jiveSYSTEMS (Video Email)

If you are on our newsletter list, over the past few months you might have noticed that we stopped using email icons and switched to video start slides (what we are now calling “snapshots”). I have been doing some basic testing to see which icon type gets the most click-throughs. Can you guess which graphic won?

The Very Short Story

Initially, I was taking a screenshot of the video and inserting it into the email message to prove my theory. Now it is available as an automated feature for jiveSYSTEMS members within our video email marketing software. Our system automatically takes a snapshot of every video email message and inserts it into the video email notification and post link feature.

Here is How it Works

1. Our system takes a picture 1 second into the video and overlays a play button on that picture
2. The picture is hyperlinked to your video email message in the video email notification
3. Snapshot is also enabled for the post link feature to integrate with your CRM or email marketing platform

This is What is Looks Like

Old “Email Icon”

New “Video Snapshot”

More Details

The mechanism that drives this strategy is getting the video email message to be as personable as possible, so it doesn’t appear like a marketing message or worse yet spam. We received very few complaints about the video email icons, but we did receive complaints about video emails not being watched from 1-2% of our members. The culprit? Video email icons. We realized as video email becomes more mainstream that this number was only going to rise, so we acted quickly and added the video snapshot feature.

In the near future, we will be expanding this feature to include the duration of the video.

These 3 very short videos from our YouTube channel will explain why video email marketing is so powerful. They are the opening slides from my “Concept2Profit: Harness the Power of Video Email in Your Marketing“ webinar.

The videos are less than 2 minutes each, so they are a quick study. My goal is not to explain the intricacies, but rather to reveal to macro concepts that are the driving force behind the medium.

Video One 

Video Two 

Video Three 

You can see the full webinar presentation here.

I recently looked at our keyword research, and found out that people commonly search for "compress video for email". I didn't think that it would be a high search result, as I was under the impression that everyone knew it wasn't a good idea.

Junk Mail

The first step if someone wants to send a video as an actual attachment in an email is to compress the video. Normally, email clients have around a 10MB size limitation to their attachments. Now, video files can be large. To compress a video file, you need video editing software, a nice computer that can handle it, and a bunch of time (even if your video isn't super long). Recently, cloud based encoding has become popular, but this is still restricted by the speed of your internet connection. [You have to upload the video and download the video again once it's encoded.] After you compress the video, you have to upload it to whichever email client you're using, which takes even more time.

Even after all that work, the recipient might not even receive the email, because it will likely get sent to spam as your attachment is (probably) near that maximum size limit. Even after those hurdles, your recipient still has to download the video. Wouldn't you rather just click a link and stream it to your screen? I think your recipient would too.

Note: If you've got a short video (perhaps 2 minutes or less) and if your webcam is set to record in a small resolution (such as 320x240 px), you might not have to compress the video. This still won't make it sutable for cross-platform viewing though. We'll go over that next.

Cross-Platform Viewing

So let's say you made it past the spam filter, which is great! Did you know that most webcams record to a Windows Media format (.wmv)? This is Microsoft's video codec, which has been replaced by H.264 and Flash, and is rapidly becoming outdated. Since many people check their email from a phone (for example, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices), your attached Windows Media Player video is not going to play for them. This format also doesn't play on Macs without installing third-party players or codecs.

Privacy

If you send your video as an attachment in an email, you're giving the person access to a hard copy of that video. Normally, we don't want to do this, because they can do anything with that file - upload it to video sharing sites, distribute your message as their own, etc. If you've ever read an ebook, you know that you normally aren't allowed (by the software) to change any text, or even select any text to copy. They build in these defenses because they want to protect their content. A video attached in an email is no different.

Analytics

Knowing that the recipient actually watched your video email is an important statistic. When you compress a video and then attach it to an email, you have no way of tracking if the recipient watches it. [If you've got a lot of time on your hands, I guess you could call them and ask.]

Final Thoughts

Video email is growing in popularity, and the applications for the technology are only going to grow. If you're a business user and desire to leverage video email as a communication tool, I strongly recommend that you use business-class video email software. We are a video email marketing software and training company, and you can learn more about what we have to offer by checking out these posts:

1. The 7 Core Features of jiveSYSTEMS
2. How to use Video in Emails
3. Visit our About Us page

Communcation has a purpose, in business it is usually to generate sales. The mechanism used to get someone to act is called a call to action. In this post, we cover the all the major elements of creating an effective video email message, and it includes a little more than just a call to action.

4 Steps To Follow When Creating a Video Email (or any commucation, for that matter)

1. Decide the Who/What/How
2. Draft 3-5 talking points
3. Practice a little
4. Create your masterpiece

Let's Look at Those 4 Steps in More Detail

Example: Your day involves a series of phone conversations with new leads. You want to create an evergreen (reusable) video email to follow-up with your leads after the call to save some time and improve your rapport with them.

Ask yourself, "WHO will be watching the video email?" A prospect that I just got off the phone with AND it’s the first time I’ve spoken to them.

• Put yourself in their shoes and be specific about the situation. A targeted commucation will yield higher conversions.

What do I want them to do? Since this is the first time I’m speaking to them, I want to start fostering trust – I want them to watch my bio video.

