Explain the Complex Simply – Wise Words from Todd Hartley

Back in 2003, online video was in its infancy. YouTube hadn’t been launched yet, and Netflix was still in the business of mailing out DVDs. But for Todd Hartley, founder and CEO of video marketing firm WireBuzz, the writing was already on the wall. Back then, Hartley was leading digital marketing for seven of the largest nationally-syndicated talk shows in Hollywood, and his job was to report what was most successful every week. “Back in 2003, it was obvious that every week my report was the same – video was getting 10x the results of our audio programs, images, blog content, articles, and anything else we were doing.”

But, as Hartley told us in interview, the timing wasn’t quite right – yet. “I placed a mental note that as bandwidth becomes more available I wanted to specialize in this tool that got freakish results. And before I knew it, in 2010 I opened up WireBuzz! Bandwidth was available, YouTube became a force to be reckoned with, and I decided that I wanted to use this powerful tool to help boost sales conversion for customers. That’s really my passion area.”

Over the past 8 years, Hartley and his team have learned quite a bit about what makes video such a powerful tool for sales and marketing. Here’s what he had to say:

What’s one aspect of video production that most companies get wrong?

The strategy part! There are random acts of video that happen every single day, and most people – even smart marketers – start to think of video and jump right to creative and ideas. But they need to step back. You have to start with strategy. When you’re dealing with strategy, you’re thinking of your end game. What is the goal? Once you have the goal you can create the strategy. Once you have the strategy, you can create the right content and then bake that strategy into the content, and start promoting it to generate that goal.

Most companies get it all wrong – they just create the video and then they try to reverse engineer how it will accomplish their goal. How are we going to deal with the CTA? And where is this video going to live? That is a big mistake. And that’s where video fails online.

Smart marketers start out with the really smart strategy and they’re able to execute all the way through the process. But most importantly, not only do they prove ROI for that video, but they also get to demonstrate that video works, and that they’re not wasting resources.

Are there any industries that you see missing out on the power of video?

The industries that have the biggest opportunity tend to be industries that are more complex to explain. In a lot of those industries the business leaders tend to be people who have seen success in an old business model and are now leading in a new business space, but haven’t evolved the way they communicate with customers.

Let’s talk about science. If the product or service has some type of research, medical, or laboratory component, that’s precisely where you should be using video. Our brains process information 60,000x faster with video than they do with text. And in those older businesses where technology or science is being used, but they’re still explaining or teaching with literature to convince and convert their prospects, they’re the ones that aren’t doing a very good job.

In these industries, the market leaders with the largest percentage growths are starting to explain what their product does through the power of video. And that’s a huge opportunity – explain the complex, in simple to understand terms, and people buy at faster rates. It’s just that simple.

How can businesses and their agencies get the most out of their relationship?

From my experience, the easiest, smartest thing to do is have a primary point of contact at both the agency and the business. These are the people who are going to filter, digest, and report back to their respective companies all the relevant details. Both companies have their own quarterback, and both quarterbacks need to clearly communicate with one another. They must be very conscious about they way they describe things, and what those changes are that need to be made. Almost every one of my clients have a very complex review process, including legal that needs to look over changes, regulators, brand managers, and brand bosses that slow down the process.

That’s totally fine with me – but where I see the biggest opportunities for growth is how those companies communicate, and how they move information. Often when the company communicates through multiple people, they end up making projects more expensive.

So I would say have one point of contact at both places, and make sure they work together – they’re not enemies! They are colleagues that are working together for one result, which is to create a very smart and very sophisticated video that helps move some business metric that these two people have decided. And once you do the the whole process starts to smooth out.

What companies do you see that are doing really great things with video?

The first one that comes to mind is CampaignMonitor. If you’re a new prospect and you arrive on their website, CampaignMonitor is doing a fabulous job of educating you from when you first arrive. They’re a marketing automation and email platform, and they start by showing you their feature set. They build instant credibility by showing you how big name brands are using their tools to amplify results. It’s really well done.

Another one is Natera, who is a client of ours. Natera is a genetic laboratory with a bunch of different tests. They have created sales enablement tools to be able to help their sales teams convince and convert at a faster rate. They communicate to two different audiences because genetic counsellors or health care professionals need to understand how the tests work. But in some cases they need to create patient-friendly videos that also bring a patient down through the awareness, consideration, and decision path too.

You have to also be studying what Gary Vaynerchuk is doing with video. He’s doing the best job with building thought leadership in the power of video and taking people along through his daily journey. The videos tell a great story because it’s Gary’s big brain in action. Watch his team, see him sit down with clients, basically get a free demo with Gary. When businesses have $30 or $50k a month to spend, they’ve already seen and been a part of the Gary V world. So they know they want to bring those resources and have him work on their project.  

The post Explain the Complex Simply – Wise Words from Todd Hartley appeared first on Vidyard.

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How In-App Messaging Converts Trial Users Into Paying Customers

Communication.

It’s the only way to demonstrate your product’s value to potential customers. Your goal is to convey information about new features, successful case studies, and industry trends.

Converting B2B free trial users into paying customers involves lots of communication about why your product trumps competitors. In-app messaging is a powerful tool to send on-time, contextual messages to connect with users.

“Customers are focused on your product at the moment of [in-app] communication, and can be delivered immediate, direct information that is targeted specifically to them and their patterns of behaviour,” states Alex Cohen, managing director at Xander Marketing.

Take full advantage of in-app messaging. Here are five ways to gain more paying customers:

1. Upgrade Your Onboarding

Trial users are ready to get started with your platform. Convinced by your promises to deliver, it’s your responsibility to exceed users’ expectations.

First, let’s debunk the notion that it’s easy to transform free trial users into customers. They still need guidance toward the sale.

That’s why onboarding is so important to the success of the user. You want these initial interactions with your product to showcase the best of your brand. To keep them hooked, your team must continue to offer solutions.

With in-app messaging, you can pinpoint targeted actions to activate the user sooner. Send tailored messaging to help the individual learn how to gain quick wins from your platform.

The CoSchedule team executes this strategy well. During the trial period, users receive tidbits on how to improve their experiences.

