Rehumanize Your Business Read online

  After a group meeting or even a meeting with an individual, follow up with a video to reiterate the most salient points. This is also helpful for people who couldn't attend or weren't invited. You don't have to cover every detail; instead, include or provide a link to meeting notes. Steve, our CMO, does this after executive leadership meetings. For connection and alignment, a few key marketing leaders get a two- or three-minute update from him about the most important topics covered in a meeting we don't attend.

  When you need to update or check in with a team member you've not spent time with recently, video helps you to be face to face when you can't be there in person. For the same reasons and in the same way that Dan Smith uses his webcam to provide his students feedback, give feedback to team members in a way that allows you to fully express yourself. These are the foundations of a service culture. It lets people know that you're paying attention, that you're appreciative, and that they matter.

  In addition to these personal touches, record evergreen videos for any message you use over and over. Video is extremely useful for onboarding and training messages. Answer frequently asked questions and cover the most important topics once, then use the videos again and again as employees need them. Put those videos in drip email campaigns, YouTube playlists, training modules, and/or other places for repeated use. Share them with target recruits as a reflection of your human approach to company culture.

  Time 9: Invitation

  Problem: Not making clear the value of participating, not selling the opportunity with energy or emotion

  Why Video: To show and tell what the experience will be like, to sell through the transfer of emotion

  You're putting on an event or you're tasked with getting people to an event. Because sales is all about the transfer of emotional energy, use video to convey enthusiasm, promise value, and provide a clear call to action. What prospective registrants, attendees, or participants will get out of it is the key. Any time you put an opportunity in front of people, you have to jump the “What's in it for me?” hurdle. Blending energy, value, and persuasion in a personal, human message clears that hurdle.

  This list of things to which you might invite people is not exhaustive, but it should get your mind going on all the opportunities you have to increase interest, response, and participation:

  Networking event

  Team meeting

  Company event

  Client appreciation event

  Webinar

  Training event

  Conference or trade show

  Informational breakfast, lunch, or dinner

  One-on-one meeting or appointment

  Social media connection

  The video options here are not evergreen versus personal. Instead, you have the option of going one-to-one, one-to-many, or one-to-all with your video invites. As always, a truly personal, one-to-one video is most effective. For the sake of efficiency, though, you might send to a segmented list for a team meeting or training event or to a full database for a networking event or conference.

  To fill up workshops and networking events, Trevor Houston with New York Life in Frisco, Texas, sends video emails. His structure is simple: energetic video, typed-out what/when/where details, and registration button. You don't have to memorize and deliver the date, time, location, and other specifics in your video. Instead, use one line of text to drive the video play and promise “all the details and a link to register below” in your video. The link can go to a calendar, an Eventbrite page, a webinar registration page, a website landing page, or anywhere else. When you do this with video email, segment your follow-up based on recipients' action or non-action like email open, video play, and link click. Send follow-up video emails to increase registration among those who've not yet registered and to increase attendance among those who have registered.

  For one-to-one invitations, Jeff Wagner, a producing sales manager with One Trust Home Loans in Houston, Texas, uses the FORD technique to gain participation. The FORD acronym stands for family, occupation, recreation, and dreams—topics to focus on to initiate conversation. Having sent more than 2,000 videos, Jeff recognized its power to connect and convert. He decided to pick out 20 real estate agents in his area whom he didn't know and invite them to a coffee appointment.

  Before sending each person a unique video, Jeff looked at their social media profiles to find a similarity, for example family (their kids attending the same school as his kids) or recreation (both being fans of the Houston Texans football team). In each video, he greeted the person by name, established the similarity, and invited her or him to coffee “to share ideas on how we can help each other with our businesses.” He also followed up with a phone call.

  With this combination of FORD, a video email, and a phone call, “14 accepted coffee appointments with me.” That's a 70% success rate on invitations to people he didn't know. “I have my whole team doing this now and we're having success,” says Jeff. “We're getting new face-to-face appointments and generating revenue. And it's because of initiating the appointment through personal videos.”

  Time 10: Thank You

  Problem: Making sure your gratitude is truly felt, allowing your words to fall flat

  Why Video: To express gratitude through tone, smile, cadence of speech, pauses, eye contact, and all those warm, human elements that are missing from text

  One of the most common ways to sign off an email is with “Thanks” or “Thank you” or even “Thanks!” These are words we read on the screen so often that their sincere tone is easily lost on us. Compare that to someone looking you in the eye and saying “thank you” after you helped set aside the weight of a burden or “thanks so much” with the gleeful grin of someone who just got a raise or a referral. Think about that moment and that experience. When you can't be there in person to say or hear those words said with real emotional energy, video is the next best delivery.

