Record one video, then use a Zidi campaign to give every prospect a personal link to it. Each link opens a page tailored to that prospect, and you can send the email from your own address.
Say you’re showing a new approval workflow to operations leads at several companies. In the recording, walk through one request as it moves from the person who submits it to the person who approves it. The email and the page can name each prospect’s company, while one recording does the walkthrough for the whole list.
Create a campaign and add your recipients
Create a video campaign in Zidi and choose the recording you want to share. If you already have a demo, watch the opening with this group in mind. For the operations leads in this example, look for a demo that opens on the request and shows where they would come in.
You can type recipients in or upload a CSV, a plain-text table you can export from a spreadsheet. The upload accepts up to 10,000 rows and a file up to 1 MB. Your plan determines how many people can go into a single campaign.
The CSV needs an email column. Zidi recognizes firstName, lastName, fullName, email, company, location, role, title, phone, custom1, custom2 and custom3. Any other column gives you a placeholder you can use in your copy.
When you export a list from a spreadsheet, keep a header row such as email,firstName,company,Region so you can see which fields the email will use. Check a few rows near the end as well as the start. Contacts pasted in from another sheet can have an email address with the company or first name missing.
For the approval demo, start with email, first name and company. Add a column only if you have a use for it. If you want to group the list by territory, for example, you could keep a Region column and use that detail where it fits the message.
Personalize the email and video page
Put the column name in single curly braces to make a token, which is a placeholder for a recipient’s details. Use {firstName} in the greeting, {company} in a page title or {Region} if you added that column. An empty cell produces a blank, so fill missing first names or use a greeting like “Hi there” for the whole list.
If the campaign uses a published video webpage, Zidi fills tokens in the page text, links and header button label. If you share the video on its own, Zidi fills tokens in the video title and description. Both setups let you use tokens in the campaign email.
Give each field a job. A title like “An approval walkthrough for {company}” tells the prospect they’re in the right place. A description like “See what the next approver gets when a request is ready” tells them what they’ll get out of watching.
Read the subject and page title with a few rows filled in. If a company goes by a short name but the spreadsheet has its full legal name, use the name your prospect would recognize. For a long company name, you can put it on the page and give the subject more room for the topic.
What each prospect sees
The email includes a video thumbnail and a Watch Video button. The button opens the recipient’s personal link, which starts with app.zidi.ai/c/ and ends with a code. On that page, the prospect sees the personalized text and the recording you chose.
Think about the handoff from inbox to page when you plan a personalized video. If the email promises to show what happens after an approval request comes in, use that same idea in the page title. The prospect should know they’ve opened the right link before they press play.
A password-protected video prompts the recipient for the password before playback. Share the password separately so they can get in.
Launch the campaign and send the emails
Launch the campaign when your recipient list and copy are ready. Launching makes the links live. Sending the email is a separate step.
Send through Zidi from your mailbox. Connect your mail account through SMTP, a standard for sending email. The email comes from your address, and replies land in your inbox. Choose a mailbox your team can follow up from.
Zidi supports Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, SendGrid and custom SMTP servers. Gmail and Yahoo require an app password, a separate password you create for a connected app.
Zidi asks for a business postal address and adds an unsubscribe link to each email it sends. An unsubscribe applies across your future campaigns. Each send skips people who have unsubscribed and people you emailed through that campaign in the past 7 days.
Export personal links for another email tool. On any plan, you can export a CSV with a personal link for each recipient. Add each link to the corresponding message in your existing email tool. A link also gives you a way to share a video too large for email.
Push links to your CRM on Pro. A customer relationship management system, or CRM, is where your team keeps its prospect and customer records. At launch, Zidi sends each recipient and their personal link to each connected CRM. Viewing updates follow after launch. See the available integrations.
See who watched and decide how to follow up
Open the campaign’s Analytics tab. The summary cards show Total Recipients, Unique Viewers, Total Views, Avg Watch % and CTA Clicks. Use the summary to get a sense of the campaign, then look at individual recipients before writing a follow-up.
For each recipient, you can see when they first viewed, when they last viewed, how many times they viewed and how much they watched. Multiple opens of the link within 30 minutes count as one view. Watch percentage is the highest share of the video that recipient actually played. Skipping ahead does not add to it.
On Pro, a call-to-action, or CTA, is an interactive button that gives the prospect a next step, such as booking a call. The recipient results show whether they clicked it.
