During the course of the last 24 months, a lot has been written about “Email Fatigue” and from personal experience, the struggle has been real. Everyone I speak to has noticed the sudden increase in the number of marketing and sales emails that pop into our inboxes and the reason for this sudden increase is pretty easy to figure out: the advent of Covid-19 and the resultant rise to popularity of sales engagement platforms.
So you might be asking yourself, how do I get more of my emails opened and read by my recipients?
Avoid your emails ending up in your recipient’s Spam folder
First things first. To avoid a decline in productivity due to Email Fatigue, network administrators have been tasked to put in place as many protocols as possible. This is to make sure that unwanted or unsolicited emails do not make their way to your recipient’s inboxes. Navigating your emails through all these countermeasures can be a daunting task; but increasing the likelihood that emails hit their targets’ inboxes is critical and well worth the effort. I found these 10 Tips to Stop Your Emails From Going to Spam really useful.
Stand out
Once your email is in your target’s inbox, you now need to stand out from the other 120 emails that they have received today. In terms of the copywriting the following pointers should be kept in mind:
“Less is More” when it comes to subject lines. Keep them short, but be as impactful as possible. This could be your only chance to stand out from the other 120 (plus) unopened emails in your recipients’ inboxes.
Creativity is key.
Keep your message only about the person you are reaching out to.
You should not mention what your organization does or what you are selling – it’s all about THEM!
Ask questions, but not too many.
Make sure that your questions are personalized to the recipient.
Do not ask rhetorical questions!
Use a Content Experience Platform such as OneMob to share a personalized microsite to your recipient. This will add a thumbnail (animated or static) to your email.
Tip: When using thumbnails, create a virtual background with your recipient’s logo and corporate colors.
Why use a Content Experience Platform/Digital Sales Room?
When your targeted recipient receives their email, they will see a friendly face with their own company logo and corporate colors. Humans are inherently inclined to have a bit of “Corporate Narcissism”. If we see something familiar that we identify with, we are curious to find out more. I have found that emails I send using a thumbnail with the recipient’s logo in my thumbnail, get a far higher rate of engagement. The Content Experience Platform – or Digital Sales Room – gives you a platform to not only send a personalized video message, but also gives you the opportunity to add text, embed your calendar link, create call-to-action buttons and share more content or resources. Use these platforms to tell your story, thus bringing sales and marketing together in one neatly personalized package. It is also ideal for building your sales funnel and can be used throughout the different stages of the typical funnel.
Summary
We spend a lot of our time and creative energy on writing copy and generating content. Making sure that our efforts pay off, should be one of our highest priorities. An artist would only hide the paintings he does not want others to see.
Sales are vital to any business. After all, it’s hard to make money if you don’t sell anything! But even though they may be critical, they can also be quite challenging if you don’t know what you’re doing. This sales funnel with video guide will walk you through the basics of building a sales funnel with OneMob so that you can take advantage of opportunities and make the most out of your marketing efforts. Here’s how to build a sales funnel with video in five easy steps.
Why Video
Your customers prefer video. In fact, 92% of consumers say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. If you want to build trust and drive sales, you need high-quality videos that explain your value proposition and help users take action. Whether you’re working on building awareness, encouraging conversion or sending customers down your marketing funnel, creating videos is a great way to make an impact on your audience.
Step 1: Finding A Niche (and an email list)
Your niche (e.g., car insurance) is where you spend most of your time and energy. When you have enough traffic, you can focus on other niches (e.g., mortgage insurance). The key is finding an audience interested in what you have to say and then building that email list!
Step 2: Setting Goals and Objectives
It’s not enough to know what you want; in order to get it, you need SMART goals. They are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based (SMART). In other words, your goals must be clearly defined so that every step of your sales funnel contributes towards achieving them. This applies from top to bottom—from marketing campaign all the way down to each call-to-action on your page. A good goal is well-defined, quantifiable and actionable; but most importantly, it’s realistic—not too hard or easy for customers to achieve. Be sure that each element in your funnel is designed to lead people forward towards taking whatever next step gets them closer to completing their goal(s) before they leave without doing anything at all. This means better microsites, more effective calls-to-action and more targeted content throughout your campaign or microsite experience will help make sure they take those final steps toward converting visitors into leads into clients then repeat customers!
