Whether you agree with it or not, email is still one of the most effective and popular marketing tools. The question is: how can marketers make an email even more captivating and engaging? Sharing valuable content is one obvious answer. Yet thousands of emails are ignored, sent to spam, or immediately deleted every day.
One great way to grab the attention of your audience is to embed a video in your email. And in this article, we’ll show you how to embed video in email to boost your email marketing results, as well as give you actionable tips on how to email videos correctly.
Outline:
Why use video in an email?
According to a recent survey, consumers cited video as their favorite type of content to receive via email. No wonder – it’s more engaging, entertaining, and easy to consume. In fact, the human brain processes video easier and faster than written text, and information presented visually is often more understandable.
But what about the email KPIs? Multiple research shows that by embedding video in emails you can increase your conversion rate and improve brand awareness. Here are some striking statistics that support the idea that video can be crucial to your email marketing strategy:
- Adding a video to an email newsletter leads to a 200-300% increase in click-through rates
- 90% of users say that product videos are helpful in the decision-making process
- 54% of people want to see more video content from marketers
- Video lowers the number of unsubscribes by 26%
- The word “video” in an email subject line raises open rates by 19% and CTR by 65%
This fantastic graph from Sezion also does a great job covering the benefits of using video in email marketing.
All in all, there seem to be almost no downsides to emailing videos with your campaigns – they are more appealing than plain text, they help you present all the benefits of your product in a concise manner, and they improve KPIs.
How to use videos in emails
Videos are a versatile type of content – you can use them for all kinds of purposes. To attract prospects, convert them, and lower the churn rate you can embed video in emails as:
✔ An introduction
Use a short video at the beginning of your campaign to greet your leads, or thank your clients for choosing your product or service and present it to them in an exciting manner that would inspire them to explore your product further.
✔ Onboarding
Creating a step-by-step video guide will help your clients more than a static screenshot. Make onboarding easier, more engaging, and fun by creating a narrated video explaining how to get the most out of your product or service.
✔ Support content
If your product or service is complex, sometimes onboarding content won’t be enough. Create videos that explain specific functions or solve specific problems your clients face in a creative, funny and informative manner. This is crucial for decreasing the churn rate.
✔ Testimonials
Video testimonials with real clients talking about your product work wonders for conversion. These don’t have to be polished, scripted speeches. Ask your most loyal clients if they’d love to take part in such videos and let them express their honest opinion. Potential clients value honesty above anything else.
✔ Nurturing material
Help your clients get better at what they do by creating video guides, product reviews, Q&As, interviews with experts, etc. Video courses are also a popular choice. All this will show your level of expertise and express to the client that you want them to succeed.
✔ Humanizing content
Interviews with the team, webinars, vlogs, and any humorous viral content will help your potential and existing clients see you in a more personal light and not as a cold corporate machine. Such videos improve client relationships and improve content engagement.
Choose your video marketing campaign goals
Before you choose what kind of video content to create, you need to determine your video marketing campaign goals. Here are a few possible goals you may pursue when you embed a video in your email:
- To educate your audience: short video tutorials, even those tackling complex problems, work much better in video form.
- To increase sales: record detailed product videos, present new features, or show real user testimonials; you can even demonstrate your manufacturing process to help win your prospects’ trust. For example, in the real estate field, a video of the property for sale works much better than photos.
- To build a community: share videos from your company’s YouTube channel on social media and offer customers to subscribe to be the first to know about new products.
- To show your products or services in a new light: emotions help buyers form an impression of the product and can be a powerful tool to encourage action. When people relate to brands or products on a personal level, they develop a connection. Videos that evoke positive feelings are more likely to help you reach your goals, whether it’s selling or educating.
- To boost brand awareness: tell your company’s story in a video focused on history, company’s everyday operations, or mission. Your videos must be original, memorable, and easy to recognize.
Please note, if you are embedding a video in an email, make it short: 90 seconds is more than enough to grab your audience’s attention and keep them interested. You should also make sure any video content you share looks professionally made with a resolution of at least 720p (but preferably 1080p and higher).
What you should know before using video in email
Even with a great video marketing strategy you still need to consider a few technicalities that might make or break your campaign. Here are some points to consider:
1. Size limits
Every ESP has its own attachment size limit, check those if you intend to send videos as attachments. You can find them here in our guide to email sending limits of email providers that covers 33 most popular ESPs.
2. Direct play support
The best way to email videos is to embed them using HTML5 to let recipients watch them directly from their inbox. Bear in mind, however, that Gmail and many other providers don’t support such embedding. Only a handful of providers support direct play, others will simply show a fallback image (so make sure your fallback is perfect).
