Using video in email to engage customers and close deals

One of the biggest missed opportunities amongst marketers is the use of video in your email marketing. As the rules around bulk senders get stricter and deliverability gets harder to master, we have to make every “send” count. 

Luckily, just like with social media marketing and paid advertising, using video in your email marketing efforts is a highly effective way to engage more potential customers, close more deals, and drive real revenue.

Below are three ways to use video specifically in sales emails to help you close deals.

Uses for video in sales campaigns to close deals

1. Behind the scenes video walkthroughs

Giving a potential buyer the opportunity to fully understand the offer brings a lot of trust to the exchange between customer and company. As you know, trust is an essential ingredient to closing any sort of deal, and creating new deals in the future. 

Video makes that easier than ever. Bring your offer to life by walking your potential customer through a demo of all the ins and outs of the product. 

Within the video, showcase your offer visually. Highlight:

• How your ideal customer will use the product.
• The products most enticing features and the benefits the customer will receive.
• The process of purchasing.

These are things that may inhibit someone from making a purchase because they can sometimes be hard to fully explain through written words only. In fact, some potential customers may prefer to learn visually. Creating and sending out these video walkthroughs of the offer allows your potential customer to understand the offer completely before making a purchase.

2. Video testimonials

As any marketer learns quickly, just because someone expressed interest in a product, service, or offer, doesn’t mean they are actively engaged in moving through the customer journey. You’ve got to find a way to build trust fast so the prospect stays engaged and interested.

That’s where video testimonials come in. 

In general, testimonials show prospects the transformation that is possible with your offer. They showcase your customer’s background, specific challenges, why they chose your offer, and the results they were able to achieve with it.

However, video testimonials do something that written testimonials can’t. Video allows your customer to see and hear the sincerity of the person. The potential customer is now in the driver’s seat and has the power to decide what they relate to and what’s not relatable about your current customer.

In sales, relatability is everything. People want to buy from people they trust. Again, we need to build trust quickly, and seeing and hearing someone they relate to in the video testimonial does just that.

3. Customer service follow-up

If you want more sales, encourage your customer support channels to use more video in their email correspondence. 

Video builds trust fast, making it an incredibly effective way to create connection, brand loyalty, and close deals quicker when customers contact support.

It doesn’t matter whether your business qualifies as B2B or B2C. Every customer and every business owner or employee is a human. When it comes to communication, it’s all a human to human experience. 

Using video software (see below) can help us create those experiences easily, affordably, and quickly. 

Let’s look at an example of the difference a video can make in enhancing the customer service experience and making sales.

“A potential lead named Shahara emails customer support asking about the difference between two products.. The customer service representative sends a canned reply explaining the difference between the products. The tone of the email is friendly and supportive. It answers the question as thoroughly as possible without asking Shahara for more information. Shahara reads it and clicks on the product that feels like the right choice, but instead of buying, she leaves the tab open to make a decision later. Logically, she has all the information to make the decision. Emotionally, she doesn’t feel connected to the product.”

Now let’s look at this same example, with video.

“A potential lead named Shahara emails customer support asking about the difference between two products. The customer service representative sends a personalized video titled “Shahara! Great question.” Inside the video, the rep gives a high level overview of the products and explains what type of customer is best suited for each offer. The rep also invites Shahara to ask any further questions and thanks her for her interest in the products. Overall, the rep comes off as excited and eager to help.

“Logically, Shahara now has all the information needed to make the decision. Watching the video, she also feels welcomed, cared for, and like a real human. Emotionally, this brings up feelings of trust about the company. She is now confident in which purchase she should complete. In fact, the video reply was so well received, she tells a friend who also purchases one of the products in question.”

As you can see, creating a positive customer service experience with video not only leads to sales, but can even lead to referrals.

Recommended video software

There are countless options on the market today to record and host video. When it comes to email marketing, choose what is easiest for you and the individual campaign. 

If you need to screen record, use a video software like Loom or Vimeo. Both have browser extensions that allow you to record your screen a few different ways and provide you with an immediate link to embed in your email immediately.

Loom takes it one step further and offers you HTML code for your emails complete with an enticing GIF of your video. This is great because it not only saves you time from having to create it yourself, GIFs in email marketing have been shown to increase click rates and conversions by 65%.

On the other hand, if your campaign calls for a more detailed, scripted, or polished video, recording and editing it in a more robust video software like Descript may be a better option for you.

Dig deeper: What is video advertising and why should marketers care?

How to embed video in email campaigns

It’s a common misconception that you can embed videos directly into the emails you send to your subscriber list. While video has come a long way, embedding it into an email is not something the large email providers have cared to make possible. Video files are simply too large to be hosted directly within an email. However, there is a very simple workaround.

First, take a screenshot of your video. Place that screenshot in your email and hyperlink the image to the actual video. 

Want to go the extra inch? Use something like Photoshop or Canva to put a “play button” on top of the screenshot before placing it inside your email.

Ready to go the extra mile? Instead of a static image, create an animated GIF of the video and embed the hyperlinked GIF inside your email. Makeagif.com or GIPHY are two popular tools for this task.

Example:

Using video in your email marketing efforts will build trust and close more deals faster. To make this happen, use simple video software in creative ways like testimonials, customer service, and product walkthroughs.