Explain the Complex Simply – Wise Words from Todd Hartley

Back in 2003, online video was in its infancy. YouTube hadn’t been launched yet, and Netflix was still in the business of mailing out DVDs. But for Todd Hartley, founder and CEO of video marketing firm WireBuzz, the writing was already on the wall. Back then, Hartley was leading digital marketing for seven of the largest nationally-syndicated talk shows in Hollywood, and his job was to report what was most successful every week. “Back in 2003, it was obvious that every week my report was the same – video was getting 10x the results of our audio programs, images, blog content, articles, and anything else we were doing.”

But, as Hartley told us in interview, the timing wasn’t quite right – yet. “I placed a mental note that as bandwidth becomes more available I wanted to specialize in this tool that got freakish results. And before I knew it, in 2010 I opened up WireBuzz! Bandwidth was available, YouTube became a force to be reckoned with, and I decided that I wanted to use this powerful tool to help boost sales conversion for customers. That’s really my passion area.”

Over the past 8 years, Hartley and his team have learned quite a bit about what makes video such a powerful tool for sales and marketing. Here’s what he had to say:

What’s one aspect of video production that most companies get wrong?

The strategy part! There are random acts of video that happen every single day, and most people – even smart marketers – start to think of video and jump right to creative and ideas. But they need to step back. You have to start with strategy. When you’re dealing with strategy, you’re thinking of your end game. What is the goal? Once you have the goal you can create the strategy. Once you have the strategy, you can create the right content and then bake that strategy into the content, and start promoting it to generate that goal.

Most companies get it all wrong – they just create the video and then they try to reverse engineer how it will accomplish their goal. How are we going to deal with the CTA? And where is this video going to live? That is a big mistake. And that’s where video fails online.

Smart marketers start out with the really smart strategy and they’re able to execute all the way through the process. But most importantly, not only do they prove ROI for that video, but they also get to demonstrate that video works, and that they’re not wasting resources.

Are there any industries that you see missing out on the power of video?

The industries that have the biggest opportunity tend to be industries that are more complex to explain. In a lot of those industries the business leaders tend to be people who have seen success in an old business model and are now leading in a new business space, but haven’t evolved the way they communicate with customers.

Let’s talk about science. If the product or service has some type of research, medical, or laboratory component, that’s precisely where you should be using video. Our brains process information 60,000x faster with video than they do with text. And in those older businesses where technology or science is being used, but they’re still explaining or teaching with literature to convince and convert their prospects, they’re the ones that aren’t doing a very good job.

In these industries, the market leaders with the largest percentage growths are starting to explain what their product does through the power of video. And that’s a huge opportunity – explain the complex, in simple to understand terms, and people buy at faster rates. It’s just that simple.

How can businesses and their agencies get the most out of their relationship?

From my experience, the easiest, smartest thing to do is have a primary point of contact at both the agency and the business. These are the people who are going to filter, digest, and report back to their respective companies all the relevant details. Both companies have their own quarterback, and both quarterbacks need to clearly communicate with one another. They must be very conscious about they way they describe things, and what those changes are that need to be made. Almost every one of my clients have a very complex review process, including legal that needs to look over changes, regulators, brand managers, and brand bosses that slow down the process.

That’s totally fine with me – but where I see the biggest opportunities for growth is how those companies communicate, and how they move information. Often when the company communicates through multiple people, they end up making projects more expensive.

So I would say have one point of contact at both places, and make sure they work together – they’re not enemies! They are colleagues that are working together for one result, which is to create a very smart and very sophisticated video that helps move some business metric that these two people have decided. And once you do the the whole process starts to smooth out.

What companies do you see that are doing really great things with video?

The first one that comes to mind is CampaignMonitor. If you’re a new prospect and you arrive on their website, CampaignMonitor is doing a fabulous job of educating you from when you first arrive. They’re a marketing automation and email platform, and they start by showing you their feature set. They build instant credibility by showing you how big name brands are using their tools to amplify results. It’s really well done.

Another one is Natera, who is a client of ours. Natera is a genetic laboratory with a bunch of different tests. They have created sales enablement tools to be able to help their sales teams convince and convert at a faster rate. They communicate to two different audiences because genetic counsellors or health care professionals need to understand how the tests work. But in some cases they need to create patient-friendly videos that also bring a patient down through the awareness, consideration, and decision path too.

You have to also be studying what Gary Vaynerchuk is doing with video. He’s doing the best job with building thought leadership in the power of video and taking people along through his daily journey. The videos tell a great story because it’s Gary’s big brain in action. Watch his team, see him sit down with clients, basically get a free demo with Gary. When businesses have $30 or $50k a month to spend, they’ve already seen and been a part of the Gary V world. So they know they want to bring those resources and have him work on their project.  

The post Explain the Complex Simply – Wise Words from Todd Hartley appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/explain-complex-simply-wise-words-todd-hartley/

Low Email Conversion? See How Influitive Increased Click-Through Rates by 800% with Video

Breaking through all the marketing noise is hard enough on its own, but when your audience is other marketers, you have your work cut out for you. How do you engage people who spend every hour of their workday thinking through the same problem? We can create blog posts, ads, and case studies to grab the attention of our prospects, but when they know all the tricks of the trade, creativity is key.

At Influitive, we’ve worked for the past five years to build a whole new category of marketing—advocate marketing—to help B2B companies ignite growth through the voices of their customers. Our platform gives marketers the ability to discover, nurture, and mobilize their customer base to reach a wider audience, accelerate the sales pipeline, and improve customer engagement. It’s my job to educate our prospects on what advocate marketing is, why it’s important, and why they need it.

In 2015, Influitive created a new industry event focused on advocacy, customer engagement, and experience. We called it Advocamp. The first year was a huge success and we wanted the 2016 event to be even bigger; our goal was to more than triple attendance. But it wasn’t going to be easy to get the attention of so many B2B marketers and convince them to attend our virtually unknown event. Oh, and did I mention that we only had three months to get everyone registered? No sweat.

We had our normal promotion vehicles—the website, email, content, and social ad campaigns—but we knew to stand out in a sea of events that look more or less the same on paper, we were going to have to get creative.

Enter Camp Counselor Buck.

Show, Don’t Tell

To convince people to attend a brand new marketing event instead of or in addition to the dozens of other events out there, we couldn’t just tell them Advocamp was the best conference ever. We had to show them. We had to make them feel something.

When you have to grab people’s attention quickly, and don’t have the luxury of a 1,500-word post to explain the awesomeness of your event, the best tool to accomplish this is video. It can help build that emotional foundation, and it’s much easier to be funny, sad, or joyful through video than almost any other form of content. But sometimes it’s also a lot harder to produce.

Fact: 87% of online marketers use video. What’s your excuse? @Vidyard #videomarketing (Tweet This)

This is where our video partners come in. We had worked with a video production company called Sparksight on many video campaigns in the past, including some basic Advocamp commercials in 2015. Among these Advocamp promo videos was a camp counsellor character named Buck—think B2B marketing meets summer camp with a large helping of physical comedy. We called these videos Buckshots.

