Email collection plays a crucial role in digital marketing. By gathering prospects' email addresses, businesses can nurture leads and establish lasting relationships with potential clients. This helps in creating targeted marketing campaigns, increasing brand loyalty, and ultimately driving sales.
But the problem is, we humans have a pretty short attention span, and we can be reluctant to give out our email addresses and other personal information if we don’t see any value in it for us.
So how can we engage our prospective leads, build trust quickly, and encourage them that it’s in their interest to part with their contact details so we can let them know about all the cool stuff we have to offer them?
An engaging, video-based signup to stand out from the crowd will certainly help to grab our visitors’ attention and build trust quickly.
Combine that with some kind of lead magnet (giving something of value away for free in return for contact details) like offering a discount code, and you’re sure to see those contact details rolling in.
Below you can see an example of just that. A videoask that asks respondents to sign up for Barks in Barcelona’s mailing list by leaving their name and email address, and receiving a 10% discount code off their first purchase in return.
Psst, by the way, this one's set to preview mode so we're not collecting submissions.
Here are some of the key features we've used in this videoask. Click a feature for more details on how it works and how to use it in your flow:
Note: Some of these features are only available on paid plans.
- Contact form
- Overlay text
- Customized branding
- Customized colors and fonts
- Button answer type
- Customize the end screen in your videoask
- Embed your videoask as an iframe on a webpage
- Integration with a CRM tool
Below we’ll walk you through how to create a videoask like the one above. Feel free to hop directly to the section that interests you most, or read on for the full walkthrough.
Jump to:
Create the first step in your videoask
Customize your videoask end screen
Customize your videoask branding and colors
Share, embed, and connect your videoask
Create the first step in your videoask
Click New videoask and choose Start from scratch.
Give your videoask a name:
By default, contact details collection will be turned on, your videoask will be saved in your Default folder, and the language will be set to English. This is the language of the prompts and interface text, not the transcription and caption language.
Note: If you disable the contact details, respondents will appear as "Anonymous" and you won't be able to reply to them. However, all the above settings can be updated later, so no stress if you're still not sure. Just make sure everything's looking how you want it before sharing it with your audience.
Click Create videoask.
Now you'll be prompted to select your video source. We'll record a new video by clicking Webcam, but you can also upload a video, select from the Pexels or Giphy library, or record a screen share.
If you need some help remembering what you want to say in your video, toggle on Notes and jot down a script or outline.
Note: Notes will only be visible to you when recording your video and won't be visible to respondents viewing your videoask.
💡Tip: Often the most engaging videos are more natural, so we recommend working with a loose structure instead of writing out and reading an entire script!
Remember to make eye contact with the camera. 👀 When you're ready, click the red button to start recording.
You'll receive a 3-second countdown before the recording begins.
Each video can be up to 5 minutes long. A timer will count down at the bottom of your screen as you record to tell you how much time you have left.
Note: If you want to create a video longer than 5 minutes, you can choose to upload your own when you select your video source. For this option, there's no time limit but the maximum file size you can upload is 500MB.
When you're finished recording, click the Red button.
💡Pro tip: You can also use the spacebar on your keyboard to start and stop recordings. This means you can keep looking at the camera until the very end!
You'll now get the chance to preview your video footage. To save it and proceed, click Yes. To re-record, click No.
Note: Re-recording does not use up your minutes. We count minutes only for videos that are transcoded and saved, either through recording or uploading an external file.
If you'd like to add any overlay text on top of your video, type it into the Overlay text box and adjust the size as required. You might also want to Darken the video for text readability.
Now, choose whether you want your video to fit or fill the screen. If you choose to Fit video, the entire width will be shown. If you leave this setting off, your video will fill the screen, with the exact dimensions depending on respondents' screen size.
When you're satisfied with your settings, click Continue.
Next you'll have the option to add a title to your videoask step. This won't be visible to your respondents, but it's a useful way for you to keep track of what each step is about in multi-step videoasks.
Now it's time to select an answer type for this step of your videoask. By default, each new step will use the Open Ended answer type. We'll change this to the Button answer type from the dropdown list.
Each answer type has its own configuration options. Any changes you make will be automatically saved and reflected in the live builder.
We'll customize the Call to action text on our button.
We want to collect our respondents' contact details after this step so we'll leave the Collect contact details on this step toggled on.
By default, the contact form is set up to collect your respondents' names and email addresses, and this will be a required step before they can move on to the next step in your videoask.
However, you can click Edit contact form to customize the details you request, and decide whether you want to make the fields required or optional.
Find out more about collecting contact details from respondents and adding a consent checkbox.
When you're finished editing, click Done.
You’ll be taken to your videoask builder where you can click the + sign to add another step.
💡 Tip: You can also drag and drop an answer type from the side to add a new step:
Learn more about creating a multi step videoask.
Customize your videoask end screen
Customize your videoask end screen to thank respondents or give some extra information.
In our example, we're going to add the discount code we promised to respondents so they can copy and paste it into the discount box at checkout.
From the builder, click on the End screen thumbnail.
Now, you can customize the text, change the background color, and add your logo.
Here you can find a step-by-step guide on customizing your end screen.
Customize your videoask branding and colors
You can customize your videoask by adding your company colors and branding.
Note: Branding features are only available on the Brand plan.
From the builder area, click the Settings icon.
Here you'll find a range of options to customize your videoask:
Want more details? Check out these guides:
Add a brand and logo to your videoask
Change your videoask thumbnail
Explore the advanced settings of your videoask
Share, embed, and connect your videoask
Before sharing your videoask with the world, test it out a couple of times in preview mode to make sure everything is behaving as expected.
Finally, decide how you want to share your videoask. In our case, we'll embed it as an iframe on our website, and connect it to our CRM so a new contact will automatically be created there every time somebody responds to our videoask.
If you want to personalize things further, kick off a conversation with your new contacts by sending them a video reply directly from your VideoAsk account.