A Conversation with Vik Rajan of Videosocials

Founder and video veteran Vik Rajan joins host Matthew Dunn to talk about email, LinkedIn, video and the changing world of business and media. Vik's got a keen grasp of the interplay between social networks, personal media like email, and emerging channels like messaging. With a shared passion for email — the workhorse of digital media — this is an enjoyably deep conversation.

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Matthew Dunn

Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. My guest today is Vic Raj on Rajon Rajon Rogen, Rogen, I should have asked you that beforehand, sorry, Vic, from video socials, and from his company practice marketing Inc. Vic, welcome. Thanks for making the time today.

Vikram Rajan

Thank you, Matthew.

Matthew Dunn

We were just talking a little beforehand about emails, emails not gonna go away, which we both think so we're both agreed on. Yeah. Further thoughts on that?

Vikram Rajan

Yeah, well, it's kind of whether we like it or not, it's not going to go away I feel it's it's kind of like this new paradigm of video conferences and zoom. And whether we want it or not, it's not going away. And it's only you know, quote unquote, going to get worse to, you know, depends on your perspective. And emails the same way like we were chatting, just, you know, off the record, so to speak, that it's across all age groups, demographics, income levels, and we live and die by email inbox. And yeah, we have to be more organized and it's the overwhelm they lose as recipients and as marketers, we have to be more savvy, to be more segmented and to be more specific and relevant. And that's what any marketing, you know, any good marketing is relevant for the demographic and the time. So, I think, especially with, you know, we can go into some of the technologies where email marketing is going and stuff like that, I think it's gonna be even more fantastic, you know, amp and dynamic emails, right, that that stuff hasn't really come into play in any significant way. I don't know how much you've spoken about that in fire episodes. But, you know, we're at the dawn of a new era. And in my world, where we include video and emails, you know, we're not literally including video in emails yet. A figurative statement. It's like turning muscle into fat, you know, the other way around. That's what I do turn fat into muscle. Anyone else would be doing? So yeah, so that aspect? Yeah, I think we're, it's exciting times to come.

Matthew Dunn

Okay. Let's come back to the dynamic and real time content. I wish she said something you said there, because that was a good, good, good analogy to help. To help people understand emails continued fit in the landscape. You mentioned how video conferencing isn't going to go away and I and I totally agree. But let me throw let me throw a structural analogy at you and see what you think on video conferencing which really got accelerated by the pandemic obviously is technologically fragmented. We happen to be speaking on zoom we could have done this on Google meet on Microsoft Teams etc etc there's there's not a there's not an open standard says no matter what you're using, let's have a video call. Well, there is Yeah,

Vikram Rajan

there is. If you want to go if you want me to go there and run with so so browsers Chrome browser Firefox, they will buy especially Chrome has the web RTC web RTC? Sure, sure. Okay. So that is an open source that we technically right. So let's not go down that tangent, obviously we want to so basically there is but yes, zoom. Yeah. And it's all

Matthew Dunn

the all the rappers have, you know, here's the call number, the address, or here's my identity, like not not not quite there, and I'm going to get quite really their current guests. If we went looking for an open source standard that said, we'll turn your browser into a video conferencing platform, there are going to be 62 of them. But I can't name one on same structure. My opinion is the reality of of messaging, texting, right? You've got SMS, you've got Apple's iMessage is you've got WhatsApp, you get the email, unlike most of those, like that asinine thing that addresses like, yeah, I'm sorry. It's kind of a global standard. And it's a global standard. Nobody wants it.

Vikram Rajan

Yeah, the wedge. Yeah, I'm sure that USPS is kicking themselves. Seriously. Yeah, right. or whatever, you know, government agency that could have done it, right. I mean, they could have gotten up any PR email. And ups USPS would be happy for that. But they didn't even though it was government technology, you know, intranet is government technology, so they could have very easily done it. I think that was quite frankly the biggest government disaster Oh, you know, of our recent time because it was a missed opportunity. But you're absolutely correct that that it is because of that, you know, because it wasn't centralized in terms of any government agency or even private agency you know, back in the day hotmail was like that standard and legendary of how they operate. Free to be free and viral and all that stuff and got bought out by Microsoft for $250 million which a lot of big money back then still I wouldn't mind being bought out by Microsoft for 250 million all but it's some how ironically chump change nowadays to get what out for that amount but because of that email has proliferated doesn't matter what email client you have to some degree we're all able to benefit from email now and I say that to some degree because as you know some of these standards that like amp it depends on the email client which is why amp hasn't really fully standardized but yeah, absolutely i think you know you can because of that as we were saying offline more people check more email more times a day more than any other social media combined. And as I often do say that it is the original internet social media second to being in person social media of gathering and so from that aspect Yeah, it's not going away and it is a direct marketing channel you know, I do a lot in the social media world and there's a lot of hype and coolness in the social media world but they're constantly changing their algorithms trying to figure out relevance and optimization and how to squeeze $1 out of us as marketers and fair enough that's what their their obligation is to their stake and stockholders but with email we have a direct connection now we have to hold that as a sacred trust and not you know, be annoying about it. But that aside, if we're relevant we're timely etc etc it's powerful man you know, just it's one click away

Matthew Dunn

one click implicit what you said the company the market or the market department. ends up with stewardship. Oh no ownerships are wrong word stewardship the good to have that set of addresses those you know, that set of relationships you know, it's been it's becoming a bit cliche to say it but if you spend all your time building followers on your page on fill in the blank social network, they might take it away.

