Video Email Marketing: What it is and how to use it like a pro
Email marketing has been around for years and continues to be one of the most effective communication tools that brands have at their disposal. A good email marketing campaign helps promote your brand, stay in touch with potential customers, and motivate them to become actual customers. However, when you use video email marketing, that is, when you combine email with a fantastic video, you breathe life into your communications and enhance the response. Statistics show that with video email marketing, the open and click-through rates increase exponentially.
Managing a video email marketing strategy, however, is not an easy task: you need to know how to use the format effectively, especially if you don’t have much experience with this technique.
So, we’re going to explain everything you need to know about incorporating videos into your email campaigns, as well as the best tips to improve your results.
How to Add Video to Your Emails
The main goal of adding video to email marketing is to increase subscriber engagement, better connect with potential customers, reach new audiences, and promote your brand. However, adding a video to an email doesn’t necessarily mean the video will play within the email itself. Embedded videos are not supported by major email service providers like Gmail and Outlook. Typically, you paste a thumbnail of the video (a .jpg or .gif) into the email, which, when clicked, redirects recipients to an external page.
Remember, the fastest and safest way to add videos to your emails is by including customized images or GIFs, usually taken from the video, to entice people to click and watch.
What Makes Video Email Marketing Such a Powerful Tool
People receive dozens of emails every day. It’s crucial to find ways to cut through the noise and stand out from the competition to achieve results. With a good video, you can turn a simple email into a more impactful and interesting message, encouraging more people to click—exactly what you’re looking for, right? In fact, studies suggest that adding the word “video” to the email subject line increases open rates by 6%, and including a video thumbnail in your email helps boost click-through rates by 50%. Yes, it’s quite significant.
The way people read emails is by quickly scanning the message and focusing on bright and colorful elements. And what’s more eye-catching than a video thumbnail (an animated gif or an image extracted from the video) placed right in the middle of an email?
Less Words, More Image
You’ve probably noticed: you can’t rely on long paragraphs of text to communicate your message. In fact, the ideal length of email text is between 50 and 125 words, which is quite limiting. However, with video, you can condense all the important information into a short time, keeping your email text light, brief, and pleasant, as good email marketing practices dictate.
Moreover, video email exponentially enhances the analytics at your disposal by providing statistics on who watches your videos and who doesn’t. It offers valuable insights into understanding which recipients interact with your content and, more importantly, what type of content they tend to respond to.
6 Simple Ways to Use Video Email Marketing Like a Pro
Alright, now that we understand the benefits of combining email marketing and video, let’s explore 6 ways to do it like the pros.
1. The Power of the Landing Page
Remember what we said about using videos to redirect recipients to an external site? When we talk about an external site, we mean a landing page created specifically for that purpose. Unlike regular web pages, which are mostly created for informational purposes, landing pages are designed explicitly to convert visitors into leads or encourage them to take a specific action.
Imagine you want to promote a new product, and you decide to send an email with an embedded video thumbnail (crafted by The Visual Speech, of course) that redirects subscribers to a landing page. There, they’ll find all the information related to your product: a magnificent product video, feature lists, customer reviews, and, most importantly, a clear call to action inviting them to make a purchase.
Sending potential customers to a page that provides more information and closes the sale can be much more beneficial than having customers stay in the email watching the video without going further. This is especially true for potential customers at the bottom of the sales funnel who just need one final push.
2. Events Are a Great Opportunity for Video
Some businesses attract new customers by organizing events. For these companies, an email marketing campaign with videos of the events has great promotional power.
Whether they are small events or large conferences, sending a video invitation via email is very effective. Just imagine if the email is personalized and includes an attractive video summarizing previous events to capture the viewer’s interest. Or with testimonials from attendees of those events, sharing their experiences. Or even with a video featuring your company’s staff encouraging potential customers to attend the event. The possibilities are endless.
3. Make Video Email Marketing Part of Your Sales Process
Okay, this is the option that best harnesses video to accelerate the sales funnel and close more deals. It’s very simple.
Nothing works better online than personalization and a personal connection with customers, especially from brands they like. Imagine, for example, that you or your sales staff record a simple but personalized video, even directly from the computer. You can send it to potential customers in a matter of minutes. The impact it has is unparalleled.
4. Testimonials Have Extraordinary Power
Testimonial videos and customer stories are super effective when it comes to convincing potential customers of the value of a product or service.
