In today’s digital world, just one great video can increase your social presence and help you reach more customers. In 2021, video marketing is an important aspect of marketing, so now is the best time if you haven’t embraced it yet. One aspect of digital marketing that is still relevant today is email marketing. Several studies and surveys have found that including a video in your email made with the help of an online video editor can increase the chances of the receiver opening your mail by 6%. This statistical fact is more than enough proof for a marketer to learn how to embed a video in their next email. This article will show you some of the best methods to include a video in your email marketing campaigns.
What is Video Email Marketing?
In simple words, video email marketing is the simple act of adding videos to your email marketing template before sending it to the recipients. If you still are not sure if you need it, then here is a quick fact- more than 83% of global marketers think of video email marketing as only growing as we step into the next decade. Moreover, around 80% of businesses are using videos in one way or the other to increase their conversion rate.
We tend to absorb information visually much better than text. With the help of online video editors, one can easily create videos and tap into the imagination of their audience. In many cases, a simple text may not be enough, and a video can make things simpler for dense topics. Videos can also help give compelling reasons for the audience to make a purchase.
How to use Video in your Emails?
Let us start with the most obvious question – how to use videos in your emails. Today, videos are much better supported within the email format than they did in the past. But still, several templates are missing the web’s universal support. As a result, if you include a video in your email, it does not play instantly when the user opens the email. Most email giants such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and others do not have the technical support to play the video straight from their mailboxes. Despite these drawbacks, it is still a progressive enhancement to add videos in a mail.
Still, more than 76% of the total marketers in the world are looking to add video in their email marketing campaigns because video gives you clicks, and in the end, that’s all that matters. Here are some focus points that will make the tricky task of embedding a video in your email smoother.
1. Start with your Video
The first thing you need to take care of is your video. That means you need to have a video that can be added to emails. There is a massive difference between uploading a video in your mail and uploading it on a website for streaming purposes. To send a video, you will first need to host it in your content distribution network (CDN) or have that video on the company’s server. This way, it becomes easier to add it to your email template.
Apart from this, remember to keep the size of the media files low when sending them on emails. You don’t want a long video to bore the recipients in an email, so it needs to be short and precise. If you go with long videos, the cost of hosting and streaming will increase exponentially.
2. Make the Emails more Personalized
If you have a backlog of video content that you haven’t posted on your website and on your YouTube channel yet, consider putting it up for good use by adding them in personalized emails. Let’s take an example; suppose a person watches a small portion of the video which is on your website, but they don’t watch the complete video. You can put that same video in the email and remind them to watch the complete video. This can miraculously improve the conversion rate and make people watch more videos from the same platform. This strategy is especially beneficial for those businesses that are running online courses and video learning platforms.
3. Showcase your Company’s Values
Things that are built with love and trust are the things that get sold! If you are not getting any good ideas to put in a video, then the best thing to do is show off your company’s personality. There is no better way to showcase your company’s values than by giving them a glimpse of your culture inside the organization. A company that makes hair oil can make a video showcasing how their employees use the same product in their lives and how it’s helping them out.
4. Place your Video below the Email Copy
When adding a video to your email, make sure to keep it below the email copy. That way, the recipient will scroll down the whole email and have a chance to read the text in the mail. It would also help if you had a text in your email. Without any text, your email is going to look like spam. The copy of the email needs to convey the same message that you are trying to convey in your video. Apart from this, your email needs to have some text in it because some devices don’t even show the image or a video when emails are opened on them.
5. Enable Autoplay but make Sure to Turn Off the Sound
Autoplay is something that is a hit and miss. Some people like it while others don’t prefer it at all. The best way to make both parties happy is to allow the video to be played when the email is opened, but with the audio turned off. That way, the recipient of your mail doesn’t attract unwanted attention when they open your email in public. Additionally, you can provide captions to the video that you are embedding in the video.
6. Animate the Thumbnail
Animated thumbnails will help you get more clicks than a static image. But this too comes with a risk because some email platforms don’t allow such thumbnails. In addition, you can also have a Cinemagraph thumbnail, which is the first ten frames of your video that was created using an online video editor.
7. Don’t be Limited to Loyal Customers
Email marketing is for more than just your loyal customers; a video in email can help you nurture more leads. You can use workflows that are a part of your CRM in order to automate videos that will move alongside the customer’s journey. With this integration, you can add forms for getting more information about the customers straight from the video. This can be of great help especially when you are doing remarketing. Lastly, download the stats of your video email marketing campaign to analyse its performance. This will help you in tweaking your future video content so it will be more effective and in line with your customers’ interest.
Wrapping Up
Email marketing is still considered the king of online marketing, but video marketing is now emerging as the number one strategy. These essential tips will help you to include videos in your email marketing.And when you use them the right way, you will surely get good results for your marketing campaign.