What’s also vital is celebrating small accomplishments with the user. A note of congratulations makes them feel part of your brand family. While the achievement is fresh on their minds, you also can ask users to complete another action.

Delivering ongoing value means setting expectations and understanding the user’s business goals. When tackling the onboarding process, strive to guide the user to a positive outcome.

2. Feature Product Updates

Alienating trial users is one mistake businesses make when interacting with this specific group. Giving them limited information won’t help them become customers faster.

While you may attempt to create exclusivity, trial users don’t like hearing the phrase: “Oh, you’re just a trial user. That’s unavailable to you.” Instead, look for ways to involve them in your brand community.

Work with your team—product, marketing, and sales—to include trial users in announcements about your application. It’s an effective way to show these potential customers that your product is constantly evolving, and you want them to be part of your growth.

Broadcast new product features within the application to encourage immediate use. Make sure to give specific instructions on how to use the feature and how it will benefit the individual. If not, you risk them ignoring every message you send.

Try giving simple examples to exhibit the ease of use. Depending on the complexity of the feature, you may want to add screenshots or a short video tutorial.

Check out the example below from Slack. When the company announced its video call feature, the message contained simple steps for users to follow.

Moreover, invite users to ask questions or report bugs regarding the new feature. It helps your team improve the product, and trial users know that their concerns are addressed.

3. Provide Educational Training

Education is the foundation of converting trial users into loyal customers. You need to properly train users how to gain value from your product. Without it, people will get frustrated and decide to churn.

SaaS companies must ensure that the learning curve isn’t too steep for their audiences. No one wants to feel like they are taking an advanced math class. Plus, people don’t want to waste hours (or even days) learning how to get your platform to work correctly.

So it’s not good enough to just say your product is easy to operate. It actually has to fulfill that promise, or you risk losing your trial user to a competitor.

In-app messaging works as another distribution channel for your marketing team to teach trial users. You can deliver helpful content to guide people throughout the journey.

And you don’t have to explicitly say that your message is for educational purposes. In the screenshot below, Hint Health frames the message in a “Did You Know…” format.

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With the power of data, your team also can decide who needs more training. Segmentation is an effective strategy to personalize the learning experience. That way, the advanced user isn’t getting bored with beginner content.

“One of the main benefits of in-app messages is the capability of hyper segmentation, so why wouldn’t SaaS companies take advantage of that? Sending the same message to every user without even knowing if they’re interested can be a huge shot in the foot,” says Gabriela Tanuri, Content Hacker at Pipz.

Be ready to train your trial users when they sign up, and customize the education to fit the user’s needs.

4. Gather User Feedback

In-app messaging is one of the best channels to collect user feedback. It’s a chance to speak directly with the user inside your platform.

You can learn about user challenges in real-time. So your team knows exactly when the individual used the specific feature and how the problem is affecting the user’s progress.

You’ll also gain insight on which benefits matter most to the user. Then, you can target more content resources around those particular benefits.

“From VIPs to free trial users and more, in-app messages have quickly become the best way for our team to get feedback from customers in the right place at the right time — and we’re noticing that the feedback is better when we can get really specific with both our targeting and messaging,” writes Dave Gerhardt, marketing at Drift.

You can employ the 1-10 rating scale to get feedback from your users. It’s quick and easy for the person to participate, and your team receives qualitative data to improve the product.

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Part of the sales process is listening to your users. Therefore, pay attention to user feedback to boost your revenue.

5. Leverage Sales Opportunities

Most companies want to create new channels to gain sales. In-app messaging helps facilitate the sales conversations with the trial user.

Like any sales call, there’s an appropriate time to ask users to explore your pricing plans. Avoid solely using in-app messaging to just convert users. Your audience will spot this tactic immediately and will start ignoring your messages.

If direct sales doesn’t work best for your company, try using it to take the conversation offline. Message users about setting up an appointment for a tutorial to demonstrate the product’s value. You also can offer special discounts or bonuses to this targeted group to clinch the sale.

Train your support team to spot opportunities to show trial users benefits only for paying customers. It’ll spark the user’s curiosity about upgrading his plan.

Another idea is to send customer success stories via the messaging platform. Users will become inspired to achieve similar results as their paying colleagues.

If the user doesn’t seem interested in buying at all, experiment with using in-app messaging to ask for referrals. Read this message from the Nickelled team:

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Messaging for More Conversions

Building quality relationships with your audience starts with communication. In-app messaging offers an opportunity to connect and support your trial users in the customer journey.

Strive to educate users about your product and respond to users’ concerns to improve the overall experience. In-app messaging is your pathway to more conversions.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2oySYCX

How ‘Flipping the Funnel’ Helped Calendly Hit Double Digit User Growth for 24 Months Straight

Technical challenges aren’t the problem.

They might be a problem. A hurdle for sure.

But it’s rarely THE biggest problem responsible for traction or flaming out.

Likewise, churn is an issue. It can send you in a negative tail spin.

But again, top line growth masks all. Papers over enough cracks until you can get your head above water. You keep getting people in the door and you can get by with many other ‘leaks’ along the way.

No. The biggest problem is obscurity. Nobody knowing who the hell you are. And therefore not willing to give you the time of day (let alone, their email or credit card info).

Most companies struggle simply because they can’t get enough people in the door.

Not Calendly.

Here’s why, and how they had to ‘flip the funnel’ in order to scale growth to massive heights in only 24 months.

Calendly’s First World Startup Problems

I recently had the privilege to interview Claire Suellentrop with Brian Sun at Autopilot. We talked about her history and story. Where she came from and where she’s going. In my completely unbiased opinion, it’s super interesting. You should read it. ;)

But it was the admission that Calendly had over 10,000 beta users that stood out.

They amassed more users than most mature SaaS companies. While still in beta. (That alone probably deserves it’s own post. Tope, you readin’ this?)

Calendly didn’t struggle with the first pirate metric that most others do. That was more or less taken care of initially. They could open up to paying customers and already see a nice chunk of them convert overnight.

Claire didn’t have to get knee deep in Facebook ads or pray to the SEO Gods at the beginning like most marketers do. Instead, she had to look deeper into the conversion funnel to figure out (a) who their most active customers were and (b) how to better tell their story.

Because that unsexy, unglamorous stuff buried deep at the bottom of the funnel is where the real money is made.

