The email has been one of the mainstay marketing channels for ages, and it is often considered the biggest marketing channel for many brands. It is a time tested element that has endured years of marketing evolution simply due to its own incredibly powerful nature. And when it comes to video-based email marketing, it simply amplifies the natural power of an email.

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What is Video Email Marketing?

Video email marketing is a powerful direct email strategy to target your audience and customers through embedded videos, GIFs, or images (linking to video or video landing page) etc. and boosts email campaign engagement for marketing conversions.

Embedding a video in an mail is an effective method of boosting marketing conversions. Since videos are intriguing themselves, they make emails, a common marketing channel, more effective and engaging. In addition, they offer a rich media format, increasing email open rate.

Why is using video in email effective?

5 Video Email Marketing Statistics

If you are not sure whether video email marketing is the right step for your business, here is a list of mind-blowing video-based email marketing statistics that would help you boost your click, open, and conversion rates.

● On average, people watch 16 hours of video per week online, which has increased by 52% in the past two years.

● Nearly 90% of professionals dealing in online marketing incorporate video in marketing campaigns.

● Subscriber engagement can be improved by 41% by using video thumbnails in the email.

● Marketing professionals observe 66% more hot leads per year when they incorporate videos.

● Nearly 100% of businesses suggest that using informational videos increases consumer understanding of new services or products.

● Compared to image and text content combined, social videos generate over 1200% more shares.

● Viewers retain 10% of the message when they read a text, while the percentage increases up to 95% in the case of a video.

Benefits of Video Emails

5 key benefits of using video email marketing

Some of them are as follows,

● Video positively affects click-through and conversion rates through emails.

● Using videos in email is an effective method of building trust and establishing a meaningful connection with the target audience.

● Consumers more prefer a one-minute video to a 15-minute long article.

● Engaging, interesting, and good-quality videos reduce the chances of the email going to trash.

Why send personalized video emails?

There are various perks that brands can enjoy when they incorporate personalized video emails into their marketing strategy.

Here are some key benefits that are mentioned below.

Capture the attention of the customers

Personalized videos can help in keeping the attention of the viewers consistent throughout the video. By doing so, the information is conveyed more efficiently to the consumers. The viewers would be more engaged and invested in seeing the video.

Connect with customers

Personalized videos help in humanizing the marketing process. With personalization, the customers would get attention and feel seen and special. It makes them feel important and not just another target audience on the mailing list.

Boosts customer retention

Customer engagement and trust towards the brand depends on a single factor, that is, customer retention. Therefore, a personalized video works as an ally that helps in improving customer retention, brand loyalty, and customer engagement.

Improved Sales conversion and Email Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Sales and click-through rates dramatically improve when brands include a personalized video in their email. For example, personalized emails increase returns by 280% and click-through rates by almost five times compared to conventional emails.

How to Use Video in Email Marketing

What types of video to create Video in Email Marketing?

5 Video email examples

There are more than one way of using videos in your email marketing campaigns. However, incorporating the right video in the right email can be immensely beneficial for business. And if you are confused about how to use video emails, here are five examples that would help you plan your next campaign.

Bonus Content

You can use videos in emails to provide bonus content to the target audience. Email subscribers would like you to go the extra mile to surprise them with an added video.

For example, if you are sharing weekly newsletters on Instagram content, you can even provide an early access link to a webinar that you would be hosting on Instagram Stories at month’s end. This way, you would be able to build interest in the heart of the subscribers for the events, keep them in the loop about your company’s events, and even give them a good reason to check their inbox for your emails. Other than that, you can even educate your subscribers on your business values and ethics.

If you take the example of Patagonia, their product-related emails mostly include a video to tell their consumers the story behind product material origin. As Patagonia supports local businesses and values the environment, its video content highlights both of these initiatives. For instance, in one of their hemp-made products email, Patagonia had also attached a video of Kentucky farms that grow hemp and, through it, regenerates the damaged topsoil.

Through this video email marketing strategy, Patagonia has educated its subscribers on the goodness of buying products manufactured from natural materials. This highlights the deeper mission of Patagonia, that is, environmental consciousness and support for local businesses and incentivizes the purchase behaviour of the subscriber.

Video for Customer Testimonial

Nutrition is not a ‘one quantity fits all’ approach. Hence, what is suitable for person A would not be suitable for person B. Hence, in most cases, people are not sure of the right way of feeling their bodies. And to help out such people, Working Against Gravity pairs their clients with nutrition coaches. The coaches listen to their client’s requirements and craft a plan that aligns with their fitness goals and routine. This helps people stay on track, fuel their bodies, and be accountable for their growth.

So, in their recent campaign, WAG compiled different stories of their past and current clients, sharing their experience with the WAG coaches in a single video. By letting their clients shoot their reviews and testimonials, WAG brought authenticity to their entire campaign. Adding raw, unfiltered customer journey to the email campaign allowed WAG to attract prospects who are still sceptical about taking their first step. Real-life examples help the prospects to relate to the video genuinely rather than seeing an ad video from a nutrition company.

Personalized Video Email Marketing

The videos in the emails do not always convey information, and sometimes brands can even use them to make their customers feel appreciated. Email personalization is a great technique for driving more traffic to the business. For instance, Rentalcars.com uses video email personalization to send holiday greetings to its consumers. While the video sent in the email is the same for every consumer, they include various suggestions of popular destinations that the consumers may wish to visit during the festive season.

Besides this, brands can also use personalized video emails during their recruiting process. The email can include a video where HR can explain the job roles, responsibilities, expectations, and other important aspects of the brand.

Company Culture

Generating out-of-the-box ideas for email marketing campaigns is not always easy. Your content makers may even run out of ideas, and that’s where video email marketing comes in. This is the best moment to showcase your company culture to your consumers.

