This blog post describes how businesses can use video messaging through both email and SMS to increase revenue and productivity. This video is brought to you by Dubb.
Have you ever received an e-mail or a text message that you just left unread or unopened? Whether you’re as a business owner, a client, or a common digital user, you most certainly have!
If you’ll ever try to figure out and analyze what made you feel disinterested about that particular e-mail, you’ll probably be able to point your finger on several reasons why:
Was it the downright generic subject line that killed your interest?Was it the message preview that did not do much to grab your attention?Or was it because the e-mail just isn’t relevant to you at all?
As a digital marketer, you know how important it is for your e-mails and text messages to reach your target market, create interest, and generate potential income. An unopened e-mail is tantamount to lost business opportunities for your company.
The “tale of the unopened e-mail” is one of the major challenges that digital marketers are navigating right now.
To salespeople and digital marketers, business messaging has always been a vital means to improve customer engagement, draw interest among customers, attract more potential clients, and provide better customer experience.
But according to research, the average office worker today receives over 100 emails and text messages per day. However, studies show that on the average, only 20% of these e-mails are being opened and read.
Moreover, the number of e-mails that are being sent globally is expected to increase to almost 250 billion by 2021 on a daily basis. It is safe to assume that as the number of e-mails rise, the number of unopened e-mails is also expected to climb.
As the world becomes more and more digitally integrated, people’s modern mailboxes are also becoming noisier. Their newsfeeds and inboxes are getting more and more crowded, and the digital marketing space is becoming even more competitive by the minute.
Bearing these things in mind, we are then left to wonder:
Is it still possible for business owners and digital marketers to attract potential customers by use of business messaging?How can digital marketers be able to maintain engagement among clients and customers?
True enough, if you are ever going to recalibrate and upscale your business marketing strategies, it’s best to start doing it now. And what better way to step up your business marketing game than by exploring the potential of video messaging?
They say that a picture paints a thousand words. If that’s the case, then how much do you think will it e worth if you reconstruct your text-based e-mails into engaging and digitally appealing videos messages?
What exactly is video messaging?
Not to be confused with video conferencing, video messaging is basically incorporating videos into your business communication system.
Videos help digital marketers connect with their customers and potential clients on a more personal level. They allow for improved customer engagement. Compared to text-based communications, videos convey emotions, provide accurate demonstrations of products and services, establish the company’s brand, and build deeper trust.
Also, video messaging allows companies to put a face to their products and services. On the contrary, text-based e-mails and SMS often create a mere transactional relationship with their clients.
With that, video message provides a better and more effective way to deliver the essence of the message you want to convey. This could result in significant increase in sales, revenue, and even referrals.
In fact, research data show that online consumers are 64% more inclined to purchase a product online after watching a video, compared to when they simply read about it.
Aside from its advantages on company sales, video messaging also helps clients a lot in processing and retaining information compared to other methods of communication. Specifically, viewers are likely to retain 95% of a message when watched on video as compared to only 10% when read on text.
Now, on to the requirements of a good video messaging platform!
1. Tracking and Analytics
In order to maximize your online reach, the video messages you send out must always include tracking and analytics capabilities.
A video platform with tracking and analytics features grants you with the ability to know the extent of your video’s reach.
Aside from that, this requirement is also important in order for you to observe how much interaction or engagement your video messages are getting.
But more than just tracking your online engagement and reach, this also allows you to discover more information about your market. What products are gaining ground on the market? Which services do they like? Which video messaging approach works best for your target audience? Which approaches or style do you need to improve or adopt?
Nowadays, you can actually choose to send a video to your clients using a regular smartphone, but unfortunately, you will not be able to track or monitor any data out of it. Not to mention the fact that the quality of the video could be reduced and would most likely turn out to be grainy or pixelated. Do this often and you’ll run the risk of disengaging a faithful client or losing a potential customer.
Another popular option is to upload a video on YouTube and then sending its link to the clients or attaching it to an e-mail. This may look like a viable option, but YouTube only provides very basic analytics. By distributing your video messages this way, you run the risk of losing the opportunity to acquire very important information that are necessary to your business.
For instance, you will never find out which of your recipients actually watch your videos. You might not know how much percentage of the video was watched and how your viewers responded to any of your material after they finished watching.
But here’s the good thing: Dubb offers not just basic analytics data. With Dubb, you will have access to these important insights, along with email open rates, reaction rates, and page views, among other things.
With tracking and analytics, you are equipped with the most intelligent data tool to help you understand your current customers and to discover more sales and marketing opportunities.
2. Call to Action
A call-to-action is designed to evoke prompt response from the recipient. CTAs guarantee optimum end-user experience by quickly attending to customers’ needs or even anticipating them ahead of time.
CTAs are all about generating engagement and prompting responses among customers.
