Until a few years ago, using videos in email marketing was considered a very bad idea. Embedding video in an email marketing campaign could slow down load times and cause users on slow connections to click away before they even viewed your message. And since many email clients were unable to handle video properly, users were sometimes greeted not with your carefully created ad campaign but with error messages instead.
All that has changed, and these days video can be an integral part of your email marketing strategy. The introduction of HTML 5 has made embedding video in your email marketing campaigns less risky and more effective. In fact, many studies have shown that adding video is one of the most effective ways to boost response rates and drive more sales.
It is clear that many email marketers have already discovered how effective video can be. A new report co-sponsored by ReelSEO, Flimp Media and The Web Video Marketing Council found that an astonishing 93 percent of marketing professionals plan to use video technology this year.
A Study in Effectiveness
A look at some further studies helps to explain why so many marketing professionals have gone from actively avoiding video to actively embracing it. The recently completed “2013 Online Video Marketing Survey and Business Video Trends Report” found that 6 in 10 respondents felt that video in email marketing helped to improve conversion rates.
That same study found that less than 3 percent of marketers felt that video made no difference in their conversion rates. Marketing professionals are also successfully using video in internal communications, with more than 40 percent of respondents reporting they had used video technology to convey information to employees.
More than 70 percent of surveyed marketers expected to increase their budgets for online video in the coming year. If you are looking at increasing your own video budget, you are certainly not alone. No matter how you plan to incorporate video into your email marketing campaigns, there are some important things you need to keep in mind.
Making Your Videos More Effective
Perhaps the most important part of effective video marketing is to make sure your recipients can find those videos quickly and easily. Time is at a premium on the web, and it is essential that your recipients be able to locate those embedded videos without searching the entire message.
Make the video the main focus of your email, rather than forcing viewers to search through endless newsletter text. When properly designed, the viewer’s eye should be naturally drawn to the video.
As with other parts of your email marketing campaign, quality is key when it comes to videos. A well polished and professionally made video can make your company look great and engender the trust of everyone on your mailing list. An amateurish or poorly edited video can send the opposite message and make viewers question the quality of your company. You should review every video you intend to use and make sure it conveys the right message about you and your company.
A clear call to caction is a must
Eevery video should include a specific action you want the viewer to take. Whether that action is visiting your website, liking you on Facebook or joining your email list, the call to action should be a critical part of your video email marketing strategy.
Create a Fallback Image
The good news is that some 62 percent of Internet users can now see video within their email messages.
Of course that means that 38 percent of viewers will not be able to see the videos you have embedded in your email marketing messages. That is not necessarily a problem, as long as you create a fallback image that those viewers will see instead.
You can make that fallback image anything you want. Just choose an attractive image that will get the attention of your subscribers and encourage them to take further action. You can hyperlink that image so that it goes directly to the video you have created.
That allows you to share your hard work with everyone on your list, whether they can view embedded videos or not.
Send video email with SendBlaster
You can send beautiful video emails with SendBlaster. All email clients able of supporting video will render it ,while all non-supporting email clients receive a fallback image, as described above. Why not give it a try?
Image credits: VideoEmail.com