Finding a Spot for Video in Your Marketed Messages

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Key takeaways

• Video in email can differentiate your brand, only one in four brands use it.
• Adding video has produced major CTR gains in some campaigns, reported increases up to 583%.
• Don’t add video before validating audience interest, some recipients may not want video content.
• Avoid plug-ins (like Flash), embed video with HTML5 to reduce spam/filter and playback issues.
• Use hosting that supports progressive download so viewers can start watching before full file download.
• Prioritize emotional, story-driven videos (customer profiles, behind‑the‑scenes) with a clear call‑to‑action and repurpose the asset on YouTube or your website.

Introduction

The key to email marketing isn’t always found within the body of text that makes up the message. Sure, if the core of your email is weak, that’s a major issue on its own. However, simply relying on this text alone, even if it is properly composed, also isn’t always the right call. Sometimes you need to go above and beyond to really connect with your audience. As one of the biggest trends that’s picking up steam in the email marketing world, video fits this billing perfectly. To find out if adding this content to your next campaign is the right call, let’s spend some time looking over the particulars of setting your brand message in motion with embedded video offerings.

The Case for Video in Email Marketing

The potential for video to serve a major role in your email marketing operations comes from two different angles. First is the concept that this method can differentiate your brand from the masses. As an industry report from eMarketer points out, only one in four brands utilize video content when setting up marketed messages. While it’s not a guarantee for success, there’s no denying that going down this path does offer the opportunity to stand out in a crowd.

Of course, when it comes to your marketing budget, simply being different for the sake of being different isn’t a good enough reason. In addition to relatively limited competition on this front, Sherry Chao of Business 2 Community explains that adding video to your emails is also highly effective. Specifically, Chao reports that some campaigns saw clickthrough rates (CTR) jump by up to 583 percent, all thanks to adding video to the equation. Basically, if you can pull of this addition to your standard messages in the right way, the payoff is huge.

Potential Pitfalls

Naturally, properly implementing video is far easier said than done. With the rise of multiple platforms and devices as a means of viewing emails, optimizing your messages and avoiding unplayable video content becomes far more difficult. Considering how disastrous a broken video can be to the aesthetic of your messages, failing on this front can cause lasting damage to a campaign. Additionally, some audiences simply might not be interested in video content, so rushing into this process without testing the waters is a quick way to turn off a large portion of your constituency if they fall into this category.

The real key to success doesn’t start with great video content and a powerful supporting message in your emails, but rather understanding what your audience wants. Once you’ve traversed this potential pitfall by ensuring this type of content falls into line with your ideal consumer profile, you can move on to more exciting portions of this process – creating and optimizing your video content.

Making a Positive Impact with Your Audience

So once you’ve confirmed that this type of content can reach its full potential with your viewers, what’s the next step? According to Lynn Baus of Marketing Land, the best place to start is by focusing on hammering out the deliverability details. First up is incorporating HTML5 into your content development process. While you can try to use third-party add-ons, like Flash, most email service clients aren’t too keen on these plug-ins, so you run a serious risk of ending up in the spam folder. HTML5 circumvents this issue by avoiding the usage of these plug-ins and embedding the video directly into your message template.

Additionally, utilizing hosting services that provide progressive downloads helps lower the burden of file size and sluggish load times by letting your audience begin watching the video before it finishes downloading. Considering how large these files can be, having progressive playback expedite the process can make the situation far more agreeable for you viewers.

With all of the technical details hammered out, you’ll need to shift your focus toward the actual video content. After all, making sure the video reaches these consumers doesn’t matter that much if what you’re offering leaves a lot to be desired. To avoid this, place an emphasis on supporting a strong message that evokes emotion within your audience. Whether it’s a customer profile or a “behind the scenes” look at your business operations, building a story that connects with these viewers and develops a strong call-to-action can put your video content over the top.

From here, don’t be afraid to repurpose this content later on down the road. There’s nothing wrong with squeezing out a little extra value by posting this video to your company YouTube account or website. If you can do this, in addition to everything else you’ve learned about video content, you’ll be well on your way to connecting with your audience in ways that the competition just can’t match.

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