your video marketing campaigns. That said, you may not know how to get started. Specifically, you may not recognize the types of videos that you can create.
Ultimately, there are a number of different formats that you can select. I just want to discuss a few here. Rest assured, however, that if you don’t like any of these formats, there likely is a format out there for you. Better yet, you can create your own format. Whatever it is, make sure that you are leveraging a video format that both speaks to your strengths and that interests your audience. Through that combination, you will find something that works for you.
Explainer Videos
An explainer video is one of the most valuable types of video in video email marketing. If you are trying to drum up business and bring in new clientele to your audience, an explainer video can be perfect for you.
In these types of situations, your audience may not yet know who you are. They don’t know what your product, service, or partnership is about. Sure, they may have gotten a recommendation or tip from a friend or colleague. Nevertheless, they are coming to your business with a blank slate (or near blank slate).
Truthfully, there is no easier way to explain the value proposition of your business than through video. Including explainer videos in your email marketing allows recipients of your messages to increase their comprehension and shorten the sales cycle. By doing these things, you can drive more conversions and generate more sales.
Explainer videos can be just a few minutes long. They can explain the problem you’re addressing and how your product or service actually addresses that problem. Compared to other types of videos, this can be a higher-level type of video. You don’t need to go into all of the details here. The overall objective is to explain your business’s value proposition and introduce your cold prospects to your company. From there, you can incorporate other methods, including sales calls or even more video email messages, to move those prospects down your sales funnel.
Product Demonstration Videos
Product demonstration videos have some resemblances to explainer videos. That being said, they are more granular than explainer videos. This is where you can explain some of the specifics about how your product or service works.
In product demonstration videos, you can provide all of the highlights and value of your product or service. You can explain how those specifics are going to benefit your viewers and customers. By doing this, your viewers are going to easily and efficiently understand the details in video form. While this happens, you are both building trust and saving time.
An example is helpful here. Let’s say that you have developed a new piece of software that makes it easier for users to purchase non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This is an important launch for your company, so you want to make sure that your audience, which includes prospects and current users, understands its value. To do so, you create a product demonstration video for your software. The video not only explains what this new product actually does, but it shows the product in action. Viewers see how easy it is to purchase NFTs and you explain how they can access the new software. Ultimately, a product demonstration video is a great use for this purpose, as it lets the viewer see exactly how that new piece of software is going to improve their lives.
Whether your product is physical in nature, a service, or software, video lets you explain the value much more easily than text. It is also more efficient than explaining that product on pages with images. They say that a picture says 1,000 words. Where does that leave video, then? Ultimately, it leaves you and your colleagues in a much better position to demonstrate your product or service to your audience.
Tutorial Videos
I want to touch on another great video that you can include in your video email marketing work. That format is the tutorial video. Tutorial videos can be great resources for current customers or prospects that are much further along in your sales pipeline.
At this point, you likely have your prospect introduced to your company. You have explained your product or service and shown how it can create massive value in their personal or professional lives. That individual may have already seen a product demonstration video that you sent to them in an email. That product demonstration may have really gotten their wheels turning. They are interested in learning a lot more about that product.
In this sort of situation, a tutorial video is a great choice. In a tutorial video, you get to actually show your audience how they can get their hands on your product or service. You show them how your product or service really works. Not only that, but you show them how your product or service is going to specifically benefit them.
You may be wondering what the difference is between a product demonstration video and a tutorial video. Really, a tutorial video is a step beyond your generic explanation. While a product demonstration video may go into some of the ways that potential users can use your product, your tutorial video is more comprehensive. It is about how your product, service, or partnership is actually going to operate. No detail is too slight here. If you need to share a specific nuance of getting the most out of your product or service, now is the time to share it. =
Ultimately, tutorial videos easily enable you to engage with your clients. They help you continue to build trust with them. You can keep nurturing that relationship—all while saving time. While it may take some time to make tutorial videos (as they tend to be lengthier than others on this list), the time investment is absolutely worth it.
Client Testimonials
This is my favorite type of video when you are leveraging video email marketing for sales. Client testimonial videos are so special because they are the most valid form of social proof. I spoke about that above.
