Email prospecting is brutal. You put in a ton of work only to be ignored by most of the people you reach out to. And even when someone does reply, chances are high that it will either be to say "unsubscribe" or to insult you, your writing, your approach, or your career choice.
At least you can take comfort in the fact that those replies help with your email deliverability. And it's that glass-half-full attitude that makes you a great BDR — you're going to keep trying even if people rarely reply with something that's exciting instead of rude.
But there are better strategies than optimism to get more of the replies you're hoping to get and fewer of the ones that make you want to find a new career.
Video prospecting is one of them.
What is video prospecting?
Video prospecting is an outbound strategy where you send prospects videos instead of text. These videos are generally personalized for each individual recipient — either by saying the recipient's name in the video or by creating an entire custom video for them.
Prospecting videos can be sent through email, as LinkedIn messages, or even as text messages. You can send prospecting videos on all of the same channels where you'd typically do text-only outreach, and you can include them in sequences you've created on platforms like Apollo, Outreach, and Instantly.
Does video prospecting work?
Put simply, yes. Email inboxes are crowded. To succeed, you have to stand out. Videos help you do just that, as Josh Whitfield of Content Marketing Media explains in the video above.
Here are some of the results that our customers at Sendspark have seen after using our tool to create personalized prospecting videos at scale:
- Brikl saw a 46% increase in demos booked when they switched from text-based emails to personalized video prospecting campaigns.
- Content Marketing Media increased their meetings booked and interested replies by 50% after they started using video in their prospecting campaigns.
- At Quickly, the prospecting campaign that delivers the highest open rates is a sequence that uses a video in the first email of the series.
- When Hipersa sends LinkedIn messages to prospects that include a video, 70% click the link to watch the video, almost 50% watch the video all the way to the end, and 12% will book a meeting — even when it's the first outreach they've ever sent to those prospects.
- Qwilr increased response rates by 300% by replacing a generic onboarding video with personalized videos in emails to new trial users who fit their ideal customer profile.
Video prospecting creates interest because it's different from what everyone else is doing. It helps you make a great first impression. And it builds relationships with prospects in a way that's difficult to do with words on a screen alone.
When to use videos in your outreach
There are an almost infinite number of ways to use videos in your outreach, but here are some of our favorites that we've heard from Sendspark's customers.
In your initial cold outreach
In a text-only cold email, best practice says to stick to only about 108 characters of text. That's not a lot of time to explain a complex product.
With a 60-second video, you can explain a lot more about your product — and show rather than tell — without asking the prospect to invest much more time than it would take to read a text-only email.
Some of our customers recommend first sending a text-only email asking if you can send them a video. They get better response rates on these emails because it's a small ask and an easy way to get a "Yes."
Others recommend sending the video in the first email. You can write something short like "We've helped [competitor] increase [desired outcome] by [amount]. Here's a short video explaining how." Then link to the video and let that be the end of the message.
Deeper in your prospecting campaigns
Sometimes, you'll be sending text-only emails, and you can see in your prospecting software that people are viewing those emails multiple times and clicking your booking link, but they're not replying or scheduling a meeting.
You're excited that they'll eventually get in touch, but you have no idea why they haven't yet.
This is a great signal that a video might get them to take the next step and reply or book time on your calendar. Videos where you're speaking directly to the camera and addressing the prospect by name feel more personal, and they're harder to disregard and ignore.
In outreach to new trialists
If you work for a product-led company, there are times when ideal customers will skip booking a demo and instead start a free trial of your product. But you know if you could get them on a call, they'll be much more likely to convert.
You could send them a text-only email asking them to schedule time with you, but the reality is that it's going to get lost among the slew of automated onboarding emails your marketing team's already sending.
Instead, send them a personalized video. It proves that you're not just another automation, and it helps build rapport that will encourage the lead to take the time to get on a video call with you.
You can send this video immediately after they start a new trial, or if you have good data, you can send it at specific milestones. For example:
- If the prospect does a few things in the trial but then never logs in again.
- If the prospect tests a feature that you know a lot of new customers have trouble with.
- If the prospect adds additional users to the trial.
- If the trial is nearly complete and they haven't converted.
In outreach to former trialists
Another opportunity to use video outreach in a product-led company is by monitoring when former trialists who didn't convert return to your website.
This is a signal that they could be considering your product again, and if you can use a personalized video to get them on a call, they'll be much more likely to convert this time around.
