Bonjoro Video Email: Convert Your Customer with Video

- Let me ask a question. When you hear the term video email, what's the first thing that pops to mind? For me, back before I knew about Bonjoro, when I thought about video email, I thought about maybe a cutesy app that you would use to send Grandma a nice little video Happy Birthday message. I thought from a personal, kind of cutesy perspective. But then I was introduced to Bonjoro, which is really a customer engagement tool that uses video email in a profoundly different way. That's what we're gonna be taking a look at today on the Product Showcase. Now, let me explain what Bonjoro is. It is a cloud-based service that allows you to create, send, and manage video emails. Now, it creates them in an interface that allows you to track the engagement with the customer. So it has some very CRM like qualities, where you can track opens, and track the conversation that you have with customers. And it's designed from the ground up to be an engagement engine, to help create conversions, and retention, and some even more sophisticated applications with customers. So it very much is a far more sophisticated tool, and specialty tool that you might think of just as a broad video application. Now, I said it's cloud-based. So when you sign-up for Bonjoro, you manage most of the aspects of your account through a web browser. But, most of the time, when you're actually using Bonjoro, you'll end up sending your emails, sending your video emails that you create on your smartphone. Now, there's a variety of reasons for this, one of which is that it's just so easy and efficient to do it from the smartphone. But there's also a very subtle personal aspect to sending a message to somebody from your phone, that they've discovered really helps with the engagement, and the effectiveness of using Bonjoro emails. And I'll show you how that works in a few moments. Now, what we'll do today in the demo, is I'll take you through the basic settings, and how you setup Bonjoro, a little bit about how Bonjoro is setup, and about how we're using it here on Dotto Tech. And then I'll intersperse a conversation that I had with Matthew Barnett, who is one the founders of Bonjoro, as he explains a lot of the philosophy behind the tool, and the best practices that others are using and that are being successful with Bonjoro. And I have to tell you, from a personal perspective, the voyage of discovery of learning how video email can work with your, with your community, and then experiencing how it works with my community has been eye-opening. It's been a really enjoyable and educational journey, as I've discovered how Bonjoro works. So you can find out more about it by visiting, we'll have links below to an affiliate link that we Have for Bonjoro for us. But if you visit their website, they'll walk you through the basic premise of how Bonjoro works. As I said, it's very CRM like. You create campaigns as you create your, as you create the different video messages that you send. So here's my account and it's the interface itself allows you to do things like compose very simple email messages that you can quick-pick, like templates of messages that you can use to send to people when it's appropriate. As you go about designing your use of Bonjoro, you're gonna want to go through the type of people that you're gonna want to send emails to, send video emails to. It's not a great cold calling tool, it's a great engagement tool once somebody is already engaged with you or your company. So here are the different templates that we've created for ours. The one that we use it most for is for our Patreon. When somebody signs up with us on Patreon, and supports Dotto Tech on Patreon, I send them this message here, which I've written here, and you can see it right here. And this allows me to welcome them to the community, and tell 'em how to get access to their perks. But the beauty is, every single person who signs up gets my attention, gets me honoring their commitment to us, by spending some time shouting out to them, creating a little personal video email message to thank them for exactly what they, for the support that they've given to us. And that metaphor, that idea can extend into a variety of different ways, where somebody has signed up for a free download for a lead. Or they've signed up for one of your courses. There's all sorts of different ways that you can utilize this tool in your own business flow. So let me just take you into the results screen, so here. Well, actually, if we take a look here in the main menu here, before I take you onto the smartphone. There are, is a to-do area, which is very cool! This is one of the magic pieces. When a trigger happens, when somebody signs up on Patreon, Patreon creates a trigger that's sent to Bonjoro that says, you have a new patron, and you should send them a welcome. So I get it as a to-do list, so it's not even anything that I have to go and look for. It pops up as a to-do on my, in my Bonjoro app, so that wherever I am, I can respond to that. Now, I'll show you how that works in a few moments. Next, is the results screen, which is tremendously important. It allows you to monitor all of the conversations that you have with each of the people who you send Bonjoros to. Because you treat each email, each video email as a very important personal communication. This isn't a spam bulk email that goes out. This is a personalized message that you've created, and you've sent to an individual. So you can see here, you can see who's opened them, what their open, who has viewed the message, who has just opened the email and not viewed the message. And going down a little bit farther, you can see and monitor the conversations when they reply, where you can manage that conversation with the person who you're sending the information to. So from a CRM, or a customer relationship management perspective, this is some really powerful features that allow you to really engage with your community. So when you design your systems, this interaction is part and parcel of what you're gonna be designing. Then you can actually design more and more custom kind of templates, to make sure that you have your own personal branding, and the messaging that you want to go out in your emails. And you can quick-pick the emails as you go. You could also send personal messages, and type in custom messages with each one. But that's something you're probably not gonna do a lot, because it kinda defeats the automated purposes of how the entire video sequence works. And then, I'm gonna just show you very quickly the automation. We'll return to this in a little while. But in the automation areas where you instill triggers that happen in your CRM, or in my case, in Patreon, that invoke the process of me replying to the email. Those are the main basic areas that it works. Now, let me take you, and let me show you, just a couple of hours ago today I replied to a email, or to a new patron who had signed up. So I was out actually walking Farley, I was waiting for Shannon, she popped into the store. And I got the message that somebody had signed up as a new patron. So what you see happening here is, I open the to-do list, I see the person's name in the to-do list. I can tap on it then, and up comes an editor that allows me to record the video and send it immediately. So you get a sense of how convenient it is.

