205 Simple Video Messaging for Home Builders - Justin Doornbos Feb 21 2024

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us, Justin Dornbos. Justin is in charge of the home builder partnerships over at BombBomb. Welcome, Justin. Thanks for being with us today.

Justin Doornbos: Hey, thanks for having me. This should be fun.

Greg Bray: We're going to get into BombBomb because that's just a name you have to say a couple of times just to have fun with it. But before we do that, let's learn about you. Give us a little introduction and tell us about yourself.

Justin Doornbos: Yeah, a little bit about [00:01:00] myself. I've actually been doing this for almost nine years now with BombBomb. And quite frankly, I nerd out to this stuff. I fell in love with this industry, I want to say it was 2016, my wife and I were building our first home. And I had really kind of just gotten started in what I was doing.

I've been in sales since I was 14 and I've been fascinated by the industry and really kind of the process of along of building my first home. I nerded out to where you could easily put video in and started making relationships. And man, I love this industry. I know I've said it probably five times and I'll say it 50 more by the time we're done with this. This is so much fun for me and I enjoy what I do. How about that?

Kevin Weitzel: That's work, and we're going to dive a little bit more into that, but for now, we'd like to hear one very interesting fact about yourself that's personal, that has nothing to do with the home building industry or work whatsoever.

Justin Doornbos: Gosh, I could give you 40 million, but I'll stick it to this. A fact that not many people know about me, this actually came up on a podcast I [00:02:00] was doing with Jeff Shore's team, and I'll say it here too, because I had forgotten about it. But fun fact is I have actually been on stage at a Macklemore concert and ripped my shirt off in a dance-off contest. Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Kevin Weitzel: I didn't, but we share something because very little-known fact, at the International Builders Show about, I don't know, four or five years ago, I got on stage with the Blues Brothers cover band and ripped my shirt off.

Justin Doornbos: Blues Brothers!

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah, actually asked me if I wanted to be part of their act cause uh, it was a hit.

Justin Doornbos: I didn't get the same treatment.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh yeah, no.

Greg Bray: I just want to go on record and let everybody know that we are not releasing the video of this episode, so you don't have to worry about any shirts coming off.

Justin Doornbos: Thank you. I appreciate that. Good disclosure.

Greg Bray: Well, Justin, tell us a little bit more about BombBomb and what you guys do, and the services that you offer.

Justin Doornbos: When I always boil it down, when people always say, you know, what do you really do? All I say this is is relationships 101. Especially when I'm talking to anybody in sales, I always say, you know, your [00:03:00] sales team is good face-to-face. There's no arguing that. And that's why most builders hire these people to meet their customers face-to-face, walk them through their model homes. We're just helping them get face-to-face faster and build trust and rapport quicker with simple video messaging. That's really it.

Greg Bray: Simple video messaging sounds simple, but I have a feeling that it may not be quite as simple as we dig in a little bit more to it. But how did you guys end up kind of focusing on home building specifically as a vertical or a market that could really benefit from this opportunity?

Justin Doornbos: Great question. Really, we got started in 2006. Our co-founder/CEO was actually a billboard salesman and he realized that, you know, he was good face-to-face, but he couldn't always visit his customers face-to-face. So, he found a way to embed video inside of the email and the first time he sent it out was to about 15 people. And within 3 minutes, he got 12 responses. How cool is that? [00:04:00] And it drew more responses than he was used to. And there's a lot of human psychology and we'll break it down. We've got books written on this as well too.

When we really kind of dove into and started our growing phase, we went to our first real estate show. It was a Keller Williams mega camp. Within that one weekend, our client base doubled, and we realized that there was something special there, in the real estate realm. And this was really kind of your typical brokerage real estate agent kind of thing as well too.

When I really started with BombBomb as well, reaching out and selling to individual real estate agents, we wanted to grow really kind of an enterprise team and have much larger deals in the solo-preneur single person, stuff like that. What I found fascinating was, you know, most of these real estate agents were 1099 employees.

