AI Avatars is a Game Changer for BDRs, SDRs, and AEs

At Vidyard, we like to “drink our own champagne.” Because we’re a company specializing in video messaging for salespeople, we know the highest-performing sellers use video—so we do too.

For years, Vidyard’s sales team has recorded and sent video messages to prospects and customers with overwhelmingly positive results—notably 5x more replies and 4x more meetings booked. Those successes showed us exactly how teams can best use video. We’ve passed on those learnings to customers so that they can drive impact for their business as well.

With the release of AI Avatars, our own sales team is customer number one. They can create their Avatars with a 90-second training video, then use those Avatars to generate personalized videos in bulk for their outreach.

And just like in the early days of using video messaging, our salespeople are seeing great results from using AI-powered videos across the entire customer journey.

We spent time with members of our sales team, including business development representatives (BDRs), sales development representatives (SDRs), and account executives (AEs). We captured their first-hand experiences with AI Avatars, as well as recommendations they have for people who share their role and are looking for the same growth in outcomes.

Here are some highlights:

• Video continues to be the most highly effective form of outreach, with AI-generated videos proving to be better at getting replies and bookings.
• With AI Avatars, the reps can create more personalized videos than ever—with one BDR generating 300 personalized outreach videos in two days.
• Using AI Avatars to generate videos frees up reps’ time to focus on other higher-value activities, like deal progression, multi-threading the account, and staying organized.
• By leveraging our own product, our sellers can deliver consistent and buyer-centric outreach. The use cases that are working well for one rep can effortlessly be replicated across the entire team.

Watch the video below to get the highlights, or keep scrolling to read the full story for each sales role.

AI Avatars for BDRs

The Battle for Prospect Attention and Response

As business development representatives (BDRs), Nely and Sarah grapple with the challenges of low email response rates and a high demand for personalized outreach.

Because personalized video messages get up to 5x more replies from prospects, they’re a great way to solve for both of those issues. However, finding time to record individual personalized videos put a strain on the BDRs’ already packed workflows.

“I believe the most videos I recorded in a day at one point was 48,” Sarah says. “That was me working from 9 to 5 with maybe a 30-minute lunch break, making those videos and sending out those emails and not focusing on anything else.”

Huge Time Savings with the Help of AI Avatars

That’s where AI Avatars comes in. It enabled Nely and Sarah to train an AI Avatar that looks and sounds just like them in just 90 seconds. Using that Avatar, they can now generate hundreds of personalized videos with just a written script. Record once, create many.

It’s transformed their daily workflows. “I haven’t recorded a custom video in a couple of months now,” Nely says. Back when she was creating videos manually, “I needed to look good every day I recorded, to make sure my hair and makeup looked good. Having that gone, it’s so much easier to make videos.”

Sarah also experienced a significant reduction in the time and effort she spends creating videos. “Once AI Avatars and bulk video generation were introduced, making the AI Avatars videos for the accounts I’m reaching out to would be max 60 minutes, usually less than that. I can shorten down my entire day to under four hours, freeing up my time for high-value activities.”

Personalized Outreach Made Easy

AI Avatars allows both BDRs to send personalized outreach at scale. For example, as part of Vidyard’s preparation for HubSpot’s 2024 INBOUND conference, Nely sent video outreach to attendees, inviting them to visit the Vidyard booth on the show floor.

“I had 300 people I reached out to within two days,” Nely says. “I usually do 100 a week, so 300 for two days is a lot.”

Because INBOUND is a major industry event and Vidyard had made substantial investments into the company’s presence there, executing this outreach the right way was particularly critical.

The ability to generate videos with AI was a game-changer. Better yet, those videos could be fully personalized for each recipient—creating an authentic, humanized interaction that greatly increased the chances of a visit to the booth.

“AI Avatars made it very, very easy,” Nely says. ”If I had been manually recording those videos, I wouldn’t have been able to personalize it. It would’ve been one video sent to everyone where I don’t say anyone’s name or company name. It usually doesn’t work as well.”

Sarah agrees. “We want to ensure all the outreach that we send is personalized,” she says. “AI Avatars is definitely beneficial in that scenario.”

She adds that AI Avatars gives her more time to focus on crafting quality outreach. “I’ve seen an increase in my productivity and my ability to actually craft quality personalized outreach to prospects,” she says.

“Before, I was just worried about meeting a quota of a number of videos recorded. I wasn’t able to really personalize emails or put much thought into the actual video scripts that I was sending. The majority of my day would be me recording those videos, and then I’d have to allot a small amount of time (if I had it) to personalizing the emails. However, now I generate a bunch of videos in the morning, and then the entire afternoon I’m able to spend personalizing those emails.”