While the early Buckshot videos from 2015 were super funny and people seemed to enjoy them, we could only use them for brand awareness, which is marketing speak for “we have no way of measuring the impact of this.” We made them, put them online, and hoped they would take off. I’m sure you can guess that they didn’t. They got a few hundred views each. But we weren’t done with video. We realized we had to put significant distribution efforts behind them just like any other piece of content we produced.

Although we couldn’t tie registrations and hard ROI directly to these original Buckshots, we did get a lot of positive feedback from our colleagues, partners, customers, and other Advocamp attendees. Marketers attend so many events every year, and often they feel like just one big advertisement. We heard, however, that we had hit the mark when it came to instilling a different kind of emotional impact associated with our event. It made a promise about the event experience that stood out from the competition. More importantly, attendees told us we delivered on that promise a few months later at Advocamp.

Brand awareness = ‘we have no way of measuring this’. Stop spraying and praying! @Vidyard (Tweet This)

When 2016 rolled around and we set that stretch goal to register nearly 4X the number of Advocamp attendees from the previous year, we knew we couldn’t produce videos that merely entertained. We had to convert. We had to change our strategy if we hoped to come even close to our goal, so we started investigating ways to make an engaging medium like video turn into an ROI-driving, seat-filling tactic.

A few months before we started promoting Advocamp 2016, we started using video marketing platform Vidyard to host all of our video content. The cool thing about Vidyard is that it integrates with your marketing automation platform (in our case, Marketo) to track and measure the impact of your video content. Video can be more costly and time consuming to produce than any other type of content, so it’s critical to tie those investments back to sales pipeline and revenue.

Around that time, Vidyard also introduced some innovative new functionality that allowed marketers to personalize video campaigns in the same way we personalize emails.

Personalization

Dale Carnegie said, “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” When someone uses your name in conversation, you feel respected and important. While our previous email campaigns used this tactic—Hi {first_name}—it was lacking in our videos.

The first batch of Buckshot videos in 2015 were all about Advocamp and how much fun the conference would be. But they didn’t put the viewer there, right next to Buck, experiencing the fun for themselves. With Vidyard, we could easily create hundreds of personalized video invitations without having to shoot hundreds of unique Buckshots.

By now, you’ve probably seen these types of personalized videos; they usually involve a character holding up a piece of paper with your name on it. But we couldn’t have Buck in the middle of the woods holding up some random paper, so we stuck with the theme and inserted the personalized text field into a merit badge sash (check out the video below to see). Now all we had to do was get these videos in front of the right people.

Delivery

In the past, if we wanted to email personalized videos to folks in our database, we’d have to create thousands of unique videos and thumbnail images for each of the recipients and insert them one by one into the emails. This is just way too many steps. With Vidyard, all we needed to do was send them our list, and through the integration between Vidyard and Marketo, we could automatically send unique thumbnail images with a link that would open their personalized invitation—all housed and hosted on Vidyard’s platform.

The Results

Our previous Advocamp promotions (email, social, and through our customer AdvocateHub) yielded modest results: 16.1% open rate, 0.7% click-through rate, and 4.5% click-to-open rate. The personalized video campaign crushed those numbers:

• 29% open rate
• 5.5% click-through rate
• 18.7% click-to-open rate

The click-through rate was 8X higher and the click-to-open rate 4X higher than our other campaigns!

The key to #marketingpersonalization? Carnegie said it’s all in the name. #videomarketing (Tweet This)

These numbers told us that clearly way more people were seeing our message, engaging with our emails, and then following through to watch the video. But these metrics don’t mean much unless we could put people in the seats. Luckily, we did that too. While we fell slightly short of our ambitious goal of 4X attendance, we tripled our attendance from the previous year. And we learned a ton.

Learnings

With most email campaigns, you work hard to draft a catchy subject line, engaging copy, and a compelling CTA. Then you send it out and…crickets. Or, if you do hear anything back, it’s almost always negative: “I don’t know how I got on this list!” “Take me off!” But with the personalized video campaign we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. People loved their videos and asked us how we pulled it off—and these were our fellow marketers! People who know all the tricks of the trade and spend all day everyday looking for new marketing magic. That’s when we knew had achieved our goal of conveying the emotional spirit of the conference.

That special feeling and “magic” of innovation was now associated with Influitive’s brand, which was something that would’ve been near impossible to achieve through traditional marketing plays. It also laid a great foundation for our future Advocamp marketing efforts.

In addition to the personalized video invitations, Sparksight also recorded all the sessions at the event. These were first available to attendees and then to those who were unable to attend. These session recordings gave us a soft-touch to follow up with the people who didn’t attend, and to this day one of our most watched videos (out the more than 500 we have hosted on Vidyard) is Daniel Pink’s keynote on “Advocate Marketing and the Science of Motivation.”

If you’re considering adding video to your marketing campaigns, make sure to give yourself plenty of lead time. Video takes a while to get right, and it’s not something you want to rush. Also, one thing we didn’t do this last time that we’re hungry to get into for the next campaign is testing. A/B test your subject lines and email segments to better understand what content resonates most with each customer segment. In addition, video isn’t cheap, so optimize to ensure you’re getting the biggest return on your investment. And finally, find a trusted video expert to help you through each step of the process—you and your audience will be happy you did.

Note: This post was originally featured on upshot.

The post Low Email Conversion? See How Influitive Increased Click-Through Rates by 800% with Video appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/low-email-conversion-how-influitive-increased-click-through-rates-with-video/

5 Ways to Make Good Pre-roll Ads (that people might actually watch)

Between the title and the first line, I’ve shown why you want to read this article, and it only took 5 seconds. If you have no interest in what you’ve seen so far, it’s likely you’re ready to leave.

This is the basic premise of a pre-roll—those annoying ads that play before the video you actually want to watch. You have to endure them for at least 5 seconds until you’re allowed to skip through. Because they are so easy to skip, pre-rolls have the highest standard of quality, custom-tailored to engage and delight us in such a short time, right?

Well, maybe not. Think of the last time you didn’t skip a pre-roll. Every day, I see terrible ads that have no chance at winning my engagement. It’s not because pre-roll is a bad medium. It’s because most ads aren’t engaging.

So, what does a good pre-roll look like? Here’s my favorite example of all-time, especially because of how low-budget it looks.

Not impressed? 91% of viewers watched the ad to the end, 7.1% clicked through, and app downloads increased by 75% during the campaign. Not bad for text and spinning burgers.

These are the results you care about. Anyone can buy impressions to bulk up a monthly report. But what you really want is engagement and, by extension, business results. I chose the Eat 24 video as an example because it proves that you don’t need a massive budget or an elaborate premise to be successful. Instead, success comes from a deep understanding of your audience. As a video production studio, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure this out, and here are our top five insights.

Truth #1: Nobody wants pre-roll

We can all agree that, given a choice, we’d rather not watch pre-roll—or any commercials at all. Most ads lack any empathy on this point, enthusiastically getting in our faces and refusing to acknowledge that they’re forcibly invading our day. Pre-rolls are especially disruptive.