If we were to do a larger team and forgive me if I'm nerding out too much or diving in the weeds, if we were to do a larger team, we're still going to have individual users kind of sign up. But when we go to the home building space, these are W2 employees where we have [00:05:00] decision makers that can purchase for 50 to 500 users at a time. And again, this was about the time I was building my first home and really thought, hey, this is a great space to dive into.

I finally got connected with Mike Lyon from Do You Convert? and his team, and they've been fans of us as well, too. So, the connection there and the relationship just really kept growing and they really kind of spread the word out of BombBomb. The rest is kind of history. This has been kind of the space that I've dove most of all my resources into and built some really good relationships into, and I love it. So, does that help answer that?

Greg Bray: I have to know, is there some secret story about selecting the name other than, Oh gosh, let's find one that's not taken yet, right? Which is always one of the hard things when you're starting a company. But where does the name BombBomb come from?

Justin Doornbos: Yes. So, it's not as fun as you think. When our CEO, our co-founder was doing this, he sat down at a dinner with somebody and they literally just said, You're the bomb, man. Obviously, bomb.com was taken. So, he went bombbomb.com and that's it. There's nothing more [00:06:00] to that other than just somebody tell him he was the bomb and that's where it took off.

Kevin Weitzel: So, how long until somebody comes up with bombbombbomb, and takes that URL?

Justin Doornbos: I'm sure somebody has tried but probably failed miserably, because that's a lot of bombs.

Kevin Weitzel: That's a lot of bombs. That's so many bombs, nobody knows what to do with them.

Greg Bray: And Kevin, I thought you were the bomb, so I'm a little confused now.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm confused now too. You keep telling me I'm the bomb, and I don't know. I don't know.

Justin Doornbos: Love it.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, Justin, help us understand just for those who have never seen this, never heard of it, when you say the word video messaging, what are you talking about?

Justin Doornbos: Yeah. So, video email is a great way to say it as well. This gives you the ability to record and send videos directly through your email, social media, and text messaging as well. But a majority of our users use this through video email, and they can track when somebody opens when they're watching, how long they've watched it.

But the reason we exist too, is if you think about it, if you've ever tried to send a video [00:07:00] through email, through your phone, cause I've been asked this question over the years, why can't I just do this with my phone? Well, if you've tried to do that, you know, a couple of things.

Number one, that video has to be a small enough file to fit inside of that email. And number two, it's a file. It's an attachment at the bottom of an email. And if I don't know you or if I've never met you and you're sending me some type of attachment to click on and download to my computer, red flags everywhere on that. My own mother sends me attachments via email and I still get skeptical to open that at times.

And so, what we're doing is we're really putting that video right inside of the email so when the recipient opens it, they see you, they see your face, a nice smile, wave, gesture, or even, you know, recording of a screen to highlight floor plans, lot lines. We even have other builders that use our screen recorder to walk through a Matterport experience and talk people through it, which is really cool.

So, again, when it boils down to it, this is video [00:08:00] email that it's not a link or an attachment to YouTube. It's right inside of the email and they can actually track who opens it, who watches it, how long, and how many times. Does that help?

Greg Bray: Definitely. Whenever I see someone with a video clip or whatever and they have the embedded video there, for some reason that freeze frame look has the facial expression with somebody's eyes half closed and their mouth all messed up. I don't know how YouTube or whoever picks which frame they want to freeze on, but how do you get a nice smiling, happy-looking initial, I'm talking about that page before anybody's clicked on anything, right? You guys with me on what I'm asking here? Do you guys control that or is that just we need a better AI that picks which frame we're going to start with? What's up with that?

Justin Doornbos: There's two ways that we do this. Number one, our auto default, if you ever record a video within BombBomb and send it out, we actually play the first three seconds as an animated preview. [00:09:00] So, the first 3 seconds are crucial to building trust and having that recipient, getting them willing to click play.