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Calendly’s built-in network effects means that each successful customer should bring in additional customers. So their unique position meant they could switch focus from top of funnel stuff you read about online everyday to the stuff that’s rarely (if ever) addressed: keeping peeps happy.

They spent a lot of time going backwards initially. Re-tracing their customer’s steps and getting a better understanding of who they were (and what they were trying to do).

That started with segmenting their user base by most active customers. They already knew people in sales and revenue-oriented roles loved the product. So those were easy.

But it was the ones they didn’t know about that surprised them.

How Calendly Discovered New Use Cases

Segmentation is one of those boring research things.

Everyone says it’s important. Starts with the basics like vertical/industry/demographics/role. And then stops. Because: MOAR SEOS!

True segmentation actually goes a lot deeper. There’s segmentation by purchasing occasion, for example. Or specific events, like Christmas, that act as a catalyst to buy certain products.

Use cases are similar. Exploring people’s daily lives to see how and when potential uses for your product pop up.

Calendly was already aware of a few obvious use cases.

Claire said that they initially “pictured it being a bunch of sales guys that would add it to their outreach emails”. You know, cold calling 2.0 and all that.

But they knew there was more. They were watching how actions people took in their software lead them to the most profitable customers. So they lined up dozens of customers interviews to uncover how the product was fitting into their day-to-day workflow.

The objective was to uncover the real reasons people used the product (vs. the manufactured reasons everyone internally believes) and use that to better construct landing pages or other site-wide messaging to drive faster Activation and stronger Retention.

Today Claire is doing much of the same work with Love Your Customers. She’s working with companies to find these ways to improve their onboarding flow to drive product adoption faster. Digging into existing customer behaviors and using that data to make Activation shorter or faster. And then coming up with new ways to re-engage those who abandon.

Calendly discovered new use cases they hadn’t even thought of during those initial interviews.

Case in point: marketing automation.

Marketing leaders and sales managers were building marketing funnels that were completely dependent on scheduling through Calendly.

Customer interviews helped Calendly realized that it wasn’t just a sales rep tool, but an essential piece of their ‘marketing stack’.

They were then able to turn around, write new support docs explaining this use case, create content on teaching others how to similarly use Calendly in their own marketing efforts.

Like this one from Sean McVey, Director of Demand Gen at Virtru.

“Only 25–30% of inbound leads were actually scheduling demos— which was a low conversion rate, considering people were clicking very specific CTAs like ‘See a demo.’”

So he decided to rethink the typically boring Thank You confirmation page, instead embedding Calendly directly to remove friction in the signup process while also removing the burden from his salespeople’s backs.

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Sean told Calendly that even after this tiny change, he “saw pretty quickly that our conversion rate was nearing 50% or more.”

So he took it one step further, personalizing the Thank You page (and therefore, sales person + calendar) depending on deal size.

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Then he also set-up Slack notifications to fire every time a new lead filled out their form. And another for when a Calendly appointment was successfully sent.

So he could easily count daily conversions – both the initial form submission and successful appointments booked – for reporting, analysis, and iterating.

The results?

“Within the first month of using Calendly, we jumped to 61% of leads scheduling a call,” said Sean.

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Sounds cool, right?

Here’s how you can do it, too.

How to Create a Calendly-Driven Marketing Automation Sequence

Forms are the backbone of marketing automation.

They’re the springboard to triggering everything else because people are explicitly showing intent in something specific.

Here’s what HubSpot’s form fields look like:

1. 1. The little infinity-looking sign indicates a ‘smart field’. So if someone fills this out once, they don’t need to fill it out again on your site. HubSpot will save the contact’s record and ‘bank’ these answers so that these ‘smart fields’ will disappear if it recognizes an existing contact’s email and IP address.
2. 2. Qualifying questions, like Annual Revenue Range?, can be used to, well, qualify prospects. But as in the example we just saw, they can also be used to determine which funnel this prospect should be placed into. More on this in a second.
3. 3. Biggest Marketing Challenge? is more of the same. Another example that can be used to both qualify a prospect but also determine where to send them (or who to send them to) after submitting.
4. 4. The final hidden field changes this prospects lifecycle stage once they fill out the form. So they now go from being a general contact to a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) depending on their answers.

Next up, these contacts are added to a ‘smart list’ depending on their answer.

These lists are dynamic (as opposed to static), so they update continuously. And they control how these specific people will be ‘enrolled’ into automation workflows.

For example, here’s one my company uses for new applications we receive. People applying for jobs are then controlled and segmented based on which position they’re interested in.

So now someone who’s interested in a Marketing position can be sent over to the person in charge of Marketing (or, me).

But guess what? You don’t need fancy software to do this. Gravity Forms also works perfectly. They have conditional logic that allows you to determine the ‘thank you’ confirmation message someone sees depending on how they answer a question.

Let’s bring this back to Calendly.

Deal size is one easy answer. Depending on a company’s revenue (or number of employees in Sean’s case), you can usually tell if a customer’s going to sign up for $3,000, $30,000, or $300,000 worth of products and services. Qualifying questions can be used to determine who those people should speak to (or whose Calendly link they should receive).

Referral source is another. The Outbound 2.0 Bible, Predictable Revenue, says to specialize sales roles. So one person qualifies outbound leads while another for inbound.

Here’s how that might looks using Gravity Form’s conditional logic:

If their Source matches Inbound (or personal Referrals), they go to my calendar.

You can also extend this sequence with Zapier. (Here’s a previous article I wrote about hacking automation with Zapier for more background.)

Zapier lets you create filters that will determine whether or not this new submission should go somewhere else (to a new page, a new app like Calendly, etc).

For example, you can have a radio button or drop down that explicitly asks people if they’re interested in a Demo (or not).

So if they answer yes, only filtered contacts get through. And you can instantly add them to a well-oiled workflow that also adds the new prospect to a series of other apps you might be using.

Remember: Processes > hacks.

For example, a new successful form submission leads to:

1. Adding to your CRM
2. Sending a Thank You / Welcome follow up email with Calendly link
3. Sending a message to Slack about the new lead
4. Creating a new deal in your sales pipeline
5. And creating a series of tasks in your project management software to follow up.