There’s nothing as convincing and persuasive as seeing a real human, not affiliated with the brand or product, speak candidly about their experience with that brand or product. So, leverage it as a business strategy. Have those testimonials or stories reach your customers’ inboxes with one or more videos embedded in emails. You’ll see how it positively affects your sales.
5. Videos Also Help with Existing Customers
We’ve spent a few paragraphs talking about potential customers. Of course, one of the main goals of marketing strategies is to convert people interested in our brand or products into customers. But let’s not forget existing customers, those who have already bought from you once or more.
There are many different things you can do by combining email marketing and video to enhance your customers’ experience and ensure repeat purchases. You can send them videos with special discounts or even send them personalized video messages on their birthdays. The limit is set by your imagination. The idea is to maintain a satisfactory customer experience and ensure loyalty to the brand.
Combining email and video for customer loyalty campaigns is simply a perfect match.
6. A Simple GIF Turns Your Email into a Super Email
You’re familiar with GIFs. They are short, often amusing, and, above all, eye-catching animations. Best of all, they fall into the image category. So, forget about any restrictions or incompatibilities that email management services like Outlook or Gmail may have. Inserting a GIF in your email is a good idea because it makes it more dynamic and attractive, and it will play correctly regardless of the recipient’s email service.
And when thinking about possible GIFs, let your imagination run wild: why not insert a call-to-action button that changes color, or place fun words that move, or several photos that follow one after another… Don’t forget to conveniently link to your website or landing page. Motion helps surprise the reader and encourages them to click.
7 Essential Tricks You Should Know About Using Video Email Marketing
We’re almost done. But before we conclude, let us share some essential tricks. You shouldn’t embark on any video email campaign without considering these tips.
1. Add the Word “Video” to the Subject Line
We mentioned at the beginning of this post that using the word “video” in the subject line of an email increases its open rate. Don’t forget to do it; inform your subscribers in the subject line that a video awaits them inside the email. This will increase their interest in opening it. We’re not saying it, the statistics are.
There are many ways to do this. Be creative when writing the subject. You can add the word Video in parentheses at the end or beginning of the sentence, like “4 festivals that will inspire your next trip [Video].” But you can also incorporate the word “video” into the sentence itself, for example: “Learn with this video tutorial…”
2. Place the GIF or Video Thumbnail (.jpeg) at the Top of Your Email
Most of the time, the email is too long to be fully visible on the computer screen, especially on a laptop. The higher you place the video in the email, the better. If it’s not at the top, the user might not see it unless they scroll. In that case, they might discard the email without seeing the thumbnail, and you’ll miss the call-to-action effect you’re aiming for. You can place the email headline or part of the text before the image, but ensure the image is within the visible part of the email when opened.
3. Enable Automatic Video Playback but with Muted Sound
Few things are more annoying than suddenly being surprised by loud music when visiting a website. The video should be set to autoplay because the fewer clicks the user has to make, the better. However, the sound should be optional. So, when the email recipient clicks on the video image, the landing page opens in the browser, the video plays automatically, and they decide whether they want to listen to the video sound. This leads us to the next tip.
4. Add Subtitles to Your Videos
This option is somewhat controversial. Some think subtitles “spoil” the aesthetics of the video. However, it’s proven that most of the time, people watch videos without sound. Therefore, if you want to ensure your message reaches the recipient effectively even without sound, add subtitles. Communication effectiveness comes first.
5. Boost Video Email Marketing to the Max: Don’t Make One Video, Make a Series
When thinking about incorporating video into your email marketing strategy, think in terms of campaigns, not individual pieces. A good strategy that will help increase your open rates is to create a series of short but emotional videos. You’ll be creating a consistent campaign while keeping your audience intrigued.
6. The CTA, an Essential Element
The key to a good email with a video is a call-to-action button where the email recipient feels compelled to click. Ultimately, that’s what the email aims for. Not just for the user to watch and enjoy the video but to be motivated to take a specific action, whether it’s opening and filling out a contact form, accessing a free trial, using a discount code, or links to social media.
Your subscriber might not end up watching the video for some reason. If so, at least they can click on the CTA and link to the content that interests you.
Conclusion
It’s clear that combining one of the most popular communication channels with the most effective marketing resource generates an incredible tool: video email marketing. It increases subscriber engagement, spreads brand awareness, reaches new audiences, and fosters and enhances your relationship with customers. Therefore, using this technique is the best decision.
So, if you want to start using videos in your emails, we suggest you try the tips we’ve explained. What are you waiting for? Start creating videos today and see how they help boost your business results!