- Jay, Steve Dotto here, how the heck you doing this fine day? I was just out catching up on my errands with my dog Farley, and I noticed that you are one of our newest patrons. So I just wanted to drop you this quick personal note, to let you know how much it means to me to have you supporting us here at--

- Then I send that email, or send that video email, and now I can track it here in the results section. So that entire process of having a to-do list that we follow through, and having created a sequence of events is really part of the power behind Bonjoro. It kind of makes you wonder where it all came from, doesn't it? Well, let's meet Matt Barnett, who was one of the founders and creators of Bonjoro, and let him tell us about the genesis of the application.

- So, I'd love to say there was some mastermind plan. As I mentioned to you before, the reason Bonjoro happened is because it was a hack that we were doing for an agency that we ran. I wasn't thinking that deeply. All I knew was, is that when I got into a room with a client, I could pitch them, and win them over. I'm really like quirky, I'm a little bit different, so I was like, well, if I get myself on video, then they'd know it's me. So I was just trying to make sure that they understood that it was me, and not an automated message. Low and behold, that worked. Honestly, it wouldn't have ever gone beyond that. You know, it would have been a great hack that we did, except one of those clients asked if they could use it. And then another one did, and then another one did, and... Yeah, and so I think, since then, we've obviously started to understand why it works. And, honestly, I can tell you, it's not necessarily video, like video as a medium. It's just that you can't lie on video, you can't lie on camera, yeah. So when someone sees it's you, and you're saying, "Hey, Steve, I saw you signed up with Dotto Tech, "yeah, love what you do." The person's like, this is actually, this is legit. Whereas, an email, even it was legit, it's really hard to tell if it is. And there's so much non-legit stuff, and that's a problem. I think, yeah, I think the medium's great, because it's hard to fake. It's not about the video, as such, it's the fact that you are actually one of the companies that's stopping to spend time with customers, at the right time.

- That concept is so very important. The personal nature of a Bonjoro message, of reaching a Bonjoro, of receiving a Bonjoro message, and sending a Bonjoro message, the intimacy of the video carries so much weight in this day and age, when so much of our communication is now accomplished by algorithms and bots. To have somebody sitting down, having their coffee in the morning, saying, "Hey, Steve, I just saw "that you signed up for X, Y, Zed, and I just wanted "to let you know that if you need any help, "I'm here for you. "We're thrilled that you've joined us, "and looking forward to building our relationship "over the next few months." That communication, that message, receiving that message just creates this deeper level of engagement that simply isn't possible. Or, maybe it is possible through old-school methods, through email or other tools. But you have to work so much harder to convince the people on the other side that the engagement's happening with a real person, and not just with an automated service. That's very big.

- Yeah, right? Though you won't believe, you have a couple of marketers come in, and they're like, "Can we just record a video for Matt, "and send it to all the Matts?" And I'm like, "No, no, stop talking, please." We are not... I'm like, sure. But, I meant, though, like with us, we always say mention the name and where they're from, or their company name, or how much they pledged, or the day of the week, like, again, be very obvious it's personal. Going a hack here, I'm like, you know, that's a gray line that we're not gonna cross. That, and it has to be ethos.

- You will hear that theme come back again and again when we talk about Bonjoro, is it is a very intimate, very personal connection that's created between yourself and the person that you're sending the information to. A lot less sterile than normal email. So the next thing I asked Matt about, was what makes for successful Bonjoro communications?

