How to Increase Sales with Video in Email. Your business email list is the most important digital asset your company has because it is your direct connection to your clients.  If you are a B2B company, you need to think of email as a valuable member of your sales team.  Are you properly nurturing your email list?  Most companies are wasting the opportunity that email provides their companies.   Do you know what successful companies do?  They use video as part of their email sales and marketing efforts.

Say Something Worth Watching

Email should also be used for more than just reminding your clients and prospects that you exist.  The average employee receives 121 emails per day.  This means your email needs to stand out among all the other emails.  It needs to provide valuable information that sets you apart as an expert.  If you look at the average email you get from a salesperson or company, there is a lot of wasted space.  The emails are focused on the company’s needs, not the prospect’s or client’s needs.  Never ever say something like, “I am just checking in,” or “I want to meet with you to learn more about you and your needs.” If you don’t know the problems they have as it relates to your product or service, you probably need to be in a different line of work.  You need to focus on the problems you know they have.  Or, as I like to call it, you need to poke their pain.  You need to keep poking until they say it hurts, just like a doctor would.  This is where video comes in.  Not only are you addressing a problem you know they have, you are providing the information in a way they want; which is through video.  Your emails need to build relationships with your reader and drive sales.  This is done by being a trusted advisor who regularly shows up in their in box.  Using this method will also help your sales team know who they should be following up with based on who is opening the email and which video they are watching.  You can also use a dedicated video player to track who is watching the videos and then have that video player send reports directly to your CRM.

Keep It Simple

The mistakes people make is that they make their email over complicated. It used to be that, when doing email campaigns for clients, we would design these beautiful graphics.  But in the last few years, we have shifted our clients to simple emails that are just a few sentences long. The emails lack any graphics, except for maybe a video thumbnail. For B2b companies, these simple text emails seem more authentic.  They also look better on mobile devices.  If an email is hard to read, it won’t be read. If you are going to use a custom designed email, it must be what is called ‘responsive;’ which is geek speak for ‘must look good on all screens.’

Make It Sound Like You

Make your email tone consistent with your brand’s voice.  Emails don’t need to sound professional.  They need to sound real.  For all of these things, the key is to test what works best for your business. Some things to test are your subject lines, preview text, header images, and call to action.

Help Your Fellow Man By Unsubscribing

Do other businesses a favor and unsubscribe to their email. Don’t mark them as spam.  Unsubscribing will give them a better opportunity to send emails to people who want them.  If you mark the email as spam, more and more people won’t see it because it will be flagged as spam.  Give them a few chances before you unsubscribe.  This will allow you to see if they provide you with any value.  This is a good example of treating others like you want to be treated.  You want the emails your company sends out to get to the people who want it.  Give the same curtesy to those who send you emails.

How to Make Video and Email Play Nice

You can’t make a video play directly for most of your email list.  Some email providers will allow video to play directly in the email but most will require that it be opened in a website browser window.  Just because it works today doesn’t mean it will work tomorrow.  It has long been the dream of marketers that video would play directly in email but, due to security issues, it still isn’t possible. One thing you can do is to create a video thumbnail image with a play button and put that in your email.  Adding a play button will help increase clicks compared to just an image.

It Is Good to Be Regular

The first step is you should be sending email out on a regular schedule.  You should be sending out an email at least once per month, ideally, every two weeks or every week depending on your industry.  As you increase the frequency of your emails, make sure you increase the value.  The video that is shared in each email should also be directly uploaded to social media platforms that you are active on.

These videos can and should be used on social media.  Hopefully, your email list is following you on social media.  It is OK if they see the same information twice.  Some companies we work with will upload the video to YouTube first and share it via email and then release it on other social media platforms the next week

Other Emails You Can Send with Video to Increase Sales

Always be adding to your email list by offering a limited video series to website visitors that they need to sign up to get.  This will get them into your email list.  You should also be using social media ads to build your email list.  If you are on a podcast or give a talk, make sure you offer them you lead magnet to get them on your email list. Your email list will lose 30% of your subscribers each year, so make sure you have a plan for how you are going to grow your list.

In addition to your regular emails, you need to have a few email sequences,  emails for onboarding new clients, and emails for prospects who have requested more information.  The more you can plan ahead and have a system for following up, the more you will increase sales.