What to do about it: Focus on providing value, not copy

I know that sounds terribly cliché. But before you groan/close this article/burn my house down, look at the video above. It barely mentions anything about their actual service. Instead, it focuses on providing value—in this case, piquing our curiosity and entertaining us. It’s an ad that understands that people don’t like ads. The big question is not “How do I talk about myself?” It’s “How can I delight my audience in the short time I have?”

Truth #2: Pre-rolls are essentially 5 second videos

If you have a long, intricate message, pre-roll ads are not the place/time to share them. Years of terrible ads have trained us to immediately hammer that “skip” button.

What to do about it: Make 5-second videos

When creating your video, assume that you only have 5 seconds with your audience. Boil down and present the most basic version of your message, or entice the viewer to continue watching. We always recommend 15 seconds as the optimal length and strongly recommend against anything over 30 seconds.

Truth #3: Pre-rolls are not like TV ads

I see TV commercials run as pre-roll all the time, but the two mediums are completely different. When I’m watching TV, I’ve grown to expect 5-minute breaks every 15 minutes or so. But pre-roll ads can pop up at any time on any video, making them inherently more disruptive. My tolerance is much lower. I might sit through a 40-second ad on television, but I simply don’t have the same patience on my computer.

What to do about it: Never run traditional ads as pre-roll

This one is really simple. Rephrased, if you’re going to run pre-roll, make original pre-roll ads instead of recycling TV spots. Say what you want about “cross-platform promotion,” but traditional 30- or 60-second ads don’t work in this format.

Truth #4: Pre-roll is about generating a click, not an impression

One of the biggest advantages of pre-roll and digital campaigns is that your audience can directly interact with the ad by clicking. No need to list phone numbers or URLs. The next step is literally a finger tap away. Despite this massive advantage, too many pre-roll ads focus on long-form copy without a clear next step.

What to do about it: Focus your video on your call to action

Cut out all your messaging fat. Your pre-roll isn’t a presentation. It’s a tool to get people to click. Because you don’t have time for meaningful copy, everything about the video should be driving a CTA.

Truth #5: Pre-roll needs a supporting backend

After clicking a pre-roll, I’m amazed at how many times I’m dumped onto the company’s home page. Really? The pre-roll teased a free trial, and now I have to dig through the site to find the signup page? In most circumstances, I’ll balk at the extra effort and leave.

What to do about it: Build a complete pre-roll pathway

If pre-roll is the bait, then what comes after is the hook. Getting your audience to your domain is only the first step. Tailored landing pages are very important to turning clicks into conversions. Don’t waste a brilliant pre-roll by not having anything behind it.

Pre-roll can be tough. I’ve seen billion dollar companies completely fail to deliver effective content in this space. At the same time, we’re beginning to see improvement. Eat 24 saw massive success with a very small budget. What could you do with yours?

2017 Update:

While creating a good pre-roll ad is vitally important to getting eyes on your content, we’ve heard from a number of our readers that video quality isn’t the only defining factor of a good pre-roll ad. You also have to engage the right targeting options within YouTube to ensure your video is getting in front of the right audience as well!

As Convince & Convert points out in this post, many users know their way around targeting their ads to geographic regions, demographics, and specific languages – those are the easy ones – but the real value can be found in YouTube’s other targeting opportunities.

Topics and interests are the real goldmine for targeting viewers, as these help define when your video is shown in relation to what your prospects are already watching. But they are a bit different from one another:

• Topics focus on what your prospects are watching right now. So if you provide dog grooming services, you’ll want to target your Topics around dog grooming videos. That way if someone is watching a video on how to trim their poodle, they’ll see your video offering to do it for them!
• Interests are more broad, and allow you to target ads to users who are watching content similar, but not exactly the same as what they’re watching now. To use our dog grooming analogy again, you may target Interests around professional dog shows. People who love watching pampered pooches paraded around stadiums probably care about how their own pooch looks! But you can take Interests further, and target dog walking videos, and dog training videos as well; interests your target market cares about, but that are not directly related to dog grooming.

The tips above are still spot-on recommendations for making your pre-roll video successful, but don’t forget to adjust your targeting settings. Knowing that you want to target men and women that are 18+ and live in North America just isn’t good enough to be sure that your advertising dollars are well spent. Go deeper, and start showing the right videos to the right audience at the right time!

The post 5 Ways to Make Good Pre-roll Ads (that people might actually watch) appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/5-ways-make-good-pre-roll-video-ads/

How Brian Used Video in Customer Success to Communicate Change

Every CSM knows that change can be a big sticking point for customers, especially a change like a new customer success manager. That’s why, when Brian Jacklin, previous CSM at Vidyard, confirmed that he was changing roles within Vidyard he knew that he needed to do something special for his 61 accounts. Something that informed them of the situation and let them know that they’d be well taken care of.

That’s why he turned to video.

Brian recorded a webcam video explaining the transition for his accounts to their new CSM, Jarrett Ash, and even asked Jarrett to record his own video to say hello to his new accounts, too.

The communication was a huge success with an unheard of 100% open rate. His video had 51 unique views (of 61 unique people who received it), and retained more than 65% of viewers all the way to the end.

We figured we’d be selfish not to share how they did it – and no one likes selfish – so here we are! Keep reading to learn the distribution strategy, see the video, and learn about the program’s results.

The Email

The video was sent through email from Brian to all 61 accounts.

Brian included the thumbnail of his video in the email as an image (that linked out to the video player on a separate sharing page) so that customers would:

1. know there was a video and
2. be more likely to click through since videos in email increase click-through rates by 50%.

Check out the email template Brian used – and customized – for all 61 contacts:

The Videos

Both Brian and Jarrett recorded videos using their own webcam, computer audio, and Vidyard’s free tool called ViewedIt.

They recorded their videos separately and then added them as unique chapters within the same player in Vidyard. This way, viewers didn’t have to take any additional actions to watch the second video – the second chapter played automatically. It also gave viewers the option to skip Brian’s video (sorry Brian!) and meet Jarrett right away if they wanted!

You probably noticed that Brian included a note about the second video in the email copy as well to encourage viewership.

The videos were kept short: 47 seconds for Brian and 31 seconds for Jarrett for less than 90 seconds of total content. No one has any time for more than that these days!

Check out their videos below!

The Results

Most importantly, this communication outreach by Brian and Jarrett performed well and eased customers through the change with a personal touch. The program saw the following results.

• 63 views with 51 unique
• A 100% open rate
• Brian’s video (the first one) kept about 65% of viewers all the way to the end
• Jarrett’s video (the second one) kept about 75% of viewers all the way to the end
• Brian also received a number of responses and customers were happy to be kept in the loop with such a personal message

Overall Video Results

Brian’s Video – Viewer Engagement Chart

Jarrett’s Video – Viewer Engagement Chart

The post How Brian Used Video in Customer Success to Communicate Change appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/brian-used-video-customer-success-communicate-change/

Using Video in Sales to Identify and Prioritize Quality Leads

Sales has never been an easy job to automate. For every tool that pops up promising automatic follow-ups or additional data points for tracking engagement, there still needs to be a human element to the sales process. Remember, as Fast Company put it, “People don’t buy products – they buy better versions of themselves.” And for all the technology that’s available, the best way to help prospects connect the dots between your product and the person they want to be is a bona fide, living, breathing human being.

