What started in the late 90’s as “Casual Friday’s” is now standard dress code all week long for many working professionals. Just as fashion shifts to be more relaxed, so have email communications. Have you noticed? Messaging has become much less stilted, more familiar and conversational. We call it business casual email.

Case in point is an email I received from the President, Barack, with a one-word subject line: “Hey”.  The brief message was an appeal for an end of year online donation. I was a prime target because I supported Barack back in 2008 with a micro-donation. Yes, I know Barack didn’t actually write that email. Still, the extreme casualness of it intrigued me. I asked others what they thought. As it turns out, most actually like the colloquial approach because it grabbed their attention.

It inspired me to run an experiment. I signed up to receive email from the Republican primary candidates. I figured this would be a fun way to collect a group of emails to examine.

As the campaign emails arrived, I filed them into a folder and am only just now looking at them as a group to write this post. I only received emails from Mitt and Rick; I didn’t receive emails from Newt and Ron and I’m still not sure why.

Anyway, scan the email subject lines below and take note of the following:

• simple language
• one to three words max
• mostly lowercase
• written as you might to a friend
• insider references

The email subject lines all strike a very casual tone. However, the message style varies by person. Summed up:

• Barack’s two messages are succinct, text-only, including one or two hyperlinks. One greeting is “Friend” and the other is personalized with my name. Signoffs are simple: “To 2012” and “Thank you”.
• Mitt’s two messages are also brief and both include links to video.  They open with “Friend,” and close expressing thanks.
• Rick’s nine messages are published in patriotic image-laden red-white-and-blue html formats (with the exception of one text-only message). None contain a salutation; otherwise, they resemble letters, complete with his scanned signature in closing.

Stripping away politics, what can we learn to apply to our own communications with prospects and customers?

• Know your target audience
  Wildly different interpretations of business casual attire create wrinkles in corporate dress codes. The same is true for business casual email. Rick’s formal letter message body was likely carefully crafted to resonate with his base. Beware: coming across as too familiar could be as off-putting as wearing flip-flops in some workplaces.
  When in doubt, err on the conservative side of business casual.
• Be personal
  All of the subject lines in my sampling looked like they came from a friend. Subject lines that read more like titles are out of fashion.
  Next time you send a prospecting email, try adopting a more casual, friendly tone.
• Spark curiosity
  “Wheaties”. That subject line is both thought provoking and timely for Rick’s constituents who recognize its reference to a positive comment made by a CNN consultant after a debate.
  Be relevant by relating your email messages to current events in your prospects’ and customers’ worlds.
• Connect emotionally
  Video is a very effective way to connect emotionally, as Mitt’s communications team knows. Video need not be over-produced. In fact, we are huge proponents of more ad hoc and authentic business casual video—a term first coined by Cliff (Pollan), VisibleGains CEO and written about by David (Meerman Scott) in the latest edition of his book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR. 
  Follow up your next meeting with an impromptu video message and include meeting notes and other supporting documentation. It’s easy. Got an iphone? Download our free app from the itunes store.

Take note of the business casual emails landing in your Inbox. Experiment with your tone, word choice and video to connect more personally with prospects and customers.

One of the hardest things for sales people to do when prospecting is to communicate the benefits of their solution to the right stakeholder—especially knowing they’ll likely be communicating first through a gatekeeper.

According to research conducted by The Bridge Group, Inc., on average it takes 9.3 touches to get the first meeting.   And, you need that first meeting to start the sales conversation, right?

Not necessarily.  TimeTrade didn’t.

They were able to send a single email with content so compelling it was digested and shared with 10 others before the first meeting—which, by the way, TimeTrade successfully secured within 10 days of sending the email.

Situation
TimeTrade President and CEO Gary Ambrosino craved a new way to open doors.  He was excited about the idea of including video in email to personally connect with prospects’ pain points and highlight bottom-line impacts of using TimeTrade’s online scheduling system.  In the short time it takes to view a video, Gary was confident he could present TimeTrade’s value proposition and actually use its scheduling product in the associated call to action to motivate prospects to book a first meeting at the very moment they were jazzed about the offering.

