Video email signatures – next fad in pissing off customers

by catpaw | 3 Aug, 2017 | apps | software | stuff

A friend spotted this and posted it on his FB feed:

Email signatures – the next phase in pissing off customers

After my initial knee jerk reaction passed, I settled down into a deep loathing of the idea, as did pretty much everyone I polled.  It’s a disasterous digital marketing concept that should have the plug pulled before it even gets off the ground.  The concept is straight out of a scammer’s wet dream. Create a little video of yourself promoting your product/self/company and use it as your email signature. First, the pitch should be in the email itself, not a superflous link that takes me to an external site so I have to listen to more blather. It’s bad enough the internet is littered with autostarting video ads, now this?

Second issue comes from my perspective as a computer consultant.  I teach my customers to be wary of links in emails. If you don’t know the person, don’t click. You never know where that link will take you. There’s a lot of scams out there so better to be safe than sorry. I know others who do the same.

“If you’re on a customer-facing team like sales or customer success, a video email signature can help you connect with your customers on a more human level”

Well, if you have your video professionally done, maybe it might work. But emaills littered with thumbnails of Joe Blow standing against a weird patterned background with bad edit cuts isn’t going to cut it. I’ve watched a lot of promotional videos and ones done without the benefit of editing skills come off looking unprofessional or creepy.

Look, if you’re a sales team, you don’t want to irritate people. It isn’t a “pattern breaker”, it’s a one trick pony that will cause audience fatigue rather quickly. Unless you are 100% sure that customer will enjoy your video, DON’T. Signatures should be to the point – give me the info I want – name,  phone #, email, website. Leave off all the fancy doodles, artwork and videos.  There is already a serious sense of email overload out there and this is adding to the problem.  If I start seeing this show up in my inbox, I’ll assume it’s more spam and toss it without ever giving the person a chance.

How about using this as your pattern breaker – be concise. Don’t add to the fatigue.

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Screen capture is from “How to make a video email signature”