So, for example, and I know this is a podcast. We have people that wave signs or a whiteboard that they write some of these names, and they're waving 'cause they know within the first three seconds we loop that. So, when I send you a video, it's gonna loop the first three seconds and kind of move around in your screen as a gif or gif is the technical term I guess. But I always take peanut butter when I hear that, so I always say gif.

Or we give you the ability after you've recorded your video, to then actually create your own thumbnail. So, when you're done with the recording, it gives you the ability to say, Hey, do you wanna have just a static thumbnail image, press here. You can wave, thumbs up, whatever it may be, and actually recreate that image as well too. So yeah, it doesn't auto-default. Way back in the day it did, and so it would be kind of awkward, and kind of make a weird face, that kind of stuff. But it's either the 3-second animated preview or you have [00:10:00] the ability to choose your own thumbnail image.

Greg Bray: Awesome. That's good to know because those thumbnails that I see of myself, I don't like them. I don't like them.

Justin Doornbos: I've been there. Hundreds and thousands of times.

Greg Bray: So, Justin, you mentioned the word trust just a second ago in that conversation. So, trust in this home buying process is critical. We've seen some recent research that talked about how buyers don't trust builders very well. Video seems to have a real opportunity to connect differently with people in my opinion. Have you guys done some research on that? Where does video impact that trust opportunity?

Justin Doornbos: Forgive me. I may go on 10 different tangents here. Yes, we've done a lot of research, and shameless plug I should say we've actually written two number-one best sellers too. One is Rehumanize Your Business, the other one is Human-Centered Communication. There's a lot of psychology into this as well. You know, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I can't wait to talk to a salesperson.

If you ever schedule an appointment to go [00:11:00] into a model home or anything like that, we know that there's a little bit of anxiety for that buyer to walk in and automatically meet two, maybe three sales reps and feel as if they're already going to get pounded with questions, whatever it may be. Like, Hey, I just want to look at the model. I just kind of want to walk in.

But if I can know who I'm going to be meeting with before I've actually even set foot into that model home, I'm 10 steps ahead. I've now shown these people who I am. They expect to see this face and know my attitude. And there you're building a better relationship than just sending a plain black and white text that they've feels like it came from a robot, and saying, we look forward to seeing you here later today at 123 Elm Street. The trust part is crucial there.

Kevin Weitzel: Greg started this podcast, we're coming up on four years ago now, he came to me and he said, Kevin, you've got a face for radio. So, I don't know. I thought it was a compliment. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. But when he said that, it made me think, what is your guidance for people that have a face for radio, if you know what I mean, that [00:12:00] maybe would scare people? Because I scared children with my videos. So, what would you suggest for people that maybe follow in my same bucket?

Justin Doornbos: Listen, out of the 9 years I've been doing this, I've never heard that. No, I hear it all the time. It boils down to we are our biggest critics. I get pretty blunt in this situation because I've heard it so many times. I hear, Hey, I don't like the way I look or the way I sound on video. Well, I've got a shocker for you. The way you look and sound on video is the way you look and sound in real life. You may hate to hear it, but it's so true.

And this goes back to way when I was a little kid and playing with, you know, recorders. The first time you ever heard your own voice sounds totally different. I know that I have a nasally voice and balding hair, but in my mind, I look and sound like Brad Pitt.

Kevin Weitzel: Boom.

Justin Doornbos: Yeah. Especially for this industry alone. One of the biggest things I tell people when they tell me that is, Listen, they're going to meet you [00:13:00] regardless. They're going to meet you face-to-face. You might as well give them a heads up what you look like. And nowadays, the last, say, four years, we've become more used to seeing ourselves on camera with Zoom and Microsoft Teams and being on these virtual meetings all the time that that objection is kind of diminished a little. But it's still there.

But again, they're going to meet you and the person who's receiving this video message of you does not care what you look like, does not care what you sound like. They just want to know that you care about them. And sending a personal video and showing empathy and showing your likeability, that speaks so much and means so much to a buyer that's very nervous about this transaction. Because this is a very big transaction for them. They just want to know that you care and you're there to take care of them.

