Only 8.5 percent of outreach emails receive a response. Or, to put it more soberingly, 91.5 percent of outreach emails are ignored.
That’s a lot of wasted potential—especially when your lead generation process is outputting high-quality leads.
Emails with personalized message bodies have a better response rate—32.7 percent. But how can your fast-moving, time-crunched sales team create personalized messages for leads and prospects—and in a way that stands out from the competition?
Enter efficient, scalable personalized video messaging. Personalized video sees an average of 16x higher click-to-open rates and a 4.5x increase in unique click-throughs in email compared to non-personalized content. And again, it’s scalable—and doesn’t have to tie up your time.
Video Messaging in Sales: Why the Hype?
Video messaging in sales has become a hot topic in recent years, and with good reason. It has revolutionized the way sales professionals connect with their prospects and customers, bringing a personal touch and a dynamic element to their interactions.
As a sales professional, personability is your superpower. Videos can capture that energy—and with the right scalable strategy? The sky’s the limit.
Rewind to 2020, when the world went virtual and companies depended on Zoom and other technology to protect the customer experience and help sales teams do their jobs. Changing your normal sales habits was hard at first, right? But this new area of communication opened unique opportunities—opportunities that have only grown.
As James says: “Video messaging is moving in the same way—it should be a habit if you’re going to be a competitive salesperson in your team or industry.”
The hype surrounding video messaging in sales can be attributed to several key factors:
- People sell to people. And buyers buy from people they trust. A personalized video message helps communicate your energy and competence without a call.
- Video gets engagement. Sell the way people want to buy. Sendspark’s customers report up to 5x email response rates and 3x email conversions with video messaging. As Bethany says: “Some people are getting up to 90 percent reply rates for cold emails, which is just unheard of with text.”
- Competitive advantage. Marketing strategies have embraced video, but sales? Only 43.8 percent of sales teams use video campaigns in their prospecting strategy (and that number seems reaching.) It’s an effective way to stand out from the competition.
- Convenience and flexibility, for both seller and buyer. Rather than scheduling a call or meeting to get your pitch across, record at your convenience—and they will watch at theirs.
So, you can see why you should dive into personalized video outreach. From the competitive advantage, to the stellar engagement opportunities, it’s clear to see: Sales can get a lot of value from personalized customer videos.
However, personalized content takes time to develop, record, and send. Time your team probably can’t spare.
Video Personalization at Scale: 6 Tips and Tricks That Help You Get Replies
So, you want to create a personalized experience that boosts conversion rates—without disturbing your sales workflow or adding a bunch of work for your team. This video creation and distribution process needs to be scalable. But how?
Let’s dive into our top tips and tricks.
1. Make It Relevant
Personalization is not about adding their name to the script.
In fact, you don’t need to make personalized content for every new lead and prospect. To make your process scalable, it’s far better to create general but targeted customer videos.
Here’s how Bethany explains it: “You could say their name and then read the same script that you read to everyone else. That’s not going to be helpful to them. Instead, think of your ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Then, make personalized videos based on each of your customer segments or stages in the sales funnel.”
This strategy reduces the number of videos you need to script and record, ensures that each lead or prospect receives a message that is relevant to their own customer journey, and simplifies your calls-to-action.
Ready for an example? Let’s say you have selected one of your ICPs. You want to create a personalized (read: relevant) video message for this segment—specifically for when you are doing follow-up outreach.
You can create just one video script that speaks directly to the needs of this ICP, and highlights the value of your solution for them—specifically. Now, pick one CTA that is relevant to this group at this stage, such as trial sign-up.
Then, record the video and program your CRM sales automation to send your hyper-relevant follow-up video to each prospect in that segment, as they flow through your sales pipeline.
You have now personalized the customer experience without slowing down your workday.
Scalable? Check.
But don’t forget to add subtitles on videos when you’re finished, as this can improve accessibility. This also makes your videos more relevant to specific audiences.
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2. Personalize Via Variable Fields
What if you want your video message to be more than just relevant? What if you want it to include the prospect or company name, or company logo, to grab their attention and increase engagement?
Good news: You can automate this via variable fields. Video personalization tools like Sendspark can sync with your email automation platform, allowing you to autofill variable fields with prospect and company names—just like an email template.
Thumbnails are super important if you want your video to get that click-through, so this is one area that could really benefit from variable fields. Captions are another.