- So we actually did a little study awhile ago about when people are doing these messages. And we found something like, you know, all the successful ones, about 35%, 40% are doing it on their commute to and from work. Which, if you think about it, like, a change of behavior. The commute was always a time you'd switch-off, you'd read your book, you know, you'd maybe answer emails. Now, it's like productive work time. I do mine, we still do them for our customers, and I'll hop in and help the team out. I do mine on the walk to the station in the morning, and on the walk home from the station. Now, I'm might get the odd honk from car, or people looking at me weirdly. But that time that I would normally just be walking, is suddenly, like, for want of a better word, billable hours. You know, and customers love it, because they're like, this guy is just walking to work.

- That really resonates as the truth, for me. When I first reached out to Bonjoro, I did, I just sent them an email saying I'd like to look at your product for a video on our show. On our channel. I received a video message back from one of the Bonjoro team. He was obviously just on his break, and standing outside of their offices on a beautiful, sunny day. But that conversational communication that came back, they looked at my channel, they thought that it was a really good fit, they thought I might like to look at the product a little bit more, that conversation got off to such a good start. And our relationship got off on the right foot, because I felt validated and valued by that communication. And the fact that it was in a less than formal environment, ended up being a really big bonus. It created a really interesting connection. So the next thing that I asked Matt is, who is the ideal Bonjoro customer?

- Yeah, so, I'll start by saying I think it's a brand first kind of call. There's definitely, you know, some, I mean, less banks, big institutions, maybe this is not right for them. I think if you're a company where relationships do matter to the sales funnel, and to the conversion funnel, and you've seen that, you know there's a much high chance this will work for you. If you have a team and a culture that is very transparent, you trust your team to get on with things, that's gonna work for you, too. Because people are more comfortable to do these. It's about that, it's about the individual Beyond that, if you look into industries, the vast majority of Bonjoro users, I would say, are SMEs. Now, within that, we see uses across eCommerce. And there it's a lot more about advocacy. So driving testimonials, driving trust pilot reviews, repeat purchases. We see a lot of online educators. If you're running online courses, very, very effective, especially, and so they, it's actually when someone is booked onto a course. You're making sure that they have support of actually going and engaging with the material. And then, upgrading to the next course. In SaaS companies, we do see SaaS, it's about conversion at the top of the funnel, so new leads coming in. So what you're trying to do there is, obviously, activate leads. So most SaaS companies will have a trial. Generally speaking, you're trying to get people to activate on the trial. So rather than coming and bounce out, or someone does bounce out, or they look like they're stuck, you're getting in touch, you're saying, "Hey, look, this is the next step you take, "but if you need help, here we are." It's what we call conversion and activation, is really the kind of starting place. It's gonna be a second touch point. It's not a cold sales tool.

- I want to take you back into the management systems within Bonjoro, to kind of illustrate what Matt was talking about there. And for this, I want to go into the automation area, because this is where, so often, if you've designed a proper funnel and a proper communications path, this is where the initial contact will happen, that leads to the Bonjoro conversations. And so, if you take a look here in the automations that they have available to you. If we add an automation, you can see that we can create... Well, first of all, you can use Zapier at any time for so many different types of communications within Bonjoro. But take a look at the services that they have available. ActiveCampaign. ConvertKit. Drip, HubSpot, Keap, which is now the old Infusionsoft, that's how we create a connection. Intercom, MailChimp, Ontraport, Patreon, Shopify. So if your customer comes in to your funnel through any of these lead generation tools, you can then create a trigger that tells a team member on your team to engage with the customer through the Bonjoro automation systems. And at that point there, you choose the proper template, you choose the proper conversation funnel to move them into. So it's a kind of a combination of highly-automated and well thought out management of a classic sales funnel with this huge dose of intimacy and interaction with an individual within your company. It kind of serves two masters, the automation is there, but so is the personal connection. And what Matt said there is ever so important, "This is a conversion tool." This is something that will allow you to take people that are in your funnel, and create the relationship and the trust level that's gonna convert them into a customer. And once they're converted into a customer, it's then a retention tool, for you to let them know how valuable they are. That to me is the sweet spot of where Bonjoro's services fit.

