The Brand-New Strategy for Increasing Email Open Rates by 5X [Infographic]

With the average office worker receiving over 120 emails per day, it‘s harder than ever for sales professionals to cut through the noise and make an impact with their outreach. Response rates continue to decline, with the latest data showing only 1% of cold emails receive a reply.

At the same time, buyers are increasingly expecting a personalized, engaging experience from vendors throughout the sales process. Sending generic, text-based emails is no longer enough to grab attention and drive action in today‘s competitive landscape.

To stand out, build rapport, and boost engagement with sales emails, smart leaders are turning to a powerful new strategy: video.

By incorporating customized, one-to-one videos into email cadences, sales teams have seen open rates increase by 5X, click-through rates by 8X, and response rates by 3X. Those that adopt video selling report a 41% higher close rate and a 24% shorter sales cycle on average.

What makes video so effective in breaking through the inbox clutter and connecting with buyers? Here are a few key reasons:

Video is engaging: While only 20% of people will read text in an email, 65% will watch a video. Video content is more visually appealing and captures attention.

Video builds trust: Seeing the face, voice and personality of a sales rep helps humanize the conversation and establish credibility more than faceless text communication.

Video simplifies complex ideas: Explainer videos that break down a sophisticated product or concept into simple terms are highly valuable for buyers, and much easier to follow than long text descriptions.

Video is memorable: Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading in text. In a crowded inbox, video makes your message stickier.

Consider this data from Vidyard‘s 2022 State of Virtual Selling Report:

Metric	Video Emails	Plain Text Emails
Open Rate	45%	9%
Click-Through Rate	32%	4%
Response Rate	18%	6%
Meeting Booked Per Outreach	12%	3%

Source: "State of Virtual Selling," Vidyard, 2022

Clearly, video is driving dramatically better sales email performance across the board. And its influence will only continue to grow – 55% of sales professionals plan to invest more in video in the coming year.

So for reps and managers looking to hit quota in 2024 and beyond, mastering video selling skills is essential. But what does it actually take to generate replies, meetings booked, and closed-won deals with video? Let‘s break down some best practices.

Anatomy of a Perfect Sales Video

Not all sales videos are created equal. To maximize impact, each video touchpoint should be intentional, relevant, and authentic to the individual buyer. Here are the key components of a video that drives views and responses:

Compelling Hook (5-10 sec): Start with an eye-catching thumbnail image and an engaging first few seconds that give the viewer a reason to keep watching. Reference a specific trigger event, challenge, or goal that you know is top of mind for the buyer.

Value Prop (30-60 sec): Clearly explain why the video is worth their time. Focus on educating and providing insights related to their industry, role or objectives vs. pitching your product. Highlight 2-3 key points or metrics.

Credibility Boosters: To reinforce your expertise, include customer logos, case studies, or excerpts of third-party research that support your message. But keep it high-level – the goal is to entice them to learn more.

Strong Call-to-Action: Make it very clear what the next step is, whether booking a meeting, downloading a resource, or replying to a question. Put the CTA in the video itself, video description, and email copy. Remove all friction with embedded calendars and one-click action buttons.

Authentic Delivery: Avoid a rigid script or obvious edits. Allow your natural personality, sense of humor, and empathy to shine through. Imagine you‘re having a one-on-one conversation vs. presenting to a crowd.

When it comes to production quality, it‘s more important to be timely and genuine than polished and perfect. Most reps generate the highest response rates from simple webcam or smartphone videos recorded at their desk.

Here are a few other video selling tips to keep in mind:

• Keep it concise: Aim for 30-90 seconds. If you have a more complex message, record a series of shorter videos.
• Put the viewer first: Always lead with their priorities and challenges, not your product pitch.
• Use personalized details: Reference their LinkedIn profile, company website, or prior conversations. Show you‘ve done your homework.
• Create a consistent brand: Develop a common video intro/outro, color scheme, and music across your team‘s video content.
• Optimize for silent play: 85% of videos are watched without sound, so use captions, annotations, and graphics to make your message clear even on mute.
• Test and iterate: Experiment with different subject lines, thumbnails, lengths, and CTAs to see what generates the best response for various personas.

With these principles, you‘ll be well on your way to creating sales videos that your buyers can‘t help but click and respond to. Now let‘s dive into how you can leverage video across the full sales cycle.

Incorporating Video from Prospect to Customer

While video is often used just for early outreach, it can enhance the buyer experience at every single touchpoint. Here‘s a full-funnel approach to engaging customers with video:

Lead Generation: Use educational thought leadership videos on social media and your website to drive inbound interest and demo requests. Gate top-of-funnel videos like webinars and interviews to identify new leads.

Prospecting: Reach out to high-priority accounts with a 30-60 second personalized video. Stand out by referencing a relevant trigger event or pain point from your research. Use video to put a face to your name, demonstrate credibility, and pique curiosity.

Appointment Setting: Once a lead engages, send them a quick video to introduce yourself, set an agenda for the meeting, and share relevant case studies. Adding a 1:1 video to your meeting confirmation increases show rates by 12%.

