Stand out in the Inbox with Video Voicemails

Does anyone look forward to tackling their inbox? Some days are better than others, but I often find this task less than inspiring. Just me?

Occasionally, amidst all the mundane clutter, you come across a gem. It’s concise, it’s aesthetically appealing, it puts a smile on your face, and it’s memorable. You might even share that email with your team - “Look what this company did with this email!”

If you’re emailing your customers on a regular basis, you’ve got an opportunity to stand out from the rest with video voicemails. Just imagine if a video thumbnail with a friendly face showed up in your inbox and led to this:

That’s our very own Erika, responding to a customer with a personal video, rather than a few paragraphs.

We’re hearing about more and more sales and support teams using video voicemails to delight their prospects and customers and leave lasting impressions. Not to mention that we’ve seen video thumbnails improve click-through-rates in our own emails.

What’s a video voicemail?

A video voicemail is a short video that you send via email to better connect with someone on the other end — be it a sales prospect, a customer, or your Aunt Patty (it’s her birthday, after all). Think of a voicemail that you might leave someone, then imagine it as a video.

Depending on the use case and your resources, these videos can be super low-fi (one continuous shot of your face, using an iPhone or your computer’s camera), or more polished with multiple shots. There’s room for both ends of the spectrum in this cordial world of video voicemails.

To be clear, we’re not advising that you embed the video itself in the email. It’s best to use a clickable video thumbnail that leads to a video embedded on your website. For more on that process, check out our guide to Using Video and Email Together.

Step by step

1. Choose an email that would benefit from a human touch

Maybe there’s a template for a follow-up email that your sales team uses every day. Maybe there’s a nurturing workflow that ends with a sales rep reaching out to get in touch. Perhaps your support team could use a more polished “congrats” video voicemail to send to customers who’ve accomplished something great. Or maybe, just maybe, you want to respond to a simple, one-off email with a memorable little video. There are endless opportunities to be more human in your emails. Once you start, it’s hard to stop.

2. Create your video

This process can vary, depending on the goal of the video and what you’re trying to convey. If it’s a first touch with a customer, you might want to produce something more polished. As my Aunt Patty always says, you only get one first impression.

If you’ve been going back and forth with someone via email, a more casual, less-produced video voicemail might work well.

While shooting something off-the-cuff can sometimes work, we generally advise people to use at least a loose script to keep messaging concise and clear. If you’re not sure where to start, try covering the following bases:

• Introduce yourself
• Explain the reason behind your call
• Provide a next step
• Add a dash of personality

3. Use the video thumbnail in your email

With Wistia, you can use our video embed code built for email campaigns to insert a video thumbnail into your email. If you’re using an email service like Constant Contact or MailChimp, you can use one of our integrations to easily track who’s watching what parts of your videos.

For more detailed instructions on that, visit our Help Center page on email marketing with Wistia.