Greg Bray: I love the idea. They're gonna see you anyway.

Kevin Weitzel: Anyway, you ain't hiding nothing.

Greg Bray: Let them work through the scary part first and then when they show [00:14:00] up they'll already be okay, right, so.

Justin Doornbos: Again, when we hear these objections, I always say, give it five videos and I promise you, you're going to have what we call your aha moment. I love different aha moments and people when they finally get a response to these videos. Wow. That was incredible. Nobody has ever sent me a video email like that before. That was so cool. That kind of stuff. And then it clicks to them saying, wow, this makes sense. I'm building better connections.

Kevin Weitzel: But Justin, am I giving them a spoiler because one of the things I enjoy most when I meet people is they go, wow, you were way sexier than I thought you were going to be. So, Greg, you know I was going to have fun with this one. How can I eliminate them from losing that wow factor of getting to meeting me in person and experiencing all that awesomeness rolled into one huggable body?

Justin Doornbos: Listen, speaking from experience and having dealt with the same exact thing time and time again, shocking people by how sexy I am.[00:15:00] Again, you want to show them sooner than later. You want to build a relationship with whoever you're going to be working with as a salesperson. Especially I want to build trust, and I know that if I have the chance to get face-to-face more often with more people, I have a higher chance of earning more business and closing more deals.

Greg Bray: So, Justin, beyond just that initial, hey, I know who I'm going to meet with, what other kind of trust implications or impact does this video have based on some of the things you guys have been studying and researching about it?

Justin Doornbos: Yeah, I'll put it in a couple of stories as well too. We worked with a top-five builder recently. This is a great case study. Rates have been rising, leads have been dropping. And so, for the builders that are setting appointments, they were setting a lot fewer appointments. We need to hold onto those appointments because that's, what's going to turn into sales.

So, this was a top-five builder that we actually implemented just one video. And it's [00:16:00] essentially what I did to you all earlier today. I always like to send out a video before an appointment. Right? I want to introduce myself. We took the numbers from this top five builder and we could see that there were far less fewer appointments being scheduled.

But once we implemented that video before an appointment confirmation, there were far more appointments being held. So, more appointments being held with less leads coming in and less appointments being scheduled. It was a 37% increase in just three months of implementing just a personal video.

And it doesn't have to be a personal video too, you can record on the fly and say, you know, Hey Greg, I look forward to meeting you. Or you can record one video saying, Hey, it's Justin. I'm looking forward to meeting you today. Here's what to expect. I record it once and I use it over and over and over again.

And again, that gives me the lead-up on whoever I'm about to meet, and it also helps me hold more appointments, which is great. We work with customers in 38 different countries and many different [00:17:00] verticals and industries. This is just the home builder specific and helping them with more appointments help, but I could go into 18 different use cases in the builder, and I'm sure we may get there too. So, does that help answer that?

Greg Bray: That's a fascinating statistic and it would be really interesting to kind of talk to somebody, if you could ever have the same person, like with or without the videos. What made you come with the video versus not? And my guess is just kind of thinking through it from my own perspective, is that knowing that somebody is really there expecting me and who they are, probably changes how real that appointment feels to me.

As opposed to this, well, nobody will even care if I show up or not, you know, they won't know, I'm busy. I'm not going to go. And there's something psychological there about, Hey, Justin's waiting for me, and has got this on his calendar. I gotta respect that and be there.

Justin Doornbos: Bingo. We dive into this in the book as well, too. The psychology is, it's hard to ignore a person's face. It's easy [00:18:00] to ignore plain text email. We do it every single day in our inbox. We blur our eyes. We swipe, delete. We just archive it, whatever it may be. But when I see somebody that's excited to see me, I have a hard time saying no. That's where we not only see more appointments being held, we see more responses to this as well.