Social proof is a huge part of a great marketing strategy. After all, it’s not about what we say about our product, service, or partnership. Our audiences intuitively understand that we are inherently biased. While we may be saying things that are factually accurate, our audiences still may not fully trust us. However, if there is another person that is speaking highly about our product, service, or partnership, our audiences’ ears will perk up. They will find that opinion to be credible and will likely do some digging of their own. In effect, when leveraging client testimonials, we are borrowing the credibility of some of our most satisfied customers.
Client testimonials are about the success that others have experienced, yet we can rely on those successes to achieve our own successes. When somebody decides to make a client testimonial video for you and your business, it means that they are willing to put their reputation on the line to support you.
This is a really big deal, so you shouldn’t take it lightly. Simply put, many people prefer their privacy over doing a good deed for any type of business. Prospects and potential customers also recognize this. When they watch that testimonial, therefore, the message will really stick. It really sticks.
There is a key reality with client testimonial videos, however. That reality? It all comes down to asking those satisfied clients for a testimonial. Quite often, our clients at Dubb will say, “Yes, I am happy to do a testimonial video. I can do it by myself on my phone or in a studio environment.” That being said, we don’t have a 100% hit rate. There may be times where there is an extremely satisfied customer, yet he or she may not feel comfortable publicly endorsing your company, product, or service. If that happens to you, there’s no need to worry. You can simply thank that customer for their business and continue working to find other customers that are interested in recording testimonial videos.
More times than not, you have to continue to follow up. You need to ask them to get the job done, even if it takes a few days or a few weeks. That said, there is also a fine line here. You don’t want to follow up too much so that you become annoying. Your customers have their own busy lives, so they likely aren’t ghosting you. In the end, there is a fine line here. You want to follow up enough that you will get that customer to actually send you their video testimonial. However, you don’t want to follow up so much that you turn them off. You’ll have to exercise your discretion here.
Just remember: chances are that if you change your customers’ lives in a positive way, your customers will want to reciprocate. They will want to give you that testimonial video. As you start to collect more and more testimonial videos, you can start to publish those videos on your website. You can do so many different things with them. For instance, you can make your testimonial videos industry-specific or demographics-specific. You can even edit those testimonial videos into a larger, more comprehensive testimonial video. You can also reverse it by taking clips from your individual testimonials and incorporate them into all of your other types of videos. By doing this, your viewers can get those indications of social proof. They can see that your customers are getting success and getting results.
There’s one more important point about testimonial videos here. Traditionally, it has actually been quite difficult to capture video testimonials of clients. In the past, we would have to have some type of videographer to help us shoot the testimonial. If we didn’t want to do this (or didn’t have the budget to hire a videographer), we would then have to go to the client. Once we arrived at the client’s location, we would have to meet with him or her, set up some type of equipment, and jump through many other hoops to actually get the testimonial. It could have been an extremely large production.
Luckily, that isn’t the only option anymore. Using a tool like Dubb, you can simplify the work and effort involved in getting testimonial videos. We have made the process much easier. In fact, one simple click lets your customers record a video themselves. They can do this from their cell phone, desktop, or wherever they are. This is called our “reply with video” call to action (CTA) and I will discuss it in more detail below. However, rest assured that if your viewer or customer wants to quickly record a video testimonial, they can do it by using Dubb. Once you have that video testimonial, you can then post it on your website, share it with others, or send it through your video email marketing campaigns.
The Call to Action
As you can see, there are plenty of different videos that you can use in your video email marketing for sales work. Whether you are creating video content for the first time or are looking for new video content ideas, you can rely on the formats above to create awesome videos for your audiences.
At this point in the post, I want to briefly discuss one of the most important parts of video email marketing for sales. It is called a call to action. Labeled CTA for short, a call to action is an extremely powerful tool that can help you generate more sales.
To better understand the power of CTAs, it is critical to understand what they are. You may already know what they are from your current sales and marketing work. However, if you don’t, CTAs are tools that instruct your audience members to take some type of action.
