Once you’ve had a strategic Animated Explainer Video produced, one of the best ways to use it to start generating leads immediately is by emailing the video to your email list.
Cold email marketing is underrated as a marketing technique and can be very valuable … when done correctly.
However, it should also be kept in mind that, like anything, cold email is a skill to be developed over months or years. It requires well researched strategy, cutting edge tools, measuring results, and optimising from there.
The notes in this article are based on our marketing experience, and our experience executing cold email in our business and for customers.
However, you will need to customise your own strategy, for your target market, and your business model.
The psychology of effective emails
The following graphic shows a general template we often use for cold emailing, based around our “Code V” structure.
It should be noted that this email example is specifically crafted for our target market, which is broadly defined as:
“Industry leading companies, with a vision and values beyond the mundane, who have a complex service which makes it difficult to explain the REAL value they offer.”
Your target market will likely be very different, so your message should be tailored to them.
Cold Email Notes and Tips
Some important notes and tips based our experience:
Follow Up
Follow up is key! Your target market is often interested in your service, but forgets to respond to your email, or simply doesn’t have time. We suggest a quick follow up every few days.
Follow up emails should be short, and offer some value – this could include a blog post or examples of your work. You need to determine how many emails is the right amount so you don’t cross the line between proactively offering value, and being annoying!
Target Market
One of the most critical parts to any marketing initiative, including cold email, is to understand your target market and the problems you solve for them FIRST.
This will be nicely distilled in your Visionary Explainer Video.
Ensure your emails describe the problem you solve in a short, simple way, like our example email above. This allows recipients to quickly determine whether your service is relevant to them.
Embedding Videos in Emails
See the Visionary eBook, “Launching Your Visionary Explainer Video”, to get some best practice tips on embedding videos in emails. We suggest:
Embed the video as a clickable image which clicks through to a landing page. The landing page should include testimonials and a call to action for people who view the video and want to know more.
See the following for a great example of a Landing Page optimised by an Animated Explainer Video:
https://visionarydigitalstudios.com/visionary-explainer-video-solution
Embed the video image as a JPG for optimal deliverability. If deliverability becomes a problem, you could even try removing the graphic all together and just embedding the link.
Email Automation Software
At Visionary, we use ToutApp to send emails, because it allows us to be more efficient and systematic.
However, if you have an email list already, MailChimp or ActiveCampaign are excellent options. Also see LeadFuze or Mailshake for more advanced options which we know are excellent.
Testing, Planning and Measuring
It’s important you run cold email campaigns in small batches initially, so that you can test whether emails are getting through, whether people are reading them, and whether they are watching your video.
It’s also best practice to test out different combinations of email text and subject lines first, before you start automating and scaling your email outreach.
Measuring and recording reads, clicks and video views is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT in all marketing campaigns. This will allow to continue optimisation, and learn about the psychology of your target market.
Laws and Unsubscribe Link
Ensure you have an Unsubscribe link on your emails!
This is law in many countries, but also ensures you don’t get annoying to prospects who aren’t interested.
Different regions have different laws and best practices for cold email – it’s important you do some research and be aware of the rules for your business.
We suggest specifically mentioning that prospects should click an “Unsubscribe” link if they don’t want you to follow up – see our sample email sequence below as an example.
Automation
Once your team is comfortable with sending cold emails, you can incorporate automation, or have more junior staff execute cold email on your behalf.
At Visionary, we generally start our email campaigns with 10- 100 manually chosen prospects initially! We then automate the prospecting and emailing process as much as possible over the ensuing weeks, based on feedback and optimisation of the campaign.
Trust
With cold email it is CRITICAL to build trust.
Obviously, the most important way to do this is to simply do EXCELLENT work for all your clients.
Once you have this covered off you need to have your prospects see as many examples and testimonials of your work as possible, so they feel comfortable with your company.
Remember, they are simply receiving an email from you out of the blue, so initially trust is low.
At Visionary, we build trust using combinations of the following throughout our sales process:
-Testimonials and case studies
-Many samples of our work
-Well designed content and articles
-Free Strategy Session up front
-Professional advertising and remarketing programs
-Guarantees
-Video proposals
Sample Email Sequence
We’ve included an example of some of our email templates below. Note that some of the formatting was lost during the copy and paste – this is only to give you an idea of how we’ve implemented cold email.
However, it’s important your emails look good, have excellent spelling and use language your target market will respect.
Copywriting is generally left to a trained professional. The craft of persuasive writing is a lifelong pursuit, equal parts art and science.
So if you’re not experienced with crafting these types of campaigns, reach out to us at Visionary!
Or find an experienced copywriter to help you produce a campaign that gets results.
Email 1 – Cold Email
Hi {{.FirstName}}, Love your work at {{.CompanyName}}. I came across your website and was impressed at your service but suspect, given the complexity of your value proposition, it's challenging for you to explain its real value to your prospects. My team creates custom Explainer Videos designed specifically for companies who offer a more innovative service than their industry standard - I think this might help you: https://visionarydigitalstudios.com/animated-explainer-videos If this is a challenge for you, are you free for a quick call to work out if we'd be a good fit to work together on a video for {{.CompanyName}}? Thanks Sanjay P.S. If you aren’t the right person to contact about this, or you'd rather I don't follow up, please let me know: [[UNSUBLINK]].
Email 2 – First Follow Up
After 2 days and no response …
Hi {{.FirstName}} Just wanted to send through a quick follow up on this. Check out our article around why explaining your value proposition powerfully is important to your success. If you're looking to have {{.CompanyName}} stand out as innovative amongst your competitors, I think you might get some value from this. Send me a quick email if you'd like to have a quick chat about this, or if you'd prefer I didn't follow up, simply click here: [[UNSUBLINK]] Thanks Sanjay
Email 3 – Second Follow Up
After 3 more days and no response …
Hi {{.FirstName}} Wanted to check in a final time - are you interested in working with us on an Explainer Video for {{.CompanyName}}? Here are plenty of examples we've recently completed from leading tech companies like yours: https://visionarydigitalstudios.com/corporate-samples While I can't be sure this will be right for your unique situation, are you free for a quick call at 3pm on Friday to discuss? Thanks, Sanjay