  In the previous chapter, we shared the benefits of expressing gratitude and saying “thank you” from a nonprofit organization and from leadership roles. Every single one of us has the same opportunity every day. Set yourself up for a successful day by starting in gratitude. Send two or three personal thank-you videos. Make other people feel good and increase the likelihood that they're there for you again in the future.

  “Thank you” is one of the easiest and highest value videos to record and send. Video gives you a more meaningful touch than any other when you can't be there in person. Sincerity and gratitude are hard to capture in typed-out text or even in a handwritten note. In writing, you rely on adverbs and superlatives to convey what you'd do naturally with your eyes, face, and tone. Even if you've sent a gift basket, you've said it by phone, or you've dropped a card in the mail, a 20-second video is a simple but powerful add.

  Here are a handful of times to give thanks:

  Thank you for registering on our website.

  Thanks for your time on the phone today.

  Thank you for meeting with me.

  Thanks for your inquiry, here are the answers.

  Thank you for doing me a favor.

  Thanks for who you are and all you do.

  Thank you for referring me.

  Thanks for your suggestion or recommendation.

  Thank you for making my day.

  Thanks for connecting on social media.

  This 10th and final time to send video in place of text is essential to rehumanizing your business. When you make this a daily or weekly habit, you'll be glad you did. The transactional value of a “thank you” video is immense; you'll achieve more financial success when you commit to it. But the relationship value is higher. When you transcend basic give and take to celebrate the inherent value of people, you'll be successful beyond measure.

  WHEN NOT TO SEND VIDEO

  Video doesn't always say it better. For lightweight, transactional messages, a text or email makes more sense. Hiding a one-liner like, “Are we still on for 4 p.m.?” or “How is that project coming along?”
or “Don't forget to invite Jennifer.” behind a play button inside an eight-second video isn't an improvement. On the other hand, most three- to five-paragraph emails can be captured, shared, and understood better in a plainspoken video. For short and simple messages, default to typed-out text unless there's an emotional, appreciative, or subtle aspect to it that's difficult to capture in writing.

  And, of course, some things are best done in person. For example, more than three-quarters of workers ages 35 and up say that the most appropriate communication method to quit your job is face to face. That share falls more than 20 points to 52% among people ages 25–34 and more than 30 points to just 44% among 18–24 year olds.4 Shockingly, 6% of those ages 18–34 say instant messaging is the most appropriate way. A way? Yes. The most appropriate way? Uh … who's raising these people?

  Think about how you prefer to learn information or receive requests. When being there in person seems best, be there in person, even at the cost of overcoming time and distance to make it happen. When that barrier is a little lower, you still want to include the richness of nonverbal communication, and scheduling a synchronous exchange in person, by phone, or by video conference is inconvenient, then send a recorded video message. Use your best judgment … unless you think the most acceptable way to quit your job is by instant message. In that case, ask an elder or an experienced peer.

  As with any digital communication, your video may be subject to regulatory compliance, whether it's federal law like HIPAA or an internal edict from your in-house legal or security team. “Though BombBomb has passed several compliance hurdles like PCI and GDPR and continues to work toward other clearances like SOC2 Type 1,” most video systems, platforms, and companies haven't done so. Use a combination of caution and common sense around information that may be subject to regulation. Do know that video email serves as an effective documentation medium. You know the exact who, what, when, and how often of every email open, link click, and video play. With BombBomb in particular, a link click can be the accessing of a document and a video play is measured second by second.

  A final note on when not to send a video: when you've sent a lot of videos. As you're communicating with people inside and outside your organization, mix it up. Send some plain text. Send some video. Send some stylized and graphically rich emails. Send some simple, stripped-down emails. As effective a medium as video is for communication, connection, and conversion, overreliance and overuse diminishes its return. Though video humanizes and diversifies your touches, even its most ardent practitioners know it's just one part of a healthy mix.

  And a final reminder on when to send a video: when there's emotion, detail, complexity, nuance, or subtlety involved. For example, a screen recording video may do a much better job explaining something than a set of typed-out rules and steps … especially with your smiling face in a little bubble in the corner along the way.

  NOTES

  1. Whitbourne, Susan Krauss. “5 Ways to Deliver Bad News With a Minimum of Pain.” Psychology Today. July 25, 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201507/5-ways-deliver-bad-news-minimum-pain.

  2. Heskett, James L., and Sasser, W. Earl. “The Service Profit Chain.” In Handbook of Service Science (Boston: Springer, 2010): 19–29.

  3. Solomon, Lou. “The Top Complaints from Employees About Their Leaders.” Harvard Business Review. June 24, 2015. https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-top-complaints-from-employees-about-their-leaders.

  4. “2018 Adobe Consumer Email Survey.” Adobe Systems Incorporated. August 17, 2018. https://www.slideshare.net/adobe/2018-adobe-consumer-email-survey.