Vikram Rajan

Yeah, yeah. Or they're gonna try to figure out a way to monetize it for themselves because that is their obligation to do so if they didn't, they'd be letting down their stakeholders and other stockholders so so from that aspect is your obligation better, but you don't have that same critical problem with email you have other situations of people verification and inboxes going dormant or getting blocked and you have a variety of other issues so it's not all rosy as we know in the email marketing world but all things considered if you are a good steward of that relationship let alone the email email address that it represents that relationship yeah it's cool because we you know, it's on our phones you know, we take it wherever we go just like any other social media but it's again more direct

Matthew Dunn

I was this is a few years ago now i was i was CIO at a big ERP like fortune 1000 company pretty good sized company 20,000 employees and the first thing I did when I walk in the door This is like 2000 give or take on you know, went around met people started learning the business but I realized that that everybody spent any time on the road particularly senior exec types first thing they did was get to the hotel Yeah, and plug in the modem back in the day right and then go to dinner because it would take like three hours for their outlook to sync up with the exchange back right This is absurd so we we put a we put a quite early for to do it, put a VPN, your corporate VPN in place, which no one was doing at the time, I thought like this is inevitable and all sudden, you know, it was like they use the hotel broadband down, it would come instead of sinking to the company phone number, which we all used to have to do. Right. I think that was the most popular it thing for four years just just to get that friction point out of the way but the point is, what was you know, what was the lifeline for them? flooding you know, email inbox,

Vikram Rajan

I think I think it continues to be you know, it's um, a lot of my social marketing, social media marketing seminars. In person. Now if it's on zoom, it's more annoying, but in person, I would if it's in the morning, like an ATM type of thing. I'll do a raise of hands. How many of you check Facebook this morning? Good number, how many LinkedIn? It was a dismal number. How many of you check email, everybody? And I'm like, Yeah, there you go. It's a Facebook marketing seminar that I will be doing, just to kind of pivot the conversation a little to kind of wink at you don't forget email, how ubiquitous it is. Look at the room. Okay, well, today we're gonna talk about LinkedIn. Today we'll talk about Facebook. But for me, there's this trifecta of what I call word of mouth marketing, kind of nice play on words. And sure you have yet website blog, that content that's on your site, you want people to come back, one email, capture form To capture that email address, because you're driving traffic from search or from social, and then the outbound or stay top of mind is email for all the reasons we just talked about. So it's kind of knowing that they're these three gears that are interoperable from social to web website, and then of course, email. And often that's going away to answer your point.

Matthew Dunn

I'm just curious on since you mentioned LinkedIn, my observation in the past year is that LinkedIn is getting a lot noisier.

Vikram Rajan

Yeah, well, they're doing all the right things I think it's funny because when Microsoft bought LinkedIn that's like you know when like Sears or Kmart 25 million even you know Yes, but it was it was kind of like alright, you know, like what's really going to well good thing is really gonna come from this you know, because Microsoft is not known as the the most hidden company right now. And LinkedIn is definitely not the head of social media. And so all right, you got these two boring b2b Enterprise oriented companies coming together let's see what they're gonna do. The irony as much as they get made fun of that they always just kind of copy Facebook well they ended up working I think it's a very it's a much more sticky platform now to your point yeah, it's noisy as cluttered but you know that you know, that's what the point is, right? It's a it's a it's a party. So yeah, it gets to a point where you know, you don't want to go to the party anymore because too many people are there. Think that yoga I think it's Yogi Berra quote right that now I know I know when he comes it's what's the what's the what's the line? It was a quote um,

Matthew Dunn

he's so good. He was so good at Mangle Yeah.

Vikram Rajan

something to the effect that now I know why nobody comes here. It's too crowded. It shows us he famously did right I know I know. I know and use it because it's too crowded. And so it's the same I already right that so yeah, it's a little bit cluttered, but they're working on their algorithm and you know, you know, we have automation partners, video socials with LinkedIn so I only have good things to say about what they've done. But truthfully, candidly, I think they've done a lot of good thing I'm not a huge fan of how they've really shut down to email export aspect of LinkedIn that a huge fan of that but there are there are automation and scraping things that were not a huge fan of but obviously can't work and LinkedIn to train it and they end up losing that But nevertheless, they I think they should make it more easily and that easier to integrate with email software. I think it would be to their benefit but nevertheless Yeah, as a social media when it comes to b2b it is I liked that they stayed true to the peer to peer professional b2b market and weren't didn't want to turn to much like Facebook in terms of the social aspect of that they weren't a social media investment they're they're a business conference you're a trade show. It's it's you're wearing your name badge you're handing out your business card it's not a weird phone call to do business there. That's it expectations. What was it was Facebook, it's a barbecue, right? And for you to be like when you're you know, ready have your business card is kind of awkward and you're wearing a name badge at a barbecue. It's like, well, what are you doing? You know, and vice versa? You know, you're in flip flops at a business conference, what are you doing? The fact that they stay true while the social media world is cluttered? Because if do i do Facebook or do I do Instagram? Why should I be on tik tok? And once fighting for that, you know, mass social. Facebook workplace isn't really a competitor to LinkedIn. You know, at LinkedIn, someone, sometimes it's like a joke is like, people roll their eyes, but I'm like, but they make money the old fashioned way. They provide value and benefit. And they charge money for it. Yeah. But HR and all that stuff.

