How to Incorporate Video in Your Email Marketing

Emails. They fill our inboxes, and (for most of us) can get overwhelming just by the sheer volume we receive. But email still remains an effective way to engage with your audience. So, how to get yours to stand out, and actually be viewed? Today we’re discussing the power of video in your email marketing, with ways to get more clicks (and connections) to your customers.

The Power of Video in Email

To start with, what are the benefits of using video in your email marketing? For one thing, video has been shown to improve open rates by 19% and click-through rates by an impressive 65%. Think about it. Are you more likely to read a full blog in your emails or click on a short video, explaining the same information?

Adding to this, including video in your emails reduces the need for excessive text. The recommended text length for an effective email is between 50-125 words. That’s not a lot to work with. But in a video, you can provide the necessary info, all while keeping it clickable and not as intimidating to view.

Technical Steps on Using Video in Your Emails

When it comes to the technical element of including video in email, you have a few options. Most email-sending platforms include an HTML block where you can insert your video link. However, some (such as Outlook and Yahoo) don’t support embedding video, so it pays to do your research before choosing a host for your email campaigns.

We at Waves use Kit (formerly known as ConvertKit), and are quite happy with it overall. It easily links to YouTube, and provides an option to upload videos directly from your desktop. The only caution we’ll give here regarding a direct upload is to ensure the size of the video file doesn’t slow email loading time. A truly successful email loads quickly, ensuring your customer doesn’t lose interest beforehand.

Outside of this, you could write your own code to embed the video (with instructions here), but we’d recommend bypassing that and either using the above HTML block or a GIF+(Link) workaround, as also explained here.

Best Video Hosting Platforms for Analytics

As with all video, you always want to ensure your content can be well-tracked for its performance. By doing so, you can improve upon the video content you create by seeing what’s working (and also, what’s not). The same applies to your video emails.

YouTube is easily the most popular video hosting platform currently available. It provides great analytics, a generous 2.5 billion monthly active user reach (potentially), and is most commonly linked to email-hosting platforms. In short, we highly recommend.

Another video hosting platform we at Waves use is Vimeo. Geared more towards video professionals, it provides an ad-free viewing experience for its audience, solid analytics, as well as supports high resolution video (up to 4k).

Outside of these two, Wistia and Vidyard are good choices for those specifically geared towards marketing. But again, always check to see what platforms your email-host connects to when deciding who you’re working with.

Ways to Create Effective Video Emails

So, tech talk aside, how to curate a great video email? We’ve got our top tips below, to get you going:

• Keep it short and sweet. There are exceptions to this rule, but whenever possible, keep your video length short, getting to your point quickly so your customer doesn’t miss it.
• Add an eye-catching thumbnail. No one wants to click on a blank screen. Ensure your video thumbnail draws attention, and has click-ability!
• Include closed captions. By including CC, you ensure your video is watchable wherever your audience may be.
• Provide a clear CTA. Make sure your video email has a clear call-to-action for your customer. What do they do next? What resolution are you providing for their problem?
• Have a strategy for your video. Without strategy, objectives fail. To help with your strategy, we’ve included a video with some considerations below.

Want to discuss your video marketing strategy further? Give us a call here. We’d love to chat. 🙂