The Funnel of Email Campaigns
Let’s talk about it in the email marketing context. Once people receive your email, check it out, and watch the video that you have included, you will need to make a choice. What do you want them to do? What’s the next step that they can take?
At Dubb, we always recommend thinking of an email campaign like a miniature funnel. The funnel starts with deliverability. By this, I mean getting that initial email into people’s inboxes. Without this step, it doesn’t matter how well designed your email campaign is. Your work will be for naught unless you can get that first message into their inboxes.
But once you get past this step, the goal is to get an email open. Email opens can be difficult to get. After all, our inboxes are constantly flooded with both relevant email messages and not-so-relevant email messages. It can be difficult to break through the noise and have your message stand out—no matter how valuable it is. Using tools like Dubb, you can definitely increase your open rates. However, it is constantly a battle, so you will need to consistently monitor and tweak your email campaigns to increase your open rates.
The funnel then proceeds to the reading of the email. Clearly, you want your audience members to read the text that you include in your email message. The text doesn’t need to be overly intricate or long. In fact, some of the best video email messages have little text and direct the audience’s attention to the video itself. In any event, once your audience members open your email, you want them to view the text that you have included within the email itself.
From there, we want our audience members to click on a link or button within the email. We don’t just want our audience members to read the email’s text and move on with their lives. We want them to take some sort of action—specifically viewing your video message. To do so, they will have to click on a link or button, as it isn’t possible to view a video within a specific email message. Your audience will need to take some sort of action to view your video content. It is important to keep this in mind as you are communicating with your audiences.
Assuming that your audience members click on the button or link, however, they will visit a video landing page. At Dubb, we call them Dubb Action Pages. Video landing pages are powerful for so many reasons. At their core, however, video landing pages contain your video content. That video content is usually prominently displayed at the top of the page. Beyond the actual video content, video action pages often contain other information. For instance, they may have text that further describes what is discussed in the video. That text may also discuss your product, service, or company. Your video action page is also a great opportunity to include some of your company’s branding. From fonts and colors to your company’s logo, having a well-designed video action page can be a terrific branding opportunity.
Finally, after your audience members engage with your video, you will want to offer them a follow up opportunity or task. These tasks include things like booking a call, filling out a form, or even inputting credit card information so the viewer can make a purchase.
You can think of this follow up opportunity or task as your CTA. The examples I provided above certainly aren’t the only CTAs that you can leverage at this stage. Using a tool like Dubb, for instance, you can program your CTA to let viewers communicate with your company via Facebook Messenger or even download an eBook or white paper. While the entire process is important, this final step plays a large part in generating more sales for your company.
Focusing on Optimizing the Email Campaign Funnel
Let’s take one step back and think about this entire sequence. First, it’s notable that there are plenty of steps in a seemingly simple email marketing campaign. On the surface, it may seem like you are writing email copy, producing a video, and clicking send. However, there are many more things that are happening below the surface. It’s important to keep them in mind as you are working on video email marketing for sales.
Along with this, it is important to optimize your conversions at every step of the process. Because we are talking about your sales funnel, you need to think about leading that prospect down every level of the funnel. Always be thinking: “How can I get the prospect from this step to the next step?” You may not know the answer right this second. That is okay, but you need to find the answers quickly.
Ultimately, by setting up an easy-to-understand, trustworthy, and extremely valuable path, you are definitely more likely to increase your optimizations throughout the entire email sequence.
So how can you do this? Read on to find out.
Ways to Distribute Your Videos
With this understanding of CTAs and email campaign funnels, I want to discuss how you can distribute your video content. After all, most of us spend our time focusing on the video creation process itself. We develop scripts, invest in equipment, find the right camera angles for our shots, and edit our video content. While all of these tasks are vital for great video email marketing campaigns, there is more to it.
Without focusing on distribution, you will find it essentially impossible to accomplish your sales and marketing goals. You’ll struggle to get your video email messages in the hands of important prospects and clients. Even though setting up solid video email distribution isn’t rocket science, it’s important to spend time talking about it so that you can avoid any unforced errors.
Using an Existing System with Dubb
First, let’s talk about if you have an existing system. By “an existing system,” I mean something like MailChimp, Infusionsoft, or some CRM or other marketing tool.