And of course, like any good automation sequence, you can build this out depending on a few scenarios.

For example…

✅ Someone filled out a form but did NOT create a new Calendly appointment? Send follow up emails or texts with the appropriate link until they do.

❌ Still no answer after ~30 days? You can safely assume they changed their mind. You can have an automation sequence that will automatically unroll them as a lead.

✅ Appointment go well? Add them to your invoicing software and send it out!

For example, you can use the same info already submitted (like client contact, company name, etc.) to create and send a new Freshbooks invoice. Connect Stripe or PayPal to Freshbooks and you can now not only accept payments online, but also monitor payment status with Slack messages.

The sky is truly the limit.

Conclusion

Traction is the #1 problem for most startup companies.
But not Calendly, who was able to ‘go live’ with thousands of beta users already in the pipeline.

Instead, their major hurdle was in making sure people not only converted but stuck around for the long-term, too. Increasing retention leveraged their network effects; empowering each existing customer to bring in brand new people.

So Calendly dove deeper into understanding what makes their customers tick. They lined up interview after interview. And used each new insight or tidbit of wisdom to better tailor their messaging.

Integrating their product into marketing automation use cases was one powerful example.

User stories, like Sean’s, allowed them to showcase how current customers were solving difficult challenges. How those customers were benefitting in both hard ($$$, %%) and soft (hours saved) terms.

And how their product was the only obvious, viable alternative for other people like Sean.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a marketing writer, agency partner, and creator of Copy Weekly, a free weekly copywriting newsletter for marketers & founders.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2ndTmG5

Low Email Conversion? See How Influitive Increased Click-Through Rates by 800% with Video

Breaking through all the marketing noise is hard enough on its own, but when your audience is other marketers, you have your work cut out for you. How do you engage people who spend every hour of their workday thinking through the same problem? We can create blog posts, ads, and case studies to grab the attention of our prospects, but when they know all the tricks of the trade, creativity is key.

At Influitive, we’ve worked for the past five years to build a whole new category of marketing—advocate marketing—to help B2B companies ignite growth through the voices of their customers. Our platform gives marketers the ability to discover, nurture, and mobilize their customer base to reach a wider audience, accelerate the sales pipeline, and improve customer engagement. It’s my job to educate our prospects on what advocate marketing is, why it’s important, and why they need it.

In 2015, Influitive created a new industry event focused on advocacy, customer engagement, and experience. We called it Advocamp. The first year was a huge success and we wanted the 2016 event to be even bigger; our goal was to more than triple attendance. But it wasn’t going to be easy to get the attention of so many B2B marketers and convince them to attend our virtually unknown event. Oh, and did I mention that we only had three months to get everyone registered? No sweat.

We had our normal promotion vehicles—the website, email, content, and social ad campaigns—but we knew to stand out in a sea of events that look more or less the same on paper, we were going to have to get creative.

Enter Camp Counselor Buck.

Show, Don’t Tell

To convince people to attend a brand new marketing event instead of or in addition to the dozens of other events out there, we couldn’t just tell them Advocamp was the best conference ever. We had to show them. We had to make them feel something.

When you have to grab people’s attention quickly, and don’t have the luxury of a 1,500-word post to explain the awesomeness of your event, the best tool to accomplish this is video. It can help build that emotional foundation, and it’s much easier to be funny, sad, or joyful through video than almost any other form of content. But sometimes it’s also a lot harder to produce.

Fact: 87% of online marketers use video. What’s your excuse? @Vidyard #videomarketing (Tweet This)

This is where our video partners come in. We had worked with a video production company called Sparksight on many video campaigns in the past, including some basic Advocamp commercials in 2015. Among these Advocamp promo videos was a camp counsellor character named Buck—think B2B marketing meets summer camp with a large helping of physical comedy. We called these videos Buckshots.

While the early Buckshot videos from 2015 were super funny and people seemed to enjoy them, we could only use them for brand awareness, which is marketing speak for “we have no way of measuring the impact of this.” We made them, put them online, and hoped they would take off. I’m sure you can guess that they didn’t. They got a few hundred views each. But we weren’t done with video. We realized we had to put significant distribution efforts behind them just like any other piece of content we produced.

Although we couldn’t tie registrations and hard ROI directly to these original Buckshots, we did get a lot of positive feedback from our colleagues, partners, customers, and other Advocamp attendees. Marketers attend so many events every year, and often they feel like just one big advertisement. We heard, however, that we had hit the mark when it came to instilling a different kind of emotional impact associated with our event. It made a promise about the event experience that stood out from the competition. More importantly, attendees told us we delivered on that promise a few months later at Advocamp.

Brand awareness = ‘we have no way of measuring this’. Stop spraying and praying! @Vidyard (Tweet This)

When 2016 rolled around and we set that stretch goal to register nearly 4X the number of Advocamp attendees from the previous year, we knew we couldn’t produce videos that merely entertained. We had to convert. We had to change our strategy if we hoped to come even close to our goal, so we started investigating ways to make an engaging medium like video turn into an ROI-driving, seat-filling tactic.

A few months before we started promoting Advocamp 2016, we started using video marketing platform Vidyard to host all of our video content. The cool thing about Vidyard is that it integrates with your marketing automation platform (in our case, Marketo) to track and measure the impact of your video content. Video can be more costly and time consuming to produce than any other type of content, so it’s critical to tie those investments back to sales pipeline and revenue.

Around that time, Vidyard also introduced some innovative new functionality that allowed marketers to personalize video campaigns in the same way we personalize emails.

Personalization

Dale Carnegie said, “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” When someone uses your name in conversation, you feel respected and important. While our previous email campaigns used this tactic—Hi {first_name}—it was lacking in our videos.

The first batch of Buckshot videos in 2015 were all about Advocamp and how much fun the conference would be. But they didn’t put the viewer there, right next to Buck, experiencing the fun for themselves. With Vidyard, we could easily create hundreds of personalized video invitations without having to shoot hundreds of unique Buckshots.

By now, you’ve probably seen these types of personalized videos; they usually involve a character holding up a piece of paper with your name on it. But we couldn’t have Buck in the middle of the woods holding up some random paper, so we stuck with the theme and inserted the personalized text field into a merit badge sash (check out the video below to see). Now all we had to do was get these videos in front of the right people.