  PART 3

  How to Record and Send Videos

  CHAPTER 7

  Sending Video in Emails, Text Messages, and Social Messages

  So, you want to record and send personal videos. You've got some ideas about when to send them, who to send them to, and what to say. So how do you actually do it? Can you just record and send videos on your own? Do you need a paid subscription to a service? Should you send by email? Or Facebook Messenger? Or texting?

  In this chapter, get the pros and cons of three ways to send video through email. Learn how and why you might use screen recording. Then, consider video by text messaging, social messaging, and social networks.

  THREE WAYS TO SEND VIDEO IN EMAIL

  Method 1: The Screenshot Method

  Record, Upload, Screenshot, Link, Then Send

  This method is “free-ish” and requires you to record a video, upload a video, make a screenshot, capture a link, assign the link to the screenshot, then send the email.

  To send a video email, you must first record a video and host it somewhere. To focus on video for relationships rather than for marketing, we'll blow by scripting, lighting, recording, transferring, editing, and all steps required to produce a more polished video. Instead, we'll go straight to the webcam for ease and speed. Record yourself with your webcam using the default programs loaded onto your computer – Windows Camera on Windows or QuickTime on Mac. There are plenty of other webcam recorders, like VLC from nonprofit VideoLAN; they're all just a Google search away. You may also record with your smartphone or tablet camera.

  At the risk of stating the obvious, most recording environments are similar. Clicking or tapping a “Record” button, which tends to be round and red, will initiate the recording. Some systems start the recording immediately, while others may count you down with a 3, 2, 1, before starting to record. In most cases, another click stops the recording. Get familiar with the most common recording environments you'll be using, so you're always ready to go. Take care to locate the camera lens, which may be hard to see if it's set against black on the face of a smartphone, tablet, or laptop screen. If you're not looking into the lens, you're missing valuable eye contact.

  Once you record your video, save it on your laptop, desktop, phone, or tablet—in a folder, on the desktop, in the camera roll, or elsewhere. From there, upload it into a hosting platform. As with video recording software, numerous services can be used to host your video. YouTube and Vimeo are two of the most popular. For simplicity, let's say you upload to YouTube. Be sure to mark it as “Unlisted,” because it's a video for a specific audience or person, not for open display on your channel (remember: we're talking personal video here). One way to send from YouTube at this point is to click “Share,” then “Email,” which sends the link in an email branded to YouTube. Of course, you could also just copy the link and share or send it however you prefer. For the more proper Screenshot Method, though, click “Share,” then copy the address of the video.

  Once you've got it uploaded into a video hosting service and copied its link, make a screenshot of your video's thumbnail image or of another frame in the video (slide the playbar or play and pause to find one you like). On a Mac, use “Command-Shift-4” to draw out a box of exactly what you want to capture in your screenshot. On a PC, use the Windows accessory “Snipping Tool.” By controlling exactly what you capture instead of capturing your entire screen, you don't have to go into an image editor to trim it up.

  Capture a frame of your video with a nice smile in it; this screenshot is your video's first impression. Bonus points for adding a play button or play bar to your image to make it obvious that clicking it will play a video. Additional bonus points for capturing an animated GIF image of your video playing with a tool like Giphy Capture for Mac or ScreenToGIF for Windows instead of a static thumbnail image. Even though they appear to have motion like a video, GIFs behave like simple image files, so they work in this method.

  If you're using a traditional email marketing platform like MailChimp or Emma or if you're using a CRM or marketing automation platform, go to the email composer and place that screenshot image into your email design. Link that image to the video you uploaded to YouTube. You can do all this in BombBomb's drag-and-drop email composer, but that defeats its purpose as you'll see later in the Pro Method. Plus, we have YouTube and Animoto integrations that allow you to
drop in the link alone—we'll take care of the screenshot for you. Once you've linked the image, send your email.

  If you're in your transactional email inbox like Gmail or Outlook, you can do the same thing—insert the screenshot image inline in your email body. Your inbox may or may not let you turn your image into a link, so you may only be able to type it in as a text link beneath the video (“Click Here to Play the Video” or similar). Add the link however you can, then send your email.

  Because you're linking to a YouTube video, an email open and a click on your screenshot or text link will send them over to YouTube. They won't be watching the video in the context of your email. And after the video is completed, they're presented with an array of other videos to watch, some of which may be your competitors' videos.

  Screenshot Method Summary

  You need a video recorder.

  You need a place to host your video.

  You need to screenshot a video thumbnail.

  You may or may not be able to put the screenshot into your email.

  You may or may not be able to link your screenshot to the hosted video.

  You may need a paid service to do both of those successfully.

  Your recipient may not get a screenshot that links to your video.

  Your recipient will be taken away from your email, your call to action, and your contact information to watch the hosted video.