You can look at how Etsy used video based email marketing to show their consumers about their company’s culture.

For example, in one of their email marketing campaigns, Etsy embedded a video where an Etsy Trend Expert demonstrated a step-by-step hair routine. Seeing Etsy employees using their company’s hair products brings a sense of relatability and normalcy to the company. This showed that their company culture is based on trust, credibility, and employee loyalty. Moreover, the email receivers also watched that other people like them believe in Etsy products.

Product or Service Launch

If your brand is launching a new service or product that your target audience is interested in, using a video is the best way to show how they can use your product or service. These types of informational videos help explain your product or service and add value to consumer interest and encourage them to be more curious about the same.

For instance, see how Make Up For Ever uses video email marketing to announce their new product launch and line. They made a video on influencers testing out their new products. When the target audience saw real women trying out the products and how they looked, they were more eager to buy the products.

Likewise, brands can even include their email subscribers to the pre-launch phase of their products. This way, they can make their subscribers interested in the new products.

Video in email Marketing: 5 Best Practices

Produce Quality Videos:

The first thing that you need to ensure is whether your video is telling a compelling story that would entice the viewers. You can turn off the audio and then watch the video to check whether it tells the story your brand wants to tell. You can even complement the video with texts to make it easier for the subscriber to understand the message. Besides that, you would also check whether the video runs smoothly before deploying it. As the video directly reflects the business, any negative user experience will affect the brand image. The video should be relevant to the business or its services or products. Subscribers can find it extremely annoying to open an email that delivers something they are not expecting. This can lead to email deletion, unsubscription, and complaints.

Do Not Overuse It:

Your email subscribers do not always want to watch a video to know where you are sourcing your products, your sustainability goals, and such. Sometimes, they want to be added to the list of pre-launch sales or new discounts. Therefore, if all your emails start having a video embedded into them from day 1, there would be high chances that your subscribers would lose interest in opening your emails. Hence, start with one or two videos in a week and then you can increase the frequency of email based videos once you gain more confidence and experience. Moreover, you would also have the time to analyze what type of video works the best in catching your users’ attention.

Watch the Video Length:

The video’s length would also determine its effectiveness on the viewers. Here are a few tips that you can keep in mind:

● Using an animated GIF would be brief and directly draw attention to the offeror set the tone for the given message content. Hence, it should not be longer than 5 seconds.

● For promotional videos, the length should be around 30-60 seconds, like a TV commercial. But you can even shorten it depending on the message size and audience.

● For longer videos of over 5minutes, consider breaking them into multiple parts.

Use the Video Properly

It would be more feasible to create a video series for your marketing channel where the videos across digital, social, and email advertising tell a story.

Besides that, you should also mention the word ‘video’ in the email’s subject line. As reported by a study from Syndacast, email open rates increase by over 19%, reduce unsubscription challenges by 26%, and boost click-through rates by over 65%.

Use Fallback Image and CTA

Having a fallback image in your email motivate the receivers into watching the video. However, do not forget to mention what you want your viewers to do once they are done watching the video. The email body should include standard call-to-action buttons.

How to Embed Video into Email?

Option 1: Use a GIF
Option 2: Use a Still Image that Redirects to a Video

How to send video emails on Gmail?

Send attachments with your Gmail message.

You can add attachments like videos, photos, and files to your email. However, when you are using Gmail, you also need to keep in mind the size limit of the video. This is because Gmail does not allow sending of large-size files.

4 steps to sending video attachments through Gmail

Step 1: Open Gmail on your computer.

Step 2: Click on the Compose button.

Step 3: Once the message window opens, click on the Attached button.

Step 4: Now, choose the file that you would like to send. You can choose multiple. Just click on the file, and then click open to attach it to the email body.

Tip: For images, PDFs, and Word files, you can drag and drop them directly into the email’s compose window.

Remove an attachment

If you want to remove any attachment, click on the Close (X) button that appears on the right side of the attachment file.

Using confidential mode to send attachments

If you are using Gmail for your school or work account, you have to contact your administration to ensure that you can send attachments using the confidential mode. And once that is done, here is how you can use it while sending emails.

Step 1: Open Gmail on your computer.

Step 2: Click on the Compose and then on the Attach button.

Step 3: Select the file that you want to send.

Step 4: Now, turn on the confidential mode from the bottom right on the Compose window.

Step 5: Now, decide the password and the expiration date. These settings will impact the attachment and the message text. For example, when you select “SMS passcode,” the receivers will get a text message including the password. But if you select “No SMS passcode,” the receivers who do not use the Gmail application will get the password in an email. And receivers who use the application can open it directly.

Step 6: Save.

How to send video on outlook email?

The message size limit of Outlook is 20MB, and if you are using a business account, the limit reduces to 10MB. So, you can only send your video attachment through Outlook if it falls under the size limitation.

If you have to send large video files through Outlook, you can first save the video to OneDrive and then send the link to the drive in the email.

Now, here’s what you need to do to send videos using OneDrive and Outlook.

Step 1: Open OneDrive and then select the file’s folder destination.

Step 2: Click on Upload and then on Files. Then choose the folder that contains the video. After that, choose the video file and click on the Open button. When the file gets uploaded successfully, you will receive a notification about it.

Step 3: Click on the Share Link.

Step 4: Enter the recipient’s email address. Now write the message text and then click on Send.

Step 5: Both you and the recipient will get an email containing the video’s link. This link would allow the recipient to both plays as well as download the video.

Wrapping Up

Video email marketing is now one of the most used and most effective marketing channels across the world. Whether you want to connect to your customers personally or share your sustainability goals with your customers, video email marketing is here to cater to various marketing requirements. And with the platforms mentioned above, you can even ensure that you are at the top of your marketing game.

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SMBCentra

Owner at SMBCentra