August 16, 2022 Outreach

Using videos in cold emails: a fintech perspective

Ever used video in your cold emails correctly? In this one, we’re going to steal borrow techniques from two skilled video cold emailers, analyse and assimilate them into fintech.

Compared to other forms of media, video excels in customer education and building trust. This lends itself well to selling complex fintech products like compliance tech, and segments where people are not aware of the problem you solve.

Ironically, there’s not much in fintech circles about how people are using this. Let’s steal insights from other sectors and apply them to fintech.  

The person I’ve heard share his cold email video experience is Kevin Dorsey, former VP of inside sales, PatientPop. According to Kevin, PatientPops sales team’s cold email videos average a click-through rate above 20%;  they include them in the first 4 steps of a multi-touch sequence.

Worth learning from ​👆​​​

Here are the other nuances of video cold emails you probably should know–including how to use a dramatic demonstration. 

Video intent

If you decide to include videos in your cold emailing campaign, decide on what your intent is beforehand and measure success by those standards. 

You could want your prospect to watch at least half of your video, and then you’d follow up with a call to book a meeting. Even if they didn’t reply, a watch would be a success in your book. Your video messaging should also match your intent. If your intent is to provoke a reply from a prospect who ghosted you, you’ll craft your video message to elicit a response. Be clear on what you want the videos to do.

Risks and Dangers of cold email videos

Even though Kevin Dorsey’s team puts videos in their first emails and shoots for the click. I would avoid this because I’m more scared of affecting email deliverability than I’m enticed by the promise of the video’s impact. (Especially if you are selling in a small market.)

Typically, if you use tools like Vidyard and Tolstoy, your video will be in the form of a clickable thumbnail image that opens to the video. This is the same structure used by hackers and spammers and can get spam filters buzzing. I prefer videos/third party links in the follow-up emails rather than the first one. Experiment and see what works for you.

Additionally, some email service providers block images by default. So ensure your accompanying text makes sense on its own just in case your prospect does not get to see your embedded image,

How long should your videos be?

The last video I sent over email was 2.06 minutes long and the prospect only watched it for 43 seconds. Depending on the content in the video and its intent, keep yours less than 2 minutes long; which is the same video length popular in the short attention span world of LinkedIn.

How do you get prospects to click your videos?

Like your email subject line, you need to title your video to attract attention. Include your prospect’s name, company or something relevant enough to show it is for them and not 1,001 people. Here is an example of what this might look like:

A screenshot of a video cold email email

This was a response to the prospect’s reply. I’d been pitching a podcast repurposing service and—in the title—I included the names of the guests in the most recent episode. It got a click and a watch.

Thumbnails

I stole this technique from Frankie Finn, a digital marketing agency owner and author of Beyond the Agency Box who grew tired of client meetings and developed a video strategy to get his clients to close deals and pay without long meetings.

Among a slew of tactics, one of them is the dramatic demonstration intro (The screenshot of the cold email video above is an example of a dramatic demo).

So let’s say, you sell AI-driven fraud and AML detection software to compliance departments. E.g:

To create a dramatic demonstration thumbnail you would pick either of these:

• A symptom of fraud and or, not detecting money-laundering
• Results of detecting fraud and money-laundering through AI
• A before and after representation of using AI to detect fraud and money-laundering

Note, this is not about taking screenshots of your product and using it as a thumbnail, it is about finding visual representations of results, symptoms, or before-and-after changes.

For example, you can:

1. Take a screenshot of a news headline about fraud/money laundering that was not detected. This will be a symptom of the problem. 

2. Take a screenshot of a positive conversation with a customer. This will be a result-based dramatic demonstration.
3. …ahem! I couldn’t think of a before and after visual representation for an AML product. If you sell compliance products, give us ideas on what you’d use as a before and after representation in the comments.

Try as much as possible to include a face in the thumbnail. Use services like Fivver to put all these together, or DIY it on Canva as I did. You can have different screenshots to go with the different intentions behind your cold email videos, from overcoming objections to highlighting pain points. 

Conclusion

You can forget everything else but these: 

1. Be clear about the intent of your video
2. Make prospects want to click your video
3. Keep them short and full of energy

Also, videos could be part of a multichannel strategy; get a notification that prospect XYZ has clicked on the video, triggers a cold call or a LinkedIn connection request.