Delivery

In the past, if we wanted to email personalized videos to folks in our database, we’d have to create thousands of unique videos and thumbnail images for each of the recipients and insert them one by one into the emails. This is just way too many steps. With Vidyard, all we needed to do was send them our list, and through the integration between Vidyard and Marketo, we could automatically send unique thumbnail images with a link that would open their personalized invitation—all housed and hosted on Vidyard’s platform.

The Results

Our previous Advocamp promotions (email, social, and through our customer AdvocateHub) yielded modest results: 16.1% open rate, 0.7% click-through rate, and 4.5% click-to-open rate. The personalized video campaign crushed those numbers:

• 29% open rate
• 5.5% click-through rate
• 18.7% click-to-open rate

The click-through rate was 8X higher and the click-to-open rate 4X higher than our other campaigns!

The key to #marketingpersonalization? Carnegie said it’s all in the name. #videomarketing (Tweet This)

These numbers told us that clearly way more people were seeing our message, engaging with our emails, and then following through to watch the video. But these metrics don’t mean much unless we could put people in the seats. Luckily, we did that too. While we fell slightly short of our ambitious goal of 4X attendance, we tripled our attendance from the previous year. And we learned a ton.

Learnings

With most email campaigns, you work hard to draft a catchy subject line, engaging copy, and a compelling CTA. Then you send it out and…crickets. Or, if you do hear anything back, it’s almost always negative: “I don’t know how I got on this list!” “Take me off!” But with the personalized video campaign we received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. People loved their videos and asked us how we pulled it off—and these were our fellow marketers! People who know all the tricks of the trade and spend all day everyday looking for new marketing magic. That’s when we knew had achieved our goal of conveying the emotional spirit of the conference.

That special feeling and “magic” of innovation was now associated with Influitive’s brand, which was something that would’ve been near impossible to achieve through traditional marketing plays. It also laid a great foundation for our future Advocamp marketing efforts.

In addition to the personalized video invitations, Sparksight also recorded all the sessions at the event. These were first available to attendees and then to those who were unable to attend. These session recordings gave us a soft-touch to follow up with the people who didn’t attend, and to this day one of our most watched videos (out the more than 500 we have hosted on Vidyard) is Daniel Pink’s keynote on “Advocate Marketing and the Science of Motivation.”

If you’re considering adding video to your marketing campaigns, make sure to give yourself plenty of lead time. Video takes a while to get right, and it’s not something you want to rush. Also, one thing we didn’t do this last time that we’re hungry to get into for the next campaign is testing. A/B test your subject lines and email segments to better understand what content resonates most with each customer segment. In addition, video isn’t cheap, so optimize to ensure you’re getting the biggest return on your investment. And finally, find a trusted video expert to help you through each step of the process—you and your audience will be happy you did.

Note: This post was originally featured on upshot.

The post Low Email Conversion? See How Influitive Increased Click-Through Rates by 800% with Video appeared first on Vidyard.

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Why Offering a Free Trial Might Be Dangerous For Your SaaS Product (And How to Figure It Out)

For some reason, people tend to be equating SaaS companies with free trials.

I find this pretty bad indeed.

Here’s why:

It’s true that many software companies see outstanding results with the free trial business model, but it doesn’t imply that everyone should use it. That’s just silly. Every single business is different, and the same strategy never fits all.

Force fitting a free trial system in your business can be really dangerous.

In this post, I’ll cover three of the most common scenarios where a SaaS company should NOT offer a free trial. Take a look through them and see if any describes you.

Scenario #1: The Product Doesn’t Deliver Results in a Reasonable Period of Time

“Do not offer a free trial when your customer can’t get a complete picture of how your product benefits them during a reasonable free trial period.”

– Wayne Mulligan, Co-founder of Crowdability

I couldn’t agree more with Wayne.

Let me explain:

The only purpose of offering a free trial is to remove the risk barrier, right?

Think about it. Companies offer free trials to show their prospective customers the value they’ll get if they decide to buy the product – they just want to alleviate all doubts and help their users make an informed decision. That’s it.

If your product doesn’t show the value within a reasonable time frame, a free trial simply makes no sense.

For example, if the user needs to gather accurate data to measure the value of your software, and he or she can’t get such data within the trial period, then that trial is worthless.

Also, it could be that your customer needs to contribute sensitive data to your system to evaluate it properly. In this case, the free trial won’t be helpful either.

In both examples, the trial period is simply not enough.

Now you might be thinking: “Why not just extend that period?”

Fair question. For some companies, it might be a viable solution. But the truth is there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. It all depends on your current situation and many other factors – like your sales cycle and working capital.

To help you out, I’ve listed below three of the most comprehensive guides on the topic. I’m sure they’ll get you on the right path:

• The Best SaaS Free Trial Length
• How Long Should Your SaaS Free Trial Be? It Depends…
• What’s the optimal free trial duration?

Scenario #2: The Product is Too Complicated

Listen:

NEVER assume that your prospective customer will even attempt learning how to use your product. If the process isn’t obvious or – at the very least – simple, they won’t see the value.

In simpler words, if your product is too complicated, a free trial will probably not work for you. Why? Two main reasons:

1. Without training, enterprise-level software tends to intimidate users, making free trials generally ineffective.
2. Complicated processes tend to cost more money. Unless you have deep pockets, getting people to use your product for free might not be viable.

And when I say “complicated,” I mean your product lies into one of the following categories:

• Your product has a complex integrated process. For example, when you need the help of developers to integrate your product into your client’s website or when people require extensive training to use it.
• Your product involves upfront implementation work.
• Your product needs third party integration to demonstrate a complete flow.

Companies like Marketo and Infusionsoft understand this concept very well. Both companies offer practical solutions, but they understand that people won’t get the most out of their products if they don’t know how to use them properly. So rather than offering a free trial, they offer free demonstrations.

In fact, Infusionsoft goes beyond your “typical” demo. Instead, you can decide whether to explore the product’s key features on your own, reserve a spot for a live webinar and Q & A session, or even schedule a customized tour from a small business expert.

This kind of attention helps you get a clear feeling of the product’s quality and its value.

