How does video marketing help garner higher email response rates?
When brainstorming ways to improve your email response rates, your mind may not go to video marketing as a viable option. But the truth is, video is all the rage right now; almost 90% of online marketing professionals use video in their campaigns. And for good reason - incorporating videos into emails have been shown to increase open and click-through rates, and content that is shown in video form tends to be more memorable than written words (as long as it's done right).
With a little creativity and a strong understanding of your potential customers, you can create video content that will resonate with your customers and leads. Using video in emails is a great way to provide additional value to your prospects, and increase the likelihood that your content and brand will stick in their brain.
Demonstrations Using Video Marketing
If you haven't heard of Shopify, they offer a platform for online businesses to build and manage their digital stores. They're a major player in the ecommerce industry, trusted by tons of online merchants.
As with any software, there is a learning curve when starting to use Shopify. Knowing this, Shopify uses video marketing in a way that provides tons of value for new subscribers: by sending a tutorial video on how to set up a Shopify store in 25 minutes. The video is informative and highly relevant to their new customers, and may help anyone feeling intimidated by the prospect of creating their own site.
Including videos in emails that offer tips and tricks on how to use your product or service is an excellent way to increase brand awareness for prospects and boost trust for new customers.
Another highly effective way to build trust through email is to send video case studies to leads. When a potential buyer is considering their options, showing them clear evidence that your product or service works could very well be enough to convince them to choose you.
Isn’t The “Demonstration” Premise Just a Case of Good Targeting?
It could be argued the demonstration method only works with email recipients because those recipients have been highly targeted. After all, you are sending this content to people you know are already interested in your product.
However, the content of the emails you send never stops being important, even if the recipients already have some awareness of and trust in you. Leads and even current customers are likely to leave if they find a different company that provides them with more valuable content. So while targeting plays a role in open rate here, it's always more about the content than anything else.
Email performance is about sending the right email to the right person at the right time - so you could say that targeting is only a piece of the puzzle.
Use Video Marketing to Promote Your Brand
Hearing or reading about an event is one thing, but seeing a video of its most exciting parts is much more impactful. Maybe your company regularly hosts industry conferences, trade shows, or even just mixers. Putting together a short, 5-minute video of all the best parts, and including it in promotional emails about the event, will have your leads scrambling to get to the next one.
Product launches are a great opportunity to utilize video too. Whether your company is just starting out or has been in the game for years, creating promotional content in the form of video is a great way to capture the attention of your leads and prospects.
Take, for example, beauty brand Make Up For Ever's use of video in their emails. When they launched their Rouge Artist lipstick, they sent emails featuring an influencer trying out the product. As HubSpot pointed out, it's difficult to shop for makeup online without seeing what it looks like on an actual person, and they addressed this potential source of buyer friction by creating this campaign. Using video in this way is highly useful to their audience, and more impactful than just pictures and text.
Conclusion - Videos to Encourage Responses
You don't always have to sell to an email recipient to get them to respond. Oftentimes, using email to build long-term brand trust and recognition is more powerful than strictly selling. Video content offers a great way to ensure your brand will resonate with your customers and prospects. Video adds another layer of depth to content and provides ways to educate and demonstrate that just aren't possible with text and pictures alone.
Looking for more ways to spice up your marketing campaigns and generate leads? Check out our blog post on 5 Effective Strategies to Generate Inbound Leads for Your Business.
