Make Your Email Messages Stand Out

Here’s a fun statistic for you.

Did you know that 25 billion “non-spam” email messages are sent every day? And did you know that a business person sends and receives an average of 600 emails every week?

We’d say that’s probably great news for network administrators looking for job security, but perhaps not all that great for business people trying to get a message across.

People no longer really read email and that’s a big problem for people whose core business is communication. Yes, that would be us in sales.

Instead, they skim through their messages and make instant decisions of what needs their attention and what doesn’t. If your message doesn’t capture the attention of the reader, chances are it’s not being read.

Here’s an different idea to make an impact. EyeJot is an online service that lets you send focused video messages by email. And we really liked it.

Now, I know. Email isn’t new. Video isn’t new. And the last thing you need in your busy life is more fiddling with peripheral computer equipment.

But there’s no need to worry here. EyeJot married video and email in a way that makes it dead simple to use. It literally took me less than a minute to send my first video email.

For one, there’s nothing to download and nothing to install. All you need is a webcam and a free account at EyeJot.com. The website automatically detects your camera and mic, you record your message (up to 60 seconds with a free account), select your recipients and send it. That’s it. All done.

But EyeJot really thought this through. Here are some other things we really liked about their service:

1. When you’re done recording and decide to send, your recipients receive an email with a snapshot of the video you recorded. Your face shows immediately, there’s no clicking on “blind links” and no surprises. It really increases your chances of your messages being heard.

2. While you need a registration at EyeJot to use it, your recipients can view and reply to your video without signing up themselves. In addition, the site is clean and professional – unlike some of the other video sites that cater to the college crowd, EyeJot is very suitable for business to business users.

3. An EyeJot signup gives you a message inbox, from where you can delete, forward or download any and all videos you sent or received. There’s no lock-in, when you’re ready to go you can take all your messages and videos with you.

4. If you’re fearful of yet another inbox to monitor, don’t worry. EyeJot comes with RSS feeds and an ability to subscribe to your own account in iTunes. If you’re used to listening to podcasts, you know how this works. When a new message hits your inbox, it’s automatically downloaded to your RSS reader or even iTunes so you can view it.

5. You get to create “groups” – distribution lists, if you will. If you share recorded messages with a team, you add them once and you can send all of them a video with one click of a button. You can even import existing contacts from Gmail, Yahoo and a few other popular email services.

EyeJot is free for messages under a minute. A paid membership will cost you $29.95 per year – but comes with the ability the record messages up to 5 minutes and a few other great perks.

There’s another great feature we’d like to talk about – but we’ll save that for later this week.

For now, check out EyeJot. It’s a great way to make your communication stand out from the rest. Similar services include Azooca, Gabmail and Springdoo.

If you decide to record a message, send it to myfirstname.mylastname AT salesteamtools.com (replace with my first and last name) and I’ll send you a video reply or just leave a comment.