3 Essential Components of a Video Email with Morgan Ingram
9 Sept 2022 · 5 min
This content was created by Kevin "KD" Dorsey. This content was uploaded by Kevin "KD" Dorsey. This is a podcast episode titled "3 Essential Components of a Video Email with Morgan Ingram" (Better Sell Better / Inside Sales Excellence) recorded on 2022-09-09. Host Kevin "KD" Dorsey interviews Morgan Ingram about tactical video-prospecting and outreach: subject lines, email copy, thumbnails, keeping videos short, using personal nicknames (e.g., KD), crafting a contextual CTA, avoiding overused formats like whiteboards, and using tools (e.g., the "Make It Big" app) to boost engagement. The excerpt includes a brief sponsor mention for Clary's Revenue platform and emphasizes learning concepts rather than copy-pasting templates.
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So there's three things to pay attention to. One is the subject line. 2 is the copy of the email. Because you can't just say, yo, what up? Here's a video. Because you can be like, okay, like, what's the context? And then three is the thumbnail. So if you think about how humans, we all go to YouTube, the main reason people click the YouTube video, the title has something to do with it, but also it's the thumbnail. If the thumbnail isn't great. You probably won't click that video. And that's actually according to a lot of statistics. And all the different things that YouTube talks about, they say, hey, actually, you know, more people lean on the thumbnail than they do the titles. And so let's go to the subject line first, because that's important. So when you're doing a subject line, one of the things I found to be successful, I actually put it here in the chat, is let's say if I was sending Kevin a video here, oh, this would be my subject line that we've seen to be really successful.
Is also weird to hear you call me Kevin, though. I'm not gonna.
I don't think anyone's gonna put Katie when they're prospecting you. Would you? Well, actually, that's a good question. If someone put Katie in their prospecting, would you appreciate that? Or would you just be, like, significantly so?
Okay, absolutely. Because, like. And actually, we can call that out real quick. KD implies you. What me implies you know, you know me.
Right, Right.
Kevin does not. Because also, no one calls me Kevin. So if you did any amount of research on me and realized everyone calls me KD, absolutely, 100%. You think about that subject line, KD will catch my eye over Kevin any day.
That's. That's super interesting because some people were like, oh, you don't know me well enough. You shouldn't be using that name. And I've heard that from other people. So I was curious to hear your take. I.
So what's interesting, I would love. This is where, like, how people feel versus how they behave. And I'd love to watch it. I'd be willing to bet open rates are significantly higher on shorthand. Or, like, call it like a personal reference because you are like, wait, does this person know me? Now? You gotta back up why you felt it was okay to reference them that way. Whether they liked it or not isn't always the point. As much as. Did you get the first part, which is the open a KD almost always. And I do this to myself, by the way. I like, you know, you fill out a form, right? And they're like, use your first name. And every once in a while, I put in KD instead of Kevin. I started getting emails from them. Says, hey, kd. I'm like, wait, did this person know me? Even though I know it's automated, I'm like, damn. Like, how did they know to call me kd? So I'm gonna pull back here. But yes, shorthand Nicknames, if you know what they go by, I'd way rather lean into that than the opposite.
Yeah, so once you have their first name, you're gonna put your name too. You put quick video. The reason you do that is because people like things quick. So doordash, Netflix, et cetera. So you wanna put that there so they know it's not long winded. Now context point is you gotta make sure the video is quick. And it's not a five minute video. Right. You wanna make sure you're not doing that. Then the body. So the body is really interesting. What I'll say on this is when you go into it, you wanna first and foremost explain the reason why you made the video and what context point you found. So for example, if I'm going after a sales leader, I'm looking at if they're hiring sales reps or they have a product update. Cause that means you have to update their messaging or did they get a new sales leader? Like you want to mention that and then relay it to the point. However, what I found the most interesting is to basically call out that the video is weird is where we've seen more clicks on the video and more replies. And I'll give you an example. So in the copy of the email, actually could share my screen and just bring it up. It's probably a lot easier if I do that. But basically what we're saying is, hey, I know that video in an email might be odd. However, I want to do something different to stand out in your inbox. And then we go with, hey, would you be opposed to clicking the video to see what I have to say? And the reason that we I changed it was because a lot of people, especially on the security side were like, I'm not gonna click a video. So we're just letting them know, like hey, we have something to say. This is odd. But also I'm respecting your inbox. Cause I wanna stand out and I don't wanna be like every other person out here. Right. And so that's what led into more responses, more engagement. And I haven't pulled up right here, so you all can see it again. I'm running different sample sizes on this and I'll blow it up. But this is an example of what it would look like. Again, I customize this first part depending on what I find. And then what I do is say, hey, it's less than however many seconds. I want them to know that this is not going to be that long. Then here what I just talked about, I know, it might be odd. I wanted to do something different to stand out. Would you be opposed to it? And then now my video is here. So what I'm doing is letting them know it's not too long. This is what I'm doing to stand out. Call to action. Would you be opposed to it? And then now in the video itself, it's there now. My last point on the video is pretty interesting. I've been a big proponent of the whiteboard since I started it out. I've started to shift to say, to not do that as of late. Cause I feel like every single person does it now. So there's an app and I'm looking at my phone to make sure that I say this right. It's called make it big. And what the app does is it makes your text big on your phone. So let's use the kd, for example, right? Let's say if I was looking to video prospect Katie here, you all can see this. I have this on my phone and I can easily just start off my video prospect in that way. And then I can easily just, you know, put it down instead of having a whiteboard. And also it's gonna save you money because it's a free app. So that's, that's also another benefit of as well. So that's the body of the video format. This is where we started to see a lot of success in terms of clients that I train on video prospecting. We just made these slight tweaks in the body because we got to get someone to click the video. You could have the best video in the world, but if no one clicks it, it doesn't matter.
So first of all, I hope y' all are taking notes on this. You're getting like behind the scenes type shit going on here. But I want to call this out because it's what we do as salespeople. Morgan just showed us an email template and what do we go and do? Write the exact same. I know there's little. So I'm going to watch my language here. But all of a sudden everyone's got the exact same email going out and we wonder why it stops working. Please pay attention to the concepts that he's teaching you. Not just the email. The concepts were there how long the email was. Something goofy about it. Calling out an awkward situation, putting the relevancy there. Like, please just don't go. Take that one word for word and go, Morgan, why didn't I get a 20% response rate like you? Okay, please take the concepts and then write versions. So this also becomes a strength of yours. It's not a year later that you're like, hey, Morgan, come back with muffins so you can teach us another way to do it. Learn the concepts of this song.
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