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Video has become the hottest digital marketing trend. When done well, it’s engaging, entertaining, and gets the point across quicker than any other medium. On the other hand, email marketing has been around since the mid 70’s and is a tried and true way of effectively communicating with customers.
So you’re probably wondering whether or not to include video in your next email campaign. Read on to find out why you definitely should, and discover some of the best ways to include video in your email campaigns. These are the topics we explore:
Why use video in email marketing?
Getting started with your email campaign
Plan your campaign
Create awesome videos
Test your video
Video email marketing best practices
Embedding video in HTML
Videos as GIFs
Static image with play icon
The do’s and don’ts of video content marketing
1. Why use video in email marketing?
Anyone in any industry can give video email marketing a go. Whether you’re a real estate agent or a small business owner, video can be used to increase open rates, click-throughs and conversions.
The world’s best marketers are using video more and more, with 78% planning on increasing their use of YouTube and video content. Including video content in your email marketing campaign can increase your open rate by 19%, increase click-throughs by 65% and reduce unsubscribes by 26%.
One study found 11.4% of leads who engage with a video make a purchase. And the longer a viewer watches a video, the more likely they are to convert. As you know, most leads don’t convert. However, including a video in email to re-engage old leads that didn’t convert could lead to a further 0.29% conversion rate, and 6.5% of those that watched the entire video converted.
If those statistics were convincing enough, read on for our top tips on how to get started with your own video marketing email.
2. Getting started with your email campaign
Plan your campaign
The first step to creating an awesome video marketing email is to properly think out your campaign strategy. What is the purpose of your email? Is it to showcase a product or promote a sale? It could be a monthly newsletter or a friendly reminder to take an action.
Whatever it is, make sure that it will appeal to your audience. You don’t want to end up landing in spam! Once you’ve identified your target audience, do thorough research and check out what competitors are sending. Make a video email marketing budget and stick to it.
A great way to add videos to your everyday emails is to include a link to your video in your email signature. That way, every time an employee sends an email, a link to your video is shown to existing, and new customers. This could result in thousands of additional video views per month.
Create awesome videos
Once you’ve planned out your strategy, start thinking about what kinds of videos you could include in your email. For example, if you were creating a promotional sale video, you could include an animated image or even an email banner that includes the discount code or percentage off, like this Domino’s ad:
A great place to start if you’re new to email or video marketing is a company video or product explainer. Even if you don’t think your product is super exciting, there’s always a story to be told, even if it’s about you or your employees!
See for example this company video template:
Use this template
Or this product tutorial template:
Use this template
The Clipchamp video editor is the easiest way to create videos for your email strategy. You don’t need any experience or technical knowledge, it’s super easy, and free! The Clipchamp editor is perfect for when you don’t want to actually film your own footage as it comes with professionally made stock footage for you to use in your video.
Test your video
Show your video to select audience, like your family or friends, to make sure that the message you are trying to convey is getting across. One easy way of sharing your videos is the share feature in Clipchamp. Once you connect your Google Drive you can easily share via Facebook, WeChat, email and more, or directly copy the share url and send to your friends.
3. Video email marketing best practices
Embedding video in HTML
If you’re coding your email in HTML5, one common misconception about video in emails is that it simply plays from right inside the email. This is not always the case. Not all email clients can play embedded video. In fact, most email clients default back to a static image. Here’s a helpful table of which email clients play embedded videos (image from Chainlink Marketing):
The two most common ways of inserting video in emails that we will cover below are:
GIFs
Hyperlinked images
Videos as GIFs
The best way to display short videos is with GIFs. Usually clips under 10 seconds work best in order to keep the frame rate high, making the GIF more smooth. It’s also a good idea to compress your GIF into a smaller file size so it takes less time to load when the email is opened.
One thing to note about GIFs is that some email services don’t support them. Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013 won’t show the animation. Instead, they will show the first frame. To overcome this, you should include vital information – a CTA, offer, or headline in the first frame of the GIF.
Here’s an example of how you can add a GIF to your email to highlight a new product feature. The GIF animation demonstrates the feature in just a few seconds and get’s the point across quickly.
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Static image with play icon**
This concept is great as all email clients should be able to show images. However, there still three reasons why recipients may not see images in your emails. Either their email client is blocking externally hosted images, their email client doesn’t support background images, or a firewall is blocking access to our image servers.
Campaign Monitor has a few tips and tricks to overcome image blocking, such as including web links and alt text.
Asside from that, images are still a great way to display video without actually embedding the video. How do you do this? Create an awesome thumbnail of your video and add a play icon to the centre. Hyperlink the image to where your video is hosted, e.g. Vimeo or YouTube. It looks like a video, but really it’s just an image hyperlinked to your video. Boom.
There’s no need for technical tools like Photoshop. Use tools like Fotor for easy graphics design – no experience required.
Here’s an example of an image with a play symbol – linked to a YouTube tutorial:
4. The do’s and don’ts of video content marketing
DO play around with the subject line
Want to increase your open rates? Try using the word ‘Video’ in your subject line. According to HighQ’s report, adding [VIDEO] to your subject line can dramatically increase your email open rates by 19%. Using tools like FindEmails can help you find verified email addresses in seconds and save you from terrible bounce rates. Not only that, they reported a 65% increase in click through rates and a 26% reduction in unsubscriber rates. Why? Because people want video!
DON’T have large file sizes
The bigger the file, the longer it will take to load. Your readers won’t wait much longer than 3 seconds to view your email in full. Try using Clipchamp’s Utilities to compress your video into smaller file sizes, without losing any of the visual quality.
DO try adding a video to your email signature
This is a super cute way of adding a personal touch to your emails. Within your email signature settings there is an option to add an image. Insert your GIF here and it automatically plays! But remember that some email servers don’t play GIF’s, so make sure that your first frame is the one you want everyone to see.
Normally, people use this to add their company logo. Why not try adding an animated version of your logo, or a cute waving animal like this one:
So now that you know how to use video in your next email marketing campaign, take a look at our other articles on how to create awesome video content. You’ll need to know how to add text to a video, how to add music, and how to split video quickly and easily.
Happy editing!
