Particularly in times of crisis, building empathy with prospects and finding innovative ways to connect with them is critical.
Video outreach (that is, sending personalized or templated videos via e-mail or social media to prospective customers) has become increasingly prolific, powered by tools like Vidyard, BombBomb, and Linkedin video. There are clear reasons to like this approach: it allows inside sales reps to replicate the feeling of an in-person interaction and stand out from a crowded field of other salespeople competing for prospects’ attention (provided prospects aren’t already saturated with videos). The downsizes, of course, are the amount of time needed to film videos relative to sending out personalized e-mails or increasing dials.
We’ve run tests on video outreach over the last few weeks for our own sales outreach, where we pitch our outsourced inside sales teams. We’ve used both Vidyard e-mails and Linkedin video messages, testing outreach to decision makers at SaaS companies throughout the U.S. Our results show a 3-4x improvement in reply rates to personalized videos in e-mails and Linkedin messages vs. personalized e-mails (that is, a templated outreach e-mail that includes a sentence or two personalized to the prospect). Roughly half of the incremental responses were ‘positive’ replies (that is, affirming interest in our offering), vs. the remaining half which simply thanked us for sending the videos. In our case, the videos generally take about 2-3 minutes to prepare and send, versus 30 seconds – 1 minute to personalize an e-mail.
In short, the question of whether the incremental minute or two to send a video is justified by the increased reply rate depends largely on the % of positive replies you get (mostly a function of the level of need in the market) and annual contract value (ACV) of your product. There are instances where the incremental replies you get from video outreach come from folks who do not have a need for your product, or where the product you are selling is simply not expensive enough to warrant such a time-consuming form of outreach. However, in most cases where outbound sales is productive as a channel, our belief is that the trade-off is worthwhile.
Some great tips on video outreach from the JB Sales team on a webinar here.
A screenshot from a recent Vidyard video. We typically use the ‘tab’ function, which allows us to browse prospect websites in real time while explaining how we can help them.