Step 3: Choosing The Right Format For Videos
The biggest challenge in creating sales videos is choosing what format is best. You have many choices, including live action video, animated or whiteboard videos, or even product demos done in PowerPoint or Keynote. It’s important to pick a format that tells your story most effectively. If you’re selling an e-book about weight loss for moms, for example, it makes sense to use an animated whiteboard video that’s easy on viewers’ eyes and keeps them engaged. After finding the right format, upload to your OneMob library and use it as your featured video on your microsite.
Step 4: Developing The Best Sales Copy And Microsite
If you want to create an effective sales funnel and convert your website visitors into leads and customers, it’s important that you understand how each piece of your online presence—from microsite, content selection, call-to-action and email copy—relates to one another. These elements must be complementary in order for people to take action. This means you need fully developed concepts that tie into each other so your prospects can follow through. The best OneMobs combine those elements within microsites. Follow best video practices for a good video that clearly shares what content you want your customer to interact with on the microsite and what action step you want them to take after engaging with the microsite.
Step 5: Build the top, middle and bottom of the funnel
Create Awareness at the Top of the Funnel
The awareness stage of your sales funnel is where you should establish brand loyalty and familiarize new prospects with your product or service. It’s essential that you do everything possible to get their attention, but also be sure that they can easily find out more information on their own if they choose. Your goal in these first moments of contact is simply to grab their attention—if people are interested enough in learning more about what you have to offer, they will take action. After all, one email address won’t put food on your table unless you start building relationships with others down in subsequent stages of your funnel. You need those people ready and waiting when it comes time for them to buy (or buy again). Your ultimate goal at this stage is simply getting people into contact with what you have to offer.
Put another way, they won’t know that your solution is ideal if they don’t fully understand what challenges they face. This stage is all about educating them about the problem. Here are some videos you can create to do that.
Educational Videos
Buyers lack information at the beginning of their journey to find a solution. This is where becoming their guide can pay off. And becoming a guide means creating videos that answer quick questions, as in the Watermelon Media video below. The video explains what content marketing is in a short, animated, easy-to-understand way.
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos are a staple in digital marketing. They discuss complex concepts in simple language, giving viewers a better understanding of what your solution offers and how it works.
Using visually interesting graphics and animations, this OneMob Video explains how OneMob can help businesses improve outreach by combining context, content and calls-to-action:
Short Video Ads Identifying Problems
Short ads can be highly effective when executed well. This 61 second ad reveals a problem truckers face and how much help Corinna is offering to solve the problem.
Drive Consideration at the Middle of the Funnel
Marketing works best when it leads people through a sales funnel, starting with awareness, then interest, then desire and finally action. Building your product messaging at each stage of that funnel is crucial. For example, in that first phase—awareness—potential customers should understand what your product does and why they need it. During interest you’ll want them to get more information about features and pricing. And in desire you’ll want them to sign up for early access or pre-sale offers. Each piece of your messaging should build on one another until you get someone all the way through your funnel so that you can then convert that visitor into a customer.
Here you want to focus on specifics, including how your product works, why it works in a certain way, and even the alternatives available and why they aren’t the ideal solution.
Product Intro Videos
Videos that introduce your product and how it works are critical for buyers. The goal of this OneMob Video is to show how helpful it is to use OneMob. If you’re a potential buyer who’s strapped for time, watching a 1.5 minute rundown of OneMob is a quick win.
Tutorials
Tutorials provide prospects with a more in-depth experience of your offering. This type of video is ideal for prospects who are considering their options and want to take a closer look at what your product can really do for them.
This OneMob Video is to peel back the curtain on what buyers need to know about using OneMob. The video teaches beginners how to create a campaign in OneMob and share with potential customers.