Matthew Dunn

And I have to agree with you. Despite calling out LinkedIn is getting noisier. I will put the LinkedIn LinkedIn tab up either a good part of the day, or for sure, at least once a day. And it and it's because it's business, right? It's like Yeah, well yeah, I need to keep up keep up with that. I mean that How did I How did I find out a bit more about your company before we started talking? You know, like, the legit place to go

Vikram Rajan

is a legit place. There's always LinkedIn and it's to Lincoln's emails to bring the two worlds together, are annoying. Like I hate it. Because Lincoln Lincoln always wants you to log in. And so it's like so and so like your posts are so and so commented, and they won't tell you who or what, like if you linked it, it's just really annoying. Like now I have to go in I mean, I have the app. So it's not that big deal. Right? But talk about you know, with dynamic, real time amp standard. I am looking forward to kind of doing LinkedIn within an email. So they get what they want in terms of eyeballs and advertising and all that stuff. But I don't have to leave what my interface to give LinkedIn, the eyeballs and the credit for advertising. I don't know that'll ever happen. But considering it's Microsoft and they can integrate it with Outlook. You know, it could And I mean, that would be a neat place for them to integrate outlook and LinkedIn more because of the dynamic. Literally the dynamism of

Matthew Dunn

amp. Yeah. Sorry, a little feedback loop when I first started talking so sorry, if it's noisy or if you're on a podcast. You mentioned, you mentioned amp, and I'll pick on I'll pick on amp for just a second, which I'm most prone to do. amp. And if you're listening to this amp is accelerated mobile pages was a Google standard for the web, originally, and about five years ago, Google put out amp for email, which is accelerated mobile pages for email, my view on amp for email, etc. Media pages, right? Your pages? Yeah, it actually no, is accelerated. Mobile First was okay. Yeah. And I'm like, Whoa, okay, now that we're getting 5g, tell me how much my mobile needs accelerating. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, Microsoft dropped support for amp for email about a year ago. And 50% of email messages are opened on iOS and the iOS Native Client does not support email. So my, my I bet the beer that we'll see that we'll see that go away, and go into Google product graveyard. And on the one hand, bummer, because more dynamic content in email is good. Could be a good thing. On the other hand, I think, I think proprietary standards always make me a little antsy for the reasons we discussed about the current sort of common carrier nature,

Vikram Rajan

common carrier nature. And that's why I was kind of alluding to it does, actually, ironically, does depend a little bit on the client. Yeah, it's kind of strange. They did, they tried to make it outsource are not part of open source as possible. Um, but the Bible VI is just there. But it's so silly, because everyone would benefit from like, real time updated, interactive web page, like email, which is how I explained that, like, everything you could want a website you could do in your inbox. And people somehow, sometimes don't really, totally get it. And I'm like, like, but it's revolutionary. And so yeah, I mean, the fact that I thought I looked at 365 does still support it, they don't they don't support it. I know, I know, I'll find like,

Matthew Dunn

no, there's, I forget the moniker for the potentially competitive interactive male standard that Microsoft's looking at. But they basically, they parted ways. And strategically, you know, having having having I actually worked there at Microsoft in the data. What is when that when the big monopolies are doing that dance, it's like watching it, you know, it's like watching Sumo in Japan or something like that. It's like, some of the maneuvers they're making may look silly, but they're thinking way, way, way ahead. And

Vikram Rajan

honestly, I don't know. Like, it's almost like a Who cares? Like, if if outlook, iOS, and Google all have their own proprietary standards, because they're because they're 99% of the email world, they would end up being this meta standard, right? Like they would be this skin, that we would, as marketers would be able to kind of do what we want to do. And the software would translate it to the three standards. It's like, ranking what I want, right? I can push your I can, I can have you fill out a form I can have you watch a video, you can, you know, buy tickets, you can do all this stuff within the email, because it's going to translate it to the outlook standard, or translate it to the iOS, Apple's standard and etc, etc. So from a marketing standpoint, who cares? Really, because who it'll be, it'll make more sense to have the meta standard, so to speak. So like, do it already. Do it? Because then then we can do this all really cool stuff. That right now, you know, it's kind of on the silly that we can't Yeah, and people don't know how it could be because we just don't have it. It was like, we don't know what we don't know. But it's annoying to have to click and go to a web page, or go to an app. When I'm right here. I'm in my inbox like, Why Why am I not just doing it here? Well,

Matthew Dunn

it's even, you know, even before you get that click, it's massively annoying. To have the simple design limitations is a limitation. data gathering versus web like God, email HTML is is a nightmare. It's so fragile. It's so fun. We've got this ecosystem of great companies Litmus email, and acid like what's their raizel dead to help you make sure it's not gonna look like crap.