In emails to closed-lost opportunities
A long list of closed-lost opportunities can be a goldmine for a BDR if you're willing to be a little more creative in your approach to re-engaging them.
There are several ways you can use personalized videos to reengage closed-lost opportunities:
- If it's been around a year since the deal was moved to closed-lost and you know the lead chose one of your competitors over you, you could send a personalized video to check in and see how things are going with the competitive product.
- If the deal was lost because you didn't have a feature the lead needed — but you've recently added that feature — you can send a personalized video letting them know that you now have the feature they were looking for and walking them through it.
- If the deal went cold because the lead just stopped responding, you can create a video sharing a relevant case study or a relevant article to see if you can get them back into an active conversation.
When prospects accept your LinkedIn connection request
Create more of a personal connection with new prospects who've accepted your LinkedIn connection request with a short, personalized video introducing yourself.
You'll want to avoid pitch-slapping them at this stage because that will just increase the likelihood that they'll remove the connection and block you. Instead, simply say hi, explain what you're an expert in, and ask if there's anything you can help them with.
This will make them much more likely to pay attention and respond to future messages.
After cold-calling a prospect
If you cold call a prospect who doesn't answer the phone, instead of leaving a long voicemail, just tell them that you'll send them a video explaining why you were calling. This will pique their interest and make them more likely to open your email and watch your video when it comes.
When a prospect asks a question about your product
When a prospect replies to your outreach asking a question about your product, it can be tempting to reply and ask them to book time with you. However, booking a demo may be a bigger step than they're willing to take at such an early stage.
Instead, record a short video where you answer the question and show the prospect how the feature they asked about works in your product. This will increase their interest in booking a longer call with you before you make the bigger "grab time on my calendar" ask.
After a call with a prospect
When you are able to get a prospect to book time with you, they'll often ask you to send them the recording of the call so they can share it with other decision-makers in their organization. However, it's highly unlikely that anyone is going to watch a 30-minute recording of a call they weren't a part of.
So in addition to sending the recording of the call, also send a two-minute quick demo of the features the prospect said they were most interested in.
The other decision-makers on their team will be much more likely to watch a two-minute demo video than a 30-minute meeting that was 28 minutes of discovery and two minutes of demo.
Video prospecting best practices
If you're ready to start including videos in your outreach, follow these seven best practices to create prospecting videos that convert.
Personalize your video
Research your prospect, and customize your message for them. As Dale Carnegie says, “Talk to someone about themselves, and they'll listen for hours.”
Personalization is the key to cutting through the noise in your prospect's inbox. In a world of automated messages and generic pitches, a truly personalized video shows that you've done your homework and value the prospect's time.
- Know your prospect’s first name. Say hi to them in the video, and make sure to pronounce their name correctly.
- Research the prospect's company, recent news, and industry challenges. Understand their company’s business and their possible needs.
- Research the prospect's role in their company and their current interests. Reference specific pain points or goals that are relevant to their role. Mention mutual connections or shared interests if applicable.
We also recommend making it obvious that the video is personalized before the recipient even starts watching it by creating a personalized thumbnail for your video.
With Sendspark, you can create personalized still-image or GIF thumbnails that:
- Show the prospect's LinkedIn profile or company website in the background.
- Display the prospect's company logo.
- Include personalized text.
The more appealing you make your thumbnail, the more likely prospects will be to click on it. So don't overlook this opportunity to immediately highlight the fact that your video is personalized.
Related: The 8 Best Video Personalization Software
Follow the five-second rule
The first five seconds of your video are the most important. That's where you'll get people engaged enough to continue watching your video instead of just closing it out.
Avoid starting your video with "Hi, my name is X and I work for X." While this is a polite way to start a conversation at a networking event, it's too boring for a cold email. If the prospect doesn't immediately sense that you have something valuable to say, they won't continue watching. You need a hook.
Here are some of our favorite techniques for hooking viewers:
- Share a statistic. Sharing a relevant statistic is a great way to get prospects thinking and curious about what you'll say next.
- Ask a question. When you ask someone a question, it makes them feel included, and it also makes them want to participate.
- Share customer results. You can do this as a combination of the two ideas above: "Would you like to know how [customer] 5x-ed their revenue last quarter?"
Get your hook in first, then introduce yourself and explain why you're qualified to talk about it.
Be conversational
Don't read from a script. When someone is reading, it's obvious and comes across as unnatural.
You want your video to come across as conversational. Look at the camera and talk like you're speaking with someone in person. The result is that your video will make the prospect feel like you were having a one-on-one conversation.
