BookLife by Publishers Weekly helps authors navigate the world of independent publishing. With Vocal Video, the team has unlocked a powerful new way to show how their products make a real difference — and found unexpected use cases along the way. As COO Carl Pritzkat puts it: "Vocal Video has revolutionized our ability to contact our customers and get them to provide us great testimonials."
Read on to learn how BookLife went from zero video testimonials to dozens - and energized marketing initiatives with Vocal Video.
The Challenge: Video Testimonials Were Simply Out of Reach
Before Vocal Video, BookLife had never managed to capture a single video testimonial. The logistics were just too cumbersome.
"Before Vocal Video, we never managed to record these testimonial videos,"
Carl explains. "It was too difficult to set up a Zoom or set up a FaceTime with these people and then record it and then go through it."
The team knew that customer stories could be a powerful marketing asset, but without a streamlined way to collect them, video testimonials remained an untapped opportunity.
The Use Case: A Simple Link for Video Capture
BookLife now uses Vocal Video to collect testimonials from customers across their various products. The simplicity of the tool was a game-changer — for the BookLife team and for the customers recording videos alike.
"Vocal Video is a tool — a link that you can send to people, even people who aren't particularly technically proficient — that allows them to easily record a video on their computer or their phone, which gets automatically sent to you," Carl says.
"It's a very simple, bulletproof, but high-quality tool for collecting videos."
And the team isn't stopping at traditional testimonials. They're already exploring creative new applications, including using Vocal Video for journalism — replacing static email questionnaires with dynamic video responses.
"We're talking about using it for journalism, for instance, sending it out to people instead of just sending them an email questionnaire. They actually respond to our questions on video, and we can then transcribe it and use it in a traditional article. But we can also use it in a video of the article, or in promotions for the article."
The impact has been felt across BookLife's entire marketing operation. The team now repurposes their video testimonials across multiple channels, getting far more mileage out of every customer story.
"Our return on investment with these videos is really through our marketing efforts," Carl shares. "It's completely energized and revolutionized our marketing and has allowed us to demonstrate to the world how great our products are because of these testimonial videos that we're able to provide. We cut them up and do all sorts of things with them so we can promote them on social media and beyond."
And the results speak for themselves: "We've seen the results through the improved performance of the different products we have because of the improved marketing we're able to do."
The Verdict
Carl's recommendation is unequivocal: "I absolutely recommend Vocal Video for anybody who wants a very simple tool for collecting video from customers, from clients — really from anyone. I think anybody who wants a very simple way of getting videos from people will be very pleased with what they get out of Vocal Video."
Ready to start easily collecting, editing, and publishing customer testimonial videos and video reviews? Get your free Vocal Video account.