Vikram Rajan

Make sure it's not gonna break your break. For something that literally we all live and die on for business. More than social media. So it's silly that they're not fixing it because especially to a company like Microsoft without, but even more so because that is their bread and butter their business to business company, even more so than like iOS and Apple, where they're more of a consumer products company, as much as they say that, and I'm sure they make billions in the enterprise, though. But nevertheless, like they're seen as a consumer product company or consumer facing.

Matthew Dunn

Yeah. I think I think email is a victim of its own structural advantages there on the upside, not owned by anyone, no gatekeepers. So we get the common carrier thing that we were discussing on on the on the you know, the corollary of that is, there's not one or two companies who can sort of move the three with a standard. I mean, I would argue that, that the relative positive take up of amp for email sparkpost friend of mine, April Mullen, she was a previous guest on this sparkpost customer. Yeah, they're wonderful, cool company. She just she was just quoted a couple days ago, in an article by Rachel saying that 0.4% of their customers are sending amp enabled emails, right? So take up slow, so you've got the biggest inbox provider right, in the space saying, let's try and push email over to the interactive side of the thing. And it didn't quite stick. Now. Yeah, yeah, we're balkanized. And we're still so we're still using a 20 year old HTML standard.

Vikram Rajan

Correct? Yeah. And I think it's big. And the irony is because, as people, ultimately our email client doesn't support it, let's say by a vast majority, right, if we're on Apple Mail, or outlook, yeah, those are in Google's sure. But like, you know, we don't even recognize it. Right? So a, those two clients don't are those two ecosystems, though, and then even I'm a Google user, on Google workplace. Um, and so if there is any dynamic content is not really being shown to me that way. It's almost purposely too seamless. Yeah, so I'm like, Oh, okay. I don't even know like honestly, the amount of email I check, I have no idea if there's anything dynamic going on, like I don't know, so they there shouldn't be a little bit more of a bell and whistle there because yeah, it's like So anyhow,

Matthew Dunn

well, inside baseball perhaps but since you mentioned it mentioned dynamic content made our company campaign genius, is real time slash dynamic content, for any email platform on what we're manipulating is something that's been built into email for 20 years that images and hyperlinks can be updated on open

Vikram Rajan

and goes using a URL. Yeah, exactly.

Matthew Dunn

And like we've built a bunch of stuff that's really quite useful quite innovative for marketers. But what we've discovered in the last couple years is email marketers broadly speaking on have a heck of a time making the bandwidth to to to adopt new or different like they seem to be on this hamster wheel of production and it's like wow, you

Vikram Rajan

know dog new tricks I guess. Oh yeah.

Matthew Dunn

A bit of that and and a constant apparently if you go to it enterprise company x and look at the average age of the people who are doing the email they're going to be in their 20s and five years from now they're still going to be in their 20s like there's a turnout problem Yeah. And then on this SMB you know small medium business side of things you know the the MailChimp customer base, if you will, if it's not in the tool set and easy they're not going to do it right? Like they're not going to use a external this or a plugin that's like it's hard enough to get email campaigns out the door in their current form, because of all the reasons mentioned, you know, fragile HTML difficulty in rendering standard that it is like yeah, like this is hard enough to do already much let's add something else to it. So you know, well, we'll keep fighting we'll keep fighting the good fight and get there. But that's, that that's the nature of markets and technolon technology change and stuff like that. Um, one other aspect of dynamic content though that I want to that I want to sidetrack on because it goes back to your company video social, you mentioned video and email, which is an area of interest of mine as well. First frame it for people, what, what's video social do and for whom.

Vikram Rajan

So we are a combination of a community and an automation system automation app, where our members are your everyday professional. So think of your lawyers, your accountants, consultants, coaches, even people who have their small firms even within a larger firm, they need to stay top of mind with their potential clients and referral relationships. So of course, it's going to be by email, but in that niche will be social media and their website. And so they come to our video blogging clubs, and they get their video blogs recorded together fun and done. It's kind of like a networking group that would meet on zoom, except the express purpose is to practice recording give each other feedback and ideas eventually get to know each other well enough where they're liking and sharing each other's videos and multiplying the results of their video marketing by email and social. So the video blogging clubs is part one of video socials. And then they get a link to their video on our private preview page, which is our app where they're able to automatically add headline, subtitle captions, or call to action in screen. And then we're automation partners with LinkedIn, and YouTube and Facebook and WordPress. And of course, you can email the videos. So from that aspect, all the automation of getting the videos out there is there. Because it's a group dynamic and a community, you get the sharing aspect where members share each other. And that really multiplies. And it holds each other accountable and encourages it's fun for those of us who like, who, but those of us who don't like being on video and creating video blogs and content, it becomes a fun community, where it's encouragement and accountability, and a little bit of networking all wrapped up into one. And so part of our system, you're able to click and create an animated GIF out of your video. And that's embedded in an email right now. But I'm looking forward to the day where you can embed or iframe a video right in an email. Because that's you know, for us more people check more email more times a day. So the more we can do it, in fact, we're well, literally looking into automating a little bit of when you post your video on LinkedIn can automatically then email your top VIP relationships where it doesn't necessarily replace a real email marketing system like yours, for example. But it's nonetheless that VIP relationships where these are the people who would actually share your video. And it's not you're not blasting to them, but really blasting through them. And so we're looking at different ways because whatever we can do to use email to bolster the results. And the efficiency of social media is good from a word of mouth standpoint. And that's essentially what our members do is they get their clients through word of mouth so