Why does something as simple as a familiar name capture curiosity and inspire action? Many salespeople are fighting for the attention of your leads and prospects. Inbox fatigue is real. By including these details, not only is it more engaging, but you are demonstrating the relevance of your email—and showing that it might be worth their time.
In general, video email can reduce inbox fatigue and help recipients retain more of the message when compared to text-based email. With personalization via variable fields, it’s next-level.
3. Include Supporting Screen Captures
Another simple way to personalize your video content—without spending tons of time—is to leverage screen captures.
This is where you superimpose your recording on top of a background that is relevant to this specific prospect. Maybe that’s a social media account, such as their LinkedIn profile. Maybe you’re aware of customer data points that demonstrate a need for your solution—such as their declining open rates for emails, or quantified issues with customer engagement.
Does what you’re selling answer those pain points? Great! This tactic adds strength to your pre-recorded message, and personalizes (read: makes extremely relevant) your pitch to each new customer.
And it’s relatively simple to include: Just grab the intended page URL, and add it to your template.
4. Leverage Video Templates
Sales email templates save you time. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, your team can work from a tried-and-true blueprint.
Same with video messaging.
Video templates, like those provided in Sendspark, allow you to create and repeat successful outreach videos. This streamlines your process—and takes the pressure off constantly developing new content.
5. A/B Test Your Personalized Videos
If you want better results for less effort, A/B testing your sales outreach is super important. In order to successfully scale the video personalization process, you have to know what works (and what doesn’t.)
A/B testing helps you experiment with different variations of personalized videos, such as varying the script, visual elements, or call-to-action, to determine which version generates the best results. This iterative approach allows you to fine-tune your video content and maximize its effectiveness.
How can you do this? Analyze metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and customer feedback to gain valuable insight into what resonates with your audience and make data-driven decisions. And how do you do that? Have the right tools in place—including a CRM—that will track this stuff for you.
Beyond the videos, it’s important to consider other aspects of your sales emails, too. For example, how is your subject line converting? A lot goes into effective sales emails. And leveraging A/B testing—including with personalized videos—empowers sales teams to identify blindspots, create impactful content, and ultimately scale well.
6. Choose the Right Tools
The tools you have in your sales stack directly impact your ability to scale growth, close deals—and create and send personalized videos efficiently. Working with video personalization may be new to your sales process, but it doesn’t have to slow you down.
Where to start? Check out Sendspark, a video personalization platform that helps you drive scalable sales conversations, personalize what needs to be personalized—and automate everything else. Leverage video templates, pull dynamic variables from email lists, and so much more. Pricing is reasonable, and you can even try it out with a free plan.
Next? Close is the must-have CRM for every scaling sales team. Our powerful automation features let you accelerate email outreach and perform A/B testing with powerful analytics. The best part? We’re built specifically for sales teams. So, we understand your workflow and pain points. (Plus, try us free for 14 days.)
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To do sales effectively, you need support—support from your team, and support from your tech stack. With the right tools you can gain all the benefits from personalized sales videos, while minimizing the headache.
The Exceptions: When to Do One-to-One Video Personalization
It should already be clear: One-to-one video personalization is not scalable. However, there are scenarios where creating uniquely personalized video messages is beneficial.
Are you dealing with big accounts? In this case, it’s probably worth the time and energy to create hyper-personalized video messages. Part of the process may be repeatable with other customers, but in general, this won’t be scalable—but it will be worth it.
Is the lead super far into the sales funnel, the deal size relatively large, and the potential customer just needs some extra support? Again, this may merit a unique video if you can’t hop on a call.
Trust your judgment. Consider your resources and deal sizes. Act accordingly.
Personalized Video: The Key to Closing Deals?
If you are looking for a way to boost lead and prospect engagement, cut through overwhelmed inboxes, and ultimately boost closing rates—look no further than personalized video.
Few sales teams have learned how to integrate video into their outreach, or how to make it scalable. That gives you a competitive advantage in an area with real benefits. For example, Proposify found that adding a video to your proposal can increase close rates by up to 41 percent—and speed up deals by 26 percent. Pretty great, right?
To get these results, you need to do it at scale. You’ll need the right tools and the right approach. Personalize what needs to be personalized, automate the rest, and make everything as relevant to each ICP as possible.
As we’ve discussed, Sendspark is a great option for scalable video creation. And Close? You can trust us to automate email outreach based on customer profiles, organize your customer data, and provide killer analytics throughout the entire process.
