Inbound Video Call play for marketing teams

As Jeff Bezos, the founder of the e-commerce behemoth Amazon, once said, your margin is my opportunity. 

Amazon proved that customers care more about velocity and experience than following existing processes or brand loyalty. For example, while most retail companies weren't offering a well thought digital experience to their consumers, the ones that did were offering a 7-10 delivery window. Bezos built the infrastructure that could provide a one-click buying experience and deliver products during the same or the next day. Over the past decade, as we know, the organizations that didn't adapt to this model ended up filing for Chapter 11 or being bought for pennies on the dollar. To the benefit of the consumers, It also gave birth to a more dynamic and vibrant e-commerce industry. 

On the business side, companies often add too many steps before their teams can connect with a qualified prospect. Companies have been using a 20-year old process to convert and qualify leads into deals. This is the status quo ripe for disruption. In the same way Amazon reinvented the buying experience for consumers, there's an opportunity to improve the purchasing experience for the business customer today. 

Additionally, the sales and marketing landscape is evolving quickly. Besides the long-lasting pandemic forcing workers to be remote, today's customers are also more sophisticated, well-informed, and demand instant gratification. They want access to information and responses whenever and wherever they are researching about you. A recent Harvard Business Review study shows that 78% of new business goes to the first responder.

That's where inbound video call solutions come into action. 

‍

A QUICK RECAP ON INBOUND VIDEO CALL SOLUTIONS

Inbound video call solutions combine video communication technology, digital telephony, and sales and marketing capabilities into one platform. The foundation of every inbound video call solution is an e-line. E-lines are digital communication addresses in the form of a URL that allows you or your team to receive video calls from any channel via any browser or mobile device.​​ For example, 11Sight's sales e-line is https://11sight.com/sales. You can start a video conversation with our sales team through your browser or any mobile device if you click on this link.

E-lines are changing the way prospects reach out to companies. If you are not familiar with all the capabilities of an inbound video call solution, I will highlight some key features here for you. 

Customization: 

• Customizable e-line: You can customize your e-line address with a brand name convention or assign an account to each team member to configure theirs. 

• Custom Domain (CNAME): You can add a custom domain as your e-line.

• Integration: Integrate 11Sight with your favorite sales and marketing tools accelerating processes and keeping data up to date. 

Calls and History: ‍

• Browser-based or Mobile video calls: You can answer calls directly on a browser with no download required or on your iOS or Android device.

• Availability control: You can easily turn your availability on or off with one click or pre-configure it in the system to automatically enable or disable your availability.

• Call history: You can access the list of all your or your teams' calls in your dashboard, access chat and file contents, and much more. Take action on missed calls and never miss a deal.

Call Orchestration: 

• Call routing: You can chose to direct calls to any team member with easy-to-set-up rules.

• Simultaneous ringing: Simultaneous ringing enables multiple e-lines to ring at the same time when a call comes in. Once the call gets answered, the ringing will stop on the other lines, and the information will be recorded in the system.

• Group ringing: Route calls to teams grouped by location, department, or any other criteria chosen by you.

‍Campaign Management:

• E-line tracking: Create unlimited custom e-line links and track what channels or campaigns are being more efficient and converting more. 

• Lead form: Add a customizable landing page and configurable form to capture caller information before each call.

• Pre-call CRM intelligence: If the caller's information is in your CRM, sales teams receive info about the account, caller, lead status, or any other selected information.

• Call notes: Add call notes after a call is completed for follow-up or future reference straight into your CRM.

‍

A UNIVERSAL CALL-TO-ACTION (CTA)

An e-line can be used as an integrated and universal call-to-action (uCTA) and can deliver a consistent, seamless, and unique engagement experience to prospects and customers from any channel. There's no sign-in or download required for the caller. The entire experience happens with one click on their browser or mobile device from wherever they are researching about you.

Since an e-line is an URL, marketing teams can add e-lines to any campaign, online profile, or website and easily track conversions. Sales team members can also add their personal e-lines to outreach or nurturing email campaigns and receive an inbound video call straight from an email. 

The most important thing here is to have your customer journey fully mapped. Understanding where your prospects and customers engage with your brand or content is fundamental to creating the right strategies to convert and engage them. However, here are some channels that have been extraordinarily successful:

• Website and Landing pages: You can add an e-button or embed call links anywhere on your website. For example, you can have an e-line in your pricing page for quick answering prospects questions or as a button on your contact form.

• Blog: If your blog is a major entry point for your prospects, you can add your sales e-line to every blog post and start receiving inbound video calls from qualified prospects from your thought leadership articles. 

• Social media marketing: E-lines can be easily embedded into posts, comments, or ads. From any social media website, your team can receive inbound video calls and start a real engagement with a qualified prospect.

• Online profiles: Placing your sales e-line address on every online profile will get you an advantage over your competitors. Your prospects will be able to reach out to your sales team from wherever they are researching about your business.

• Targeted display/video campaigns: Embed your sales e-line on targeted campaign and have the people clicking on your ad starting an inbound video call to your team from wherever they are.

• Cold email marketing campaigns: Run A/B testing to understand your audience's preferences. You can have one of the emails going out with a call-to-action (CTA) being an inbound video call to your sales e-line. 

• Nurture/Outreach email campaigns: Add personal e-lines for each sales team member or your sales e-line to email sequences, and prospects can start an inbound video call straight from the email. 

• Trade Shows and Conferences: Combine online and offline strategies for your events. Your pre and post show campaigns can use your sale e-line as the main call-to-action. For in-person events you can print unique QR codes to your marketing collateral that once scanned will start an inbound video call to your sales team. 

Sales and marketing alignment is extremely important when deploying an Inbound Video Call strategy. While a successful IVC strategy will help you increase qualified lead conversion in 3X on average, your sales team has also to answer the calls and jump on these qualified leads right away. However, we will save this discussion for another day. In the meantime, If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at https://11sight.com/sales.