Influence Decision-Making at the Bottom of the Funnel
Prospects are most likely to make decisions that allow you to move them down your sales funnel. This is when they’re beginning to come around, so it’s important not only that you present valuable information, but also that your sales staff can convince prospects that they’re on their side. If you don’t have access to sales people, give prospects something of value in exchange for their contact information—something no one else is offering. Something as simple as free advice or a $100 coupon code might be enough. Be sure that whatever you provide demonstrates how much better off customers will be after working with you (better than what they had before). Provide good content and customers will decide where to spend their money by themselves. You just need to show them how worthwhile your offer is and what it offers beyond its obvious benefits.
The Relationship Gets Stronger at the Bottom of Your Funnel: Even if everything goes perfectly from top to bottom, some potential customers won’t convert because they either lack time or money (or both) or just aren’t interested at all—regardless of what you do or say. At least then, though, you know where you stand!
This is where you have an opportunity for the sale, so focus on content that will help convert leads into customers. This often involves reinforcing ideas shared at the middle of the funnel.
Demo Videos
OneMob’s abilities and functions are shown in this short demo that reveals the true benefits within the software.
Customer Testimonial Videos
According to social proof theory, a person who doesn’t know the proper behavior for a certain situation will imitate the behavior of others and look for guidance for their actions. Using video testimonials at the bottom of your funnel is a great way to inject some social proof into your buyer’s journey.
But don’t just scratch the surface or be vague in your video. Give specifics and create a story that’s worth watching, especially for buyers looking to be convinced that yours is indeed the right solution.
In this testimonial video, Kevin explains how OneMob helps him reach more customers.
Bonus Step:
Getting Traffic To The Funnel
There are three primary methods for generating traffic—viral, pay-per-click (PPC), and SEO. Viral traffic requires you to convince people you know, like and trust that your product/service is something they would want to share. This kind of traffic comes at a cost, however: It takes time and effort. You have to be willing to give away your products or services in order for others to spread word about them. PPC is like viral traffic except it doesn’t rely on personal connections, which makes it easier but also more expensive. SEO means using search engine optimization techniques to get found by search engines like Google and Bing. While these may not generate instant sales right away, they do drive qualified prospects through your sales funnel over time. Research each method thoroughly before deciding what works best for you. Each business has different goals, requirements and limits so you’ll need to find one that fits just right. Now let’s build a successful sales funnel with your OneMob’s filling the front end of the funnel!
Email us at sales@onemob.com to learn more about getting your OneMob account to build your next great sales funnel.
Just a few weeks ago the Milwaukee Bucks made history in the NBA winning their second championship in 50 years. It was an amazing accomplishment, and they became OneMob’s first customer to win a major sports championship. I could go on about the great coaching, players, clutch moments, or even the “Greek Freak” who helped them get there. While the Bucks were winning on the basketball court, the Bucks ticket and services sales team used video to navigate through unprecedented times to still keep in touch, develop, and grow relationships with their fans. The results of this perfect storm: the team secured a record number of 2021-22 season tickets including renewals and new sales as a whole. Here is how they leveraged OneMob.
Spring 2020
In the Spring of 2020, the world shut down due to the Covid-19 virus. The sports industry was majorly impacted with nearly all sporting events canceled or delayed. While the NBA figured out if they would resume their season and if there would even be fans in attendance, what is a ticket sales rep supposed to do? Brett Hollenbeck had a brilliant idea. He decided to use that moment in time as an opportunity to let Bucks fans into his home and provide a unique and humorous look into his work from home life.
Everybody was working from home
It wasn’t just humor that kept the Bucks in front of their season ticket members. They took the opportunity to reach out and get feedback using OneMob to personally invite fans to take their survey and even threw in a link to the Bucks Virtual Town Hall meetings as an incentive for fans giving their valuable feedback.
Jamie Dematthew used OneMob to get valuable customer feedback
Summer 2020
When the NBA decided to resume the 2019-20 season the team still didn’t have anything to sell, at least for this season, because the NBA moved the remaining season to Orlando, Florida where the remainder of the season and the postseason would be completed, without fans in attendance. The Bucks were clever enough again to change their outreach with the purpose of keeping fans engaged with sellers. Bucks reps sent video reminders of upcoming games that fans could still watch from home. They also sent trivia questions that fans could respond to and if they got the question right they had the opportunity to win Bucks memorabilia or food and drink vouchers for upcoming games.