Before recording a video, take a few minutes to prepare: meditate a little, get up and stretch, or do whatever helps you focus and get your energy up. Practice what you'll say before you start recording. Treat the video recording as you would an important sales call. It will make you look confident and feel comfortable.
Additional tips:
- Smile and maintain eye contact with the camera.
- Use natural hand gestures to emphasize points.
- Speak clearly and with enthusiasm.
- Dress professionally but comfortably.
A confident, engaging delivery builds trust and makes your message more memorable. Remember, you're not just selling a product or service; you're selling yourself as a potential partner or solution provider.
Include one clear CTA
Never send a prospecting video that doesn't have a clear next step for the recipient.
A strong CTA gives your prospect clear direction on what to do next. Without it, even an interested viewer might not know how to proceed, potentially costing you a valuable opportunity.
To figure out what your CTA should be, ask yourself: What's the one thing you want the prospect to do after watching the video? Is it to schedule a demo with you, reply to your email, visit a page on your website, register for an upcoming event, or call you?
Whatever that next step is, make it as clear as possible. Additionally, choose only one thing. Including multiple CTAs may make the prospect feel overwhelmed to the point where they simply choose to do nothing.
Make sure your setup is on point
If video prospecting is a strategy you want to pursue long-term, it's worth investing a little money into your setup so your videos look more professional. That means you need quality audio, crisp video, and a background that isn't distracting.
For a low-budget approach:
- Use a recording program that blurs your background.
- Move your desk in front of a window to take advantage of the natural light.
- Use a free tool like Krisp that gets rids of background noises with AI noise cancellation.
If you're willing to invest in your setup, you can get a professional camera and microphone on Amazon for about $50 each. And you can get a ring light that clips to your monitor for around $20. We actually recommend getting two ring lights so the light is balanced across both sides of your face.
Finally, if you're going to use a fake background, make sure it displays consistently. It's very distracting when the background clips constantly, and you want prospects listening to the words you're saying — not focusing on what's happening behind you.
Pay attention to your deliverability rates
Video emails are "heavier" than text-only emails, so it's important to make sure that you're paying close attention to your deliverability rates when running video prospecting campaigns.
If you're running truly cold prospecting campaigns, you may want to avoid sending a video as the very first touch. Instead, send videos later in your sequence once you've been able to see that prospects are engaging with your initial emails.
If you do want the video to be in your first message, make sure to provide context for it. Don't just say hi, link to the video, and sign off. Let the prospect know what the video is, and give them a reason to want to watch it.
Of course, you can also just send your video as a LinkedIn message to avoid the deliverability issue altogether.
Track your engagement
If you're using a platform like Sendspark, you'll get a notification when someone watches your video. This is a great signal that it's time to follow up with that prospect!
Of course, you can also see when prospects aren't engaging with your videos at all. This is also helpful to know. Lack of engagement is either a sign that your video isn't compelling enough or that the prospect isn't interested and shouldn't get more video emails.
11 types of videos to send in your prospecting campaigns
To give you a head start on your video prospecting journey, we put together this list of 11 types of videos you should consider sending in your prospecting campaigns.
1. The introduction video
The introduction video is perfect for making a great first impression. Introduce yourself, explain your role, and describe how you can help the prospect.
You want to use this type of video in the same way that you would reach out to someone for the first time on LinkedIn with a message or connection request.
In terms of best practices, keep it short, friendly, and to the point.
2. The follow-up video
After you've met with a prospect, you can send a quick follow-up video to recap your discussion and outline next steps.
Salespeople often make the mistake of sending the prospect the entire recording of the call, but no one has time to watch an entire call to understand what you covered. Instead, send them a short and concise video recapping what was covered and any action items.
This is a great way to show prospects that you're proactive and invested in their success.
3. The product demo video
Instead of constantly pushing prospects to book a 30- or 45-minute demo call, you can get people really interested in your product by sending them a quick two- to three-minute demo of your product and its value.
Use this video to provide a snapshot of your product's key features and explain how it can help prospects in their day-to-day roles. It's a really effective way to get them interested and then, as a byproduct, get them to actually book that longer demo you're hoping for.
4. The case study video
Case studies are powerful sales assets, but they tend to be overly-long text-based manifestos that prospects aren't going to make the time to comb through in detail.
Instead, consider sending prospects video case studies instead. You could just record yourself walking through a case study your marketing team wrote and highlighting key aspects of it, or you could ask your customers to create new video testimonials for you. We'll talk more about that option later.
