There is no question that owning a big email list is beneficial for a blog, if you’re treating it as a business.
You can easily reach out to your audience to promote a new piece of content, a new product or service, or just keep them up to date with what you’ve been doing lately.
Traditional email collection tactics such as pop-ups on your website or lead pages work really well. There’s no denying of that. But there are other ways to do that nowadays. Just as effective, if not even better.
The one that we are going to talk about in this post, as you’ve seen from the title is video.
Companies of all sizes, as well as marketers, spend a lot of their time and budget in video marketing.
As much as I hate saying this, because I love writing, nowadays people are more inclined towards watching videos rather than reading.
Read: Best Email Subscription Plugins for WordPress
On the other hand, I do get why videos are gaining more and more traction. I can see how there is a personal connection you can create when you are actually viewing the person talking to you.
I see how it’s easier to grab someone’s attention through video. And this is not just an opinion but a stated fact. According to Statista, YouTube attracts 37% of internet usage.
Anyways, the bottom line is that video content can be used to grow your email list even more.
With that said though, maintaining your website is just as important. So, keep post engaging content regularly and make sure you are up to date with the recent changes in the SEO industry.
I would say a combination of video content & blog posting would give you the best outcome when it comes to building your email list.
Now, on to the videos!
Why should you use videos in the first place?
Wow, where should I start? There are a ton of reasons:
- Video content keeps the people engaged as long as there is a good story behind it.
- Animated text or graphics can be used to spice up the video
- There is the minimum effort required to grasp the knowledge being given to us in the form of a video, most of the work is being done by the narrator.
- Publishing videos can help people developing trust in your brand as they get you to see you instead of reading and not knowing whether the information is real or not.
- Videos have proven to be engaging as well as entertaining.
On top of that, creating videos is not really as expensive as one might think. At least not anymore.
So that’s one myth out the window.
How to make use of video marketing to grow your email list
The possibilities are infinite. It all depends on how creative you are and how much time and effort you plan on putting in your videos.
But let’s go through some of the most common and most effective tips and strategies for gaining new leads through video.
1. Dominate social media
Videos are getting far more organic reach than any other type of content. All the major platforms are pushing videos towards as many users as possible.
So, you get a nice little boost from the algorithms right of the bat.
These videos should be thought out in such a way that they eventually lead people to subscribe. And this is where you need to be smart about it.
For instance, if you are marketing for a gym, tell the in your video that you are offering a discount coupon to those who opt in.
Or ask them to subscribe for free fitness routine and diet plans. A similar sort of strategy could be applied for the marketing of other products and services as well.
2. Using gated videos
This method has a higher conversion rate, but I find it a bit intrusive.
With gated videos you basically allow viewers to watch a small part of the video and then you grant them access to the rest of the video only after they put in their email.
We found explainer videos and animated videos to work really well with this type of technique. So maybe keep that in mind too.
Important point is that you should stop the video at a point where viewers get most engaged and they are willing to know what happens in the rest of the video.
So, you kind of make them have the urge to subscribe and see more of the content.
3. Using premium video hosting services
Using paid video hosting sites such as Wistia for example had its benefits.
This is somewhat similar to Youtube when it comes to uploading videos on your website but it allows you to add registration/subscription turnstile forms within the videos.
You can’t do that on YouTube or Vimeo.
The turnstile feature gives you an option of choosing where you would insert the form, you could either insert it right at the end, in the middle of the video or even before the video starts.
Some alternatives to Wistia are Optinplayer, HeroCaster, and Viewbix (Viewbix is slightly expensive).
4. Using YouTube for generating leads
Out of all the social media platforms YouTube gets most of the attention so there’s no question that your videos should be on YouTube too.
You can put them on your website and other platforms, but definitely have a YouTube channel that is constantly being updated with new content.
Now, there are a couple of different ways to make people subscribe to your list.
First and foremost, make sure you link your website or squeeze page in the description of the video.
Second, make sure to actually ask the people to subscribe to your email list and let them know you have the links in the description of the video.
From personal experience, I noticed that this is more effective when you mention these more than once in the video. So instead of saying it just at the very end of the video (oh, and by the way, only a small portion of all your viewers make it until the end), say it at least one more time in the middle of the video for example.
Last, but not least, you have the annotations and end cards you can place on top of your video.
Over to you
That is pretty much it in a nutshell. I know creating videos might sound like a challenging task. And I am not going to lie. Make videos is more work than creating written or audio content.
But if you want to keep up with your competition or take the lead you will eventually need to diversity, get out of your comfort zone and add videos to your content marketing strategy.
Author bio:
Cristian Stanciu is a freelance video editor, owner and post-production coordinator of Veedyou Media – a company offering video editing services to videographers, marketing agencies, video production studios or brands all over the globe. I can Ccatch up with him on his blog or on LinkedIn.
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