Anyways, the bottom line is this:

If your product is too complicated or requires extensive training to deliver its full value, try with free demos. This model might work better for you.

Scenario #3: The Free Trial is Giving Away All The Value

Look:

Be careful about measuring results by focusing on user acquisition. I mean, if those users don’t turn into paying customers, they’re worthless. Savvy companies always bear this in mind.

If you want to increase your bottom line through free trials, you need to integrate the process in your sales funnel first and measure results by sales, not users.

The key lies in this simple, yet neglected concept.

Marketing expert and evangelist Trish Bertuzzi has worked with many SaaS companies, and she makes a fascinating point in his article on Why Free Trials Don’t Always Make Sense:

“…for some applications, there’s very little value delivered beyond the free trial period. If it’s a solution that helps manage a task done once per year – for example, arranging the annual user group conference – why would the prospect actually pay for the solution once that task is done?

In this case, the SaaS company is essentially giving away the full value of its solution. A free trial can attract users, but not many paying customers.” – Trish Bertuzzi

Her recommendations include:

• Offer a “sandbox demo” – letting your prospective customers try your product in a controlled environment might increase the effectiveness of the demo.
• Create an explainer video – explainer videos are proven to work extremely well for SaaS companies and – sometimes – a clear video is enough to explain the benefit.
• Money-back guarantees – if the free trial model doesn’t fit your business, you can still offer a money-back guarantee to reduce the risk involved in the purchase.
• No-obligation contracts – if your customer doesn’t get what she or he expected from your product, that customer could end the relationship without any problem. This reduces risk and entices more people to buy.

Many startups tend to imitate what other successful companies are doing, but remember, what works for others might not necessarily work for you. If a free trial model isn’t profitable, better rely on different strategies.

Don’t Take My Word For It – Test It Instead

If your business lies within one of the three categories outlined above, a free trial model will probably make no sense for you, BUT, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it at all.

I mean, there’s no way to know for sure unless you test it. Every business is different, and your results may vary. So please, don’t follow my advice blindly. I’m not trying to stop you, but to “awaken” you – never do things just because “you’re supposed to.”

The fact you’re running a SaaS company doesn’t mean you should offer free trials nor copy what your competitors are doing. Better trust on your own testing.

It’s the only way to figure it out.

What do you think? Are you going to test it? What other tips do you have? Make sure to share your thoughts in the comments! Brutal or otherwise.

About the Author: Josue Valles is a freelance copywriter, professional blogger, and business writing coach. He’s on a lifelong mission to help businesses find their voice and to turn boring ideas into brilliant stories. If you’re interested in working with Josue, you can email him at josuevallesp@gmail.com

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5 Ways to Make Good Pre-roll Ads (that people might actually watch)

Between the title and the first line, I’ve shown why you want to read this article, and it only took 5 seconds. If you have no interest in what you’ve seen so far, it’s likely you’re ready to leave.

This is the basic premise of a pre-roll—those annoying ads that play before the video you actually want to watch. You have to endure them for at least 5 seconds until you’re allowed to skip through. Because they are so easy to skip, pre-rolls have the highest standard of quality, custom-tailored to engage and delight us in such a short time, right?

Well, maybe not. Think of the last time you didn’t skip a pre-roll. Every day, I see terrible ads that have no chance at winning my engagement. It’s not because pre-roll is a bad medium. It’s because most ads aren’t engaging.

So, what does a good pre-roll look like? Here’s my favorite example of all-time, especially because of how low-budget it looks.

Not impressed? 91% of viewers watched the ad to the end, 7.1% clicked through, and app downloads increased by 75% during the campaign. Not bad for text and spinning burgers.

These are the results you care about. Anyone can buy impressions to bulk up a monthly report. But what you really want is engagement and, by extension, business results. I chose the Eat 24 video as an example because it proves that you don’t need a massive budget or an elaborate premise to be successful. Instead, success comes from a deep understanding of your audience. As a video production studio, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure this out, and here are our top five insights.

Truth #1: Nobody wants pre-roll

We can all agree that, given a choice, we’d rather not watch pre-roll—or any commercials at all. Most ads lack any empathy on this point, enthusiastically getting in our faces and refusing to acknowledge that they’re forcibly invading our day. Pre-rolls are especially disruptive.

What to do about it: Focus on providing value, not copy

I know that sounds terribly cliché. But before you groan/close this article/burn my house down, look at the video above. It barely mentions anything about their actual service. Instead, it focuses on providing value—in this case, piquing our curiosity and entertaining us. It’s an ad that understands that people don’t like ads. The big question is not “How do I talk about myself?” It’s “How can I delight my audience in the short time I have?”

Truth #2: Pre-rolls are essentially 5 second videos

If you have a long, intricate message, pre-roll ads are not the place/time to share them. Years of terrible ads have trained us to immediately hammer that “skip” button.

What to do about it: Make 5-second videos

When creating your video, assume that you only have 5 seconds with your audience. Boil down and present the most basic version of your message, or entice the viewer to continue watching. We always recommend 15 seconds as the optimal length and strongly recommend against anything over 30 seconds.

Truth #3: Pre-rolls are not like TV ads

I see TV commercials run as pre-roll all the time, but the two mediums are completely different. When I’m watching TV, I’ve grown to expect 5-minute breaks every 15 minutes or so. But pre-roll ads can pop up at any time on any video, making them inherently more disruptive. My tolerance is much lower. I might sit through a 40-second ad on television, but I simply don’t have the same patience on my computer.

What to do about it: Never run traditional ads as pre-roll

This one is really simple. Rephrased, if you’re going to run pre-roll, make original pre-roll ads instead of recycling TV spots. Say what you want about “cross-platform promotion,” but traditional 30- or 60-second ads don’t work in this format.

Truth #4: Pre-roll is about generating a click, not an impression

One of the biggest advantages of pre-roll and digital campaigns is that your audience can directly interact with the ad by clicking. No need to list phone numbers or URLs. The next step is literally a finger tap away. Despite this massive advantage, too many pre-roll ads focus on long-form copy without a clear next step.

What to do about it: Focus your video on your call to action

Cut out all your messaging fat. Your pre-roll isn’t a presentation. It’s a tool to get people to click. Because you don’t have time for meaningful copy, everything about the video should be driving a CTA.

