Sending a video email to a customer is a great way to interrupt their inbox.
I make it my habit every morning before 9 a.m. to send a minimum of 5 video emails to customers and prospective customers. I love the response I get when people hit the reply back button in my video email and let me know that they loved the video email I sent them. They will often say “Wow! That was really cool!” or “How did you do that?” or “Watched your video. Nice job Greg!”
Sending a video email does not take me any longer to send than it does to sit down at my keyboard and bang out a traditional text-based email. In fact, now that I have made sending video emails a part of my morning routine, it actually takes me less time to send a video email. I prep the video email, it’s just a matter of recording my message using my webcam or phone and then clicking the send button and boom my video email is headed to my recipient’s email inbox.
I thought I would share with you some of the 5 types of video emails that I send and hopefully jumpstart your brain to start thinking of ways that you could connect with your customers and prospects that you interact with every day in your business.
Video Email Tip #1 – Send A Video Email Saying Thank You for Being a Great Customer
Saying thank you is the right thing to do. Saying thank you to your customers is good for business. I have such great customers and I know you do too. A great habit to cultivate is to send your customers a video email and thank them for their business.
One of the ways I personalize my video emails is by writing a short message on a Dray Erase 5 x 8 Index Card. I bought these cards on Amazon.com for $7.99 – a great investment! So, how does this work? I often will write the person’s name by saying “Hi Karen!” I then write a two or three-word statement that communicates a quick message. “Hi, Karen – I appreciate your business!”
When someone sees their name and the quick, personal message I created just for them, it pulls them into my video email and gets them to click. Another thing that this personalized notecard does is puts a smile on their face. The next time you go to send a video email try using a dry erase board or a dry erase index card.
The software that I use to send Video Emails is Glimpse Video. Glimpse Video animates the first three frames of my video and then converts those three frames into an animated gif that displays movement when it hits my recipient’s email inbox.
While animated GIFs don’t work everywhere, support across most email clients is exceptional. Animated GIFs work in all webmail clients and most desktop and mobile clients. The main exceptions are Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013, which all refuse to animate the GIF and instead display only the first frame of the animation.
Apart from that, you can see that animated GIFs work beautifully on all other clients.
Desktop Clients
 Lotus Notes (6, 7, 8.5) |
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Outlook 2000-2003 |
 Outlook 2007-2013 |
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Outlook for Mac |
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Apple Mail |
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Windows 10 Mail |
Webmail Clients |
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Gmail |
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G Suite |
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Yahoo! Mail |
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AOL |
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Outlook.com |
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Comcast |
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Orange.fr |
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SFR.fr |
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GMX.de |
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Web.de |
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T-Online.de |
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Freenet.de |
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Mail.ru |
Mobile Clients |
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iOS Mail |
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Android (Default) |
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Android (Gmail) |
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Android (Gmail IMAP) |
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Blackberry |
Video Email Tip #2 – Send Follow-up Video Emails After a Networking or Client Meeting
I attend a lot of virtual networking meetings and many of them are on Zoom. There are always two or three significant conversations that I have with people in those meetings. As is often the case, the host of these virtual networking meetings asks each participant to include their contact information inside the Zoom chat. I always save the chats from those virtual meetings. >> Learn how to save a chat in Zoom
Once the meeting has ended, I make the commitment to follow up with the people I met from the networking meeting. My follow-up process consists of firing up my Glimpse Video account and sending off a video email. Typically, my video email starts with their name and the message “Let’s Connect!” written on one of my 5 x 8 Dry Erase index cards. I let them know that it was great to meet them and that I would love to set up a one-to-one meeting with them. I always make sure to include a custom Call To Action (CTA) button in my video email. My Call To Actions vary depending on the recipient I am sending my video email to. It might be a “Schedule a Zoom,” “Let’s Connect!,” “Schedule a DEMO” or simply to “Visit My Website.” My video email platform of choice, Glimpse video, also gives my recipients the ability to hit a Call Back CTA which will dial my phone number. Glimpse Video also gives me my video email recipient the ability to click another CTA, “Reply Back”, which opens up my recipient’s email program and lets them send me an email. I love how these Call To Actions buttons makes it so easy to connect with me.