In the game of sales, we know that we get ghosted all the time. So, if I'm looking to draw a response from somebody, that's where I inject video into the message. Because again, if I see somebody asking me a question or I see somebody looking forward to meeting me, it's hard for me to ignore that. And psychologically us humans are triggered to respond to humans. So, when I have a human asking me a question, it's hard for me to not respond to that.

Greg Bray: So, I know that when we talk about like social media postings and things like that, people putting video out on social media versus just a picture or whatever seems to get a greater engagement in some of those things. Have you guys measured engagement and [00:19:00] what types of impact with and without the videos? What type of numbers, if you've got some specifics that you might be able to share with us today?

Justin Doornbos: Certainly. One that comes top of mind here too. We worked with one of the big four global consulting firms. We compared their responses with traditional plain text emails along with video email in their normal day-to-day cadence and what they would do for their sequence and everything.

So, it was traditional email, and this was to cold outreach, traditional plain text email, they would get an average of 15% response rate.

Kevin Weitzel: That's actually good in today's world.

Justin Doornbos: Very. Big time. So, we took that, that's their plain text email. We injected video and the same kind of messaging, but now in video form. When we did that, it jumped from a 15% percent to 33% response rate. And if you had asked anybody in a large Fortune 100, if you had 33%, how would that impact your business? That's huge. To cold outreach, that is very, very big. So, that was a [00:20:00] great day for all of us.

The same company, traditionally, it was, 10 touches to get a response. And then when they did video, we dropped it from 10 touches to get a response down to three touches. So, less communication back and forth and you're starting more conversations. That was huge.

Greg Bray: So, Justin, is this only for salespeople? We've talked a lot about salespeople, but where else could this maybe work into that buyer journey and all these different touches?

Justin Doornbos: I'm glad you asked. There is, obviously, a number of use cases outside of builders, but we're talking builder-specific. No, it is not just for salespeople. We started with NVR Ryan Homes with their sales team and we then organically grew into their project management. And the reason being was our mobile app was helping them save so much time on site, going out and giving updates and showing. Instead of uploading a picture, going back to the office or the model and uploading the picture, sending it out as an attachment, they were able to take our mobile app out there, record it, still have the [00:21:00] video branded to their logo, everything and send it off to the customer.

That one was not only saving them time, but it was reducing onsite visits, which to anybody on site is a great deal to have less visits on site so they can get more work done. So, from sales, project management, construction, even design studio too, and showing somebody before they come in. Whether it's the design studio or showing them on their website, a couple of options that may work for them.

This goes back and forth from start to finish. Wholesale too, customer care, warranty. You know, Hey, who's going to be the person knocking on your door to fix your furnace? Well, wouldn't you like to know who that is so it's not just some stranger, right? And build a better customer experience that leads to more referrals. So, really, it's endless all over.

Greg Bray: How hard is it, Justin? It sounds great. We get better response rates. We increase trust, all this kind of stuff. But there's something I [00:22:00] have to do different in my process now, if I want to do this, and when I have to change my process and change the way I like to do things, that takes a little bit of a push sometimes. Yeah, sure. I want better response rates, but man, now I got to do this extra thing. How hard is the extra thing?

Justin Doornbos: Yeah, certainly. We know if we've ever led sales teams, it's hard to get salespeople to do other things than they're used to. Right? The nice thing about this is it's simply just pressing record. There's no uploading, downloading, having to, you know, do anything like that. This works right within their inbox or their CRM. So, typically any onsite sales consultant will work out of Outlook or say Gmail. We all love to think that they would work out of their CRM all the time, but typically, that's not the case. We all know that as well too.

One of our big core competencies is we work where you work. We need to make this fast and easy for teams to use or else they're not going to use it. So, right when I open up a brand new email message, there's a red record button right [00:23:00] there saying, Hey, would this email come across better if I were face-to-face?

We've all read emails before that we thought are they being funny here? I don't understand what they were really trying to say. Were they being serious? We're clearing communication with that tonality and the empathy in there too. But to go back to your question, how easy is this? You hit record. That's really it.