But sales teams aren’t working stacks of lead cards anymore either. The average marketing database is in the thousands, and grows by hundreds of leads every week, meaning that by the time the MQLs become SQLs, there is no shortage of prospects for salespeople to… well… prospect. And how salespeople choose to spend their time is one of the biggest conundrums for sales leaders. Each salesperson gets the same number of hours in a day – how can leaders make their teams more efficient? And if each salesperson is trying to juggle dozens of possibly-engaged leads, how can they best prioritize their time? Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to do this with video in sales!

Why Efficiency Matters

Most sales teams exist with a certain amount of automation. Salespeople send out templated emails all the time, and most cold-calls start with a script. But when it takes 6 to 8 touches to generate a really viable sales lead (up from 3.7 in 2007) then knowing which prospects your team should be applying the efforts to is critical.

There are a number of factors that sales can use to determine a really engaged lead. Looking at content consumption is probably the biggest, as with most of the buying process happening before your sales team gets involved, prospects are taking discovery into their own hands.

Targeting Low-Hanging Fruit with Video in Sales

Knowing a prospect has downloaded a whitepaper is useful information, but you may never know if they actually read it. That’s where video is a game changer from an engagement perspective – not only will your salespeople know that a prospect has clicked play, but they can see exactly how long that prospect viewed the video. Powerful tools for separating the wheat from the chaff.
Once your sales team decides to engage with a prospect, it’s still not easy to know whether or not the prospect really cares about what you’re saying. In other words: email open rates are great for knowing when a prospect has clicked on an email, but really don’t tell your salespeople anything about how engaged they are. Maybe they just deleted it right after!

And voicemails are even worse – you may never know if your prospect even listened to your voicemail, let alone whether they were excitedly jotting down a follow-up number to call you back.

That’s why high performing sales teams have been moving video into the prospecting process, and using it not only to drive more engagement, but to help prioritize the leads worth pursuing versus the tire kickers that aren’t really interested.

Case Study: Data-Backed Persistence Pays Off

Recently at Vidyard, one of our closed deals didn’t look like it was going anywhere on the surface. Nico, the rep here at Vidyard that had been working the deal, had diligently been sending out videos in his emails but receiving no response from the prospect. Under normal circumstances, Nico would have given up and moved on to another lead, but thanks to back-end analytics on the video, Nico’s prospect was revealing a very different story.

While they weren’t replying to his emails, Nico’s prospect was watching the videos he was sending. All of them – and often. Better yet? Nico’s videos had multiple views from inside the organization. So not only was the prospect watching the videos, but they were sending them out to others. And those other people were watching them too. From start to finish.

So Nico pressed on, and long-story-short, that prospect became an opportunity, and that opportunity became a closed deal.

Simply sending out engaging content wasn’t enough – Nico needed the back-end data to prioritize a lead that looked like it was going nowhere on the surface to a lead that was really engaged, just not ready to start up a conversation. Data he couldn’t get if he was only sending out text-based emails, or text-based attachments like PDFs or PowerPoint presentations.

Without that data, Nico would have moved on and missed the opportunity.

What Sales Leaders Can Do For Their Teams

It’s a fairly accepted truth in sales that most customers don’t know what they’re looking for. There’s the old cliche that if Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. But much like most accepted truths, there’s a lot of myth attached to that too.

The same goes for prospecting. Every lead may look like the next six-figure deal, but most teams know prioritization is the real key to success. In the fast-paced world of modern sales, it’s not worth dwelling on leads that aren’t showing any indication that they’re interested in starting up a conversation, let alone making a purchase. There are plenty of fish in the sea and it’s worth fishing where the fish are biting.

Early adopter sales leaders learned early on that video is a powerful tool for prospecting – it’s engaging, and it can help drive better response rates, even for cold leads. It can also increase the click-through rate on the emails your reps are sending out by 50%. But what we also learned is that video is an excellent tool for helping our salespeople prioritize leads, and better decide where to spend their precious time.

Not every lead is going to be a winner, and seeing what leads have engaged with your marketing content is a big step towards predicting whether a lead is even worth a sales follow-up. But it’s important as sales leaders to teach your team to apply the same methodology to their prospecting. If you’re sending out your 6 to 8 touches, and not seeing a response, it may mean that the prospect isn’t interested, but it also may mean that the prospect is still feeling out whether or not your solution is right based on the information you’re sending them. Wouldn’t it be great if you knew which one it was?

The power of video doesn’t just lie in its ability to engage with prospects – it’s also one of the most powerful qualification tools your team can use to prioritize leads and become more efficient salespeople. If a lead is watching every video you send them, but hasn’t emailed you back yet, then you may find yourself in Nico’s shoes. Giving up on that lead would have meant giving up on one of the biggest deals he closed all year. And without video, he likely would have looked like just another dead lead.

The post Using Video in Sales to Identify and Prioritize Quality Leads appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/video-in-sales-identify-prioritize-leads/

Meet the Team, Video Style: Amar Chahal

Meet the Team is our monthly chance to introduce you to the fabulous, quirky, talented people that work at Vidyard, using our favorite medium — video! For this episode, we caught up with Amar Chahal, head of Growth & Business Development here at Vidyard. Learn how a business class at UofT changed his life, and the best way to fry chicken in this new video:

What Didn’t Make the Cut

Amar had way more to say than just the secret of Brampton, so let’s dive into some of the answers we couldn’t fit into the video:

What brought you to Vidyard?

Great question – there’s a long answer and a short answer. When I joined Vidyard there were maybe eight people, and my initial attraction was that Vidyard had gone through YCombinator and had a great set of investors. But once I started going through the interview process, learning more about the team, and meeting Michael and Devon, I felt much more strongly about joining Vidyard.

What’s your favorite video on the internet right now?

My favorite video on the internet is Urban Outlaw, a film by Magnus Walker.

He’s this old British dude who has crazy dreadlocks and has a collection of vintage Porsche 911s, ranging from the first year they made it in 1965 all the way to 1985. So he has one car for every single year. It goes through his collection and why he’s so passionate – the smell, the sound, the way the car makes you feel. Being a vintage car enthusiast myself, I really resonate with that video. Especially since it’s winter here, so I live vicariously through Magnus until the summer rolls around.

What’s your favorite place to eat in Kitchener, and why?

I think the expected answer from me would be Lancaster Smokehouse. Order the fried chicken and waffles. Although you can’t go wrong with anything else on the menu either.

I would say to go off the beaten path a bit, there’s an amazing Lebanese place called Arabesque, and their chicken mousahab is to die for!

