J. Michael Drake, chairman and CEO of masterIT (ranked No. 6 on our MSPmentor 100), isn’t resting on his laurels. While some managed service providers struggle to understand marketing and PR, Drake is pushing ahead with video marketing, and leveraging online video to generate sales leads. The results are impressive.

First, check out masterIT’s marketing video:

Now, learn how masterIT used the video to generate sales leads.

masterIT connected the video to an email marketing campaign. This email video campaign had a 31% open rate and a 22% click through rate — far stronger results than a typical email campaign. Drake used Emma (“a way cool email marketing firm based in Nashville,” he says) to manage the campaign. The database for the campaign involved 2,400 c-level execs (CEO, CFO, COO) in 700 firms he targeted in the Memphis, Tenn., area.

Drake is now working on future video campaigns and thinks masterT can drive the results even higher. “The subject line of a video email is so critical in terms of improving the open rate,” he says. “I think video marketing is huge step in the right direction for MSPs.”

In terms of funding the videos, Drake says IT vendors paid for the video production. But even if you can’t find partners to fund the effort, Drake adds, it’s fine to produce video content that isn’t quite as polished. “People will listen to you for 2 minutes if you have something compelling to say.”

Agreed. I just got off the phone with Drake and will share some more marketing and business thoughts from him next week.