In short, Nely and the other BDRs can spend more of their time and effort on building relationships with their prospects.

Both BDRs have also improved their core KPIs, such as engagement, with the help of AI video. “I’m definitely seeing more video views, and I’ve gotten an increase in replies,” Sarah says.

Nely has dealt with prospects who didn’t realize the videos she was sending to them were AI-generated. “He said that he didn’t know it was an Avatar; he thought it was real. Essentially, people don’t notice.”

Sarah echoed similar experiences, saying, “I’ve definitely seen a lot of positive sentiment whether or not they immediately realize the videos are AI-generated.”

Nely and Sarah’s Suggestions for Other BDRs

Based on their experiences with AI-generated video, Nely and Sarah recommend it to other sellers who are looking to streamline their at-scale outreach.

BDRs can use AI Avatars to generate personalized outreach videos in bulk from a single script. They can use customizable in-script keywords to replace specific details within each video, such as prospect’s name, interests, or company info. While the rep is only doing the work of generating one video, they can create personalized videos for lists of prospects that are hundreds of names long.

Nely advises having different video plays depending on the specific contact. “For my customers, if I’m reaching out to tell them that their renewal is coming up, I generate that video with AI, “Nely says. “So having bulk video generation really helps with those 70 to 100 emails I need to send per week to my accounts. That really makes that easier.”

But if she’s following up on an established prospect relationship, “I would probably want to personalize their email and give them something more specific.”

While AI video can be uncharted territory for a lot of sales teams, Nely and Sarah say that comfort comes with time. Nely, for one, came to trust AI-generated videos almost immediately. “I rarely watch my Avatar videos back to check them before I send them,” she says. “I trust the process. I think that’s the hardest part for us—to let go a little bit.”

Sarah is of the same opinion. “Seeing the value of the tool firsthand and actually opening myself to that experience, my job has gotten so much easier. It’s not only the quality and the productivity of your work, but it’s also the peace of mind that it brings you.”

With AI Avatars, Nely and Sarah can quickly incorporate the highest-performing tactics into their own outreach. It’s been a master key for driving prospect engagement, workday efficiency, and the kinds of results their leadership is looking for.

Generate Videos with Your AI Avatar Create your own true-to-you AI avatar, then generate full videos with just an AI prompt. Learn More

AI Avatars for SDRs

Finite Energy and Time = Finite Video Outreach

For Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) Alex, Anna, and Cassia, the issues of standing out in their outreach and maximizing the efficiency of their workday are of paramount importance.

Personalized video messages have been a long-standing solution for these issues. When the SDRs send video as part of their outreach, they book up to 4x more calls with prospects. But like the BDR team, the SDRs have incredibly busy workdays, and finding the time to record videos can be a challenge.

Anna always wants to put her best face forward on camera. “When I make videos, they have to be perfect,” she says. “So I had to redo them and redo them until it’s perfect.”

And when she adds the other aspects of her day-to-day work to her schedule, it can be a challenge to ensure both perfection and productivity. “After back-to-back meetings, I get drained,” Anna says. “So if I have to do those meetings and also make 50 videos a day, it’s tough.”

At-Scale Personalization…

With AI Avatars on their side, Alex, Anna, and Cassia can maintain that personal touch in their outreach without overburdening their calendars.

After recording a quick video to train the AI model, the SDRs could start generating full videos that mirror their likenesses. All it takes is a written script and a few steps within the AI Avatars tool. The SDRs can generate countless videos from the same script, customizing specific keywords within that static script to personalize individual videos for individual customers.

For Cassia, standing out from the competition is key, and including videos in her outreach is a powerful way to do so. “Even if they don’t click the video in the email, they’re like, oh this girl actually tried a little bit harder. She sent me a video. I know what she looks like,” Cassia says. This small but noticed effort helps her build rapport with potential leads.

Alex agrees. His background in retail sales has made him acutely aware of the importance of personal connection in his outreach. Despite using AI-generated videos, he believes that the human element remains intact. “Even if it’s an AI-generated video, it’s an actual human person actually reaching out,” he says.

And AI-generated videos offer the flexibility to create videos regardless of where you are or what you look like. “Whether you’re in bed sick or at a conference, you can literally send videos off as if you’re at the office,” Alex says.

…in a Fraction of the Time

But it’s more about maintaining that crucial personal touch. AI Avatars also saves Alex, Anna, and Cassia valuable time and effort.