Solution
TimeTrade used VisibleGains applications and best practices to create a single communication including:

• A personal video introduction with an animated overview; and
• A set of actions the prospect could choose to do such as:
• watching a product demonstration,
• learning more from information presented on the TimeTrade website and
• booking a meeting.

Results

• One email sent to one person who shared it with 10 different people generated 14 views

• 10 Days later, TimeTrade had a booked meeting

• 90 Days later, TimeTrade had a signed deal

“With a single link, our sales rep in the prospecting process was able to reach and touch 10 people, leading to closed business.”
- Gary Ambrosino, President and CEO, TimeTrade 

Conclusion
Getting a first meeting is a key milestone in the selling process, often requiring Herculean effort and tons of guesswork by salespeople about the right time to follow-up.  The initial back and forth exchange between a sales person and prospect kicks off a salesperson’s direct involvement in the prospect’s buying process.

Salespeople open doors and earn the right to subsequent interactions when they demonstrate a persistent understanding of their prospect’s pain points.  Sending compelling content and following up when a prospect is engaged with it (thanks to the alerts sent by VisibleGains in this example when email is opened and content is read) helps salespeople get the first meeting, advance the sale and close the deal.

Are you taking full advantage of the opportunity to start sales conversations in email?

TimeTrade is the world leader in online appointment scheduling systems used by businesses to create new customers, accelerate the sales and service process and make it easy and fast to respond to customers—24/7. TimeTrade’s scheduling software solutions are built on the flexible TimeTrade Appointment Cloud SaaS platform that has the power to scale up to meet the real-time scheduling demands of the largest deployments.

Customer testimonials are typically hard to get. I thought I’d list a quick way that I have gotten video testimonials from customers in the past using flip cameras and dropbox.

1. Step one buy some video cameras Kodak Playtouch ($179) or Flip Cameras ($80) with your loaded logo (as of today you still can) – see picture to the right.
2. Step two send the cameras to your clients with an email & document asking them to find a quiet room that’s well lit.
3. Step three ask them to turn the camera on, sit in front and read the questions aloud and then answer (its also helpful to send a “best practices how to record”).
4. Step four ask them to upload the raw footage to your dropbox folder you have just shared with them – or ship the camera back.
5. Step five edit the video down to under 1:00 in total time.
6. Step six load the content to your site with appropriate tracking codes to see who watches and what they do next (don’t forget a call to action).
7. Step seven ask for their final approval and tell them to keep the flip as a gift.

Marketing should exploit the immediate connection and effectiveness of using video in their referral process. Video is an effective and simple way to make a connection. These types of clean videos come across as very honest as there is very little “production”. I’ve gotten five testimonials completed in 30 days using this method.

It might be obvious to some but the web is becoming a broadcast system. People love consuming content this way and it really has an impact. You don’t need large budgets or time to enable this component of your demand generation marketing engine.

David Meerman Scott just launched his revised & updated book The NEW RULES of MARKETING & PR (Click to buy).  If you haven’t read it you should.

In it David talks about the creation of a video category called business casual (page 252). He explains that video in all its forms need not be the high production difficulty and cost you’ve come to expect from “formal video”.  David goes on to make several points

1. You can produce simple low cost engaging content that works/converts.
2. Do not create poorly shot video, with bad lighting and editing – there is a baseline.
3. He is “convinced that the trend towards casual content means that consumers want to get closer to the organizations they do business with”.
4. Informal “telling it like it is – will make us more efficient”

One additional learning that David and our customers have stressed is -

Trust.

Business Casual video is honest. You’re standing out there on your own with no fancy backgrounds nor teleprompter.  People love the directness and the honesty that comes through the simple format.  We find that people appreciate it and are therefore willing to advance to conversation with such a forthright individual that’s focused on the content delivered.

Never forget that no matter how produced your video is – the content must be authentic and engaging. That is what converts visitors. The business casual content is easily produced on small high definition capable cameras (Cisco Flip, Kodak Zi8) that are simple to use and cost less than $80 to purchase. The quality is fantastic and as of this post Flip cameras are still online for sale.

