Benefits of Client Onboarding Videos

Onboarding is the process a user goes through when they start their journey as a customer to your product or service. An onboarding video in particular can be an effective way of defining a strong relationship right off the bat, solidifying your client’s decision. The period right after signup is one of the best windows for people’s attention — welcome emails have four times the open rate when compared to any other type of email. When your welcome process includes a custom video for your client, this success increases exponentially.

We’ve recently started using an onboarding video as a tool for welcoming clients to their completed website project and would like to share a few things we’ve learned along the way.

Why Onboarding Videos Work
In a study conducted by Wistia, an internet video hosting and analytics company, they ran a test comparing two emails — identical, but one added a video as the top piece of content. The email with the video showed a clickthrough rate three times higher than the one with only a paragraph of copy. Here’s why:

• Emotional connection — Being welcomed by someone from the team allows for an emotional connection, removing the “faceless cooperation” stereotype.
  
• Community — Your client will feel welcomed into your community if they are able to see where and who you are.
  
• Humanizes — Having someone speak directly to them, by name, allows your clients to see the people and personality behind your company.
  
• Digestible — A video clip weaves your story, mission and product and services together into a single, approachable narrative. They don’t have to search your site for the information they’re looking for because you’ve laid it all out for them in your video; all they have to do is sit back and watch.
  

Once you’ve taken the time to shoot a personalized onboarding video for your new client, you’ve built a strong foundation for them to feel supported and valued. This reaction can be contagious — they are likely to pass this feeling and experience onto other potential customers with their recommendation of your company, building your word-of-mouth reputation.

Tips for Your Onboarding Video
Now that we’ve covered the benefits, here are some tips for creating your own client onboarding video:

• Under a minute — A minute-long video is the sweet spot for keeping a viewer’s attention.
  
• Greet them by name — Take personalization a step further by editing the beginning of your video so that it greets each client by name or company.
  
• Use a compelling thumbnail — The screenshot or video still you use before the video begins playing is more important than you think. It may be the difference between a client pressing play or moving on. If you are embedding this video in an email, we recommend using a screenshot or video thumbnail image with a play button and linking that to the page with your video.
  
• Solve problems — Show your client a tool or feature that will help their business right now, and instruct them to interact with it. For example, encourage them to fill out a feedback form!
  
• Use humans — While there are many sources out there for creating animated characters, it is much better to use someone from your office, in person.
  

Conclusion
When a client has committed to you as a company, it is a great time to reaffirm that decision by creating a personalized onboarding video — it will help spark the realization that they've found the right fit. At JTech, we use our onboarding video to welcome a client to their new website, show them the product we’ve launched for them, introduce more of our team, and set the stage for a healthy ongoing relationship as business partners.