“I love that I can just pump out 20 personalized videos,” Cassia adds. “I just put in a name, generate the video, and I’m ready for the next meeting.”

And generating all those videos only takes her a few minutes. “It’s just a huge time saver, a huge energy saver,” she says. The extra time gives her the chance to follow up with leads, take more detailed notes after meetings, and stay more organized.

Like Cassia, Alex has leaned more heavily on AI videos, creating a mix of manual and AI-generated content. He finds the technology particularly useful for bulk outreach. “If we have a huge list of over a hundred leads to reach out to, the bulk personalization makes the most sense to utilize to be more efficient,” he says. “I created 30 videos yesterday in less than three minutes. It’s giving us back so much time in our day so we can focus on other things, or maybe reach out to more leads.”

Anna also highlights how AI Avatars help her adapt more quickly to changes. “If we get a list of new leads from a different campaign, I would have to wrap my brain around what this is, and what I’m going to say in my outreach,” she says. “But now, I can use a template, generate the video, and move on to the next.” The AI Avatar tool allows her to stay nimble and efficient, significantly speeding up her outreach process.

Since she started using AI Avatars, Cassia no longer feels the need to manually create videos. “I haven’t made a manual video since I started using AI Avatars,” she says. “I love the product. It looks exactly like me. It sounds exactly like me. I don’t even check my AI-generated videos before I send them.”

Anna, Alex, and Cassia’s Suggestions for Other SDRs

But it’s more about maintaining that crucial personal touch. AI Avatars also saves Alex, Anna, and Cassia valuable time and effort.

“I love that I can just pump out 20 personalized videos,” Cassia adds. “I just put in a name, generate the video, and I’m ready for the next meeting.”

And generating all those videos only takes her a few minutes. “It’s just a huge time saver, a huge energy saver,” she says. The extra time gives her the chance to follow up with leads, take more detailed notes after meetings, and stay more organized.

Like Cassia, Alex has leaned more heavily on AI videos, creating a mix of manual and AI-generated content. He finds the technology particularly useful for bulk outreach. “If we have a huge list of over a hundred leads to reach out to, the bulk personalization makes the most sense to utilize to be more efficient,” he says. “I created 30 videos yesterday in less than three minutes. It’s giving us back so much time in our day so we can focus on other things, or maybe reach out to more leads.”

Anna also highlights how AI Avatars help her adapt more quickly to changes. “If we get a list of new leads from a different campaign, I would have to wrap my brain around what this is, and what I’m going to say in my outreach,” she says. “But now, I can use a template, generate the video, and move on to the next.” The AI Avatar tool allows her to stay nimble and efficient, significantly speeding up her outreach process.

Since she started using AI Avatars, Cassia no longer feels the need to manually create videos. “I haven’t made a manual video since I started using AI Avatars,” she says. “I love the product. It looks exactly like me. It sounds exactly like me. I don’t even check my AI-generated videos before I send them.”

Generate Videos with Your AI Avatar Create your own true-to-you AI avatar, then generate full videos with just an AI prompt. Learn More

AI Avatars for AEs

More Engagement Throughout the Sales Cycle

For Account Executives (AEs) Jeremy, Mason, and Mike, personalized video has long been a cornerstone for their outreach process. They would manually record videos for their accounts as a quick introduction, or to relay key details from a meeting or document.

“Even if they don’t watch the video, the fact that it looks like you’ve made a video for them…we’ve humanized the sales process in that regard alone,” Jeremy says.

And a humanized sales process is a successful sales process. For an AE, building an authentic relationship with accounts is a key stepping stone in achieving the kind of engagement that drives those big-ticket sales.

But creating those humanized videos at scale without exhausting the team’s resources was a sticking point. Each account, even a small-ticket one, demands and deserves the sort of buyer-seller relationship that video can provide—but an already-busy AE can have trouble finding the time to record.

Quick, Efficient Video Generation That Gets Results

This is where AI Avatars came into play. It’s allowed the three AEs to generate personalized videos without the need to appear on camera every time.

After having initially trained their Avatars by recording a quick video, they can now generate remarkably realistic videos from a written script instead of having to go through the full recording process every time.

“AI video in initial outreach is great for casting that wide net,” Jeremy says. And because AI is so efficient at generating those videos, that net is wide indeed.

Sending AI-generated videos has also slashed Mike’s no-show rate. “I rarely have someone ghost me before a call,” he says. “Sending an AI video goes a long way to make sure they show up, and that we have a good conversation.”