Here is an example of business casual video content –

Today, when visitors see this business casual content they find it genuine and engaging. The results are excellent and the more you do it the easier it gets.

We’re excited to announce a project we are launching in partnership with Constant Contact Labs: VideoMail.

Using VideoMail, any Constant Contact user can create a simple email (powered by Constant Contact) which includes an Event Promotion Video App (powered by us).  The video app is quite simple and is designed for businesses to promote a sale, a live event, or any other reason to get people to their store or website.

So, if you have a Constant Contact Account (Free Trial Here), you can make and send them for free.  Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

How This Project Came To Life

Having an office in the same building as Constant Contact, one of the best B2B brands, certainly has its advantages.  In addition to the inspiration we get from seeing a SaaS company who has “made it”, we get to meet a lot of their team who have been more than generous with ideas, feedback, and advice.  One group we’ve worked very closely with is the Constant Contact Labs team.  Constant Contact Labs’ role is to innovate on new ideas that can bring value to their nearly 500,000 customers.  They are like a startup within the larger company and have a great track record with some great projects.  After a few meetings, we started brainstorming some ways to work together.

Given that we are in the business of enabling “regular business people” use video to help promote and sell, we zeroed in the VideoMail use case.  Currently, we only have one Video App Template available, but we expect to expand the offering as we get more users and feedback.  Let us know what you’d like to see.

Cisco announced today that they are discontinuing the Flip Camera. Also, our favorite camera, the Kodak Zi8, has also been discontinued. We all know that every phone/tablet/iPod has a camera, but they are not good enough for business video. So what can we do?

The good news is that Kodak recently came out with the PlayTouch. The PlayTouch offers all the features the Zi8 offered, including 1080P HD video, a mic in, USB plug and play video transfer, as well as a few new features we like.

Watch the video below where I review the PlayTouch

Key Features Of The PlayTouch

• Clipping/Trim Videos Right On The Camera – this is a huge time saver!
• Microphone In Jack Can Also Be Headphone Jack (not both at the same time)
• Same great quality video recording as the Zi8, including image stabilization
• New Larger Touch Screen
• Video Effects, Like Sepia, B/W and 70′s (whatever that means, maybe it puts bell bottoms on everyone?)

We’ve always recommended the Kodak Zi8 for our customers, and we’ve begun to recommend the PlayTouch. Until portable device cameras get better, we’ll be sticking with these.

Let us know if you have any questions. Comment below.

I had the chance to sit down and have an interview with Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, authors of the new book “Content Rules.”  I wanted to share a clip of what Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman cover about using video.

We’ve found a very nice microphone that will work with the Kodak Zi8, Canon DSLR’s and a lot of cameras that allow a headphone (1/8″) microphone input jack.  It’s the Sony ECM-AW3 Wireless Micriphone (Click Here To See The Mic).  The mic works pretty great, take a look at the video below for my test review, technical specs and where you can buy this wireless microphone.

Pros:

• Fairly Inexpensive ($160 – Amazon)
• Easy To Use
• Great Sound
• Works on Many Cameras
• Package Comes With Needed Cables
• Uses 2 AAA Batteries (Not Included but No Digging at Radio Shack for Button Batteries)
• Portable & Easy To Move Around With
• Automatically Reconnects When Walking Back Into Range
• 3 Hour Battery Life

Cons:

• The Mic Is Large, Hard to Hide
• No Way To Listen To Audio While Recording (Unless Your Camera Supports It)
• Bright Blue LED Gives It Away (Does Come With A Cover)
• Very Open Mic (Will Pick Up A Lot Of Background Noise)

Please let me know if you have any test cases you would like to see or have any questions.  Just comment away!

This article was originally posted on Constant Contact’s blog

Last week I presented six great reasons to use video in your email marketing and social media efforts. After reading that blog post, you may have asked, Is my business or organization the type that should use video? The simple answer is: Yes. Video works well for every type and size of organization — from single proprietorships to large companies, nonprofits, agencies, and clubs.

The other part of the question is who should be involved in the creating of video. Again, the simple answer is anyone and everyone. Don’t think it is just the leaders; everyone on your team can be part of communicating your message — and should be. It’s important to involve a mix of people at different levels and functions.

