Being heard, understood and remembered in a sea of plain text communications is like screaming your value proposition in a football stadium when someone scores a goal. So why are the number of text dominate emails we send and receive, increasing so rapidly?
Sending plain text (and even HTML emails with images) is becoming less and less effective. The traditional answer to this predicament is send more emails, which can be likened to driving faster when running out of gas.
It is time we learned to slow down and trim the fat, so we have room to learn and apply new and more effective strategies.
When you send a video email to a new prospect as a follow-up to a first phone call, it changes the dynamics of the sales cycle. By putting a face to the name, you are building trust, rapport and credibility. We call this practice “The Digital Handshake”. The video email can be personalized (recorded as a one off), or it can be evergreen (a canned response) that you or your assistant can send.
Part of the underlying mechanics of what makes video email so powerful is that it improves comprehension and retention.
The image to the right is taken from the Weiss-McGrath Retention study. Notice the initial comprehension when using video is higher, and the retention of that information is significantly greater after 72 hrs. The result, if articulated well, can etch your value proposition into your prospects minds.
Not all webcams are created equal. I have tried many of them, so I can comfortably say that the best are made by Logitech. I am currently using the Logitech C910, which costs around $80 on Amazon. Before that I was using the Logitech 9000.
So if you were just thinking that video is expensive, think again—the video in the top left of this page was produced using the Logitech C910 webcam and then uploaded directly to this page. I did not edit the video. I did not do any noise correction, color correction, sharpening… nothing at all. I just hit start, stop and upload. Granted the video is not going to win me any awards, but it does get the job done!
Creating and sending video email is even easier, with the jiveSYSTEMS software.