How To Improve Your Email Marketing Campaign Using Video
Emails remain one of the marketing channels with a higher conversion rate, and no email works better than one you combine with video content. In this piece, we show you how video can help you boost your email campaigns.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I bet the first thing you do when your workday begins is to check your email. And no, I'm not a mind reader!
Checking your email first thing in the day is actually what most people do, even before visiting social media. This proves email is a potent tool to reach out to your audience, but it’s even more powerful when combined with video content.
As you may know, video is one of the most useful ways to deliver a message with effectiveness and ease. It manages to simplify any topic and turn it into an understandable and entertaining piece, at least when left in the hands of a professional video production team (learn more).
So, let’s do the math:
An incredible video + An efficient medium as email = a great marketing strategy!
That's the (overly) simple way of putting it. In truth, the formula for an effective video email marketing strategy is much more complicated.
But don't worry! We are about to explore the full formula for combining email with video marketing successfully. Read on!
Why Use video in Email Marketing Campaigns?
Before getting on with the How, let’s dig into the Why.
There are a number of proven reasons to put together a video email marketing campaign:
- People are curious about emails with videos.
The numbers say so. Just by including the word “video” on the email subject, you can increase your open rate up to 13%.
- Emails that include video perform better.
Using videos on emails can increase the click-through rate up to 300%. Yes, you read that correctly.
- Video brings about way less unsubscribes.
Believe it or not, video content can reduce your email unsubscribe rate by 75%.
- Video is more impactful than text.
I guess it comes as no surprise that video is easier to remember and understand than written content.
- Video is more likely to get shared on social media.
We are talking about people distributing your message for free. Do you really need more reasons to jump into the video email marketing world?
Tips & Tricks for an Awesome Video Email Marketing Strategy
It’s time to talk about how to put together a powerful video email marketing campaign. Take a look!
Choose the ideal way to display your video
There are two ways of adding a video to your email.
For starters, you can embed the video with an HTML5 code so that viewers can watch it within the email. This format allows your video to play well on multiple devices, including mobile phones.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows with HTML5. Some email providers don’t support embedded videos, and we are not referring to bush-league companies – we are talking about Outlook, Yahoo, and even Gmail.
So, an alternative solution is to add a video thumbnail that redirects your email recipients to your landing page, where they can watch your video without trouble. As side benefits, this method also enhances your page's SEO and allows you to strategically place your CTAs.
Now, there are no right or wrong answers on whether to make your video play within the email or on your landing page. My only advice is to find out who your audience's email providers are before making a definite decision about the matter.
Keep it short
Nobody expects to spend 20 minutes checking out a single email. So, try to keep your videos short – we are talking about 3 minutes or less – and to the point.
The key to creating such brief videos is covering a single topic in the entire video, just as product demo videos do! Otherwise, your video may end up being too convoluted or vague.
To autoplay or not to autoplay, that is the question
Automatic playing is a topic of debate among video marketers.
I have to admit that autoplay can attract viewers that wouldn’t have clicked on your video otherwise. However, it’s also true that the audience may find it bothering, as it’s quite unexpected.
A reasonable middle-point is to make your video – whether embedded in the email or your landing page – autoplay without sound. That’s a non-intrusive way of displaying your video without pissing the viewer off.
Include video captions
If you follow our last advice (good for you!), your video will autoplay with no sound. Of course, the viewer can turn the volume on if they feel like it, but even if they don't, they should still be able to understand your video. That's why I strongly recommend you to add captions to the piece.
Captions will make your video comprehensible for those watching your video on the go and for people with hearing impairments, allowing you to reach a much wider audience.
Optimize your thumbnail
The thumbnail will be the first thing email recipients will see of your video – and I guess you know how impactful first impressions can be, right? Then there's no need for me to explain why you should put effort into designing an enticing thumbnail.
This thumbnail should be built specifically for your email marketing campaign. After all, video email's thumbnails don’t have the same style as YouTube’s, which tend to be a little more over-the-top.
That said, unlike YouTube's, video emails' thumbnails can be animated! Animation turns your thumbnail into a GIF, making it much more interesting, attractive, and (why not?) beautiful.
Speaking of thumbnails, make sure you reduce your thumbnail file size so that the email gets loaded faster.
Pair your video with awesome copy
Without a written copy, your video email runs the risk of being dubbed as spam.
An email consisting of only a thumbnail might look suspicious to some, especially to spam filters, since they can't read through images. On the other hand, a compelling and on-point copy can not only make your email come across as reliable but can also drive more clicks to the video, as you can tailor it to the sales cycle stage your potential client happens to be in!
The Takeaway
Whoever believes email is dead isn't very well-informed. The reality is that email is as powerful as it always was, or even more! Since now it's easy to combine it with other useful marketing tools like video.
People love video emails – the stats you’ve learned today prove it so.
The thing is that just adding a video to your email is not going to cut it for them. You need to put the best practices we mentioned today into action to actually see the positive outcomes of this strategy. Once that's taken care of, you will never want to go back to regular emails again!