Jada Pollard’s Trivia OneMob
2020 Offseason
Orlando wasn’t as magical as the Bucks had hoped and they finished out the year with a strong season but not an NBA championship (yet). With uncertainty looming around when the next season would start and if Fiserv Forum would even have fans in attendance next season the Bucks continued building relationships with fans old and new.
Premium Sales Manager, Jason Natter leveraged Linkedin to find new customers.
Josh Schedler, also a Premium Sales Manager simply said thank you to his customers for their continued support but didn’t forget to include links on potential upcoming events, more information, and of course his contact information.
New reps like Alex Orendorff sent a quick video to match a face with the name.
Winter 2021
By Winter 2021 the NBA had more clarity on the 2020-21 season. The season would be underway and shortened, but no fans allowed in attendance YET. Reps continued to stay in touch with fans in creative ways. Since they already did trivia when the team was in the bubble they got even more creative with at-home scavenger hunts and gameday attire contests.
Amy Weinfurter’s at home scavenger hunt
Charlie Raethke’s gameday contest
Eventually, the NBA and local officials started letting fans (and the staff) back into Fiserv Forum which helped them put together “show and sell” videos and welcome back fans.
Michael Chapman’s show and sell
You already know how this story ends. The Bucks went on to make and win the NBA finals for the first time since 1971. Throughout all of this, the Bucks also sent hundreds of custom videos targeting 2021-22 season renewals and eclipsed their goal with the combination of a great team on the court and in the ticket sales office which is currently working on the best video a team can ever make the “thank you for a championship season” video.
Congratulations to the Milwaukee Bucks, OneMob’s first Championship sports team.
We asked Hazel Koch (@HazelSKoch), Account Executive Recruiter at Betts Recruiting, about how OneMob has helped in her outreach to candidates. Here’s what she had to say:
As a recruiter, being able to develop and maintain meaningful relationships is a critical part of the job. In order to successfully match a candidate with the right client, you need to spend the time building genuine relationships to ensure you’re facilitating a long term match.
In such a competitive space, where job seekers are looking independently and talking to multiple recruiters, a big challenge is differentiation. How can you stand out from the rest of those hungry and driven recruiters to engage A-player candidates and convince them to respond and connect with YOU?
For Hazel, it was challenging to build a strong foundation with her candidates through traditional emails, cold calls and texting. She was hitting a big wall with outbound, with a low 3-4% response rate. A lot of effort for very little result.
So when Hazel decided to record and send personal videos with OneMob, she immediately saw a big uplift in engagement with a 12% response rate just in the first few days, resulting in more booked meetings. By making the extra effort to put a face to her name, she was able to elicit these types of responses:
With OneMob, Hazel now has more insight, like email open rates, something she couldn’t track before. She gained incredible momentum in the first week of using OneMob, with a 78% email open rate and 63% unique watch rate on her videos, so she’s truly set up for success.
Creating that personal touch doesn’t take much. With OneMob, you can record a professional and branded video in under 60 seconds. You’ll be able to respond promptly with real-time alerts on email opens, videos watched and responses. And, everything gets tracked back to Salesforce automatically so you can accurately measure the impact of videos to closed opportunities.
Trade shows and conferences are one of the best ways for sales reps to meet new prospects and connect with existing clients. Conversations that go down in person are more meaningful and have lasting results, especially since face to face interactions are becoming rarer in this digital age. However, sponsoring events can be costly, making them fewer and farther in between. So when your company does sponsor that premier event and sends you cross-country, you better make it worth their while and score some big deals. No pressure. How can you ensure that you’re making the most of the experience, every step of the way? The answer is video.
Motion picture is a powerful medium that’s a game changer when it comes to events, and is applicable throughout every phase. Here are some tips on how best to use it:
Leading Up to the Show
Send an appealing invitation: a unique and unsolicited way to stand out to those prospects or clients, who are getting plagued by tons of other cold calls and templated emails.
Inform without being boring: highlight all the details of where you’ll be, what you’ll be showcasing, etc. Promote any special plans, such as prize giveaways or after parties.
Prepare prospects to meet you: attendees will recognise you at the show, taking out the initial awkward guessing game.
