Serasi

Video holds a strong attraction for consumers and if properly adopted in email marketing has the potential to make your business one of the most talked-about and profitable on the web, simply through embracing people’s desires to share and be entertained. For proof that consumers want to watch entertaining marketing videos, you need only take a look at the array of advertisements, viral videos, how-to guides and other video shorts hosted on sites such as YouTube.

The question is: how to spread the word? Starting with your own consumers in an email marketing campaign is the most logical step because:

Two common ways of including video in email are to either embed the video within the body of the message using code or to attach it as a separate file that recipients can download and open at their convenience.

So why aren’t more companies using video and email marketing?

The thought of an email marketing campaign with video that displays and plays the moment it’s opened is a tantalising one. That’s because, to be frank, copy and images alone don’t jump off the screen in the same way video with its visual, audio and textual elements combined does. Some companies have even reported increases in ‘click-through’ rates (leading to more sales conversions) of up to 50% after adopting an ‘email and video’ approach.

However, the reality is most emails with video embedded or sent as file attachments won’t display in email clients and desktop applications. This is usually for one of several reasons:

…and these are just the technical hurdles your email faces; consider for a moment how your audience might react.

Some will be pleased with the video, others will hate it, either because they can’t open the email for the technical reasons stated above or because it upsets the consistency of your previous email marketing campaigns (especially if you don’t indicate the presence of a video in the subject line or in prior emails). If these upsets occur too frequently, subscribers will get fed-up and either unsubscribe or stop opening your messages.

Does this mean video in email marketing is off-limits?

Not entirely: the embedded and attached video tactics mentioned above are just two out of a possible three. What we haven’t mentioned is linking to videos hosted on your site - a safer option that allows your subscribers to view the video at another location without unexpectedly crashing their computers.

By sending an email with a link to the video, they can decide whether to follow the link or not, depending on if they think it is relevant to them and if their connection speed can support it (you could host multiple versions of the video in different sizes to make it as inclusive as possible). This approach keeps the email’s file size down, has greater success with spam filters, provides you with a useful metric i.e. how many people have watched the video - and takes subscribers needs and expectations into consideration.

Tip: To improve the search rankings and number of site impressions you receive, it’s preferable to host videos on your own site instead of external locations like YouTube. That way any links and traffic the video inspires will be directed to your domain, boosting your rankings.

Best practice tips to get people visiting your video

Here are several easy-to-follow tips that will help promote interest in your email marketing campaign and accompanying video:

It’s possible that some of your contacts’ email clients might have images automatically disabled, in which case the image stills will not display. That’s why it’s important for you to have the text link beneath the image as it provides subscribers with an alternative route to the landing page. As an additional tip:

Encouraging recipients to share your video

Making a video is easy - making a video subscribers want to share because it’s entertaining, informative and relevant is more difficult. Decide on the creative elements that will bring the best result for your video and use these final, additional tips on how to get people sharing it:

Follow these simple best-practices and you will see an increase in the number of people opting into your email marketing campaigns: that’s more qualified leads for you to send campaigns to and turn into loyal customers.

Not only will this grow your email marketing list organically, the resulting inbound links and traffic to your site should see it rise higher in the search engine rankings, meaning a sustained increase in the number of sign-ups you see long after the video has been launched. Embrace your subscribers’ desire to be entertained and share with their friends, and create more new sales leads for yourself by combining email marketing with linked video.