Truth #5: Pre-roll needs a supporting backend

After clicking a pre-roll, I’m amazed at how many times I’m dumped onto the company’s home page. Really? The pre-roll teased a free trial, and now I have to dig through the site to find the signup page? In most circumstances, I’ll balk at the extra effort and leave.

What to do about it: Build a complete pre-roll pathway

If pre-roll is the bait, then what comes after is the hook. Getting your audience to your domain is only the first step. Tailored landing pages are very important to turning clicks into conversions. Don’t waste a brilliant pre-roll by not having anything behind it.

Pre-roll can be tough. I’ve seen billion dollar companies completely fail to deliver effective content in this space. At the same time, we’re beginning to see improvement. Eat 24 saw massive success with a very small budget. What could you do with yours?

2017 Update:

While creating a good pre-roll ad is vitally important to getting eyes on your content, we’ve heard from a number of our readers that video quality isn’t the only defining factor of a good pre-roll ad. You also have to engage the right targeting options within YouTube to ensure your video is getting in front of the right audience as well!

As Convince & Convert points out in this post, many users know their way around targeting their ads to geographic regions, demographics, and specific languages – those are the easy ones – but the real value can be found in YouTube’s other targeting opportunities.

Topics and interests are the real goldmine for targeting viewers, as these help define when your video is shown in relation to what your prospects are already watching. But they are a bit different from one another:

• Topics focus on what your prospects are watching right now. So if you provide dog grooming services, you’ll want to target your Topics around dog grooming videos. That way if someone is watching a video on how to trim their poodle, they’ll see your video offering to do it for them!
• Interests are more broad, and allow you to target ads to users who are watching content similar, but not exactly the same as what they’re watching now. To use our dog grooming analogy again, you may target Interests around professional dog shows. People who love watching pampered pooches paraded around stadiums probably care about how their own pooch looks! But you can take Interests further, and target dog walking videos, and dog training videos as well; interests your target market cares about, but that are not directly related to dog grooming.

The tips above are still spot-on recommendations for making your pre-roll video successful, but don’t forget to adjust your targeting settings. Knowing that you want to target men and women that are 18+ and live in North America just isn’t good enough to be sure that your advertising dollars are well spent. Go deeper, and start showing the right videos to the right audience at the right time!

The post 5 Ways to Make Good Pre-roll Ads (that people might actually watch) appeared first on Vidyard.

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How to Find an SEO You Can Trust: Weekly Forum Update

Hello again! Since I last wrote an update, Spring has arrived! Hopefully a lot of you are enjoying some slightly warmer weather between bouts of wrestling with Google.

We’ve got a lot of great news threads from WebmasterWorld and Cre8asiteforums this week, as well as our title thread from SEO Chat!

I think it’s pretty common knowledge in the business and SEO worlds that sometimes people get burnt. Sometimes a business hires an SEO who can talk circles around them, but they either provide no results or wind up doing damage.

It’s also difficult for businesses to gauge the value of SEO, I think. That’s probably why many of them flock to Fiverr and other services.

If they don’t understand the value, why not buy cheap and see how it goes? But, certainly, not all SEO practitioners are equal. And not everyone’s definition of SEO is the same, either. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

Let’s start with some news!

Advertisers Are Suspending Ads on YouTube Due to Extremism Concerns

I believe this story was initially broken by the New York Times. They found that advertisements for big companies and even governments were appearing on YouTube for videos posted by what the BBC calls “extremist groups.”

Those ads didn’t just make the companies money – they made the extremists money as well. Not just chump change either – 250,000 pounds, according to The Guardian. And that goes to groups like Isis.

“Taxpayer-funded ads for various branches of the British Government were appearing alongside Isis propaganda videos and other offensive content,”

writes the BBC. Google has been scrambling to fix their system and reassure advertisers.

“I think it shows the flaws Google’s matching of ads with user generated content (and third party sites as well – AdSense targeting can be pretty inappropriate too).It works ok for “widgets in working” type searches, but for anything that is not specifically a product search it becomes pretty hit and miss,”

writes graeme_p.

“The pot has been simmering for a number of years. This might be the first sign it’s about to boil over,”

writes tangor. Besides WebmasterWorld, you can read more about the UK Government pulling YouTube ads on Cre8asiteforums too!

Google’s “State of Website Security 2016” Released

The most startling revelation in their report is that between 2015 and 2016, 36% more sites were hacked. Google warns that “61% of webmasters who were hacked never received a notification from Google…because their sites weren’t verified in Search Console,” which is a statement that some on WebmasterWorld take umbrage with.

Since so many sites are unverified,

“…Google shouldn’t be relying on that as a way to notify, imho. It’s up to webmasters to look after their sites, but they shouldn’t have to have GSC, imho,”

writes engine. Keyplyr speculates that most site owners might just hire a developer and nothing else.

“Surely most have no knowledge of GSC and if they do, may be timid about engaging with the various tools and settings.”

7_Driver wonders how Google defines a hacked site. They’ve received notifications in the past but,

“Both times it turned out to be a site that we linked to that had dropped and been re-registered and now contained Malware – it wasn’t on our site at all.”

How To Find an SEO Consultant You Can Trust?

SEO Chat newbie Chois2 is looking to improve their search traffic, and they want to find an SEO firm or individual to do so. They’ve gotten quotes from firms and looked at freelancers on Upwork.

“From those who I’ve shortlisted [on Upwork], the references check out and they successfully achieved top Google ranking…However I feel most everyone telling me that they will do a little on-site SEO but focus on backlinking and directory submissions.”

Like many people who want the results of SEO but aren’t familiar with the industry, they’re wondering how to find someone to trust. Chedders makes a lot of great points:

“Firstly I would never hire an SEO person who approached me. If they are good at what they do then either they will have a good reputation within the industry or they should not be difficult to find.”

He also writes,

“The other problem I have really is that for the money a lot of the top agencies charge you could bring the SEO in house.”

Pierre Benneton outlines how different SEO firms and individuals price themselves:

“As a professional, I work both on a project basis or an hourly base. My hourly price is composed of a fix rate plus a variation depending on the niche, the company, and the money my job will generate. Therefore a small restaurant will pay less for my services than a big company selling high added value products.”

