Selling With Video Guide: Video Prospecting at Scale

Was it the 120th or 121st email that just dropped into your inbox? That’s about how many emails an average person gets every day!

Getting a foot in the door just seems to be getting harder for any salesperson. How do you catch your prospect’s eye in a noisy inbox?

Videos. 

Because 80 percent of people say they've been convinced to purchase an app or a piece of software because of a video — further, 87% of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI, and 78% report that video marketing has improved their company’s bottom line. BAM.

Knowing how stats give content credibility, here’s another one – just adding the word “video” in the subject line boosts open rates by 19 percent.

Compelling, engaging, versatile, powerful – forgive me for using clichéd adjectives – but they best describe why videos are the one tool that can help fill sales pipelines, fast. 

From bringing a sales pitch to life through authentic, personalized communication to giving live product demos, videos always deliver more for the sales rep.

Creating a memorable first impression and piquing the prospect’s interest is easier with a video than with a cold text-only email. Adding your unique touch helps shatter sales stereotypes because you get to inject your personality into your video. 

After a series of video emails, this can lead to a fruitful business relationship. 

And with targeted efforts, you can tailor pitches to make inroads. When your conversations center on addressing your prospect’s pain points, they’ll listen. 

Note: Test your video content on new prospects from Leadfeeder. Sign up for a free 14-day trial.

Personalized video emails cut through the clutter

While it sounds like a lot of hard work. It’s not. Shooting a video using a smartphone is no biggie. Create professional videos with best practices such as using the right virtual background, lighting, appearance, message, voice, and body language, and you’re on your way.

Your prospects are being bombarded by loads of similar sales emails and calls from your competitors. But sales happen, right? So how are the successful sales reps getting heard? 

Relevance, timing, familiarity, play a big role in overcoming the prospecting roadblocks. If you’re not a friend, a peer, or a part of their professional network, your name likely means nothing to prospects. 

We hear client success stories where salespeople built trust over time by sharing content that was relevant to the prospects and provided tangible value. Also, where referrals improved clickthrough rates and opened up a path to the prospect. It is a great way to not go straight to spam. 

There’s a better, quicker way. Use personalized videos to play that note which resonates with your potential buyer, and you will be heard over the din. 

Why videos win every time

No matter how blasé you act, aren’t you a wee bit happy when you see personalized content? (Even a random webinar invite with my name means I’m going to do a quick scan of the message.)

Prospects aren’t so different. In a personalized video, you can use their name, title, and profile picture.

Don’t just talk about the same benefits package to every insurer. Talk about the benefits specific to that customer to make them feel important. The chances of them engaging with you go way up. 

They’ll notice you because you’re speaking directly to them. Their attention span, which is usually under 10 seconds, will be longer. 

They will recall a Joe with brown hair and a winning smile who was talking about helping them digitize their business. 

This occurs when you send out bulk generic text-based emails with no personalization. If you can’t be helpful, don’t send anything. Not to prospects, not to customers. Far better than a “faceless” Joe Brown who was doing the very same thing in a text-based email. 

Also, don’t be tone-deaf. Keep it REALTM

R - Relevance (Be relevant to the customer. Why you? Why you now?)

E - Emotionally engaging (Ask compelling questions that persuades your customers to respond)

A - Actionable (Add relevant CTAs to drive action)

L - Lively (Bring your personality. Let it shine. Don’t be boring)

There have been a number of studies on nonverbal communication with varying results. However, most experts agree that 70 to 93 percent of all communication is nonverbal.

Videos win every time because it is a nonverbal mode of communication and they are REAL. For instance, when people are working remotely and socially distancing themselves, videos help connect and show empathy and concern.  

Using personalized video emails at scale

The old way of prospecting was cost-intensive, did not really instill trust and engagement was low. 

See what happens when you use personalized videos.

For example, for an introduction and invite video, record the intro, personalize the thumbnail with the prospect’s [first name]. 

Then personalize other elements in the videos like images, CTAs, URLs to keep it authentic. Add CTAs to let prospects book meetings.  

Look at the image below to see why video emails get better response rates.

The next step is to drive every prospect to a personalized sales page, and I think this is a terrific way to engage prospects. It allows you so many options to add elements of personalization – logo, content related to the prospect’s interests, name, CTA, and so on. 

See what I mean?

Even personalizing a single video with texts, logos, thumbnails, and more to deliver a customized experience to thousands of recipients increases response rates by 300 percent. 

Be that as it may, it sounds like a lot of effort and time, but it’s not. There are plenty of tools in the market to help you personalize videos at scale.  

After aligning sales and marketing teams around a bunch of your elite prospects, you can spend precious hours making videos (with the exact names, business units, chief challenges) that are just right. But imagine hyper-personalizing videos for every name on your list? That’s possible.

But, of course. 😊

Video personalization platforms like Hippo Video allow you to send mass personalized prospecting videos. 

Your entire sales process can be automated to send these videos at scale. And they integrate with your CRMs and marketing tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Outlook, Gmail, and more. 

With some imagination, surely there are more creative ways to personalize these videos. 

The 10- 80 – 10 principle

I’m borrowing the 10-80-10 principle to describe how we can create personalized video emails at scale. 

I’ll give you an example. I send video emails to 10 leaders in the sales industry every day, so about 50 a week. I can’t personalize 50 videos a week, can I? Not without putting other tasks on hold (and maybe losing a bit of my sanity). That’s not feasible. 

So, what I do is split the video into three sections. It’s a 1-min introduction video. 

In the first section, I introduce myself and add a personalization element to get their attention. Something along the lines of “Hi I’m [Name], yada yada…congrats on your well-deserved recognition as a sales leader by LinkedIn ...”. 

This is the first section of the video. 

In the second section of the video, I get into the crux of the email, asking if they would be interested in our product demo that can solve specific business challenges they’re facing.

And finally, I go into reinforcing the pitch – adding more elements of personalization such as “I know that [our product] will be able to help [name of your company] [insert high-level benefit here]. Are you open to a deeper dialogue?”

If you look at these three sections, the second section remains constant for all the videos because the intent behind the emails is the same. I only have to record the first and third sections for each of my potential prospects. 

It is just 2–4 lines, so it doesn’t take me even two focused hours to record these. Because I keep the scripts ready. Thanks to the teleprompter in Hippo Video, I don’t have to memorize them or check my notes. 

With Hippo Video, you can stitch separate videos together. Recording personalized video is easy and saves you time and effort because you don’t have to record individual videos every time.   

Video emails — low effort, high impact

Using videos in your sales cadence would fall into the “quick wins” quadrant of the effort impact matrix, where, with little effort, you can enjoy maximum impact. 

For salespeople, this should be the task of the highest priority when prospecting.

You get a 66 percent increase in leads, a 3x response rate, and a 40 percent shorter sales cycle. Seriously, what’s not to love?

It doesn’t matter if you’re email 125, but if you’ve done the best you can to make the prospect feel special with personalization, you stand a good chance at getting a response. 

Why are you still waiting to send video emails? Start sending video emails for prospecting. 

Note: Need warm leads? Use Leadfeeder's 14-day free trial to bulk up your list!