Matthew Dunn

yeah, yeah, okay, interesting. Wow, great niche, and I love the love this, the social engineering, of recognizing that one of the real challenges in recording, you know, recording yourself on video is, is that solo thing, trying to go through script, it's not easy,

Vikram Rajan

it's boring, it's scary into the black hole can be scary. Then it's like where do I look to click Start off to click stop. If you're not tech savvy, it's even worse. And then it's just it's easy to procrastinate like nothing bad happens if you don't record your video blog today, you know, or tomorrow. It's like going to the gym. Nothing bad really happens if you skip the gym today, tomorrow, next week, even pulling down for a while, you know, as I know, you know if you're so fun, yeah. And then after a while you don't videoblog want a week to week basis. And then it's like yeah, I did that last month, I kind of stopped. Maybe I don't need to do anymore, and you fall off the bandwagon. And now you're out of sight out of mind.

Matthew Dunn

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The other the other thing that I think you're addressing with that, just listening to it, which I quite like the quite like, the way you laid that out is there are there's a bunch of really uncomfortable self awareness triggers involved in that solo, video recording thing. I mean, even even, even just audio recording, I've done a bunch of voiceover work for you to separate business, but even just an audio recording of you know, I'm sitting here I'm going to go through the script, pause, listen to like, Oh crap, right? Cuz you can't you like you can't not do some evaluation of that's my voice or that's my voice and face. And it's a hard hurdle to get over me. Yes, there are people who live to see themselves on screen, I'm not one of them. But most people, it's a big lift, especially by themselves.

Vikram Rajan

It's, it's, it takes a lot more acting when it's just by yourself, because you're just again, staring into the black hole. But if you had, you know, a couple of friends with you, that are in the same boat as you, right, they're not sitting there judging in a bad way. It's either it was their turn, or it's gonna be their turn. So they're we're all in the same boat, a little bit of butterflies, even if we're not, you know, completely nervous. You know, so you have your peers that you're comfortable with. Yeah. So you know, it becomes friends and families. So from that aspect, as a peer community, it's a lot easier to kind of talk to and kind of have to do the presentation in front of a small audience than just where do I look and how do I look and yeah, and and they support each other. They give feedback. So

Matthew Dunn

that's, that's that's great. Plus, you get That, you know, you get that change in changing dynamic of how you talk to, you know, to a person, particularly if you've got a relationship with is is not nowhere near the framework you're in when you're staring at that black hole as you said, and trying to stay on script limited.

Vikram Rajan

And we want our members you know, it's that personal brand, it's their natural authenticity, genuine conversational, all that stuff happens by nature because that's what you're doing. You don't have to have this contrived retail smile and Pepin energy when it's just like you. It's like this awkwardness of course, sometimes it's very serious topic you don't really need it. But then it's like, again, it's ultimately lonely and boring and we want to make it a social fun event, even if it's a serious subject and then you get the added marketing benefit where here are referral relationships These are people who can share you to some connections so and vice versa you're able to help them to so it becomes inevitable peer relationship

Matthew Dunn

now did the did the software platform piece of video socials come after as as you started to recognize that helping helping with that distribution problem would make the business heavy more impact

Vikram Rajan

18 very soon after it the only reason they didn't launch at the same time was for Developmental reasons everything longer than you think. So and instead of having hired guns as programmers we took a little bit longer and we also we knew we didn't need all the bells and whistles day one so it evolved over time to it's pretty good robust platform now with automatic reposting a whole bunch of fun stuff. But for us it is a community you know that it's it's even if people had to manually posted it The hardest part is that getting it recorded or effective message you know, doing it on a consistent basis. It's ultimately a time management and attack management to some degree. And that you know, kind of what we said emails never going away some extent time management and nervousness. Unfortunately, that's a perennial human trait, you know, doesn't matter how many scheduling and time management systems we have, we never get that 25th hour in the day and so from that aspect, it's very easy to never have the time to do something that you don't really want to do. So we make it fun. So yeah, to answer your question, it came very soon after we we launched this end of January really February of 2019. And the software we're starting to kind of come out for our members to use again March April. So it was it was relatively quick, but I do remember being a little bit of the hamster wheel promising of like it's gonna come to it next week. And you know, next week I kept saying I said it for like two months and that it was like alright, here it is. And I know you will fix that bug next week. Yeah. Is your actual project

Matthew Dunn

is Yeah, it's cuz Yeah, exactly. Is your market for the service? I would guess at least us nationwide. Yeah.