On the Floor
Entice and engage with attendees on the floor: Show live demos, conduct interviews and capture the action, all on your smartphone and without leaving your booth.
Record message with your new leads: By capturing your conversation on camera, you and your prospect will remember what you spoke about.
Following Up After
Stand out from the rest: While attendees are getting bombarded with follow up emails, video breaks through the mass of boring, plain text emails.
Revive the conversation: Sending your prospect the video that you recorded on the floor will refresh their mind of you and your conversation, keeping the post-show momentum going.
There are a million ways to get creative with video. Tell a good story, make it upbeat and incorporate calls to action. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is to not get over complicated. Keep it short and sweet, because engaging viewers in those first few precious seconds is crucial. So what’s the easiest and most cost effective way to do this? With OneMob. Our mobile platform allows you to:
Capture prospect and customer feedback in the moment to leverage later
Share the experience with attendees in real time and post to Chatter & communities
Brand with your company or event logo
Want to know more about how OneMob can help you at events? Sign up now to try it for free.
What’s the fastest way to boost revenue and grow your business? The trick is to tap into a powerful resource that you already own- your sales force. But when your employees are disengaged in the workplace, as 32% of U.S. employees are, their full potential goes untapped. And as any manager knows, when their team lags drive, performance suffers. But in today’s data-rich, highly mobile and tech-savvy workplace, B2B representatives need unconventional and challenging training programs to motivate them, now more than ever.
As a team leader, it’s your job to keep your employees engaged. Maybe numbers are dipping or you need a way motivate CRM adoption, which is crucial in driving pipeline visibility and predictability. You’ve surely heard of or tried gamification, a concept which has gotten a lot of buzz lately. When reps get excited about competitions that align with their goals, that reward the right behavior and that set challenging but realistic benchmarks, gamification works wonders (inside sales), engagement and performance improves. By incorporating technology, leaderboards and metrics into their competitions, Sales leaders are finding success in reinvigorating their reps. A little friendly office rivalry in the already competitive sales pit helps take motivation up a few notches.
Benefits of Gamification
Increase engagement during a training program
Drive adoption of training resources, new programs, or CRM software
Gain better insight into practices that are effective and ineffective
Inspire collaboration when reps share best practices with each other
Grow revenue by encouraging competition and shared goals
Create a culture of recognition and praise within a team
While we’ve shown you how video is helpful in onboarding and educating employees, it can be a real game changer when it comes to gamification. We’ll show you not only how OneMob engages reps through video, but measures their performance as well- giving reps and managers alike actionable insights.
Run a Successful Sales Contest with OneMob
Recording the Best Video
Video allows reps to try out different approaches, and really see how they look and sound. Challenge them to make the most creative introduction, or the compelling break-in video. See who makes the best follow up to a cold call, or see who can revive the most dead leads
Customizing Player Page
Creating different video player page layouts lets reps figure out what — works best for them. Testing out different combinations of content types, external buttons, and CTA messaging let’s reps experiment to find what approach works best, and in what situation. Experimenting with different email subject lines and video thumbnail images helps reps determine what gives them that extra advantage.
Sending Internally & Externally
By asking reps to send their best pitches, managers can instantly provide direct feedback with a response or a follow up example. Or, reps can send to their prospects, and A/B test their different video/layout combinations to see what resonated best.
Tracking & Analytics
Managers can see how their reps are performing based on the metrics that matter most to them. Number of email opens, watches, button clicks and responses are all automatically written back into the rep’s individual Salesforce accounts, and tied to existing Opportunities. Over a longer period of time, managers can easily determine which accounts got (the most videos/ highest video watches) per rep, or who closed the most deals with video.
To be successful, contests must not only be motivational and moral boosting, but efficient and effective as well. Whatever your approach, make sure that it addresses key business objectives, is data-driven and can be managed in real-time within your CRM. With the OneMob platform, you can be sure all three of these requirements are met. To help your reps to embrace their full potential through video, contact us to get started.