On Pro, Slack can post when a recipient first opens their page or first clicks the CTA button. Slack does not post campaign watch milestones.
Use the watch percentage to choose what you say next. If a recipient played most of the video, ask how their team handles the approval step today. That gives them a specific question they can answer from experience.
If someone clicked the booking button, check your calendar before you follow up. If they’ve already booked, you can ask them to bring an example request to the call. If they haven’t, offer to walk through one of their requests together.
Look across the recipient rows before you revise the recording. If few links have a recorded view, start with the email. Try a subject that names the task or a first line that says what the viewer will see.
If people open their links and most play only a small share of the video, check how long it takes to show the task you promised. For the next campaign, try opening on the request itself. Explain the steps as you show them.
Check the campaign limits by plan
| Limit | Free | Starter | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| New campaigns per month | 2 | 20 | Unlimited |
| Recipients per campaign | 25 | 500 | 2,000 |
| Emails per send | 5 | 50 | 200 |
| Emails in any 30 days | 50 | 1,000 | 5,000 |
| CRM push | No | No | Yes |
The recipient limit tells you how many personal links you can create for one campaign. The send limit tells you how many emails can go out at once through Zidi. A 120-person list fits in one Starter campaign, so plan for at least three sends if you email the whole group through Zidi.
Before you send, count the emails you’ve already sent through Zidi in the past 30 days. Two full Starter campaigns of 500 recipients each would use the entire 1,000-email allowance if you emailed everyone in that window. If you have more outreach planned, factor it into the schedule before the first send.
Prices are per seat. Starter costs $19 a month or $168 a year, and Pro costs $49 a month or $468 a year. See pricing for the full plan breakdown.
Write the subject, the email and the first 10 seconds
Put the topic in the subject so the prospect can tell why the email is worth opening. In the body, give them one reason to watch and one question they can answer.
In a first email, ask about a task the prospect handles today. In a follow-up, pick up the question they raised in your last conversation. If a teammate recorded the video, say “I’m sharing a short walkthrough” so the email matches who made it.
First email
Subject: Approval handoffs at {company}
Hi {firstName}, I recorded a short walkthrough of how an approval request gets to the next person. The video shows what the person submitting the request sees and what the approver sees. Where do requests usually get held up on your team?
After a conversation
Subject: A look at the approval step we discussed
Hi {firstName}, You asked what the next approver sees when a request comes in. I recorded that step so you can see how it could work for your team at {company}. Would it help to go through one of your own requests together?
In the first 10 seconds, name the task and put it on screen. For the approval demo, start with a request open and say, “I’ll show you what happens after you submit this request and how the next approver knows it’s theirs.”
Use that opening as a check on the whole campaign. If your first screen shows the approver’s queue, write the email around that step. For other ways to open a recording or follow up, see these video prospecting scripts and examples of video for sales outreach.
Catch common mistakes before launch
- Check for duplicate addresses. Lists pulled from several sources can include the same prospect twice.
- Keep the list focused. If two groups need different walkthroughs, give each group its own campaign.
- Read the tokens in context. Check punctuation and spacing as well as the values in the spreadsheet.
- Keep exported links with their addresses. Sort the whole table so each link stays with its recipient.
- Match the email to the conversation. Use the follow-up template only for people who asked about that step.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I send one video to 500 prospects? Yes. Starter supports up to 500 recipients in one campaign, each with a personal link to the same recording. If you plan to send through Zidi, check your remaining 30-day email allowance before picking a send date. You can also export the links and send them from your own email tool.
Can I change the list or swap the video after launch? The list, video and page are locked once you launch. If more prospects come in later, create a new campaign for them and select the recording you want them to see. Check the monthly campaign limit on your plan if you expect to add several groups.
How can I test the email and page before sending to prospects? Make a small campaign with an email address you control and fill in the fields your copy uses. Launch it, send yourself the email, then open the page from the Watch Video button. Check how the subject and greeting read and where a reply goes. Count the test toward your monthly campaign limit if your plan has one.
How long does a campaign track views? Campaign view tracking ends 90 days after launch. After that, each personal link serves as a playback link. If you send in waves, work backward from the end of the tracking window and leave time to review the recipient results after your last send.
Can I tell the difference between an email open and a video view? Yes. For emails sent through Zidi, each send shows how many emails were opened. It is a count, not a rate, and it does not name who opened. The campaign records video views separately, per recipient. If a send shows opens but few links have a view, give people a specific reason to watch, such as seeing what the next approver receives.