Greg Bray: I definitely have had experiences with people misunderstanding the tone I intended in an email or me not understanding their tone.

Justin Doornbos: I think everybody who's listening to this has gone through that experience before. Certainly.

Kevin Weitzel: But Greg, you got to understand that when you are saying that somebody's misunderstanding your tone when the email reads, Pack your bags. You're fired. There's no way for them to take that other than you're angry or disappointed.

Greg Bray: I'm not angry. I just want them to leave right?

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, okay. Alright.

Greg Bray: Don't be angry. There's nothing to be angry about. I don't do that, Kevin. Come on.

Kevin Weitzel: I know.

Greg Bray: [00:24:00] Come on. Come on. You mentioned at one point reusing a prerecorded video that's a little more generic. What are some ways that you could leverage the power of the video, but not have to record every single one?

Justin Doornbos: Yeah. Two key ways that I would do for builders, I wish I could show the simplicity of this. These pre-recorded messages you can load into your email with a click of a button. So, the two key ways that I'll start off any builder on is a predeployment confirmation, introduction where the onsite rep introduces themselves before they come into the model home.

Or number two, host. Whether it's a walk-in or whether it's an appointment to always have a video that says, Hey, it's Justin. Thank you so much for visiting today. Wolf Ranch is a great community. We hope to help you with your new home search. Here's a couple of extras that you may not know, or we may not have covered about the community.

Those two videos, one, again, it helps increase that appointment rate. The second one, after the [00:25:00] appointment or walk-in, it helps drive them back into that model home. It helps create a lasting impression. They can walk out of your model home and walk five steps down the road in some communities and walk into a competitor's home.

What is that competitor sending after they visited? Probably a plain black and white text that they pre-recorded or it's an automated thing in their CRM that just feels like a robot sent it. But if I have a personal touch on that, I leave a better impression on these prospects and starting a better relationship as well. Pre-appointment and post-appointment would be the two easiest pre-recorded videos you could possibly do to start.

Greg Bray: All right, on post-appointment, I have to ask, wardrobe issues, right? I recorded this thing previously. I'm not wearing the same thing I'm wearing when they just left, right? And they get this, they go, wait a minute. He had a blue shirt on before. What's he doing with that? Any issues there or am I just overthinking it?

Justin Doornbos: I've actually never heard that, but it's a [00:26:00] good point too. And this is where I always dial it back to say like, don't overthink this. You're good face-to-face, we're just helping you get there faster, build trust and rapport, all that kind of stuff. But if I had a different outfit on than it was, great. They know that, hey, this was pre-recorded, but they're still more impressed that you sent a video-embedded email.

They don't know that it took you 2.5 seconds to do this. They're more impressed with the fact of the customer experience saying, hey, this isn't just some black and white text automated that the salesperson didn't even write. This was a personal message and a personal recording from that rep. And guess who I'm thinking of when it comes time to think more about a brand-new home. I'm thinking of somebody when I have that human connection as opposed to a black-and-white screen.

Greg Bray: All right. Well, Justin, thank you so much for sharing with us today. Any last thoughts or words of advice that you'd like to share with our audience before we finish up?

Justin Doornbos: Like I said earlier, don't overthink it. Right. But the best question I can ever say to somebody is, would you close more business if you could get [00:27:00] face-to-face more often with more people? The answer is always yes. Right. We're simply just helping you get there faster, and that's really it. And if you do ever want to try this, you can try this with no credit card required. You go to our website, bombbomb.com. You can download a two-week trial and you can try it for yourself. That's what I would leave you on right there.

Greg Bray: Well, Justin, if somebody wants to connect with you and learn more other than that, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Justin Doornbos: Yep. It's JustinD as in David at bombbomb.com. Feel free. I'll shoot you a quick little video to introduce myself I'm sure. I've shot now over 15,000 videos in my time. It comes pretty second nature to me.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, thanks again for sharing with us, and thanks everybody for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.