Last year, we gave you all our best practices for creating and using video, which became an essential part of digital marketing in 2015. But we know that 2016 isn’t the year to start using video in your outreach- it’s the year to start engaging with and measuring its impact. Whether they be personal recordings or high quality productions doesn’t matter, since video is already the most engaging form of content. What matters is how your viewers interact with your videos, beyond just a watch.
In the past, we’ve looked to views and watches to determine a video’s success. However, number of views is becoming more of an irrelevant metric, since watches don’t truly help you gauge the level of a viewer’s interest. What you need to know is if your videos are generating responses. Does your audience follow your call to action, register for your event or download a piece of content, and more importantly, have you given them the means to easily do so? That’s why we’ve createdEngagement Pages, or customizable landing pages to host not your videos, but your other digital content. By combining multiple digital components onto one page, you not only create a viewing experience unique to you/your brand, but an interactive one as well that furthers interest and inspires action. So here are 3 parts of the OneMob player page that will help turn your watches into meaningful responses.
1) Response Form:
Tried and true, the response form is your viewers’ direct line to you. Whether you’re trying to set up a meeting or gather feedback, our form makes it easy to get the responses the you’re looking for. Your viewers can reply back with their own written or video message, and a date and time that’s convenient for them to meet. This ability to directly reply right on the page starts the conversation off, right away. Talk about efficiency. Here are a few examples:
Recruiter asking a hiring candidate to create an introduction video
Real estate agent booking appointments with interested buyers
Sales person getting a first meeting/call
Click the page to hear how OneMob Customer Success Lead, Kyle, begins account activation.
2) Iframe:
If a direct response isn’t what you’re looking for, there are more ways to engage. With our new Iframe, you can replace the response form with any additional content of your choosing. Whatever you include, just having that side by side view of your video and supplemental content creates a more interactive experience for your viewer. Amp up your custom pages with:
Informational content, such as one sheeters or articles
Downloadable applications, contracts & proposals
External web pages or links to support articles
Interactive maps or virtual tours
See how this agent provides a 3D home tour to go with her own listing video.
3) Custom Button:
By adding a supplemental button below your video, you can direct viewers to whatever that next step may be. Label your custom button with proven CTA’s:
Download the latest case study, report or whitepaper
Sign up to see a demo or start a free trial
Read more or get the latest news from a featured article
Visit your website’s homepage to learn more
Here’s an support video that provides instructions and a link to live assistance.
We know that video should inspire and attract viewers to go beyond a watch. That’s why we’ve built all these features to inspire not only more views, but more actions. And to help you measure the results of your efforts, OneMob brings you the analytics to prove it, with not only the number of watches, but the viewer information, shares, clicks, replies, etc. By giving you both more opportunities to engage and greater insights, OneMob shows you how your digital content is performing and making your profitable.
OneMob is excited to sponsor Inman Connect, a 4-day conference that brings together the best of real estate and technology in New York City later this month. Produced by Inman, the leading source for real estate news and technology, the event will feature some of the biggest names in the industry to discuss the future of real estate and the latest trends in sales, marketing and customer outreach.
OneMob will be there to show real estate agents how they can sell more properties with video. With the OneMob platform, brokers and agents can record or upload videos of listing, send to clients and then track engagement. Instead of sending YouTube videos, agents can build a custom video player page tailored to their clients, which are fully branded and trackable. Companies such as RE/MAX, Wells Fargo, and Meritage Homes use OneMob to leverage video with their clients more effectively. To learn more, read here on Inman, or visit www.onemob.com to get started.
If you think video messaging is just a sales tool, think again. With a little thought and creativity, the possibilities for implementing video in your everyday business applications are endless. Thankfully, we’ve done all the brainstorming for you. Each week, we’ll bring you fresh ideas on how you can use OneMob everyday, in every way. First up: how incorporating a video improves your email signature.
For most, email is the main method of workplace communication. Given its high volume and wide reach, there’s a lot of opportunity for sharing content and increasing brand awareness. Opportunity also lies beyond the message of the email body itself. Maybe the phrase “email signature marketing” rings a bell. You may choose to promote your company’s website, blog, social media channels, upcoming events, new marketing offers, product demo, free consultations, etc. Without making your email signature longer than your actual email message, video is an unexpected but effective medium to share something extra. It’s also beneficial for you as a professional. Adding a video thumbnail makes your signature more attractive and personal, allowing you to really introduce yourself. Most importantly, video helps increase engagement, drive opportunities and promote brand awareness. With OneMob, you have the ability to track this activity, with all the analytics written back to your Salesforce accounts.