3. CTA placement
When you place a video in the middle of your email and it’s not a direct play, you run into the risk of your recipient never reading the CTA at the bottom because they are redirected to a different page. Make sure to include your CTA in the video itself: place it somewhere towards the end of your video, so it is perfectly clear to the audience what you are expecting them to do (go to your landing page, buy products or services, download applications, share a video, etc.).
4. Subject line
As we’ve mentioned before, mentioning the video in the subject line improves the open rate among other KPI. So don’t forget to craft an intriguing subject line if you’re using video in your email. Here are some examples of subject lines that can boost open rates:
- Teachers: This Video Tutorial Shows How to Keep Your Students Occupied
- New SS19 Designer Bag Collection Presented in Video
- New Arrivals: Get Inspired by This Plus-Size Work Clothes Video
- Latest News: Check Our Recorder’s New Features in This Video Review
How to send a video through email: 6 methods
There are several ways to incorporate a video in your email depending on how you want it to display – as a link, as a directly playable video, as a visual background, etc.
Method 1: Include a link to a video
The easiest way to incorporate a video in an email is to just add a link to the video. The link can be to your site, YouTube, or Vimeo. However, there’s a chance that the client will be distracted by the recommended videos on YouTube and skip yours. To avoid this, link instead to the Movavi Cloud, a secure media storage service. Upload a full version of the video to the Movavi Cloud and give your recipients the link. It’s especially convenient if you only need to share a file – you can get to a shareable link in just one click. Google Drive link sharing also works great for this method. However, if you’re using video for the visual impact, it’s not very effective.
Method 2: Use an animated GIF instead of a real video
If you’re not looking to send a long video and just want to make your email more engaging, you can use an animated GIF instead. That way, you’ll provide a moving image that will grab your recipients’ attention and demonstrate a product or its features without having to include a whole video. Check out how Dell did this:
You can also use Photoscape, SSuite GIF Animator, Wondershare Filmora, GifPal or Picasion to create your own GIFs or use Giphy to share pre-made GIFs. You can also easily create a GIF in Movavi Video Editor Business. To do this, launch the program and open the video that you want to turn into GIF. Trim the footage if necessary or cut out unwanted parts, then save the result by clicking the Export button and choosing GIF from the format list.
Method 3: Insert cinemagraphs instead of videos
Cinemagraphs are half static pictures, half animated GIFs. They are essentially pictures in which only parts of the image move. This may not be the best way to present info about your product to the prospects, but when used right they will make your email brighter and more appealing. For example, isn’t this Stranger Things 2 cinemagraph ad by Netflix thrilling?
To create cinemagraphs, use Clipgraph, Plotagraph, Photoshop, ClipToGif (GIFs are available as well), Flixel.
Method 4: Attach a video as a file
Simply add a video from your PC using the Attach files button. But keep in mind the email service provider’s attachment size limit we’ve mentioned before (for example, you won’t be able to attach a video in Gmail if it’s larger than 25 MB).
Method 5: Embed video in an email using HTML5
The most effective way to add a video to an email is to embed it directly into your email using HTML5.
Unfortunately, not all email providers can play videos directly from the Inbox, as we’ve mentioned in the previous chapter. Email clients that support direct play are: Apple Mail, Outlook for Mac, iOS 10+ native client, Thunderbird, Samsung Galaxy native client. Other email clients will display the fallback image in place of a video.
If you still want to try embedding, using Movavi Video Editor Business you can make beautiful videos, edit, and share them. Cut your video and join clips with transitions, add creative filters and your logo. You can make tutorials and comprehensive how-to videos with explanatory elements. It’s even possible to combine screen recordings with webcam footage and add music and voiceover to your video.
Method 6: Use a linked static image with a play button
You can create an illusion of a video by using a static image with a play button: just link the image to the full version of your video so that when people click the play button, they are redirected to where the video is hosted. To add a link to an image, follow these simple steps:
- Сlick the Compose New Message button in your email client.
- Add an image from your computer.
- Drag over the image to select it.
- Click the link icon and add a hyperlink destination (URL) for redirection.
It’s very important to use a powerful image from the video. It should be the most interesting or intriguing part of the video – something that will make people click play and watch the full video. Here’s what it looks like in practice:
In conclusion
Embedding a video in email is a simple and effective digital marketing trick to improve your email campaign KPIs. Create original videos of your products or services that will help your brand stand out and boost your sales even outside email marketing.
Here are some suggestions to help you successfully use video in your next campaign:
- use videos in all kinds of emails (introduction, onboarding, support, testimonials, etc)
- use different videos for different purposes
- don’t be afraid to use alternatives (GIFs, cinemagraphs, etc), sometimes they work better than videos
- make your videos short and to the point (35-40 seconds for introductory videos, ~3 min for explanatory)
- pay attention to attachment size limits and video playback
- make sure the fallback image is attractive
- add a CTA at the end of the video
- always A/B test