Vikram Rajan

Yeah, yeah, we do have a member in Germany and potentially more members in Europe, but nationwide here in the US in about a dozen states, we've got over 120 members and growing so we've got raving fans, so relatively new in terms of how this is really growing and scaling, but it's, um, it's fun, very come in handy. Of course, you know, I'm here in New York, you're you're in Washington. And so it's just, you know, people have the same needs all over whether they speak English or German or Italian or Japanese. You know, there are lawyers and consultants and other professional service providers who are subject matter experts and thought leaders, they need to make an impact and stay top of mind with their circle of influence, but their business in practice. And so we're looking forward to video socials, you know, the sun never setting on video social.

Matthew Dunn

Do you? Do you find that folks in real estate or folks in law are more natural and comfortable on camera out of the gate?

Vikram Rajan

It's amazing. Like the right people think like, Oh, he's a litigator? You know, they're thinking like law and order or you know, To Kill a Mockingbird, or Yeah, and they're like, of course, you know, he's gonna be a natural but he's nervous. Or she is a relatively young person. So of course, she's gonna be much more video savvy. people or people, it's, it's all sorts of hangups, and then we've got like a good 20% of our members, they're gonna be wrong, or not the nervous type. It's just, they just they know, they need a drumbeat. It's like, let's just get going. It's like, you know, very often it's the people who have coaches and Fitness Trainers that are training at the gym, more than folks like me who need to or should go to the gym. And so it's very, there's a good card, right? have our members who are doing keynotes and they've got podcasts and, and courses and they've got a whole media infrastructure and they're really seeing video socials as part of their marketing mix. But to answer your question is not necessarily by profession or a by age or gender, people and it's a lot of fun. I think that's a good dynamism that, you know, that's well seasoned, well connected professionals able to learn from someone who's maybe newer in business and maybe presents better and vice versa. Right, everyone's learning from each other. Right?

Matthew Dunn

It's kind of encouraging to hear the I think it's easy for people maybe less so now because I've been working with I've been working with video long time sounds like you have as well. But as I watch video and the volume, you know, sort of volume prominence usability of it start to climb. It's easy to underestimate the off screen work as well. Yeah, like this, this, this is not type type hit sense, like, you cutting this editing that getting a master file, they're like, you know, all that stuff. It's like, Oh, this is time consuming. And it's actually hard to make it kind of a methodical pipeline, because there's some I've been doing this for 10 years, there's still grunt work

Vikram Rajan

with video is there is kind of our job on the software side on the community side is the interaction and the friendship and the peer relations. on the software side. Yeah, I agree with you, Matthew. However, that's kind of our goal is to make it less so yeah. And we do so in two ways. One, of course, there's automation, and the tools can be there where you push a button, and that will Alexa will transcribe your video into a read along written blog aspect of your and then our system turns into subtitle captions is eerily accurate. So that's taken care of adding the headline the call to action endscreen. That there, we've lessened the need and almost eliminated the need to do a lot of that cutting and splicing by reminding our members that you want to keep it short and simple. Because these are people scrolling through social media, or scrolling in their inbox. And unless it's short and pithy and extremely relevant in that two minute range at most, you've lost, right so if you're gonna, when it comes to like a big production, you know, a nonprofit gala video or a webinar and courses, you know where it's hours of footage and you need B roll in different camera angles, absolutely. Then you need either you're doing it yourself and you're you know, being lost in the black hole quagmire. Or that's why you hire production staff. That's why videographers I think are extremely essential and necessary. We don't really displace them, we're really filling a void between that do it yourselfer, and afford that professional videographer who would just be annoying to have to take that beautiful work and annoying amount of work. But it's just like, really, you want me to edit a five minute vlog for your LinkedIn like, you know, COVID and I can't go in person, so I'll do it. I really want to do it. Like that's awful. That was just too cost prohibitive because I'm like, Alright, I'll charge you my rate. Yeah, and that's just silly, right? So we filled out void. So to your point, yes, there is a tedium that we've automated, and we've also kind of figured out the sweet spot to avoid a lot of the tedium that you may need because if you say like we get compared to Toastmasters a lot I don't know if you're familiar

Matthew Dunn

with us in Toastmasters. Oh, excellent.

Vikram Rajan

My business partner was president of the largest Toastmasters in Hawaii. So we pay a lot of respect to them and very much relate to Toastmasters, a video blogging and they haven't like an almond oil counter. I'm sure you've heard from your wife where they literally will count how many times and we don't do that because we're like that's silly, is that it makes sense for that world. Perhaps what for us? Say I'm gonna like no big deal. Be natural, be conversational, you flub up a word. All right, don't just throw out the whole video, we flub up words like I forgot that quote, just you know, a couple of moments before we all know it I'm sure some of your listeners knew exactly what the quote was and was you know, kind of yelling But nevertheless, it makes it more natural and conversational that way so from that aspect, as our members get used to locate a flub, it's okay to do that and keep it short and simple. And they get to recognize Alright, what is a two minute topic or, and I'm number will say, hey, you stopped way too much into that three minute video and went to like three minutes and 15 seconds. You didn't need to stuff it all just mentioned, instead of like the six ways to do something, just mentioned the two ways and the other four ways, shoot me an email, and I'm happy to share the other four ways and that's a great call to action a nice teaser. And so our members learn the kind of the tricks of the trade and keep a short and simple KISS principle. Keep it short and simple, where it eliminates the need for all that tedium, the rest of which is automated through our platform.