The great news is that video can go into your existing campaigns on those platforms. Using a tool like Dubb, you can easily include video in any type of email marketing campaign. Dubb has a wealth of integrations with some of the most prominent CRM and marketing platforms (you can find a complete list by clicking here). Whichever existing system that you have, you can be confident that Dubb has an integration with it.
What this means is that you can rely on Dubb’s technology to include actionable videos into your video email templates. You can also include video in your sequences and any emails that you are already distributing.
Ultimately, the entire Dubb team wanted it to be as easy as possible to integrate video into your existing systems. We are constantly adding integrations with all types of CRM and marketing platforms. Along with this, don’t hesitate to reach out if you want an integration with your favorite platform. In all likelihood, however, you will find that an integration already exists.
If You Don’t Already Have an Existing System
Now, let’s say that you don’t already have an existing CRM system or marketing platform. You are coming at this from scratch. If that is the case, you’ll find that Dubb has a fully functioning CRM system for its users. In this CRM system, Dubb users can send out bulk video email campaigns and automated email campaigns. This can all be based on things like engagement, audience demographics, and more.
Essentially, there are plenty of reasons why you would want to send someone an email video message. Using Dubb’s automations, you can easily set up workflows that send emails based on specific actions. Your workflows can be extremely simple. For instance, you can have a workflow that sends one email to one person. It can be a hyper-personalized video message that you want to send to a key prospect. However, you can go beyond that and create a much more complex workflow that sends many emails to different groups of people. Better yet, those emails can be sent automatically. There’s no need for you to manually go into your CRM or marketing software to send out a bunch of emails from time to time. Instead, you can rely on the power of technology for it to happen automatically.
This can also be done on some of your favorite email hosting services. For instance, Dubb offers substantial value to users of Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, and many other email providers. You can choose to connect your email provider directly to Dubb. You can also opt to send out your video email marketing campaigns using your own emails.
Ultimately, the choice is yours. Using Dubb, you can make your workflows as simple or as complicated as you’d like. In the end, Dubb gives you the power to design these workflows and rely on these automations so that you can accomplish your sales and marketing goals.
Embrace the Power of Automation
Finally, when talking about distribution, it’s important to spend a little more time talking about automation. I firmly believe that when you are thinking about your video email marketing, you should always be considering ways to automate your campaigns.
Automation is one of the best things about today’s modern technologies. In the old days, you would need to manually complete mission-critical tasks in order to reach your customers online. For instance, you would need to manually add names to an email list. From there, you would design emails and manually send them to individuals on your list.
Those days are over. Now, there are plenty of sophisticated, yet easy-to-use tools that can help you leverage automation in your sales and marketing work. Automation provides so many benefits to you and your colleagues. For one thing, automation saves you significant amounts of time. Whether you are a VP of sales or just joined the sales department of your company, you are undoubtedly busy. You don’t have time to manually complete tasks that can simply be automated away. The good news is that, once you have properly set up your workflows and automation triggers, the technology works 24 hours per day, seven days per week, and 365 days per year. Even while you are sleeping, your automated systems can keep delivering real value to your prospects and customers.
Another important thing to remember is that automated systems don’t make mistakes. Granted, this is assuming that you have set up your automated systems correctly. If you set your systems up incorrectly, you’ll notice that mistakes happen again and again. However, assuming that the setup is correct, the technology won’t make mistakes that humans tend to make. You can go to sleep knowing that your CRM and marketing software are acting exactly the ways that they should be acting.
The beauty of automation is that it can be specific to the customer journey. What your prospects are doing in the process should determine what emails that they are receiving right now. To keep providing value to members of your email lists, it is really helpful to have a recurring newsletter or email campaign series. This type of valuable content can be paired up with automated drip campaigns. By doing this, you can get personalized messages out at the optimal point of your audience’s journeys, thereby increasing your chances of getting a conversion.
Some First Principles to Keep in Mind
In this post, we have already spoken about some incredibly important things. We discussed what video marketing is, why video is so helpful for your email marketing campaigns, the types of videos that you can create, and why CTAs and distribution are so important. These are all important points that you’ll want to keep in mind when you are creating video email marketing messages.