Discovery: During discovery calls, record key parts of the screenshare, demo, or conversation. Edit this into bite-size clips organized around their top priorities, and send as a follow up to reinforce your solution‘s value prop.

Proposal: Bring your contract or proposal to life by walking through key terms and benefits in a video. Embed short FAQ videos to proactively address common questions and objections that stall deals.

Closed Won: Send your new customer a celebratory video message to welcome them to your community. Shoot a brief onboarding or training video to ensure they‘re set up for success from day one.

Post-Sale: Check in with quarterly business review videos that recap their progress and ROI. Invite them to participate in a video testimonial or case study to build advocacy.

By sprinkling in videos across the entire customer lifecycle, you create a highly differentiated, immersive experience that sets your solution apart.

Consider this example cadence for a sales rep working a typical opportunity:

Buyer Stage	Video Type	Video Length	Desired Outcome
Prospect	Personalized Outreach	30 seconds	Book discovery call
Engage	Meeting Confirmation	60 seconds	Ensure attendance
Discover	Demo Follow-Up	2-3 minutes	Align on next steps
Propose	Proposal Walkthrough	5-7 minutes	Get verbal agreement
Close	Celebratory Welcome Message	90 seconds	Kick off onboarding

Of course, the right video cadence will look different for each rep based on their business and territory. But this illustrates how video can guide buyers from initial outreach to closed deal more efficiently than ever before.

Measuring the ROI of Video Selling

To fully realize the benefits of video, it‘s not enough to just create more video content. You also need a systematic way to track, analyze and optimize the performance of your sales videos over time.

Start by setting a baseline for your current email metrics like opens, clicks, and replies. Then as you start incorporating video, measure improvement on those same metrics at both an individual rep and team level. According to Vidyard‘s benchmark data, teams should aim for:

• 45-55% higher open rates for emails with video
• 5-8X higher click-through rates on emails with video
• 3-5X higher response rates on prospecting emails with video

Some other video-specific KPIs to track include:

• Video views: The total number of times your video was played. Look at unique views to see how many individual people watched.
• Average watch time: How much of your video people completed on average. If there‘s a large dropoff in the first 5-10 seconds, the opening isn‘t engaging. If average watch time is over 50%, the content is resonating.
• Viewer drop-off: The specific points where people stopped watching your video. If there‘s a sudden dip, that part of the video needs to be improved.

To tie video directly to revenue, track the amount of pipeline and closed-won business influenced by video content. Opportunities that were touched by at least one video in the sales process have a 127% higher close rate than those without video.

By measuring the quantitative impact of video on core sales metrics, as well as the qualitative feedback from buyers, you can identify what‘s working and double down in those areas.

Scaling Video Across Your Sales Organization

Once you‘ve tested and proven that video outreach can generate outsized results, how do you get your whole team consistently executing on this new approach?

1. Choose a video platform: Invest in tools that make it seamless for reps to record, send, and track videos. Look for integrations with your CRM, sales engagement tools, and broader tech stack.

2. Create a video content library: Develop a central repository of approved video templates, examples, and best practices that reps can easily customize for their own use cases.

3. Train your team: Provide in-depth training not only on how to create videos, but when and why to use them based on different buyer personas. Help reps internalize this as a new selling skill set.

4. Encourage adoption: Run a contest or create a leaderboard for reps with the most video views each week. Celebrate early wins and case studies to get the whole team bought in.

5. Analyze and optimize: Regularly review video performance data to spot top performers and opportunities for coaching. Use A/B testing to experiment with new approaches.

Transforming your sales team‘s approach with video doesn‘t happen overnight. But with the right process, platform, and people in place, you‘ll quickly build a team of video selling rockstars.

The Future of Sales is Video-First

Adding video to your sales emails isn‘t just a short-term tactic – it‘s a fundamental shift in how sales teams are engaging and supporting buyers through a new digital landscape.

Consider these eye-opening statistics on video‘s ROI:

• Sales reps that use video have a 28% higher close rate and 17% higher revenue per rep than those who don‘t. (Aberdeen, 2022)

• Deals that include a custom proposal video are 41% more likely to close than those without. (Videolicious, 2021)

• Reps that use video shorten their sales cycle by 24% on average compared to their peers. (Vidyard, 2022)

Buyers increasingly prefer video over any other content format, with 90% saying they want more video from brands and businesses they‘re considering. For sales organizations, that presents an unprecedented opportunity to create human connection at scale.

The most successful sales teams in 2024 and beyond will be the ones that go all-in on video. They‘ll weave video touchpoints through the entire buyer‘s journey to accelerate deals. They‘ll arm reps with the skills to be trusted video guides, not pushy pitchmen. And they‘ll use video engagement data to understand and support buyers better than ever before.

If you‘re still relying on the traditional text-based sales playbook, you‘re rapidly falling behind. Your buyers expect more. There‘s never been a better time to reimagine how you reach and convert them.

So pick up your camera, personalize your message, and hit record. The future of sales is video – make sure you‘re a part of it.