Overall, AI has been a huge boost to the ever-busy AEs’ video creation efficiency. “This week alone, I made 65 videos,” Mason says. “They were all ready within less than 10 minutes, which was absolutely mind-blowing.”

Mike agrees. “I save time and save energy, definitely,” Mike says. “I can get my meeting confirmation videos for each day out in five minutes.”

The full team has massively increased the number of videos they’re making. One AE generated 700 videos in a single week—a level of scale that was previously unimaginable.

“At the click of a button, you can get a hundred videos,” Jeremy says.

It’s immensely helpful for their outreach. “I have more time to spend on personalizing the email,” Mason says. “So I can think about how I’m going to make this email more appealing overall, because I know I don’t have to spend as much time on that video.”

True Conversation Personalization at Scale

While AI Avatars facilitates video creation, it doesn’t compromise on personalization. The three AEs can add key details about their accounts to their videos, ensuring they retain that personal touch.

“I can continually have that personalized approach and be able to add the buyer’s name or the company’s name to that pre-meeting video,” Mason says.

Mike agrees. “I can take some notes from my SDR team, or I can just share something that we chatted about before the call,” he says. “I find that resonates a lot better, and I can do that really quickly with my AI Avatar.”

And AI Avatars doesn’t just save time for the team—it also drives better results for their core KPIs.

“I definitely think that those replies that I’ve been getting have increased,” Mason says. “Overall, it’s allowed me to make more of those generic outreach approaches a lot more personalized, which as we all know, helps to drive better engagement from those prospects.”

Surmounting the AI Learning Curve

Jeremy, Mason, and Mike found it relatively easy to conquer initial hangups about using AI to create their videos. “Once you see what it actually looks like and what it sounds like, it’s pretty easy to get over that hump and then start firing these videos out,” Mike says.

Mason agrees. “There was definitely a bit of a learning curve, but more about building the trust that I had with the tool,” he says. “I can go generate a quick video, and I have full confidence that the video quality is going to be to what I expect of myself in a video. I don’t even have to go and preview the video before I send it out, because I know that it’s going to be good.”

Jeremy, Mason, and Mike’s Suggestions for Other AEs

Relationship building is especially important to AEs. With AI, AEs can generate personalized videos featuring their face and voice—creating a critical touchpoint of authenticity right out of the gate.

An AE can use their AI Avatar to create a full video from just a script. And that single script can be endlessly personalized using custom keywords. You can substitute individual accounts’ names, business details, or pain points, creating a unique video every time.

Whether you’re sending a video as initial outreach, a meeting follow-up, or a late-stage touch meant to drive action, you can use your Avatar to make sure that communication is both personable and personalized every time.

Jeremy, Mason, and Mike stress that the quality of the videos the AI can generate is dependent on the training video you provide to the algorithm.

“The higher the input quality is, the higher the output quality will be,” Mason says. So make sure you’re getting your camera setup, lighting, and audio down pat so the algorithm can create an Avatar that looks and sounds the best it can be.

Carefully curating the scripts you feed into the AI is also important. “You’re not writing out emails in these videos,” Mike says. “It’s translating how you would actually speak into a video. Make sure that you’re giving your Avatar pieces of your personality in the script.”

Furthermore, the AEs advise that AI-generated video isn’t meant to replace manually-recorded videos—just to streamline and augment the video process. “It’s meant to supplement them and help your sales reps save time and energy, so that they have the energy they need for phone calls, discovery calls, demo calls, following up, and all the other things that salespeople do,” Mike says.

Mason agrees. “AI videos aren’t going to replace every instance of video within a sales conversation,” he says. “It’s fantastic, and it’s really built well for the use case…but there’s still going to be those times, particularly throughout the sales cycle, where you’re going to want to have more of those customized videos that you would make manually, like going over proposal overviews or through documents, where it’s very important to go through a ton of different stuff that’s highly customized to those individuals.”

For those conversations, manually recorded video is the most effective approach. AI-generated video is the grease that helps build new relationships and move them forward toward those crucial hands-on points.

For Jeremy, Mason, and Mike, AI Avatars has created an environment where every member of the AE team can be a top performer. When it becomes clear that a tactic or message is getting more eyeballs, each rep can immediately roll it into their outreach process, spreading the success out across the entire team. It’s led to big results across the AE team that support the business’s larger goals.

Generate Videos with Your AI Avatar Create your own true-to-you AI avatar, then generate full videos with just an AI prompt. Learn More