Videos are extremely popular in 2019. It is the fastest growing form of content on the Internet. This phenomenon has many marketers wondering how to incorporate it into their email marketing. They want to use video marketing in their emails because videos are both engaging and entertaining. Plus, video content can increase the open rate of your emails by 6% or more. This can lead to high email ROI as well. In this article, we will discuss the best way to incorporate videos to develop the best email marketing strategy.
How to Use Video in Your Best Email Marketing Strategy
People often think that you can simply embed a video into an email, and it will play right inside the email. This thought process is not true though. Email clients like Gmail, Outlook, and others do not have the functionality to play video directly within an email. Marketers must overcome this problem when looking to incorporate videos into their emails.
Despite this technological disadvantage, more than three-fourths of all marketers plan to increase the amount of video content they produce in 2019. This is because video still has amazing impact on email metrics:
- Videos can boost open rates by 19%.
- Videos can boost click-through rates by 65%.
- Videos can reduce unsubscribe rates by 26%.
Marketers must work diligently to create the best email marketing strategy that incorporates video content in it that increases email ROI.
Create Video Imagery for Your Emails
The easiest way you can include videos in your emails is to create a static image with a play button on top. The idea is that the image will link to the video content which would be hosted on a website like YouTube or Vimeo. You can also include “?play” at the end of your video’s URL link to have your video play as soon as your subscriber clicks on the play button. Now that’s smart email marketing.
Put GIFs in Emails
Another way you can create the illusion of a video is by including animated GIFs in your emails. Since GIFs are an old image file format, they are widely supported in emails. Still, GIFs do not work everywhere. GIFs do not work properly in Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013. In these email platforms, only the first frame of a GIF is shown. This means you should include the most important and relevant information you are trying to convey in the first frame of your GIF, that way your email still looks great whether the GIF animates or not.
Animate Your Play Buttons
You can also create imagery that is a hybrid between a static image and an animated GIF. In this strategy, you can create a GIF where you animate the play button for a video to compel your subscribers to click through and play your video. This approach is an enticing way to grab their attention and direct them to your desired goal, watching the video.
Why You Shouldn’t Embed Video in Emails
It is possible to embed video within emails. It takes some technical knowledge and HTML knowledge to complete successfully. Nevertheless, doing this may be more detrimental to your emails and not be the best email marketing strategy. Not all email clients support the ability to play video in a user’s inbox.
This can be disastrous for your email marketing if your campaigns do not perform how you intend them to.
Email clients that do support native video playing include:
- Apple Mail
- Outlook.com
Email clients that do not support native video playing include:
- Gmail
- Android Devices
Another thing to keep in mind is that native video playing does not automatically track how many people watched the video You would need to add custom click tracking to determine that information within an email campaign. This is different than having viewers watch videos on YouTube or Vimeo where tracking takes place automatically.
Conclusion
You cannot afford to ignore video in 2019. You also cannot afford to leave it out of your emails. Videos are a part of the best email marketing strategy. Videos can be a powerful way to connect with your audience. Videos are both engaging and entertaining, making it an easy way to interact with them. 64% of users are more likely to purchase a product online after watching a video too, making it an extremely powerful content format for your business.
Follow our advice to develop your company’s strategy. If you’re not seeing the results you want, reach out to us at FrescoData so our experts can assist you in creating a video content marketing strategy for email that works.