From there, I want to spend some time discussing some first principles when thinking about video email marketing for sales. We already discussed some first principles above (like leveraging CTAs when you are creating any type of video content). However, I want to share a few more here.
You can rely on these first principles when you are creating any type of video content. Whether you are creating an explainer video, a product demonstration video, or something else, these first principles will keep you on track. They will help you avoid preventable mistakes and increase your chances of accomplishing your video email marketing goals.
Focus on Creating Value For Your Audience
Arguably, this is the most important principle when creating any type of content for any type of audience. With that said, it often comes at the expense of our wants and our goals. However, by focusing on your audience’s wants and needs, you are naturally able to accomplish your own wants and needs.
When you are creating video content in the sales or marketing context, you naturally want to generate more sales. The best way to do this, however, is to solve a problem or issue that they are facing in their lives. The problem or issue doesn’t need to be life-altering. It can be a minor annoyance that they encounter every day.
Regardless, your audience is certainly facing issues or problems in their lives. To understand what those issues or problems are, you really need to have an intimate understanding of your audience. You need to understand their motivations and the way that they look at the world.
Obviously, this is easier said than done. What also complicates this work is that your audience is not some single monolithic body. Your audience can be current customers, some of your warmest prospects, colder prospects, or something else. Within those cohorts, there are plenty of more narrowly tailored cohorts with their own problems, issues, and interests.
So what does this all mean? Ultimately, you should be creating video content with your audience in mind. They should be at the top of mind. Whether you are creating a tutorial video that explains the nuances of your product or an explainer video that gives a much higher level description of your service, make sure that you are creating the video for your audience, rather than yourself.
To reiterate, this isn’t rocket science. However, some companies and organizations may struggle with this. Using your audience as your North Star can help you create valuable content. And by releasing that valuable content to any type of audience, you substantially increase your odds of developing stronger relationships with your audience and generating more sales.
Don’t Hesitate to Outline or Write a Script
If you are creating video content for the first time, it’s natural to think that you simply pull out your camera, hit record, and start talking to the camera. I’m not saying that you can’t create content this way. In fact, if you are creating a quick 15 to 30-second check-up video with a key customer or client, you can probably just speak directly to the camera. You may have a point or two that you want to make, but the video is short enough that you can simply memorize those points and make them.
But putting aside those quick types of videos, I think that it is well worth your time to create an outline or script before creating your video content. This is for several reasons.
Primarily, the simple act of creating an outline or script can organize your thoughts. When you are speaking extemporaneously to the camera, it’s easy to forget certain points that you want to make. This can be because you simply get lost in your train of thought or you are unexpectedly nervous when speaking to the camera. You may not even recognize that you forgot an important point before distributing your video to your audience.
In that sort of situation, you can make a comment on your video landing page, for instance. However, you can substantially decrease your chances of making that mistake by creating an outline or script. Putting pen to paper and creating this sort of plan ensures that you will make all of the points that you need to make. It may also lead you to not include points that you thought were important to make. This benefit of organizing your thoughts helps you make much more effective videos for your audience.
Next, creating an outline or script can keep you and your team on the same page. Most of the time, you are not creating video content in a vacuum. You are collaborating with others in your company, whether they are members of your sales team, marketing team, or C suite. Because of this collaborative nature of video email marketing for sales, you and your team need to be aligned so that you can deliver the most value to your audience.
An outline or script can help you get there. If you create an outline or script in Google Docs, for instance, you can all collaborate at the same time. Seeing real-time changes lets you more quickly finalize an outline or script. You can then take that outline or script and use it in your video.
There’s one important thing to note here, however. You don’t want the script or outline to take up an inordinate amount of time. Like searching for the right equipment for your video production, it can feel like we’re being “productive” by continuously going over and changing our scripts or outlines. That being said, there comes a point of diminishing returns. You spend more time on developing an outline or script and less time actually creating video content.
It’s important to resist this temptation. As valuable as an outline or script can be, you don’t want it causing unnecessary delays. Keep this in mind as you are using these valuable tools. Often a simple script or outline is good enough to start shooting.
