Repurpose Your Videos to Build a Captive Email Audience

For the last few weeks, we've (so far) shared eight seller lead strategies to help you engage and convert sellers this summer. Today, we'll head all the way back to Tip #1, and give you a few new ways to repurpose your videos so they get even more attention!

Email tactics for a 2017 audience

In 2005, you could get away with sending Daylight Savings Time email reminders or Thanksgiving ecards. But in 2017, your sphere is getting hammered by spam and automated email campaigns they don't even remember signing up for. How can you stand out from the pack?

It all starts with video.

Step One: Add closed-captioning

People love videos, but they aren't always able to watch with the sound blaring. A recent study from Facebook showed that videos with closed captions had a 14 percent lift in total views — meaning that if you're spending the time to make videos, you should spend the time to add captions to them.

In years past, dubbing in captions could have cost a fortune in transcription fees, but YouTube now has it built directly into their platform. Follow these instructions to get closed captioning on all your YouTube videos.

Keep in mind that because this an automated, free service, YouTube may have some typos or mismatched timing on their closed captioning. Follow these directions to get your captions perfect before saving this new version of your video. (After all, you'd never send a handwritten letter or flyer with typos all over it!)

Step two: Add a must-open email subject line

Email subject lines are a tricky art, as we explored in this two-part series. But when you have a video to promote, you can add in exciting video-oriented language to your subject line to drive up open rates. You could also consider adding a video emoji to your subject lines.

Think it's a gimmick? A Syndacast study showed that by adding "Video" or "Watch" into a subject line, emails saw a 19% boost in open rates and a 65% increase in click-through rates!

Step three: Add some visual appeal without learning HTML

You have a great-looking video, but a simple text email with an attached YouTube video won't inspire much confidence (or click throughs) from your audience.

Using a video thumbnail instead of a link is said to increase click-through rate by 21.52%, according to Wistia — and we know a super simple tool that creates fantastic thumbnails in a flash!

MixMax is a productivity extension in Chrome, and it has a ton of amazing features to help you manage your inbox. But my favorite thing about MixMax is that it embeds video, articles and PDFs into an appealing, visual format right within my email.

Whether I sent a link to a YouTube video or attach a listing presentation, I know my audience is going to receive engaging, visual content.

Here's what it looks like when I send a jellyfish video using MixMax:

The finished product

By simply adding these three quick steps into your email production process, you'll be reusing an existing video to rouse and engage your entire sphere! Here's what your final email will look like:

More Articles in this Series

The realtor.com® Results Series team has been on the road sharing our top 10 tips for drawing in and converting seller leads. And now, we're ready to share them online with you!

For the next few weeks, tune into the Results Series blog to learn how we recommend you engage and convert sellers this spring and summer. So far we've covered:

1. How to become an online video expert
2. How to write compelling, seller-focused calls to action
3. How to write a 9-word email to cold prospects
4. How to identify and engage warm seller leads
5. Export every LinkedIn connection with this five-minute hack
6. Create a custom Facebook audience to retarget your top prospects
7. Send Targeted 'Just Listed' and 'Just Sold' Postcards (without using predictive analytics)
8. Get a Smarter Door Knocking Script from an Outreach Expert

To view the original article, visit the Realtor.com Results blog.