The post Meet the Team, Video Style: Amar Chahal appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/meet-team-video-style-amar-chahal/

50+ Video Marketing Stats that Prove You’re Doing it Right

Video may be all the rage, but for data-driven businesses, it’s hard to justify spending resources on a new content type without… well… data, right? And if this was five or ten years ago, you wouldn’t find much to support online video. But it’s 2017, and the times, they are a’ changing!

So to help you – or your boss – understand the power of video, we collected over 50 video marketing stats spanning everything from why video is effective at driving customer intent all the way through to what videos you should be posting to your social channels. There’s something for everyone here, so let’s dive in!

Driving Buyer Intent & Conversions

• 96% of viewers find video helpful when making purchase decisions online – Animoto (Tweet This)
• Prospects that view videos of a product are 85% more likely to buy – Internet Retailer (Tweet This)
• 65% of executives have visited a vendor’s site after watching a video – Forbes (Tweet This)
• 51% of executives under 40 reported making a purchase decision after watching a video – Forbes (Tweet This)
• 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before they visit a store – Google (Tweet This)
• 4 times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it – Animoto (Tweet This)
• 1 in 4 consumers actually lose interest in a company if they don’t have video – Animoto (Tweet This)
• 59% of consumers say that customer testimonial videos are helpful – Animoto (Tweet This)
• North Americans ranked video as the #1 content asset they would like to see from brands – HubSpot (Tweet This)

Engaging Viewers

• The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text – HubSpot (Tweet This)
• 96% of business-related videos take place on desktop browsers, and only 14% on mobile – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• The most popular viewing time for B2B videos is 7am – 11am PST – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• The top 5% of videos retain an average of 77% of viewers to the last second – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• The average video retains 37% of viewers all the way to the last second – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Videos under 90 seconds have an average retention rate of 53%. Videos over 30 minutes retain only 10% – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Wednesday is the busiest day for B2B video viewing – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• 82% of all global consumer internet traffic will come from video by 2020 – Cisco (Tweet This)

Optimizing Video Content

• On average, 18 videos are published each month by businesses – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• 85% of businesses now have internal video production staff and resources – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Manufacturing and High Tech are the industries that publish the most new videos – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Businesses have an average of 293 videos in their library – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• 56% of videos published in the last year are less than 2 minutes long – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• The four most common video types for business are Explainers, Product Demos, How-Tos and Testimonials – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• The average length for B2B video is 8 minutes long – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• 85% of businesses are likely to begin or continue using video in 2017 – Marketing Insider (Tweet This)

Distributing Your Videos

• Company websites and social media are the two most popular distribution channels for business video – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• The top 3 types of video on YouTube are Product Reviews, How-Tos and Video Blogs – Mediakix (Tweet This)
• Adding video to your site increases your chance of a front-page Google result by 50x – Forrester (Tweet This)
• Adding video to your social feeds means audiences are 10x more likely to engage and share your posts – Content Marketing Institute (Tweet This)
• More video content is uploaded every month to the web than cable television has created in the last 3 decades – Clickbank (Tweet This)
• 33% of tablet owners watch at least an hour of video every day – Brafton (Tweet This)
• 63% of marketers surveyed said that Facebook has the biggest impact for their social videos – Animoto (Tweet This)
• People spend 3x more time watching a Live video on Facebook than a video that is no longer live – Facebook (Tweet This)
• Searches related to “how-to” on YouTube are growing 70% year over year – Google (Tweet This)
• 67% of millennials agree that they can find a YouTube video on any topic they want to learn – Google (Tweet This)
• 55% of viewers consume video content thoroughly – higher even than social media – Hubspot (Tweet This)
• Landing pages with video convert up to 80% better than those without – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Open-to-reply rates have been seen to increase 8x in emails that contain a video – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Including the word “video” in email subject lines can increase open rates by 19% – HighQ (Tweet This)

Videos on Social

• Videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than photos, and three times more likely than GIFs – Twitter (Tweet This)
• Video is shared 1200% more on social media than other content types – SimplyMeasured (Tweet This)
• Social video ads receive an average 1.84% click-through rate, higher than any other form of social advertising – Invesp (Tweet This)
• People comment 10 times more often on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos – Facebook (Tweet This)

Personalized Video

• The average retention rate for personalized videos is 35% higher than for non-personalized videos – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• 75% of late-stage prospects that received a personalized videos became closed deals – SalesLoft (Tweet This)
• Personalized videos have a 16x increase in click-to-opens and a 4.5x increase in total/unique click-throughs – Vidyard (Tweet This)

Measuring Your Video Success

• 35% of businesses are using intermediate or advanced analytics to measure video performance – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Businesses producing 50+ videos per year are 2.5x more likely to use advanced analytics – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Companies using increased video analytics are far more likely to be increasing budgets for video this year – Vidyard (Tweet This)
• Over 50% of marketing professionals world-wide name video as the type of content with the best ROI – Adobe (Tweet This)
• 70% of marketers say video is the most effective medium for driving conversions – Demand Metric (Tweet This)
• The average cost per marketing-generated lead is 19% lower for companies that are using video – Aberdeen (Tweet This)
• Video users grow company revenue 49% faster year-over-year than organizations without video – Aberdeen (Tweet This)
• Video users enjoy 27% higher click-through rates and 34% higher conversion rates – Aberdeen (Tweet This)
• Video users see 41% more web traffic from search than non-users – Aberdeen (Tweet This)

 

Got a stat that we missed that you think the world should know? Let us know in the comments – just make sure you tell us the source!

The post 50+ Video Marketing Stats that Prove You’re Doing it Right appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/50-video-marketing-stats-prove-youre-doing-it-right/

The Top 5 Worst Brand Video Marketing Fails from the Past Year

Big brands have the data and the resources to keep their finger on the pulse of social, political, and cultural topics. These resources create pressure to broadcast the right messaging in their video marketing campaigns. Getting the message wrong can spell disaster on a global scale, just as getting the messaging right can open new doors to spikes in sales and popularity.

When brands get the message wrong, those errors often surround gender, racial, or cultural stereotypes. 2016 was witness to a list of failures, proving that regardless of budget, your company’s messaging can make or break a video marketing campaign and the business attached to it. So as brands start rolling out their video campaigns for 2017, let’s learn from some of the worst failures of 2016.

1. Chevy “Understands” What Millennials Want

Chevrolet’s ad for the new 2016 Cruze was aimed intentionally at the millennial generation, or at least the “idea” of that generation.

The video presents a focus group filled with real millennials, not actors. This is Chevy’s first move: telling us that these are real people and so their experience with Chevy will be too.  Unfortunately, this is about as transparent as can be. A man with a Dali-esque mustache sits next to a tattooed lumberjack, across from a woman with a bleached mohawk. These stereotypes juxtaposed next to each other in a focus group is all viewers need to see to cue an eye-roll.

Next, images of “millennial” activities are presented to the group. They view men with long beards, people with piercings, and we go down the list of participants critiquing stereotypes while they sport those same stereotypes.

Finally, the focus group leader concludes that millennials would prefer a car that appeals to them, rather than an ad. Go figure.