- Yeah, so I like to use a use case. We have a good user called Jacques, who does something called "Piano in 21 Days". So on my music lessons. Now, I know that he's been with us awhile, so he's more of a power user. He starts using other places on his funnel. He will send messages to every new course member, every single one. Yeah, so he has a CRM when someone converts, that's a trigger that fires into the app. He gets a notification. He sends, you know, Jenny a message within, you know, an hour, or two hours. And he welcomes them. But, the reason he's doing it, is he's trying to activate. When he does the message... The other thing you do with the integration, is actually pull in some information from your CRM. So he can see, when he does a message, have they gone and engaged with the first lesson. Have they done X, Y, Zed? If they haven't, he will say, please, go and do this. If they have, he'll say, please, go and do this instead. If they've done everything, he'll just be like, thanks, for signing up, you're amazing. He then is trying to stop what I would call churn. So he said his refunds have gone down by 50%. Conversion, and then activation. Because if someone's activated, they're engaged, they won't refund then bounce. These phases start for any customer, we always say, is likely going to be new leads. So conversion is the easiest part to see value. And I think what we want to do, is make sure customers understand how and why it's working, before they start to go and do more, I guess, kind of fancy things, like try and tackle attention or churn, or advocacy. Leads are super-easy, everyone has leads coming in. And when you're using a lead for MailChimp or, you know, a Patreon account, whatever it is, it has a system right now. Now, we plug into a lot of those, yeah, I think we have maybe 12, 13 integrations direct. And then we have a Zapier integration, which is, in fact, our most powerful integration. It's a lot more customizable. But that means we can plug into, you know, anything else that we haven't built direct yet. And, obviously, it takes us time to build direct, and great integrations, because APs always there for the other, you know, thousand systems people use.

- So when we boil Bonjoro down, we have technology that identifies opportunities for us to communicate with prospects, or with customers. We have triggers that are created through actions that they've taken, that then create to-dos for us to communicate. And then, we have technology that makes it really easy for us to send very intimate, personal messages, that engender real engagement. And then we can manage that conversation as it slowly blossoms and evolves. All in all, a really appealing set of tools. But, this was my favorite part of the interview that I did with Matt coming right up. And I'm gonna play both sides of the conversation, the actual interview itself. Because I put him on the spot, to boil Bonjoro down to its core value.

- Because it's such a simple concept. And I think, you know, the journey for us has been trying to understand, really, why it works. Like I say, it's not, it's not about video messaging, really. But that's not the point, you know. And trying to understand that is actually, it's taking us like, you know, like a year of heavy research, really.

- Okay, you've gotta spell it out, you've gotta spell it out. It's not about video messaging. What is it about?

- It's about taking time again with customers. That's it. That's it! Nothing more, that's it, that's it, we did it! Go back to your grandma, go out to your parents, and they're going to shop, and they knew the grocer, and they knew the butcher. People like people, they like... We're social animals, the way we've evolved. Like, meeting new people has been a way of life for humanity for millions of years. Driving online, I think we've gone through this struggle period, where we've, where, again, the scale happens, yeah, so how do you have the scale, reduce time, et cetera, et cetera, where you've put again. And there's almost like a bit of bounce back now, where we're like, I haven't got a minute. Where are these humans again? So it's nice timing, and it's just natural, it's a natural struggle and kind of like working out where we fit in an online world, versus like social relationships.

- There's the simple truth behind Bonjoro, spending time with your customers. Honoring their relationship with you, by actually giving them your attention, and spending time with them. It shouldn't be a revolutionary concept. It isn't. But in the online world, with our passion for bots, and automation, and all of these systems that make us more efficient, we've lost some of our humanity. A tool like Bonjoro takes technology, and brings the human back into the equation. I tell you, I really enjoyed putting together this feature on Bonjoro. The team down at, the team in Australia and England that works for Bonjoro are terrific folks. And I really, I really appreciate the fact, this fact that it really is the anti-bot. How in this world where so many bots, so many computer processes take over our relationships. To really insert the people back into those relationships, it's a breath of fresh air, it feels right. When you use Bonjoro, if you sign-up for the trial, if you try it, it will feel right. You will notice that you feel good about honoring the relationship you have with your prospects, or with your customers. And that is a, that's a real great step in the right direction. There's plenty of room in our business for processes, and there's plenty of room for bots and all automation. But this human to human contact that Bonjoro brings to the fore, really, I think it will make a big difference, if you use it in the correct way. I hope you found today's video to be useful. Remember, to subscribe to here at Dotto Tech, and wring that notification bell, to make sure you hear when new videos are uploaded. Looking forward to your comments on this topic, Bonjoro, as I've said many times already, is a product that I am truly excited about, and I would love to hear if it catches fire with you, as well. Until the next time, I'm Steve Dotto. Have fun storming the castle.