Matthew Dunn

Nice And you've you've said you've automated the the thumbnail the video to GIF piece of the work to

Vikram Rajan

say yes, but but I'll forgive you. What's that? You might say yes. But nevertheless, that's a different episode do we can argue by

Matthew Dunn

gift versus you know, these graphics Interchange Format.

Vikram Rajan

You know what I'm currently the founder does a GIF right? Yeah, I

Matthew Dunn

heard those numbers. The whole peanut butter thing for a little while it was a was a actually there was there were patent rights on on that format by compuserve. For a while.

Vikram Rajan

Yes, it was yes. I remember. I wasn't compuserve user back, you know, make you feel old. I was in high school at the time. But I was a prodigy and compuserve geek back then. So. So I know the I know the 1200 baud modems. But But animated GIFs? Yes. Um, yeah, our system turns videos Academy,

Matthew Dunn

which is, and what we're both alluding to, because we kind of swim in the sea is that currently, email doesn't really allow reliable playback of video in the email message itself, right? There are a few platforms, my friend, my friend, Lisa, Lisa Jones has a has a company that that does this as well as it's possible to do it. But you can't say 100% of emails, you're going to be able to play this video in the message itself and technological limitations that are, you know, they kind of boiled down to it's not going to work for a while.

Vikram Rajan

Yes. Yeah, it's kind of like what we were discussing. So it's gonna rewind the podcast, and you'll, you'll know why he so yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, until we get to that point, which, you know, who knows? Yeah, we use the animated GIF as kind of the teaser so that at least it was like, click here to play in here, this video. And you're not that we're looking to trick anyone. But if they don't get that as an animated GIF, who cares, they'll they'll click it. And then they'll watch it either on YouTube or their website or whatever, wherever it's hosted. It kind of make it where and, you know, we whole point is to make the email as interactive as we possibly can kind of to your point where it's kind of cool. But I'd love to kind of see how you're kind of hacking in a good way in a in a productive way. The limitations that we're facing today. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn

I was on I was on a zoom call with a bunch of email industry folks from only influencers, oh, two months ago, and the topic of video and email came up. And I was really surprised to me, this is a bunch of the top email marketers in the world as a collection. And someone said, Well, how many of you have actually gotten an email with video or video thumbnail in it?

Vikram Rajan

Oh, even even an animated or Okay, it wasn't it wasn't even

Matthew Dunn

100% it wasn't even 50% and what I've said Yeah, well, except like I get it from Matthews. Cuz I guess I do it. Right, exactly. But it's just not nearly as common. No, as as you'd think because it's effective, right? if if if I record a video and send it to you in email, especially if I hold up a little sign that says hey, thanks Vic. You're gonna watch it statistically.

Vikram Rajan

Statistically, it's it's amazing how it kind of does remind me of those kind of yoga vehicles it's amazing how small the number really is is something that we think everyone is doing and I think we get lost in that forest but people aren't in that for so like I use another example similar to that of LinkedIn and video because you know, I do a show of hands of the whole band if you scroll your LinkedIn every other video upfront every other post is a video post I mean, they're prioritizing it so just can't escape it you know whether you like it or not. And yet how many of us know how many people do we know that are actually posting videos on LinkedIn on a consistent basis? Yeah. Your connections I mean, it's not even half the people that you know post on LinkedIn or active so it's like just ain't going nowhere which I'm like from a marketing standpoint well that's awesome that's like a huge blue ocean like we think like I was doing video everyone's doing video anyway normally, like practically no one is we just may be swimming in the water so like in our world we see especially me right so I always have to remind when I even talk about this concept of animated GIFs in a video is mind blowing to people know I'm always having to use like silly analogies or like you know, on Facebook where you see those moving those means that are like movies. Well imagine something like that. Have you talking in an email? What am I just because so far and because they're not seeing yet the everyday consumer person is not seeing it. And that's funny that you're mentioning an email marketing industry event isn't seeing it then that is your everyday You know, our consumer type professional is not seeing it. Yeah. So

Matthew Dunn

yeah, I was just gonna say so huge opportunity for like, what you're what you're what you're helping your video social customers do like that's pretty leading edge stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vikram Rajan

Wow. Yeah and we try to make it where it's kind of push button it's like push a button and place the email with animated GIF you've got? No, it should be kind of no brainer because our kind of members are not going to sit there trying to figure it out.

Matthew Dunn

Last question for you yet because I've already told you tied up more than 45 minutes of your time. Where do you see text and messaging fit for professional and marketing communication?