Ultimately, the point of the focus group is obvious after the first few seconds but proceeds to be drawn out for the next two minutes. When the car is finally revealed, we’ve forgotten it was supposed to be a car ad. Chevy’s angle comes off as patronizing rather than youthful and insightful. Nothing about this ad or this car appeals to millennials, and that was the point, right?

2. Mushroom Pizza Is “Medically Proven” To Satisfy

Creative marketing angles are one thing, but advertising pizza as if it were a medical solution doesn’t sound like an appetizing combination. Unfortunately, Mellow Mushroom’s Pizza made this misstep not once, but a handful of times in their campaign. In this campaign, the brand advertises their pizza as if it were a cure for indigestion, erectile dysfunction, and more.

It’s possible to imagine how this pitch of hunger as a disease and Mellow Mushroom’s Pizza as the cure might have sounded creative initially, but then there is connecting a medical need with food that leaves little to salivate over.

Noting the video’s style, it mimics the formula of an ad for prescription medication with trips through an artificial stomach. Yum!

For the finale, Mellow Mushroom Pizza doubles down on their concept, just in case it was lost on some viewers, with a doctor appearing suddenly to join the pizza eating-clientele at their table.

The irony of this campaign is that viewers are left neither wanting pizza nor a medical consultation.

3. Secret’s Deodorant “Aids Women” In the Workplace

Female-targeted advertising campaigns (“femvertising”) are nothing new to the hygiene and beauty market. Females have been the target of many advertising campaigns through the decades, the majority of them quite crass and demeaning.

Only in the recent decades have women called foul on campaigns sporting messages that say they need product XYZ to be desired by men. This campaign message no longer works well and has been replaced with a much better one that says, “We see your value and understand your struggle. Try our product to make your day that much easier.” At least, that is the aim of most female-targeted campaigns.

Secret’s #StressTest campaign tries for this confident message admirably but flies right past it. It comes down to a combination of poor casting and poor dialogue that turns this video ad into a failure. The actress, suited up and sporting thick-rimmed glasses, seems out of place immediately. The glasses look like a cheap way to make it clear that this is a working woman who is serious. Then the monologue she recites is as far from authentic with lines like, “We won the company.”

Secret drove right past relatable and parked in the one-dimensional lot with their portrayal of a young woman in the modern day workforce. From Secret’s depiction, this gal is ready to battle the gender wage gap, and Secret’s deodorant can help get her there. After all, it’s less likely that she’ll tackle the gender wage gap if she’s not smelling berry fresh, right?

Secret’s message ultimately becomes: Ladies, to earn respect in the workplace, speak up, and don’t forget to smell nice. Needless to say, this video falls on deaf ears for the modern woman who is more attune to transparent marketing trends that plug the desirability factor at female demographics. This working woman’s fresh scent is going to seal the deal on her raise, and Secret wants us to know it.

4. Bud Light’s Political Parody Campaign Loses The Race

This video campaign reminds marketers how important it is to know your audience. The basic rule of thumb: beer and politics don’t mix. Beer brings people together to enjoy moments. Politics can be divisive and complicated. So Bud Light’s campaign with a couple of celebrity left-wingers, Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer, parodying a presidential candidate’s campaign feels out of place and a bit manipulative.

This universally popular brand is not so subtly aligning themselves with a political party but Bud Light, being an all-American beer, should advertise to all Americans. No one wants their beer to come with a side of political righteousness, regardless of how Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer are serving it up.

Bud Light eventually felt the heat when their numbers began to drop as a result of this campaign. A representative for the company released the statement:

“Turning around a brand the size of Bud Light, which alone accounts for almost one-fifth of the total category, takes time,” the spokesperson wrote. “Despite continued positive signs in brand health evolution, driven by millennials and Hispanics, 3Q was the softest performance of Bud Light for the year from a volume and share perspective.”

On the topic of this political parody campaign, the company spokesperson stated:

“The Bud Light Party campaign helped us improve these brand attributes, but it did not translate to improved volume and share performance.”

5. Damn, I Want Some White Vans

This video is not produced by the shoe brand, Vans, and it’s not a failed attempt at video marketing. In fact, this is an excellent example of video marketing. From this Viner’s video, Vans saw a 30% spike in online sales.

This video, made by a Viner in high school, was meant for no other purpose than to share comedic content on his social media profiles and yet it excels in showcasing the White Vans shoe, expertly. The clip is relatable, presenting the average teenager – Vans key demographic – walking into school and turning heads because of his white Vans. Damn, Daniel!

The video, coincidentally, includes an age-old advertising story angle ala back-to-school marketing. “Walk into school with these new shoes, and you’ll feel like a rockstar.”

The gem of this video is that it’s genuine and relatable. However, it’s the clip’s catchphrase that seals the deal on this viral video. It’s catchy and sticks in our heads. Not to mention, it’s fun to use in everyday situations. “Damn Karen, back at it again with the red pumps,” for example.

So, this video has authenticity, a catchy phrase, and a genuine depiction of how these shoes will make you say “Damnnnnnn,” when you look in the mirror.

Upon seeing the spikes in sales, the Vans company got wise to the video and redirected their homepage to a list of White Vans. Smart move.

“Of course, how could we not mention Daniel, as in ‘Damn Daniel’, which, as you can imagine, did have a strong impact on the sales of White Vans, which saw 100% sell-through in both retail direct-to-consumer and wholesale channels.

The national media attention the brand received is a wild demonstration of how creative expression, youth culture, and loyalty can conspire to cause a phenomenon. Well done, Daniel, well done.”

– Steven Rendle, VANs COO

Vans may not have made the video, but they easily could have. Maybe it would lose a bit of authenticity if it were a proper ad, rather than a Vine video, but the elements that make it so enjoyable would still be there. The clip entertains you, it doesn’t deceive you, and it makes you want some Vans. It’s an excellent example of a missed marketing opportunity.

In 2017, if you’re a notable brand with a video marketing budget, your campaign needs to be well thought-out and intelligent. A successful video marketing campaign requires a substantial amount of collaboration to be effective. Incorporating tools like GAIN into your process to help gather feedback for videos from the many content creators and approvers on your team ensures every stakeholder has a say before content goes live.

Brands have the power to shape the social commentary with their video campaigns, and when the messaging is misguided, it’s open season for criticism and backlash. So if your brand is ready to wield your influence through video, be sure to study these past failures so you can improve your chances for video marketing success.

Want to see examples of companies that did it right in 2016? Check out this post!

The post The Top 5 Worst Brand Video Marketing Fails from the Past Year appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/top-5-worst-brand-video-marketing-fails-past-year/

Forrester Finds the Future of Video May Not Be Television

Remember commercials? If you still have cable TV, you probably encounter them on a regular basis, but as more families are ‘cord-cutting’ in favor of online streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu, commercials are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Or at least, they were…

Forrester Research has bad news for marketers. Consumers are using ad-blocking software more than ever before, and the culprit is video. But not just any video – interruptive video. The kind of pre-roll ads that take a page from television-era advertising that do nothing but disrupt the viewing experience. And when everyone is skipping video ads – or worse, blocking them entirely – nobody wins.