I also started using a very cool networking app called linqapp.com. This app allows the connections I make to have access to my contact information, plus watch an introduction video I created telling my story. A connection can also schedule an appointment with me on my Calendly.com account.
Video Email Tip #3 – “Hi Missy! Let’s Connect!”
The third way I use video email is to reach out to prospective customers. All of us in a business-to-business environment have vertical markets that we are trying to reach. A pleasant interrupter to a vertical market prospects inbox that you are trying to reach is a video email.
Video email is the closest face to face opportunity that you have to get in front of your prospect. If you keep a video email short and to the point, your opportunities for securing an appointment through a Zoom call or a face-to-face go up dramatically in this business-to-business environment.
The reason why your opportunities go up is that video email allows you to actually call your prospect by name, go for the direct ask, include specific Call To Actions inside the video email landing page. Glimpse Video also provides me analytics when I send a video email. After sending a video email I can go into my Glimpse Video dashboard and see if and how many times my recipient “Opened” my video media. I can also see if and how many times my recipient “Played” my video email. This type of analytical insight helps me to discern the level of interest my recipient may have in my video message. I can think of nothing more powerful than sending a video email to a prospective customer.
Video Email Tip #4 – “Happy birthday Bob!” ???
Another effective video email to send to your customers is wishing them a happy birthday or some other personal or professional milestone happening in their life. Let’s be honest, everyone loves it when somebody takes the time out of their day to wish someone a happy birthday. Don’t you?
I can think of nothing more personal and powerful to receive than a personal video email from you wishing your customer a happy birthday. One of the things I like to do, and I know it’s kind of silly, is to wear one of those little cone-shaped party hat like we use to wear when we were kids and blow one of those annoying party squealers. Nothing says happy birthday and brings back fun memories than one of those cone-shaped hats and a party squealer. I like to use my video emails to remind my customers that they’re appreciated, and I want them to know that having a birthday at any age should be fun. Why not make it memorable and send a quick short video email. Trust me, they will love it and they will never forget it.
Be sure to develop a system of tracking birthdays and then checking that system often. I simply keep a spreadsheet of my customer’s birthdays. I look at my spreadsheet at the beginning of each workweek and see what birthday video emails I need to send out. [Click to download a free Microsoft Word Birthday and Anniversary Calendar].
Do not forget the major milestones that people have in your business timeline too. I’m thinking of milestones like customer anniversaries, maybe they were recognized in a local business publication for accomplishing something huge in their business, maybe they reached a major milestone of being in business for 50 years, perhaps they hired a new employee. Whatever the occasion or celebration you can use a video email to celebrate and honor them. Let them know that you appreciate them, and you are noticing all the hard work that they are doing in their business.
Video Email Tip #5 – “Hi Julie! I wanted to introduce you to my friend Laurie.”
If you have been in business long enough you have introduced another business professional to someone looking to connect with their service or products. Making referrals is a smart bridge building activity. Video emails are a powerful way to introduce people. It’s far more powerful and effective for me to introduce my friend and professional colleague to someone in a video email. It’s way more effective to convey my emotions on why I feel they should connect with my professional referral. My voice and my body language and my smiles can communicate a higher level of trust that is more difficult to capture in a text-based email. The social proof and the connection I make through a video email are more convincing than in a traditional text-based email. In fact, now that I have started using video email on a consistent basis, I rarely introduce people through a traditional text-based email anymore. Video email is easier and it just works.
The technology of video email has evolved and matured. A text-based email seems more impersonal now and it’s easier for the recipient to avoid and delete. They are curious, so they click. Video email is how all the savvy professionals communicate now. No joke. Are you one of the savvy professionals? If not, do you wanna be? If so, see how video email works by filling out the form below. As soon as your email request hits my email inbox, I’ll shoot over a video email to your inbox. It’ll be fun! I promise! Let me know in the comments below how you are using video email to connect with your customers and prospects.
