by Tony Vidler 
If you aren’t using video with email to educate and engage clients and prospects yet, why not?
It seems an odd thing with everyone having smart phones that can take high quality video’s on the spot, and with everyone also drafting and sending perhaps a 100 emails a day, but it is still relatively uncommon for professionals to combine the two as far as I can tell.
Yet, we all know by now that a massive proportion of todays consumers will click the play button on a video far more readily than they will read text in an email. We know that it makes sense commercially – we can answer a bunch of FAQ’s or give explainers that take us 10 minutes to produce and which we can then re-use dozens (if not hundreds) of times – saving futuure time and effort.
Embedded video in emails generally have a high engagement rate to begin with as they grab attention visually and is also usually perceived as an easier communication method to engage with. Video doesn’t tend to be a medium which requires the viewer to actively concentrate – they don’t have to read, interpret meaning and analyse in the same way they do with text only messages. Context, tone, body language can all be conveyed with video to help package the entirety of the message, which improves comprehension and engagement.
It is particularly useful when engaging with existing clients and contacts (although definitely doesn’t need to be restricted to just those who have a relationship with you already) because there is the sense of it being a “conversation”, rather than a lecture or set of instructions. .
How many times have all of us sat reading a text only email and spent time trying to figure out the tone of the message, and what the sender was really implying? Video tends to leaves little doubt about what was meant.
As a means of communicating rapidly and effectively with clients there is no question that combining video with email is more effective than email alone, or even video alone. It should go without saying, but a boring, dry or dull presenter remains a boring, dry, dull presenter regardless of the medium, so we ned to bring a bit of zing to the show. As video is a one-way conversation in reality we have to lift the energy level a little more than usual – but without aiming for frenetic and zany! Just lift the energy, pace and inflexion a degree or two more than is normal, and that gives the message a lot of life which a plain text email just cannot convey.
Creating video’s today could not be more simple. Hosting them on a platform have never been easier. Attaching or embedding them into an email message is just as easy.
If you haven’t begun sending video’s to clients and prospects in your emails yet, then make that a definite “to do” this year. The technology is pretty much in every professionals pocket. It is also in pretty much every consumers pocket. It is the way of “now”, not the way of the future. And it is good for your business.
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