Every organization has an insight to share, a story to tell, or a product to talk about. As I discussed in the first part of this series, video is now easy and cost-effective to create, so it is within anyone’s reach. It also puts a face on your company and brings your story to life

So let’s look at how different types of businesses and organizations might use video:

Retail shops, restaurants, and other businesses that sell to consumers

• Create a video to introduce yourself. Ask your customers to say hello when they come in.
• Tell customers about a special item you have or a weekly special you’re featuring.
• Take a quick video of a customer in the store, and interview her about the item she purchased. Ask for a product review, or how she intends to use it.
• Share a recipe or how to cook a favorite dish.

Watch an example: Seattle Coffee Gear Crew Review: Saeco Via Venezia

Businesses that sell to other businesses

• Discuss a new product or service
• Introduce your team
• Talk about an upcoming event to get more attendees
• Highlight a customer success story
• Answer a question of the week

Watch an example: WellesleyWeston Magazine

Professional services

• Share a tip of the week
• Talk about a recent piece of legislation and how clients might be affected
• Demonstrate a strengthening exercise
• Introduce a member of your team
• Launch a new website or service offering

Watch an example: Borislow Insurance: BI Healthy Advantage

Nonprofit organizations

• Interview someone you have helped; include a call to action
• Speak with someone on your leadership team on a current topic
• Ask a volunteer why she is involved with your organization
• Highlight some relevant research you are publishing

Watch an example: LIFT

Religious institutions

• Educate about an upcoming holiday. Include interviews with children and adult members, as well as the clergy.
• Share a thought of the week
• Introduce congregation members, including new members to the community
• Share a teaching moment
• Make a more personal fundraising appeal

Watch an example: Trinity Lutheran Church

I’ll be back next week to talk about how to create videos like these, and others. Till then, I’d love to know your thoughts about why video works: Feel free to post them here or onConstant Contact’s Facebook Page. And if you’ve created videos of your own, please include a link!

This article was originally posted on Constant Contact’s blog.

Businesses and organizations of all types and sizes use email to communicate and share information with their customers, members, and prospects. Early on, of course, email communication was limited to text. Soon, many remembered the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words and began including pictures and images in their communications. The result of including these images was just plain more — more people opened the emails, more people read the emails, more people remembered what they read, and more people took any suggested action.

So allow me to propose a new adage: If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words (according to Forrester Research).

You may be asking, why video now? For one thing, it’s easy, it’s cool, and it works. But it’s more than that. Over the next four weeks, I’m going to share my thoughts on why use video, who should create videos, what kind of videos can you create, and finally, how to create great videos.

To start, here are six great reasons to use video in your email marketing:

1. Tell your story quickly. People don’t have a lot of time, so you want to get your message across quickly. Video can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. To repeat the adage above, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a one-minute video is worth 1.8 million.
2. Put a face to your business or organization. A video helps bring your business or organization to life, and it makes your communication more personal. Putting people on camera makes you and your team real to your customers and members.
3. Get your readers to remember your message. Let’s face it: In general we remember little of what we read. Our retention of a message is much better (estimates are three times better) when it includes pictures, sound, and motion. Your readers can only take action if they remember what you said.
4. People enjoy video. People like to read, but they really like video. We watch TV, go to the movies, stream video content to our computers and mobile phones, and more. In fact, according to comScore, the average U.S. Internet user watches 186 videos every month.
5. Videos are easy and inexpensive to create. The great myth is that video is hard and expensive. Video cameras are cheap to buy (many cost less than $125) and easy to use. Look at the Cisco Flip or Kodak Zi8. They both allow you to shoot with one button. If you have an iPhone or some other mobile devices, you already have a video camera. You can also just use images and add a voiceover. Creating video is very simple.
6. Get your readers to take action. Forrester studies have shown that email communication that includes video can double or triple your click-through rate.

I’ll be back next week to discuss what types businesses or organizations should use video. Till then, I’d love to know your thoughts about why video works: Feel free to post them here or on Constant Contact’s Facebook Page.