So what is a business to do? Well, thankfully Forrester has some answers on that as well. In Video Strategy for the Post-Digital Age, Forrester outlines three strategies for building engagement, whether your prospects are looking to buy, or just casually consuming content.

Download the report, and learn how you can start creating the kind of videos your prospects won’t want to skip!

The post Forrester Finds the Future of Video May Not Be Television appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/forrester-finds-future-video-may-not-television/

Oh Hi! Say Hello to the New Vidyard Dashboard

One of the things I love the most about the time I’ve spent at Vidyard is talking to people about how they live and breathe video. It doesn’t matter who it is, from marketing to sales to IT, the Vidyard user base is passionate about using video efficiently and effectively. As a member of the customer experience team, I was lucky enough to see first hand how people across all industries and use cases interact with the dashboard. The most interesting part of this diversity among our users is that in spite of their different goals, a common workflow has bubbled to the surface which isn’t quite expressed in the UI.

With this in mind, we wrangled up an expert team to devise a plan to reorganize the Vidyard dashboard into a better representation of this more natural workflow we believe all users should be using.

As Mike and Devon first talked about during the product keynote at Viewtopia ‘16, we think that the future of how you leverage video day to day can be broken down into three categories: content, channels, and insights (CCI). This is a concept that we want to show you in the platform.

So we’re proud to bring to you our new CCI menu structure! This new reorganization of the dashboard menu follows your workflow as you manage your video content by putting the Vidyard tools you rely on in the places you would expect to find them.

Let’s take a look at what Content, Channels, and Insights means inside the Vidyard dashboard.

Content

The future of your content stream is video. The democratization of video production in some of the platforms you use regularly is already happening. Vidyard is aiming to encourage this through tools like ViewedIt and our popular Studio-In-A-Box program. We want your videos to be personalized and interactive. Helping you manage all of this content is the first item on the agenda.

In the Vidyard dashboard, the content area is where your videos live and players are built. It’s not just about the videos themselves, but how you manage the metadata, thumbnails, personalization and interactivity. We want to work towards making your content easier to see, move, and edit. You may have noticed we’ve made small changes over the last little while that will allow you to move players around between groups, and we began piloting the video library to give you direct access to your videos. This is the beginning of some key improvements we’ve planned to help you build out and manage your content library.

Channels

We want you to think strategically about where and how you get eyeballs in front of your videos. Your channels aren’t just a dumping ground on YouTube or an occasional post to Facebook. Your video channels include your website and your social outlets. At Vidyard, our entire company has become a channel as more and more communication is being done through video.

If social is your game, you’ll be able to configure your YouTube and Facebook channels. For SEO, you can manage your video sitemap. Whether you’re driving traffic to a video hub, podcasting with a video feed, or just adding some style to your branded sharing pages, this is where you’ll find the tools to distribute your players.

Insights

Vidyard is, and always has been, about allowing you to make smarter decisions around your content by showing you how your videos are performing. The reality is that not every video is a winner and that’s okay. That’s why we published the 2017 Video Benchmark Report. We want you to understand where you sit in the world of video.

It would then make sense that after you’ve organized your content and configured the distribution channels, you would want to know how things are going. To that end, you’ll begin to see additional data points throughout the platform. We’re hoping that a more simplified view of this data at the right spots in the platform will help offer some better context.

Simple, right? This all starts with a reorganization of the top level navigation within the dashboard. Like this:

I’ve been working with the head of our dashboard team, Tyler (over there on the right), to begin carving out the right journey for our users so that this idea of Content, Channels, and Insights is reinforced in the dashboard. Don’t let his calm demeanor fool you. This is the reason he gets out of bed every morning.

 

Want to see a preview of the changes to come? Check out this ViewedIt video I recorded for the highlights:

If you’re ready to try it for yourself, reach  out to your Customer Success Manager or the Vidyard Support team to have them flip the switch.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear any feedback you have so feel free to sound off in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Oh Hi! Say Hello to the New Vidyard Dashboard appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/new-vidyard-dashboard/

Would you like to Brand Like Amazon? Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It

Some of you might have seen through our social media channels that Jeffrey and I have been working on a new book with our friend and mentor Roy H Williams. We have been sharing a new chapter every week. This Monday we will release Chapter 11. The book has only 12 chapters.

If you would like to be among the first to read the book head over to BrandLikeAmazon.com. If you subscribe you will receive by email a PDF of the first 3 chapters and then you will receive a new chapter every 2 days. Do not miss chapter 10

We are just beginning to get hear from readers what they think about the book:

“Wow, that is one of the best “business” books I’ve read in years. Incredibly inspiring — both the story itself and the way in which you told it. I’m in awe.” – Scott Brinker

“Witty anecdotes and crisp, often hilarious dialog combine with an exploration of powerful marketing principles and customer engagement strategies that have driven the growth of many of today’s most successful companies…making Brand Like Amazon a must read for everyone from business professionals to people who love an engaging story well told. Jeffrey, Bryan and Roy have crafted a clever and insightful book that not only underscores the importance of branding, but also lifts the spirit and tickles the funny bone.” – Chris McCann, President and CEO, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.

“This is your best book yet! For students of growth and transformation, this book provides the bridge to go from the “Why” espoused by Simon Sinek to an enterprise’s marketing and messaging. Just brilliantly told story!” – Steve McKean, CEO, BILLSHARK

We can’t wait to hear what you have to say about the book.

The post Would you like to Brand Like Amazon? Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It appeared first on Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg.

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BryanEisenberg/~3/grlPwhUDHwc/

Introducing Vidyard for SalesLoft: Skyrocket Sales Team Impact with Personalized Video Emails

Today we’re excited to announce that, in partnership with SalesLoft, the platform for modern day sales engagement, we’re launching a new integration that will help sales teams supercharge sales emails with personalized, custom videos boosting response rates by 8x!

2017 could be the hardest year for sales reps

It’s true. You’ve probably felt the struggle intensify, because sales reps are selling into a stronger headwind than ever before.

• In 2017, Radicati Research projects that, on average, we’ll each receive nearly 100 business emails every day.
• Recent research from Microsoft shows that the average attention span of the prospects you’re targeting has plummeted to less than 8 seconds.
• CSO insights shares that sales reps only spend 33% of their time actively selling – likely given the time involved in account planning, researching, and prepping communications.

Put these forces together and it’s clear that sales reps have their work cut out for them to stand out, get noticed, and drive responses.

That’s why selling in 2017 requires a different approach.

The new rules for winning sales messaging in 2017

The best sales professionals know that relationships with customers built on trust is the foundation for scalable sales.

But in the era of marketing automation, buyers are overwhelmed with generic and templated messages, and are conditioned to think that everything coming from you is automated.

So how will modern sales teams balance authenticity with scalability? Therein lies the challenge for modern sales teams in 2017.

In 2017, winning sales teams will crack the code on sales messaging that resonates with buyers. It must be:

• personalized
• through channels marketing automation can’t communicate with
• about them, not you
• structured
• delivered through diverse channels: email, phone, social, and video

Plus, many sales organizations are adopting sales acceleration platforms, like SalesLoft, to execute this modern sales methodology.

