How to Build Relationships with Personal Video
Bonjoro Makes Personal Video Easy
I love finding apps that make my life easier! It's even more impressive when I find one that also does things BETTER. This week, I found an app that is going to make it easier for you to thank supporters and make you better at it. Sending personal video clips to people is a great way to say thank you or solidify support. But it can easily become unwieldy or difficult to find time. This app makes that process simple!
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Bonjoro came onto my radar screen earlier this week through Pat Flynn. He's been using it to send personal video thank yous to people who purchase his new podcasting course. My immediate thought was, "I sell courses. I should do that too!"
Since starting to use Bonjoro, I've become convinced that it's a game-changer building relationships with personal video. The only question is whether you'll let it be a game changer for your campaign!
Keep reading to find out what Bonjoro is, how I use it and how I think it can help your campaign.
What is Bonjoro?
One of the first things you'll notice about the team at Bonjoro is that their team obviously has a lot of fun. They wear bear suits, are Australian and never take themselves to seriously. It makes exploring the product fun!
Bonjoro was created as an easy way to send personal video to customers. In 4 easy steps, you can send a personal video with company branding and call to action directly to anyone. Then you can see whether they open it, watch the video, etc.
It also saves time. Because of it's integrations with tools like MailChimp and services like Zapier, Bonjoro can be set up to automatically tell you if there is somebody else that you need to send a video to!
For instance, any time that someone donates to your campaign online, you can be prompted through the app to send them a video. It will show you the name, email address and donation amount of the person who just donated.
How cool would it be to donate to a campaign and then, just a few minutes later, you get a quick, personal video from the candidate thanking you by name for your donation and talking about the impact it's going to have on your campaign!!
How does My Campaign Coach use Bonjoro?
With the new candidate coaching courses that we've launched, I wanted a way to build stronger relationships with people signing up. Both on our free and paid programs, I'm seeing registrations from people I've never before interacted with personally. I don't want to just let those relationships be virtual. They need to be personal.
I could write up a personal email to everybody but that would take forever and they'd probably assume that some degree of it was automated. By using Bonjoro, I can quickly send a personal video to each registrant and welcome them to our course.
My hope is that these videos will catalyze a closer relationship with the students as well as increase customer satisfaction and retention.
Integration with Zapier
Zapier is a powerful tool for connecting all kinds of web applications. Think of it as an "If-This-Then-That" engine. If an action occurs in one of your platforms, Zapier triggers an action in another tool.
For instance, if someone donates on your website through PayPal, Zapier can add their name and email address to MailChimp and tag them as a donor.
When using Bonjoro, it means that you can use different types of actions to trigger a prompt to create a video.
I have Zapier set up to tell Bonjoro that I need to send a video any time that someone registers for one of our courses. Bonjoro displays the name of the person, their email address and reason why they're in my to-do list.
It's also set up to integrate with my appointment booking service. Any time someone signs up for a meeting, I get a notification and can send them a video as well. Since I use Calendly for scheduling all of my online/phone meetings, this gives me a chance to reach out, say thank you for scheduling and perhaps ask them some questions that I'll need the answer to prior to our conversation.
I'll need to do some videos and a blog dedicated JUST to Zapier sometime in the near future but, for now, just know that it's super cool and I use it a lot!
What can Bonjoro do for my campaign?
Let me start by saying that I've only just scratched the surface for how Bonjoro can be used for campaigns. There are huge numbers of potential applications and these are only a few of the ones I've thought of so far.
Thanking Donors
By integrating Bonjoro with your donation processor (through Zapier), you can be automatically notified when someone donates. You'll see how much they donated and be able to quickly send them a thank you video.
I love sending notes to donors, and still recommend it in as many cases as possible. But the immediate follow up of a quick personal video will have a huge impact! You're already getting the notifications in your email, so harness your excitement about the new money coming in and communicate it straight to the person who has been so generous!
In the "what it does for me" column, take advantage of the fact that the person has JUST donated to you. They're obviously in a mood to help. Use the custom call to action button to ask them to share your donation page on social media! Your personal video follow-up can help catalyze more donations from new people.
Welcoming Volunteers
Zapier lets you tie in Bonjoro with all kinds of other tools. One of them is Google Sheets, as well as other types of form processing apps. You can set it up so that a volunteer signup through your website triggers a new video assignment in Bonjoro
In many cases, staff are going to handle most of the volunteer training and assignments, but face-time with the candidate is one of the best ways to keep folks motivated. By communicating directly with someone, right after they show interest, you can build their excitement. In turn, that makes it more likely that they follow through on their promised action. It also helps keep their morale high!
Just because someone signs up as a volunteer on your website doesn't mean they're going to show up and help. By sending them a Bonjoro, you're going to increase your volunteer retention and clearly show that you care.
Connecting with Voters
One of the most common questions that canvassers are asked at the door is: "What does Candidate X believe about Y?" Volunteers do their best to communicate what the candidate believes (...if they know...). But wouldn't it be better to hear directly from the candidate with a personal video?
Of course it would!
Depending on how you handle your voter contact, you might be able to integrate it through Zapier. Or you could have a staffer quickly add the people that you need to message.
So much more!
With all the possible connections, through Zapier, I'm confident this is only the beginning of the list of tasks that we can use Bonjoro for. As you can tell, I'm pretty excited about it!
Places to improve
In the tutorial video above, I mentioned two pieces of advice I've sent to Bonjoro.
- When adding a to-do manually, allow a third field (in addition to the email address and who it's assigned to) where you can input a reason why the video needs to be sent. There currently isn't a way to show this unless using one of the automation tools. The WHY is critical if you're bulk-assigning a bunch of videos to someone, since they need to be able to tailor the message.
- I'd like to be able to upload a list of to-dos via CSV or some other common file type. I'm not aware of any voter contact platforms that currently integrate easily with Zapier (although Campaign Sidekick is working on it) so if you're wanting to use Bonjoro for follow up, you'd need an easier bulk creation option. For instance, I'd like to be able to download a list of the voters that my canvassers talked to, along with some info about their interaction, and upload a list of videos to send back. The candidate could then log into their account and see who to send videos to and why. Some videos might be based on an issue or on an action, such as agreeing to take a yard sign. You could then use the Call to Action button to solicit a donation.
"Building Relations and Earning Votes"
That's in our mission statement for a reason. We believe that viewing votes and voters as transactional relationships is an awful mindset. By using tools like Bonjoro, you're able to focus on relationship building instead of just harvesting votes. It will help candidates remember the person behind the vote. It also ensures that voters see the personality and care that a candidate puts into the relationship building process.
Check out Bonjoro and send me a personal video message to tell me why you like it! My email address is Raz@MyCampaignCoach.com
Please use the links we've provided to Bonjoro when you sign up. It lets them know that we sent you and if you end up getting a paid account, a little bit of that money will go towards helping us keep producing great content like this!
Do you want me to send you a Bonjoro?
I'm sending Bonjoro videos to everybody that signs up for one of our online courses: our FREE "Are you Prepared to Run for Office" course and the Advanced Candidate Course (currently 50% off with the coupon code "FIRST25"). So sign up for one of those and you'll see a personal video thank-you show up from me shortly!