Make the Most of Your Video Landing Pages
No matter what type of video that you are creating, you will certainly want to make the most of your video landing pages. Video landing pages are a vastly underrated tool that can help you provide even more value to your viewers.
As I described above, video landing pages are hubs for all of your video content. They typically have your video at the top of the page, some CTA (or CTAs) below it, and perhaps your contact information below those CTAs.
Video landing pages are a huge part of generating sales from your video content. Because of this, you certainly want them to have your organization’s branding. Things like fonts, color, and your logo are really important. Including all of them in a template, and then using that template for some or all of your video content, helps you stay consistent. Your audience will know that they are viewing high-value content from your organization, allowing you to strengthen the relationship and get closer to the sales finish line.
Also, be strategic with your CTAs. Some CTAs are more relevant to certain videos than others. For instance, if you just created an explainer video for a new product you’ve developed, you may want to include a direct calendar scheduling CTA. Essentially, this CTA lets your viewer quickly and easily schedule a call with you or a colleague. Instead of having to exchange emails with that interested viewer so that you can schedule a call, your viewer can single-handedly take action. He or she can see when you are available and place the call on your calendar. From there, you can follow up and move that viewer further down your sales funnel.
This is just one example but it shows you why it is important to be strategic with your video landing page. Your video landing pages are incredible assets to build your brand, develop stronger relationships with your viewers, and increase your conversion rates. Use them to your advantage.
Get in the Habit of Consistently Creating Content
There are two principles for the price of one here. Ultimately, no matter what your video email marketing goals are, you need to get in the habit of creating video content. It is a muscle you can develop, but you need to actively work to develop it.
What do I mean by “get in the habit of creating video content?” If you really think about it, you can create video content anywhere. Sure, you can create it when you are sitting at your desk or working out of your home office. That being said, you don’t have to limit yourself to these locations. Sometimes, the best types of video messages occur when you are in interesting locations. For example, if you are sending a check-in video to an important prospect, you can record your video when you are on a walk or in your car. It may not seem as “formal” as creating video content in your studio or office, but it is arguably more effective. You aren’t putting on a mask and making a video “the way that it is supposed to be made.” Instead, you are being your true, authentic self. Subconsciously, you are giving the viewer a view into your life. This builds trust and makes it easier to develop strong relationships with your audience.
So don’t hesitate to create video content—wherever you are. You could be at a trade show or an important conference in your industry. You could be on your commute to the office. You could even be in a meeting with your colleagues and decide to record your thoughts on a relevant topic. Whatever the case may be, you want to develop this muscle.
Why is it so important to develop this muscle? This comes to the second part of this principle. When you are sending video messages (or creating any other type of content for an audience), you’ll discover that your audience expects consistency. If you are providing high-value content, they are going to want even more high-value content. It’s the nature of the beast.
The great news is that your content is resonating with your audience. Whether you have an audience of one or many, they want to hear more from you. It is a massive opportunity, but you can’t just stand still. You need to take advantage of it.
There are plenty of strategies that you can use to make the content creation process easier. For instance, think about developing a content calendar. Plan out your content for weeks (or even months) in advance. Think about reusing videos that you have recorded in the past. You can even use a strategy called the Waterfall Method, which lets you create mini clips of longform content and share it in different contexts.
If you are intimidated by your obligation, there’s no need to worry. There are ways to make the content creation process less onerous. That said, make sure that you are staying consistent. Keep creating content for your audience. Over time, you’ll notice that your work will absolutely pay off.
Perfection is the Enemy of Progress
This is a really important first principle that I think many people forget about. Especially if you are new to video sales and marketing, you may think that your content needs to be “perfect” (or close to perfect) before releasing it to your audience.
On the surface, this may seem to make sense. After all, perfection is impossible to achieve. Even if we may be perfectionists at heart, we probably recognize that our ultimate goal is not going to be reached. But having said that, when creating video content, it’s easy to invest hours and hours into a specific video—especially at the beginning. We go over multiple versions of a script and spend lots of time finding the best equipment for our videos. Before we know it, it has been days (or even weeks) before we hit the record button.