Video is the new secret weapon for top-tier sales teams

When it comes to delivering sales messaging following this formula, not all mediums are created equal.

Email is one dimensional, lacking the tonality and non-verbal cues responsible for over 90% of your ability to build trust with your audience.

Phone calls are dying. As Gary Vaynerchuk shares, “I bet phone calls piss you off”. And the numbers would indicate people agree. Today’s buyers are texting 5 times more than making phone calls. They want to engage on their terms and on their time, not yours.

Which leads us to video.

Video is the new secret weapon for sales communications.

Why? Because it humanizes sales outreach. It gives you “face-to-face” time, and adds a personality to your sales message in a way that email or phone calls just can’t.

And it works!

Sales teams that have embraced video are seeing big impacts throughout the sales cycle:

• 8x higher response rates
• 5x higher click-through rates
• 20% higher close rates
• 30% larger annual contract values

The advantage to using video before everyone else does

Even though video has proven itself as a higher impact way to communicate with prospects and customers, only 6% of sales teams are using video strategically throughout the sales cycle.

That presents a huge opportunity for early adopters of video who will stand out in inboxes, get noticed, and drive engagement.

This edge isn’t going to last forever. Sales leaders at SalesLoft’s Rainmaker 2017 conference project that in the next 12-18 months video selling will become the norm, which means the window to differentiate your sales message through video is limited.

Thanks to SalesLoft’s new integration with Vidyard, embracing video to supercharge sales emails is as easy as leaving a voicemail, but far more impactful.

Supercharge sales emails with Vidyard for SalesLoft

This new integration is the first of it’s kind. Vidyard for SalesLoft makes it easy to add a custom, personalized video message to your SalesLoft emails or email templates.

Sales reps can record a selfie video using their webcam, right inside SalesLoft and add it to their email along with a video thumbnail image shown to drive increased response rates.

The integration also makes it easy to compile custom video playlists drawing on existing videos from marketing and sales that can be personalized with a custom video intro to add context.

To top it off, Vidyard captures valuable viewer analytics around who watched what and for how long – crucial to help sales teams tailor follow up messages and focus their sales strategies.

Getting started

Existing SalesLoft customers can try out the new Vidyard for SalesLoft integration free for 14 days by signing up here.

If you’re ready to learn more about selling with video, check out this blog post on video selling tips including the 3 most powerful types of videos for sales.

The post Introducing Vidyard for SalesLoft: Skyrocket Sales Team Impact with Personalized Video Emails appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/vidyard-salesloft-sales-team-impact-personalized-video-emails/

Vidyard Expands Ecosystem, Adds SalesLoft to Increase Sales Effectiveness With Personalized Video Emails

Vidyard for SalesLoft helps modern sales organizations increase their email response rates by up to 8X through the use of highly engaging, customized, and personalized video emails.

KITCHENER, Ontario – March 9, 2017 – Vidyard, the leading video platform for business, today announces the latest addition to their growing integration community: SalesLoft, the platform for modern day sales engagement. With the Vidyard for SalesLoft integration, sales reps can easily record, share and track highly engaging, personalized videos from within the SalesLoft platform. This makes incorporating video a simple and effective addition to any modern selling strategy, helping to humanize the selling process and build better relationships with buyers. Vidyard’s integration community includes Salesforce.com, Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot, Act-On, Adobe, Kapost, Hootsuite, ExactTarget and more.

Today’s prospects receive hundreds of emails a day, which makes it especially difficult for sales leaders to stand out, get noticed, and book meetings. By adding a highly-engaging, personalized video to sales emails, sales leaders can boost response rates by up to 8X.

The Vidyard for SalesLoft integration helps sales reps track what each prospect watched, down to the second, so that they can reach out at the right time with the perfect message. It will be especially helpful for inside sales, field sales, and solution consultants:

• Inside Sales: Humanize and truly personalize prospecting emails by recording a webcam video of yourself or capturing a screen recording of your prospect’s website or LinkedIn profile in the background.
• Field Sales: After your initial meeting, send curated follow-up materials like testimonial videos, demos, or campaign videos, along with a personalized introduction. No longer will deals be missed because sales reps didn’t have access to the right content at the right time.
• Solutions Consultants: Build and send custom product demos using screen recordings or on-demand product videos.

 

“In 2017, the most successful sales teams understand that personalization and response rates are intrinsically linked,” says Kyle Porter, CEO of SalesLoft. “Video offers sales teams a new way to personalize sales communications in an authentic and natural way. Vidyard for SalesLoft allows sales teams to quickly record custom video messages as part of a sales cadence – all in the same time it takes to leave a voicemail.”

“It’s undeniable how effective video can be when it comes to building strong relationships, especially when you don’t have access to meet a buyer in person. Today, our sales team uses video to get connected with potential buyers on a more personal level during the sales cycle,” says Tonni Bennett, VP of sales at Terminus. “By incorporating video into their daily communications, our sales team has seen an increase in appointments scheduled, and responses have been higher to post-demo summaries and walk-throughs of sales contracts. With video, communication is short, sweet, and most important of all – human.”

“At a time when businesses and brands are looking to connect with customers with authenticity, video allows sales teams to rehumanize selling by quickly communicating complex ideas using simple video messages,” says Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard. “Videos are easy for buyers to digest, and simple for sales reps to create. No one has to worry about spelling, grammar, or typos, they just speak into their webcams and share their thoughts. This humanizes the information, brings it to life, and differentiates you from the competition.”

Vidyard for SalesLoft continues to extend the power of video across the entire business, from sales, to marketing, to customer service and beyond. In January, Vidyard launched ViewedIt Enterprise, a business-class video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. This comes after the company was also named a leader in Forrester’s 2016 Online Video Platforms For Sales And Marketing Wave Report.

Vidyard’s robust set of open APIs and extensions allow developers like SalesLoft countless ways to build the potential of video into products and applications – all underpinned by unmatched analytics on video content and viewers.

 

More Information:

• Learn more: http://www.vidyard.com/salesloft
• Build with Vidyard: https://www.vidyard.com/developers/

 

About Vidyard
Vidyard is the video platform for business that helps organizations drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Microsoft, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewers into customers.

 

Media Contact:
Sandy Pell,
Sr. Manager, Corporate Communications
Vidyard
press@vidyard.com

Video:

Discover how the power of personalized video sales emails can increase sales effectiveness with Vidyard for SalesLoft.

 

Screenshots:

With Vidyard for SalesLoft, sales reps can add an engaging video thumbnail image to their sales emails and email templates.

 

 

Record a personalized, custom video message inside SalesLoft – as fast as leaving a voicemail.

 

Compile videos from marketing and sales into a custom video playlist, curated for prospects.

The post Vidyard Expands Ecosystem, Adds SalesLoft to Increase Sales Effectiveness With Personalized Video Emails appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/press-releases/vidyard-expands-ecosystem-adds-salesloft-increase-sales-effectiveness-personalized-video-emails/