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What I learned this week: personalized videos go a LONG way!

Published 11 May 2020 by Jasmine Collins, CANDDi
Read this in about 2 minutes

Hello! I’m Jasmine - a relatively new addition to the CANDDi team - and each week I write about something particular that I’ve learned.

This week, it’s all about video.

More specifically, I’m going to be talking about the kind of on-the-fly video you can record by yourself, as opposed to the more scripted type of which can take a while to produce.

I’ve been using these videos in three distinct ways, and I’ve had a lot of fun seeing just how effective they can be!

video marketing

Videos for prospecting

The most effective way I’ve found to use one-to-one videos is when prospecting.

People often quote the statistic that video prospecting emails get 8x higher open-to-reply rates than regular ones. It’s hard to say if that’s true after just one week, but I can tell you that the sales conversations that follow are definitely of a higher quality.

I think a big part of it is just standing out from the crowd. People get prospecting emails all the time, but very rarely do they include a short video which addresses them directly. Being memorable is important!

The other important component, as far as I can tell, is the way that video helps to make a human connection. I always try to keep things natural and lighthearted, and use the prospects name a couple of times.

When in doubt, I go for the kind of tone you’d use if you bumped into a friend in a coffee shop.

Introducing yourself using video is so quick and effective, I’d recommend anyone who prospects to give it a go!

Videos for new customers

When people sign up for our free trial, they get an onboarding call where we discuss how best to use CANDDi for their specific business model.

It takes more work on our side than it would if we simply had an automated process (you can read more about that here!) but it’s worth it because it lets us provide some real value to our users.

After this call, I’ve been recording quick videos to show new users how to do things in CANDDi that will get them their first big ‘wow’ moment.

This is particularly useful if I notice a new user hasn’t completed an important task like setting up the CANDDi email integration. A personalized video gets their attention, engages them, and allows even the most technologically-illiterate individual to get things set up without a problem.

Videos for internal use

This sounds like a bit of a weird one, but it’s also really useful to send quick videos to your colleagues.

With everyone working from home, getting input from other team members isn’t as simple as shouting over or throwing a crumpled Post-It note at their heads.

Video calls are great for this, but sometimes you need feedback on something non-urgent that isn’t worth pulling everyone away from what they’re working on straight away.

In these cases, I’ve found it really effective to do a quick screen record with a voiceover to show what I’m working on. Then I can email it round and people can give me thoughts in their own time!

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