Ultimately, when we think about video production, we should think about iterating. We should think about getting something out there. By doing this, we receive real-world feedback. While some of this feedback may be familiar to you, chances are that you will receive feedback that you didn’t necessarily expect. You can then incorporate that feedback into your new video content. By getting real-world feedback and using that feedback in your subsequent videos, you get to create better and better videos for your audience. You get a better sense of what they want to see, and by putting in the work, you can deliver it to them.
Recognize that your video content is never going to be absolutely perfect. In fact, sometimes the most authentic videos that we create work much better than highly-produced videos. This is because this type of video content comes from the heart. We speak directly to the camera and share our real thoughts on the topic at hand. Even if this video isn’t as “polished” or “sleek” as something that takes much more time to produce, you’ll find that it can be way more effective.
I really hope that you keep this point in mind. In video email marketing, perfection is the enemy of progress. Even if you make some mistakes, you’ll find that your subsequent work makes up for those mistakes. In fact, by making those mistakes, you’ll end up making much better video content than if you hadn’t made those mistakes.
How Dubb Can Help You With Your Video Email Marketing Work
I really encourage you to follow these first principles when you’re working on video email marketing for sales. All of us make mistakes learning (and not following) these principles. You can save yourself from frustration and wasted time by following these principles from the start. By starting off on the right foot, you will get to your goals much more quickly.
Now, when you are working on video email marketing for sales, you have plenty of tools at your disposal. You can choose from plenty of different microphones or cameras. You can even invest in things like tripods and lighting. However, one of the mandatory items that you’ll need is recording, editing, and distribution software. Without software, you will find it impossible to do this work.
When looking for software, you have many options at your disposal. If you complete a quick Google search, you’ll find plenty of options. With that said, I highly encourage you to check out Dubb. Dubb is video software that was designed to help you reach your sales and marketing goals. Sales is in our DNA and, because of this, we have created many important features that can help you reach your goals.
If you want to read about all of the features that you can find on the Dubb platform, go ahead and click here. You can also contact us if you have any questions about Dubb and how it can help you. Nonetheless, I want to touch on a few killer features here that can help you with video email marketing for sales.
The Playlist Feature
I think that Dubb’s playlist feature is one of the most important features in our feature stack. You can think of the playlist feature as a way to tack on valuable video content to your original video messages. It’s like a playlist that you would create in Spotify or Apple Music, but in video form.
On the surface, this may not seem like the biggest deal. But in the sales context, the ramifications can be huge. To see why, let’s take a look at YouTube. YouTube is a critical platform for video distribution. It’s for good reason, as YouTube is the second-most trafficked website on the Internet today. By placing your content on YouTube, you get to access the sheer scale of the platform.
However, there is a key tradeoff here. When a YouTube user watches your video, you have no control over the next video that appears on their screen. In some instances, that video may be unrelated to your content. In other instances, however, that user may see a video from your competitor. Because you have no control over the next video in your user’s queue, you miss out on an opportunity to shape the viewer’s journey. YouTube also doesn’t offer features like built-in CTAs, making it even tougher to accomplish your sales and marketing goals.
By using Dubb Action Pages, you get much more control over the viewer experience. You can use the playlist feature in so many different ways. As just one example, let’s say that you created a quick 15 or 30-second follow-up video message to a prospect that you met at a conference. You can make that quick follow-up video message a hyper-personalized message. However, at the end of it, you can direct that viewer to keep watching. The next video in the queue could be a longer product demonstration video. That video can give your prospect some more detail on how your product works and how it can add value to his or her life.
You can use the playlist feature however you’d like. You can add one (or more videos) to a specific playlist, giving you the flexibility to craft the viewer’s journey. In the end, the playlist feature can be a huge asset as you communicate with your audience.
Dubb’s Chrome Extension and Mobile App
Next, let’s talk about Dubb’s Chrome extension and mobile app. Both of these tools make the content creation process substantially easier. You can find the Chrome extension by clicking here. You can also find our mobile app for iOS and Android.
