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Established five years ago, Younium has rapidly grown its presence in the Nordic and Benelux markets. The company has a software solution that helps SaaS companies manage and capture key performance metrics surrounding subscription revenue. It is now ready to stretch its wings and expand into new markets. But breaking into a foreign market and finding the very best talent to grow when your brand is unknown can be hard.
That’s where video comes in.
In just five years, Younium has landed hundreds of customers and doubled in size. Now it has its eye on new markets in Europe and North America. But starting in a new market with an unfamiliar brand can feel like going back to square one. No warm referrals. No momentum to speak of. For Klara Ahlgren, an account executive with Younium’s business development team, prospecting in a new territory means using the dreaded cold email or call.
Explains Klara, “We have built up a great presence in the Nordic market but have a goal to expand. We want to establish a footprint in the UK as a first step. But with no traction in the UK market, it’s a challenge to get those first prospects to pay attention to you.”
Like many startups seeking to grow and market at scale, Younium relied on generic email campaigns and sequences to attract prospective customers. The tactic was failing miserably.
“After running these generic campaigns for a while, we pulled the brakes,” says Klara. “It wasn’t working at all. That’s when we said to ourselves, ‘why not try video to help us cut through the noise?”
Inspired by her colleagues in sales, Jacqueline Mostrom was also looking to video as a way to make an impact. As Younium’s sole HR professional responsible for talent recruitment, Jacqueline was also finding it hard to get prospective candidates to pay attention.
“It is a candidate’s market right now. There are so many great companies out there, and we’re all trying to compete for the same people,” says Jacqueline. “We use ads to attract applicants, but you still look like everyone else out there.”
She elaborates, “I do most of my talent prospecting using LinkedIn, and again, we needed to find a way to stand out—especially for those professionals in high demand, for instance, those in sales, customer service, and developer roles.
Enterprise video hosting and sharing solution that’s built to meet your needs. Learn More Initially, Klara and the Younium sales team experimented with video using a small fellow Swedish company. “We knew the founder, so it made sense to us to have our first meeting with them. But the solution was just too complex. The company wanted to sell us consulting services. We were eager to get started, and so our answer was a firm ‘No.’”
The next logical choice was Vidyard. “When it comes to video for sales, Vidyard is the biggest and most well-known. So we began experimenting with the company’s free tool and then reached out and booked a meeting.”
Klara instantly felt at home using video for prospecting. “I am not the best email writer, but I have a big personality, and I wanted it to shine through in my outreach efforts. The first email I sent said in the subject line, ‘Good morning from a super freezing Stockholm.’ I put that generic video into my sequence to see if it might work. I got a lot of clicks but no replies. That quickly told me that even when using video, a one-to-many approach in the prospecting phase wasn’t always going to work. It needed to be personalized to be truly effective.”
Klara’s new workflow has her gathering information about her target prospect using LinkedIn, then using those nuggets to send a personal video via LinkedIn messenger, prefaced by a short note of introduction. In her video, she typically uses a screen share video so the prospect can see she’s on their LinkedIn profile or website’s pricing page. Then she uses the information she finds to address common pain points answered by Younium.
She and her sales colleagues have a dedicated Vidyard Slack channel where they share their video successes and learn from their failures.
Says Klara, “It’s really nice to learn from others, and with the team dashboard, you can feel the competition a bit, which is always a motivator. I love being always near the top of the ranking for my use of video.”
Hear from Klara and why she can’t live without Vidyard as a sales tool.
Over in HR, Jacqueline uses video to differentiate her approach from other talent recruiters in a noisy market.
“Video allows me to take that extra step and make a more personal impression on a candidate, which can make a huge difference in getting people to respond and book meetings.”
Jacqueline shares how using video for recruitment helped land the right customer success manager.
Klara has found her sales groove with video. She estimates she’s sent over 200 videos to prospects to date.
“When I have a bad day at work, I jump into Vidyard and start sending out personal videos. I can easily do 5-10 personal videos a day,” she says. “Honestly, I can’t imagine living without this tool. I wouldn’t know what to do if it was taken away from me.”
Thanks to her use of personalized video, Klara is now getting traction in the UK, and her sales funnel is filling with prospects. She also shares the story of her colleague, Younium’s commercial director Sam Jonsson, who was able to shorten the sales cycle on one of his recent deals by 50% just by using video to move the prospects along the buying cycle.
Jacqueline is convinced video is her secret recruitment weapon. She shares a recent story to illustrate its effectiveness.
“We had an open role for a customer success manager. We attracted several applicants, but few were what I would consider qualified candidates. It was frustrating. After hearing good things about personal video from Klara and others in sales, I had to give it a try.”
Jacqueline researched profiles on Linkedin using the platform’s Recruiter Premium version to build a list of 28 ‘dream’ candidates. She then sent each individual a personal video via LinkedIn messenger to introduce herself and Younium. The results were impressive. 61% responded to her video, and 35% of those candidates booked a meeting with her to learn more. Another 33% of the people who booked meetings went on to second and third interviews. And Jacqueline found her perfect hire.
As part of her hiring process, Jacqueline now asks candidates for sales and business development roles to create a two-minute video sales pitch using Vidyard.
“People really enjoy this assignment,” she notes. “They find it very creative.”
Younium was founded to solve a problem faced by many subscription model companies: too often, there are missed opportunities for increased monthly recurring margins, improved customer relationships and retention, and timely and accurate reporting for subscription data insights. The company’s robust cloud app helps customers handle complex subscriptions and manage the financials behind them, allowing them to improve teamwork and collaboration, capture accurate data on subscription revenue, improve efficiency, and problem-solve in real-time.
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