Video Email Messaging as the Future of Sales Outreach
THE SITUATION
Chestnut Ridge at Rodale approached their slated groundbreaking time and needed to continue hitting and surpassing sales goals. The marketing and sales team wanted to expand on their existing sales tactics to generate more engagement from leads, leading to more deposits. With advances in sales technology, Creating Results recommended testing a video email messaging platform to allow sales team members to create on-the-spot personal messages that are delivered directly to a lead’s inbox.
STRATEGY
Our senior living audience is all about trust. Many times, when they receive an email, they can’t put a face with the name, sometimes making it difficult for them to trust who it’s being sent from. With video email messaging – they can. Platforms like Soapbox, Bombbomb, and Covideo allow users to record short, tailored videos that can be sent directly to a contact’s email. Using video email messaging allows for not only personalized touches from the sales team, but it also creates a genuine interaction between all parties where you’re able to see a smile, hear emotion in a voice, and more. Creating Results felt that testing a platform with video email messaging would catapult the number of responses from the lead side, eventually increasing the inquiry to sale conversion.
SOLUTIONS
We worked closely with the marketing and sales team at Chestnut Ridge to roll out training and usage guidelines for a video email marketing platform. This included real-time video development, examples of the best ways to use video and homework!
To encourage initial adoption, sales members were incentivized on the number of video messages they sent each month. The marketing team also started using the platform to send video messages internally. What the sales team found was that the pain (or the fear of new technology) was worth the gain as demonstrated in the results below.
RESULTS
While some adoption has been slower than others, the sales team members that have been using video email messaging have become believers. The proof is in what they have seen in terms of the improved response from leads via email, the influx of appointments set from video responses and finally – SALES!
One salesperson said “More and more of my communications is via email and less on the phone. The personal touch with a video introducing myself helps reduce the anxiety when the children of the potential resident work during the day and they do not have the availability to verbally have a conversation on the phone. It really helps reduce their stress and gets them excited about next steps.” This drives home the ease of interaction with this product, both from the sales side and from the recipient side.
We also received positive feedback from recipients of video email messages. A prospect stated that she really enjoyed watching the video. She said it was a creative way to remind her about her appointment and sent it to her daughter. Another couple that recently signed liked seeing a video email message showing them their apartment was sold on the community’s magnetic board. This was major for them as the live out of state and couldn’t sign in person.