Let’s start with Dubb’s Chrome extension. This free tool lets you easily record all types of video content from your browser. It is extremely simple to install and use. Upon installing the Chrome extension, you’ll find that you have plenty of tools at your fingertips. You can record a video using your selfie cam, record the entirety of your screen, or record a combination of both. You can also take a video that you have already recorded and directly upload it to Dubb, meaning that you’ll get a video action page for that specific video.
But let’s talk more about these creation tools. If you are shooting a product demonstration video or tutorial video, for instance, you may need to record your screen. This is especially true if you are speaking about a digital product or service. Yes, you could describe how to use the digital product or service in more abstract terms. However, it is much more difficult for your viewers to understand what you are talking about. But if you can record your screen, your viewers will instantly get it. They can physically see what you are talking about, which eliminates confusion and gets that viewer much closer to making a purchasing decision.
Using Dubb, you also get plenty of additional tools that can help you with your screen recordings. One of those tools is the annotation tool. With the annotation tool, you can draw on your screen as you are recording it. You can circle or underline text, for instance, when you want to make a certain point. You can even draw pictures on your screen if you like. This is a fantastic feature and one that can help you communicate your points more clearly.
Now, let’s talk about Dubb’s mobile app. Like I mentioned above, you can find it on iOS and Android devices. Dubb’s mobile app makes it really easy to record awesome video content, edit it on the go, and distribute it to your audiences. For instance, Dubb’s mobile app makes it really easy to shoot longer-form content. You can do this by shooting small, individual clips and splice them together. Along with this, the Dubb mobile app makes it easy for you to make trims on the fly. You can even add music and emojis as you see fit.
Ultimately, with the Dubb mobile app, you essentially have an outstanding editing studio in your pocket. You don’t need to wait to get back to the office to edit and distribute your video content. Instead, you can do it wherever you are. This is massively liberating and lets you supercharge your content creation process. Whenever you have an idea for a video message, you can simply pull out your phone and get started.
CAIRA
CAIRA is a tool that can help you in a slightly different way. Instead of being a tool that makes video production easier, CAIRA is specifically designed to help you improve your language in your video content.
When we are making pieces of content like video messages, we need to obviously focus on the visuals. Like I said earlier in this post, video is, quite obviously, a visual medium. Leveraging this fact makes it easier for your viewers to be engaged with your video content.
That being said, visuals aren’t enough. The words that you say actually matter. With that said, we often don’t pay close attention to the words that we’re using. We say what we want to say and move on. While this can work when creating videos for our personal lives, we pay for poor communication in our business lives. Even if we said something that we don’t think is negative or in poor taste, our audiences may think otherwise.
To make it much easier to evaluate our language when creating video content, our team at Dubb created CAIRA. CAIRA is a speech analysis assistant that is powered by the Dubb platform. It automatically analyzes the language that you use in your video content and provides suggestions on ways that you can improve your language.
Going to the analytics tab of your Dubb account, you can see CARIA’s analysis of your videos. CAIRA scans your videos and evaluates many different parts of your videos, including delivery, effectiveness, and professionalism. Within those subcategories, CAIRA can flag things like your cadence, repetition, use of filler words, positivity, persuasiveness, empathy, and even profanity.
With this data, you can shore up your future videos. You can, for instance, use more positive language when speaking about your product, service, or company. You can use more persuasive words when you are communicating with prospects at the bottom of your sales funnels. You can even take note of the filler words that you frequently use, so that you avoid using them in the future.
Ultimately, if you become a Dubb user, don’t hesitate to use CAIRA in your day-to-day video email marketing work. It can play a huge part in creating extremely effective and persuasive video content.
Get Started Today
Video email marketing for sales is a fantastic way to accomplish your company’s goals. Whether you just started a small startup or work for a much larger company that is trying to promote a game-changing product or service, video email marketing for sales can change the course of your business. I encourage you to take the lessons and insights discussed in this post and apply them to your work today. You won’t regret it.
Finally, we invite you to check out Dubb for yourself. You can get a free seven-day trial of our premium plans by clicking here. Should you have any questions about Dubb or the things discussed in this article, go ahead and contact us.
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