5. The truly personalized video
At Sendspark, we make it easy for people to create personalized videos using dynamic variables that let you turn a template video into an unlimited number of personalized videos.
However, there's still a time and place for truly personalized, one-to-one videos made specifically and exclusively for a single prospect.
This is often best practice for really high-value prospects or warmer prospects that you've spoken to before. Just like you wouldn't send them a generic text-based email, you don't want to send them a generic video.
When deciding if a truly personalized video is appropriate or not, we recommend tiering your prospect list. This will ensure you're only spending tons of time creating highly personalized videos for top-tier prospects.
For everyone else, use Sendspark to personalize your prospecting videos quickly and at scale.
6. The event invitation video
Creating personalized videos for the people you want to attend an upcoming event your company is hosting is a great way to boost replies and attendance.
What we've done at Sendspark is had our CEO create a video for us, then we use our own product to dynamically insert the names of the people we're sending invitations to. When the recipients receive the videos, it seems to them like our CEO is inviting them personally.
With this approach, we've seen a massive increase in the number of accepted invites and a huge boost in attendance at our events.
7. The content sharing video
In all likelihood, your marketing team is creating dozens, hundreds, or thousands of really great, insightful blog posts that would be really helpful for your prospects. However, these posts aren't always getting in front of the right people; they're just not being distributed properly.
One great soft approach for getting prospects to engage is to create a video walking through a specific piece of content your team put together, then ask the recipient if they'd like to be sent full guide to read.
8. The cold outreach video
It's no secret that cold outreach is harder today than ever. Email inboxes are just saturated with outbound emails, and prospects rarely even take the time to read outreach emails anymore.
For outbound to be effective, you really have to break through the noise and grab someone's attention, and what we've seen at Sendspark — through our own efforts and what we hear over and over again from our customers — is that video is a really effective way of doing that.
With Sendspark, we make it easy for our customers to create thumbnails for their prospecting videos that show the prospect's LinkedIn profile in the background.
When people see this, the natural human reaction is to wonder: "What are they doing on my LinkedIn profile. What are they talking about in this video?" This encourages them to go watch the video even if they highly suspect it's just more cold outreach.
9. The re-engagement video
One of the most frustrating things for sellers is when you had a demo that went extremely well and then the lead just ghosts you.
Video in this scenario is another great way to reach out and provide a bit more context. It's much more personal than the typical "just wanted to bump this up" or "just wanted to send an email to check in," so it can be much more effective in generating a reply.
Even if the reply is just "sorry, my boss said we don't have budget for your tool this year," at least you can close the deal out and stop spinning you wheels trying to bring them back in.
For this type of video, I recommend talking through what you discussed in the call, the challenges the lead reported, and how your tool can help them overcome their challenges.
This could reignite their interest in your platform, and it's also a great asset they can share with other decision-makers who might be blocking your point of contact from moving forward in the sales process with you.
10. The thank-you email
As sellers, we work really hard to get to a contract signature, but there's also been someone on the other side of that deal cycle who's been working with you and probably doing a lot of convincing on their side to get that deal across the finish line.
Sending them a video to say "thank you so much for your help with this deal," "thank you for your time," "thank you for your support," etc. can be a really impactful way to show your appreciation.
Additionally, as that account gets onboarded and starts implementing your product, it can leave a really long-lasting positive impression of you as a seller and your company as a whole.
11. The testimonial request video
Way back in example number four, I said I'd talk more about requesting case study videos from customers later. It's been a while, but we're finally here.
A lot of times, companies view getting customer testimonials as the responsibility of the marketing team, but as sellers, we're often the ones with the relationships with customers.
Where we've sometimes spent months working with customers to close deals, the marketing team may never have spoken to anyone on their team once.
With Sendspark, it's really easy to request a testimonial video from a customer you've been through a deal cycle with. You can simply send them a video where you ask them to record a video back to you answering a few questions about their experience with your product.
They can use Sendspark directly from your video without having to download anything, record a quick video with their responses to your questions, and when they save it, it shows up immediately in your Sendspark account.
You can then use the video they created to do what we described back in example four — send those testimonials to new prospects to get them engaged and excited about your product.
Start sending videos in your outreach campaigns today
Throughout this article, we've shown you how video prospecting can not only transform your sales process and drive better results but also make you a more dynamic and interesting seller.
If you're ready to start incorporating video into your prospecting strategy to watch your engagement, open rates, and reply rates soar, you can sign up for Sendspark here.
