Cold email campaigns aren’t something you should be afraid of. In fact, with research showing a 15.11% conversion rate for cold emails in 2020, they’re something you should consider using to your advantage to boost your clicks and results.
If you’ve had a hard time with cold emails in the past or it’s something you’ve never tried, don’t worry. This article includes 7 powerful tips you can use to increase your response rate, all by making the most of personalized video.
There isn’t that much of a learning curve, so everyone can leverage it with some high-level advice.
Here’s why personalized video is the future of cold emailing campaigns.
Why personalized video?
Personalized video is effective because it can be much more targeted towards certain prospects and age groups.
Whether you’re promoting your talent management system to CMOs of recruitment companies or simply sending a friendly introduction to a new customer that signed up to your SAAS platform – this is an effective method of humanizing your marketing, sales and onboarding efforts.
It’s easy to read words and forget about it the next second, but when you have someone speak directly at you, albeit virtually, it has a longer-lasting impact.
In addition, you can weave in personal information using custom images and interactive buttons. This not only makes your video more appealing to your audience but helps your cold email campaign appear much more convincing and less out of the blue.
An easy way to figure out which email campaigns are most successful is by looking through your own inbox.
Data shows that there is an average email click-to-open rate of 14.10%, so just like your audience, you may be more drawn towards emails that are personalized. Browsing through cold emails you’ve received yourself can help you create a bank of inspiration for future campaigns.
1. Find your best angle
As with anything you try for the first time, seeing great results with video marketing is about learning and testing, and if something isn’t working as well, taking a different approach.
Most of us feel awkward or shy in front of a camera–and that’s okay! It takes a while to get used to seeing yourself, your mannerisms, and hearing how you speak. Facing yourself will be your first hurdle to guarantee a video worth watching.
In order for your personalized video to be a success, you need to consider key elements such as natural lighting, crystal-clear photography and videography, and excellent sound. Or in other words, your 4K smartphone.
You don’t need to spend a fortune on expensive equipment for this to work.
Once you’ve got the basics right – shooting in the daytime, using the rule of thirds, etc – you can start thinking about your message and how best to portray it.
2. Ensure your videos are authentic and engaging
The words ‘authentic’ and ‘engaging’ come up a lot in marketing, but they are two golden rules for cold email campaigns. Nobody is going to open or read through emails that are the same as every other email they’ve received that day.
Personalized video can help you avoid that pitfall. Reaching your prospects through video brings a level of humanity to the cold, lifeless text we’re so accustomed to seeing on our screens day by day.
We’re all tired of seeing the same templated messages land our inboxes. They’re uninspiring, unoriginal, and often left unread.
For example, if you want your audience to sign up for a free trial of your software, a generic video would show you walking them through your platform. But why should they care? It’s all about you at this point.
Instead, you could shoot a quick screengrab video with your prospects website in the background and your face in the corner. Let’s say your software helps eCommerce companies improve their conversion rate. In the video you could briefly introduce yourself, mention what you do, and walk them through a couple of quick wins they could implement right away.
Using this approach, you’re providing value and building trust at the same time without going for the hard sell. This opens the door to further discussions that can lead to new business!
3. Get the timing of your videos right
If you’re familiar with the popular video-sharing platform TikTok, you’ll know that every video is short and sweet. Before you know it, you’re onto the next one! Given the app’s success, it shouldn’t be a surprise that videos shorter than 90 seconds usually get the most engagement.
The same principles apply when doing video outreach to cold contacts.
The length of your videos for cold email campaigns is extremely important, not only because it takes just a few seconds to make an impression, but because people typically don’t have the time (or even attention span) to watch a 5-minute monologue you’ve shot for them.
Most people like to tick their emails off their list and keep scrolling, so the more interesting information you can squeeze into a vibrant video, the more likely people will watch until the end and be likely to convert into a meaningful conversation.
4. Show who you really are
We get it, you want to put your best foot forward (don’t we all?) but sometimes, connecting with someone means being human: and that means it’s okay to make a mistake or two.
Unsure of how to pronounce their name? Try speaking it in different variations and apologize beforehand if you’ve murdered it in every way possible.
Stuttered towards the end? Laugh it out, wish them well, and show that you’re not that bent on getting the perfect video because the message is your top priority!
Avoid reading from a script or using a monotone voice in your personalized video. If you want people to respond to it, you want to come across as real, bold, and impactful as possible, giving you the opportunity to connect with your audience. In other words, be yourself.
You want to be remembered for the right reasons though, and there’s a fine line between showing emotion (and that you aren’t just a robot behind the screen) and being over the top.
Creating different audience personas or a strong email list before you run your cold email campaigns can help you manage this and allow you to gain a strong understanding of who it is you’re targeting. An additional important step would be to validate your email list to make you’re not wasting your time making videos for people you can’t reach.
5. Tease your video through your body text
There’s nothing worse than watching a PowerPoint presentation where someone is reading directly off the screen, right? Well, the same goes for your personalized video and the body of your email. Having them say exactly the same thing is pointless.
The body of your text should tease the content in your video. Keep it short and sweet. When it comes to sending personalized video through email, less is certainly more in terms of written text. Something as simple as “ Hey FNAME,
Wanted to give you a quick shout to share a personal, 2 -min video I made for you:
VIDEO
Would you be open to this form of collaboration?”
…can work like gangbusters.
6. Include a clear and enticing CTA
There are multiple elements that can affect the success of your email campaigns, but one of the biggest downfalls is a poor CTA. Or, not using one at all.
A bold CTA is paramount if you want anyone to respond to your email. Whether you want your viewers to read more, click, sign up, or do something else entirely, your call to action needs to convince them to take that next step.
You can include a CTA in the body of your email as well, but placing one at the end of your video will allow you to ‘catch’ prospects when they’re most likely to be willing to take the next action.
7. Never stop testing
One of the best ways to improve your results from email marketing is to test different strategies. Tracking and evaluating your performance allows you to build upon what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and create a structure that brings you conversions.
This is also an effective way of knowing how well your audiences are reacting to your personalized video – if people are unsubscribing to you or not responding at all, you’ll want to change your approach. This underscores the importance of tracking the right metrics. You can only solve a problem if you know what’s causing it.
Make your cold emails more impactful than ever before
Personalized video is a great element to include in your cold email campaigns. According to recent data, people spend around 100 minutes a day watching online videos in 2021, and 92% of marketers say it’s an important part of their marketing strategy.
If you don’t get involved now, you could be missing out on a whole bunch of customers.
Including other interactive content in your emails can also boost your success, but getting started with personalized video shouldn’t take a lot of work. Plus, the earlier you start, the sooner you’ll start seeing solid results.