Providing your customers with CTA options is vital in video messaging. CTAs are more than just mere verbal cues on videos for customers. It should do more than just tell them to click or sign-up somewhere. What you need are actual clickable, interactive, actionable, and trackable links that will encourage your customers to make real-time response to your message.
CTA buttons can be a number of things: They can be a button for making a booking, purchasing an item, for downloading, filling out a form, replying to a message, or even for social media widgets.
At Dubb, we provide CTAs with a great deal of valuable functionality. There are link redirections for registering an account. There is also a feature that allows for direct integration with a calendar service. Aside from that, Dubb also has video reply functions for gathering video testimonials from clients and customers.
Dubb also offers customizable CTAs to help produce positive results, increase click-through rates, conversion rates, and sales.
Also, as shown in the video, Dubb even has a unique exit intent pop-up feature that comes with CTA buttons. This prompts the customers to respond should they attempt to leave the webpage. You’re not going to find anything like this on any other video platforms.
However, be mindful of laying out too many CTA options for your customers as this might overwhelm them and lead to confusion. It is as important to present your customers with multiple options as it is to not overwhelm them with too many.
You’re going to have to find just the right balance.
3. Branding
Your branding is your business identity. It’s what sets you apart from your competitors, and has a lot to do with customer experience and what they remember you by. A strong brand is more than just a catchy name, a sleek logo, or an interesting design. It is your overall message that is reflected in every facet of how your business operates.
When delivering video messages, it’s important to exclude distractions and make sure that the recipient will focus on your brand and your brand alone.
As you may have seen on the video, we showed you how hosting a video on YouTube looks like. When users open a YouTube video, they are also shown competing content and advertisements from other brands or companies, taking away from successfully getting the full attention of the user. YouTube may be an ideal platform for discovery, but it’s not the case for using video in business. Distributing your material without distractions is crucial in strengthening your brand and boosting your sales. You have to make certain that your brand is distinct from others, and that you are communicating your message consistently without anything getting in the way.
4. Ability to Send in Bulk / Automation
Here’s a very exclusive function to Dubb that you will definitely need for video messaging: the ability to send either an e-mail or SMS messages in bulk or through automation. It helps you save time, it systemizes your processes and lets you redirect your focus on other matters.
Organizing e-mail drip sequences and creating marketing automation workflows have never been this easier. Sending in bulk or through automation is basically technology doing the work for you.
Now, we could continue comparing Dubb to other video marketing services or video sales platforms, if only this function weren’t unique to Dubb.
We’ve shown you in the video how video messaging with Dubb works, and how it meets all the necessary requirements.
With Dubb, your target recipients will receive the same video and will practically have the same experience whether you send your messages to them through e-mail or via text messaging.
Upon attaching the video, you are given the option to input the recipient’s first name on the video to make it more personal; this also comes with a default animated GIF preview of the first few seconds of the video. Note that the GIF preview is customizable into anything of your choice. Please note also that text messaging does not support the GIF preview yet.
Moreover, your e-mail or SMS will contain a link to the video and a pre-populated message, which you can also personalized. When recipients proceed to click the link, they will then be redirected to the trackable page, complete with branding and interactive CTAs.
Sending one-on-one messages to all of your clients is simply inefficient and not scalable. With Dubb, you have the means to build out e-mail or SMS campaigns that you can send to your clients either in bulk or through automation.
By triggering automation, you can send out video messages at periods and dates of your own choice. This also gives you the ability to intertwine SMS campaigns with regular e-mail campaigns. Additionally, you may also add delays, action steps, branches, and tags to them-all at your personal disposal.
Not only that, but you are also able to know exactly how your recipients are engaging with the material by viewing the detailed reporting and analytics that are available for each campaign.
To sum it all up, if your business or company is committed to building organic connections and strong relationship with your client-base, it is important that you invest in video messaging tools that will help you do the job effectively. Make sure that you check out these requirements in your video messaging platform if you want to expand your market reach and improve your company’s engagement and sales.
Dubb has provided you with the tools you need to carry out video messaging tasks appropriately and with industry best practices.
Check out our video content for sales and video marketing if you haven’t already. These videos can help you understand the value of incorporating videos into your marketing and sales efforts.
SPECIAL OFFER: To access over a dozen free eBooks on how to effectively use video for all aspects of your business, visit Dubb Resources.
About Ruben: Ruben is the founder of Dubb. When he’s not creating his next video, he’s probably playing drums, at a Taco Tuesday or with the fam. Follow Ruben on IG, FB, YT, TW, Medium, and his blog.
About Dubb: Dubb is a popular video creation, hosting, sharing, and tracking platform. Follow Dubb on IG, FB, YT, TW, and the Dubb blog. To get a free trial to Dubb, request an invite.
Originally published at https://dubb.com on May 7, 2020.