KernelPanic also makes some brilliant points about the value of PPC, when done by an experienced professional. Any newbies out there looking to learn what to look for – give this thread a read!

Approaching Google SEO as a Zero Sum Game

Things ebb and things flow. It seems to be the case in SEO, sometimes, that today’s number 1 is tomorrow’s bottom of page 40. And when that happens, a site’s traffic just seems to dry up. WebmasterWorld member goodroi further defines things:

“I don’t see it as simply the top 10 rankings get all the traffic. I see it more like each day X amount of people are searching for something and that pie is getting sliced up each day.”

NickMNS thinks of a zero sum game as post and pre Google updates:

“The idea of the zero sum game, simply suggests that the update may not be about your site being penalized but instead about a competitor’s site being pushed up.”

Furthermore, other Google updates like direct answers and the Knowledge Box have been viewed as sapping traffic from sites that once raked it in. Give this thread a read for more on this very nuanced topic.

Your Forums Are Probably Not Bringing Your Site Down

That’s a relief for me to hear! Gary Illyes recently responded on Twitter to someone asking if the user generated content on their forums could be why their site was failing. His response was that it seemed “unlikely.” But to add more to this thought – a forum could hurt you if you completely ignore it.

User generated content could mean spam links or whole paragraphs of copied and pasted advertising text. If you let your forum be buried under that kind of stuff with no moderation then yes, there could be a danger.

AdWords Exact Match is About to Become…Inexact

Again! AdWords’ exact match feature was watered down in the past, but soon it will begin widening what it defines as “close variant matching.”

That means that variations in words you specify, or different word orders, could become targets. Threadwatch has more on why webmasters are upset that the word “exact” has lost its meaning.

The post How to Find an SEO You Can Trust: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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How Brian Used Video in Customer Success to Communicate Change

Every CSM knows that change can be a big sticking point for customers, especially a change like a new customer success manager. That’s why, when Brian Jacklin, previous CSM at Vidyard, confirmed that he was changing roles within Vidyard he knew that he needed to do something special for his 61 accounts. Something that informed them of the situation and let them know that they’d be well taken care of.

That’s why he turned to video.

Brian recorded a webcam video explaining the transition for his accounts to their new CSM, Jarrett Ash, and even asked Jarrett to record his own video to say hello to his new accounts, too.

The communication was a huge success with an unheard of 100% open rate. His video had 51 unique views (of 61 unique people who received it), and retained more than 65% of viewers all the way to the end.

We figured we’d be selfish not to share how they did it – and no one likes selfish – so here we are! Keep reading to learn the distribution strategy, see the video, and learn about the program’s results.

The Email

The video was sent through email from Brian to all 61 accounts.

Brian included the thumbnail of his video in the email as an image (that linked out to the video player on a separate sharing page) so that customers would:

1. know there was a video and
2. be more likely to click through since videos in email increase click-through rates by 50%.

Check out the email template Brian used – and customized – for all 61 contacts:

The Videos

Both Brian and Jarrett recorded videos using their own webcam, computer audio, and Vidyard’s free tool called ViewedIt.

They recorded their videos separately and then added them as unique chapters within the same player in Vidyard. This way, viewers didn’t have to take any additional actions to watch the second video – the second chapter played automatically. It also gave viewers the option to skip Brian’s video (sorry Brian!) and meet Jarrett right away if they wanted!

You probably noticed that Brian included a note about the second video in the email copy as well to encourage viewership.

The videos were kept short: 47 seconds for Brian and 31 seconds for Jarrett for less than 90 seconds of total content. No one has any time for more than that these days!

Check out their videos below!

The Results

Most importantly, this communication outreach by Brian and Jarrett performed well and eased customers through the change with a personal touch. The program saw the following results.

• 63 views with 51 unique
• A 100% open rate
• Brian’s video (the first one) kept about 65% of viewers all the way to the end
• Jarrett’s video (the second one) kept about 75% of viewers all the way to the end
• Brian also received a number of responses and customers were happy to be kept in the loop with such a personal message

Overall Video Results

Brian’s Video – Viewer Engagement Chart

Jarrett’s Video – Viewer Engagement Chart

The post How Brian Used Video in Customer Success to Communicate Change appeared first on Vidyard.

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3 Tools to Quickly Create Awesome Visual Tweets

Visual tweets attract more clicks and shares. Despite various levels of skepticism (many people were claiming visual tweets to be annoying), visual tweets are getting more and more adopted.

Here are three free tools allowing you to create stunning visual tweets in seconds.

1. Twit Shot

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(Online, Mac App, Google Chrome Extension)

TwitShot.com is a cool app that extracts an image from the given page and creates an instant visual tweet. If you don’t use Google Chrome or a Mac (whaaat??), you can still use the web-based app.

Be careful with the web based version: It didn’t give me any status update that my tweet went live, so I tweeted the same URL+image three times:

Here’s one of them:

(HOW) Can We Speed Up the Disavow Process? -> http://t.co/3RSfNnEM7F http://pic.twitter.com/OHzul5Qck8

— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) July 25, 2015

2. Record.it

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(Mac and Windows)

Record.it is a free Mac and Windows application that lets you record screencasts and instantly turn them into animated gif pictures that can be instantly tweeted.

The Windows version doesn’t have Twitter support yet (it seems but I have tested it on Mac) but they say it’s coming soon.

Here’s a tweet I created on how to apply to Internet Marketing Ninjas free competitor analysis (Took me 1 minute to create):

Request your FREE competitor analysis over at @NinjasMarketing -> http://t.co/UAeQ6hzUi7 http://pic.twitter.com/J2jLvFbZbT

— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) July 25, 2015

I’ve tested a lot of animated GIF creators and this one seems to provide the highest quality of animation.

3. Buffer Pablo

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(Web based)

Buffer Pablo is the quickest way to create tweetable visual quotes. If you sign in to Buffer, you’ll be able to share the visual quote to Facebook too.

There are other ways to tweet quotes: Buffer is the newest one. The other options include Chisel and Canva.

Which tools are you using to create visual tweets? Share them in the comments!

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