Vikram Rajan

You know, it's one of the things that I'm so as I alluded to right there, there's this concept that I have when I post a video, by on LinkedIn, I want to be able to notify the people that are my raving fans and my closest colleagues and family friends, you know, people who I feel that they would like and share my post, in my case, a video post. And so, because email is so cluttered, just some extent, the text messaging world has a nice potential. The irony is that it's a lot easier for us to go get somebody's email address, even if we don't know it by heart, it's relatively simple to go to Outlook or Gmail and just go get it. And it's like a more annoying process, especially on the computer to get that person's phone number. And cell phone number like either pick up my cell phone, go to his contact, type it in, so it's less, you know, seamless, but there's a huge potential there, it's a more intimate, medium, and talk about stewardship of email list. Two stewardship of an SMS list of text messages, I think is even more sacred in that sense, at least the cultural norm right now, where we don't want to be bothered and and so from that aspect, I, you know, it'll be interesting to see like, where it goes, I would like to take it there because we're using it for that purpose. Like we're not looking for this to be a mass email blast, like it's meant to be a, a cut mass customized to your VIP relationships. And if that's the case, well suppose you send someone a text message, Hey, I just posted this on LinkedIn, hey, do me a favor, and like and share it, and you only send that message once a month, then they're not gonna be so annoyed. If you send it to them, like every day or multiple times a week, then leave me alone, and you're ruining that relationship. And, you know, as a VIP relationship, even worse, right? So it's not even just your owning a potential friend. This is like your, your drinking, buddy, this is your you know, your uncle, or your cousin. Like there are people, you know, like curse at you back. It's so it's a secret relationship beyond a customer relationship. So it answer your question, I think the two the worlds can come together, we just have to be that much more careful. Why do you ask, by the way, like,

Matthew Dunn

two reasons. One, I've had any number of guests, Kenneth Burke, from a company called text requests was an early guest on this podcast and and I invited him specifically so that we could just compare notes about how those how those worlds collide on and then the second interest is, you know, I look at my behavior, it sounds like what you observed of your own it's like, it's a high priority. interrupt if I if I got a message when you and I first started talking, Mike, my phone sitting here I'd muted it, but there's a text message from my wife. And I, you know, I looked at you better. Yeah, you better Yeah. And if, if we manage that well,

Vikram Rajan

right. But if a were a colleague you met at a conference last year, telling you that he just sent out his his video blog on LinkedIn. It's like, like you like that, like you went there. And that was not appropriate. Like, and if you ever go there again, yeah, I need to figure out a way to block you. Yeah, I'll

Matthew Dunn

probably also filter you Right. Yeah.

Vikram Rajan

Right. So it's, versus with email. You know, yes. You know, maybe and I had a very black and white world is that spam and that's a different discussion, but you have some kind of a collegial relationship. And so it's somewhat acceptable in that perspective where Hey, I met you at the back so and so conference, just want to check in with you by the way here's a video post that I did. You know, I'm not gonna be I'm not mortally offended by that. I mean, it's gonna be, but I'm not like How dare you send that to me. And if you ever emailed me again, I will track you down and disconnect from me. drop me an email. Um, and so the I think that's an advantage because we have a lot more of those outer circle relationships and relationships. And we will always just add a new rule. So from that aspect, email enables you to stay in contact with the 95% of your relationships that are not

Matthew Dunn

5%. Yeah.

Vikram Rajan

So, but then you have the advantage with with 5%. Why aren't you using technically?

Matthew Dunn

Yeah, yeah. And it's a there, there are a bunch of the technical term is affordances. They're a bunch of things that email has evolved to handle that the text messaging really has not evolved as well,

Vikram Rajan

right? Yeah. Right. I mean, like spam filters to just use that as one example, right? I mean, spam filters are like, I'm dealing with a situation where it's almost too good. Like I'm getting like, things that are being filtered that I don't want too much. So it's like, oh, it's on constantly No, it's not spam in Gmail started realizing that it's my own website, sending me notifications when a guest rsvps, or one of our video blogging clubs. And I'm like, that's really annoying, because I really, you know, as a sales company, I need to know, like, I want to know that RSVP. And so I want to be, you know, that's something I want to be bothered with. Um, it's very important. And so I'm constantly going now into my spam folder, like literally daily, because I know I'm missing things that are valuable. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. So But to your point, my phone doesn't do that in the text messaging. Well, there's no spam filter, which is all the more reason why we have to be careful, very calm. Yeah. Yeah. So that as much as like, you know, this new feature that I've already started talking about programmer about, um, it's like, I may as well just start with email because it's a lot easier for someone to be like, Okay, I guess these are like my 15 people that I know really well. Yeah. What are these 15 people that you would be texting with? Yeah. Like this? No, like, that's not like, no, that's not where like, this is not literally the person I'm having dinner with. Yeah. You know, this is a person I have coffee with. And so I think that's a nice analogy, right? So it's a it's a coffee list, not a dinner list. And so

Matthew Dunn

it's only gonna get more complicated,

Vikram Rajan

more complicated, but we are here to figure it out.

Matthew Dunn

We're here to help. We're here to figure it out here to help people. Well, Vic, what a what a delightful conversation. A lot of fun. You know your stuff. I

Vikram Rajan

really you never thought that having a combo. I never thought having a conversation about email marketing. It'd be so fun. Like I don't know what else to talk for an hour about the future of email marketing. This was a blast. Thank you.

Matthew DunnCampaign Genius