Why Email Marketing with Video is a Winning Combination

It is becoming harder and harder to catch customer’s attention using only words. Using video in your e-mail marketing campaign is more and more popular these days. There are more than a few good reasons for that, and they have all been statistically backed-up. Some of the proven benefits of using video in your email are the open rate increase of 19%, click-through rates increase of 50% and subscriber reduction of 26%. Remember Email marketing with video &  video marketing strategies is different.

There are plenty of reasons to add video to your email marketing campaign this instant, but before you do, here are some useful tips.

• Try to be as much clear and concise as you can. After that, they will lose interest and drop off. Watch some examples email videos and figure out which one had the most of your attention and why.

• Target your audience properly. Simple autoresponder style, where you just keep adding new people to the list and sending the campaign from the same point may not quite work here. There’s a difference between people who have just joined your list and old contacts who are perhaps already familiar with your product. People who have just joined your list may not be in the same point of understanding the video the same way as older ones. Make sure the time point of the video implementation makes sense.

• Creating two short series rather than one long can be a benefit. Breaking the story into smaller fragments will deliver it more thoroughly. By going on and on with one series of emails you risk unsubscriptions due to too long flow.

• After all, don’t forget to ease the process of reaching out to the maximum. Let the last frame of your video be a ‘’Send us a message now” button or whatever you find the easiest for the customer to reach you.

After considering some general aspect of video implementation stated above, you will get to the technical issues and how to actually implement video.

Here are some general and most efficient ways.

Using a play button

The most simple way of implementing video is by using a play button on a static image.

The only thing you need to do is to link the hosted version of your video to the image. One click on the play button will take your customers to the site like YouTube or Vimeo where your video is hosted.

Using an animated GIF

Using ever-popular animated GIF is still super easy, and you have more space to deliver the message, than using a static image. You can use more than one GIF in your email and as many frames per GIF you wish. The only thing to be cautious about is the file format of GIF which is not supported everywhere. For example, Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013 and Windows Phone 7 only read the first frame of your GIF.  In that case, make sure to put all of the key information in the first frame, so it still delivers the most important information of your message.

Animated play button

This is an interesting combination of linking a static image and using an animated GIF. This animated button displays an animation on any of the first keyframes (up, over and down) of the button symbol.

You can use an animated GIF on your play button to call attention to it and attract the customers to play your video.

Embedding the video directly

This is an option for those who have a certain technical and HTML knowledge. Though this option has the same technical issue as the GIF, the one that not all clients have the ability to play the video right in the inbox, it can be more efficient and interesting. Before considering this, you must acknowledge the risk of unsubscribing. But if you are confident to try, you need to know your way around HTML5 which has far more options. Applications like iOS client, Apple Mail and Outlook.com will allow recipients to play the video in the email directly. Gmail and Android users will display the fallback image instead.

Even though social media video production can do wonders for you business, the time frame for catching customers attention is between 30 and 90 seconds.

In every business, keeping track of trends is crucial. Leading business means adjusting on daily basis, but still keeping your business true and unique. There is no longer doubt that social media video production can do wonders for your brand. This is hard, but luckily there are a handful of experts that can help you with these aspects of marketing, so you can focus on other aspects of your business.