Make the most of all your digital communications with a personal touch, even in your signature line. To learn how you can link your OneMobs to your email signature, see our support page.
Cold calling. You’ve done it a million times, and will probably do so a million more. But we keep hearing same the questions pop up in trending sales discussions and articles everywhere. Is it effective or is it outdated? Will we ever move away from it? Is there a better method? A practice endangered to extinction, social sellers everywhere are pronouncing cold calling nearly dead. With so much back and forth, what’s a salesperson to do? The answer isn’t to stop cold calling- it’s to stop leaving voicemails.
The Challenge
As every salesperson knows, making initial contact is the hardest part. Picking up the phone has long been the first step in this process. If someone answers your call, great. But when you’re sent straight to voicemail, that’s where things start to go downhill. It used to take about three to four calls to reach a prospect. Given our increased mobility and new modes of communication, the number of attempts has doubled. On average, less than 1% of calls get returned and less than 2% of those calls result in booked meetings. So what does this mean? It means that there’s a fundamental hole in the way sales teams are reaching out to prospects.
Communication is Broken
Simply put, leaving voicemails is no longer very effective. We’ve all been in the situation where, upon seeing a missed call and voicemail from a friend or relative, you choose to call back without listening to the message. “Did you get my message?” they ask. “No,” you reply, “but I saw that you called.” Unfortunately, the business world doesn’t operate in the same way, and your prospect is not going to call you right back. According to Business Insider only 33% of people listen to voicemails from business contacts daily, and only 18% listen to voicemails from numbers they don’t recognize. Meaning, four out of five of your cold voicemails aren’t even being played. I’m not suggesting that you put down the phone indefinitely. Real-time verbal communication is absolutely essential. But when you do get sent to voicemail dungeon, you need to be more strategic with your follow up.
Resolution
As evidenced by text and email, much of our communication has evolved from verbal to visual. InsideSales reported that the top three forms of messaging that people respond to are email, office phone calls and cell phone calls. Clearly, people are choosing their email inboxes over their voicemail boxes. But even those are becoming inundated with mass amounts of generic messaging. As text becomes less compelling, what is the next medium that will catch, and hold, our attention?
It’s time to take a step back and re-examine our methods.Don’t let an unreturned voicemail slow down your sales cycle. Following up with email is still more effective, but even those can get lost in the mix. So how can you ensure your emails are not only being read, but eliciting more and higher quality responses?
Personalize Your Outreach
Putting a face to a name goes a long way. When someone sees a smile and hears a voice, a sense of trust and a layer of objectivity is established around that individual and their context. Not like in an email, where a text-based barrier makes it difficult to accurately express yourself in letters, fonts and whitespace. And more often than not,your messages are being misinterpreted. With video, this is unmistakable.You’re essentially unmasking yourself and gainingmore credibility with your viewers. People don’t want to be sold to. Buyers want to be engaged on their own time, in a new way that’s more dynamic, less about products and more about their business application. They’ve gathered enough information on their own to form an educated opinion. What they need is an expert, trusted advisor and source of guidance. So how are you going to elevate yourself, get more attention and receive more responses? By personalizing your outreach.
Thankfully, we live in an age where new tools and technologies are making communication easier, more engaging and enjoyable. Video messaging allows people to record, send, watch and reply to each other whenever and wherever it’s convenient for them. Technology has advanced enough to the point where we’re not limited to recording videos on our webcams and uploading them to YouTube. Nor are we required to own expensive DSLRs to record high-quality videos. Look no further than to your smartphones. You use it every day, in x amount of ways. The practice of moving the phone from the ear to the front of the face is becoming less of a novelty, and more of a norm.
At OneMob, we practice what we preach. By incorporating video into our email outreach, we’ve seen increases in our open rates, click-through rates and higher quality responses. See how our customers are getting results with video messaging and contact us to learn more.