• Any act of marketing needs to have a clear call to action and a video email is no different.  Ask yourself, “What do I want the viewer to do after they have finished watching my video?”
• A bio video is a 1-3 minute long video with you talking about who you are. Let people know what you do, where you came from, and more. This creates trust without you even talking directly to the viewer.

How are they supposed to do this? Click on “Who Is Paul?” to the right.

• Making the call to action easy to follow is sometimes more important than the call to action itself. Do not make people jump through hoops. With jiveSYSTEMS, you can setup different buttons (known as exit links) that point to different places, like a bio video. This is one of the more unique features of our video email marketing system that makes it really effective for marketing and sales.

Next, let’s come up with some talking points

• Glad to answer your questions
• Good talking with you
• I’ll be following up with you

Now it's time to do a dry run. Stick to your guns, so as not to deviate or drone on. We spend a lot of time, energy, and resources to get a person's attention – the worst thing to do once we have that is to ramble and waste it. When doing the dry run, focus only on the Who/What/How and your talking points.

“Hi, I am Paul Sokol with jiveSYSTEMS. It was great getting to chat with you on the phone today and connecting for the first time. I enjoyed talking with you and answering your questions regarding video email, and I’m glad I was able to help out. I wanted to send you a quick video email as a follow up to our call to let you know that I’ll be reaching out to you in a few days with some more information. In the meantime, go ahead and click on ‘Who is Paul?’ to learn more about me and what I do. Have a great day!”

The key to the dry run is to only talk about the who/what/how and your most important points. This keeps your videos succinct, concise and actionable. It also saves you time.

Once you can do a dry run comfortably, go ahead and record it. Once you have a take that you like, all you have to do is start using that same evergreen (pre-recorded and reusable) video email every time that situation arises. Using video effectively really is that simple!

Wrap-up

The only thing for you to do now is transition from thinking into doing! Start using these steps with the next video email you create, and you will be well on your way to effectively adopting this technology to drive revenue. If you have any questions or feedback regarding this video email creation strategy, feel free to leave a comment below.

Leave a Comment

If you have any questions or feedback regarding this video email creation strategy, feel free to leave a comment below.

Our goal is to make it super simple for you to harness the power of video email in your marketing and daily communications.

Let's go over some recent updates to jive:

No More Duplicate Template Confusion

• Video tempates have been seperated from exit links
• You can now have one video email template and map it to multiple sets of exit links

Cloud-Based Video Email Storage and Delivery

• Faster load times across all types of internet connections
• Higher level of security and redendancy

Better Quality and Faster Encoding

• We have ported our encoders over to a new and more powerful system
• Video email eocoding times are now much faster (about 10x faster)
• H.264 encoding has been added (lower bitrate for faster streaming at a higher quality)

New Backup Measures

• Auto-archiving of the last 10 videos for easy re-encoding
• Failsafe for internet conntection crash when recorcing a video email (works well in most cases)

Universal Video Email Player and Tri-Transcode

• Tri-transcoded videos play on Blackberry, Android operating systems, and iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads
• The video email player automatically selects the most suitable video files (transparent to you and the viewer)

A question that we get asked more and more is “What does jiveSYSTEMS actually do?”  It represents a milestone in our company in that we're moving into the next phase of the technology adoption lifecycle; the early adpoters phase.

With the rise of travel expenses - namely the cost of fuel - the video email industry will only continue to grow.

Our History

jiveSYSTEMS has been around for about 3 years. In our most recent update, we added iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, and Android support while maintaining a great video quality and super fast load times.

What We Do

We teach businesses how to leverage video email in their marketing to shorten the sales cycle and automate repetitive tasks by nurturing better relationships with their prospects and clients.

Our business-class software automatically:

•     encodes and uploads your videos to the web automatically
•     creates a webpage and video player so people can view your videos
•     plus you can customize the page and add links to other places to make your videos actionable

You can also:

•     send your video as an email to an individual or group
•     link directly to your video via its URL in an email, email marketing system, or CRM platform
•     generate an embed code for your video an put it on a webpage

A membership to jiveSYSTEMS includes unlimited coaching and support from our knowledgeable video email marketing coaches. We will even help you get your webcam setup, install the software, critqiue your videos, setup an auto-responder campaign, and more.

Quick and Easy Workflow

Record
Use a webcam to record directly into our servers
Upload a video from a Flip camera/camcorder

Encode
The system automatically transcodes the file into a bunch of different formats, including:
FLV / MP4 (Computers)
3GP (Mobile Devices)

Publish
Choose a template for the video to play in
Customize your links to drive people wherever you want to send them after your message

Distribute
Email it out
Generate a link for an email marketing blast
Embed it on your website or blog

Track
Get notified each time your sent videos are viewed
See when each recipient viewed your video last, and how many times they have viewed it so far

The Price

We keep our pricing simple, there is just one plan and it includeds EVERYTHING:

•     up to 60 minutes recording time per video
•     unmetered storage and bandwidth for your videos
•     unlimited support via email, phone, and screenshare
•     live training webinars and more...

Learn more about our video email marketing software and training.