Video in Email — How to Get a Lift in Your Email Campaign Results

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how valuable is a video? We can get a good idea by looking at the lifts in email campaign performance rates when marketers use video in email. Here we share examples of video in email successes, talk about various options available for adding video to email, and provide a list of useful resources to help you learn more about the latest video email-marketing technology available today.

Great Examples of How Much Video Can Improve Email-Marketing Results

In a previous NewsLever article, we talked about how adding video to email campaigns can increase your target audience’s engagement. The following are some recent examples showing how much video can improve email-marketing campaign results:

• In a study conducted by GetResponse emails with video had an average 5.6% higher open rate and 96.4% higher click-through rates compared to emails without video.
• In the 2012 Video Marketing Survey and Video Email Trends Report published by the Web Video Marketing Council and Flimp Media, 76% of respondents who used video increased email click-through rates.
• In a recent MarketingSherpa case study, the destination marketing organization for the city of Carlsbad, CA — Visit Carlsbad — ran a video contest to engage their email newsletter subscribers. Results included:
  – Email open rates reached 18%, 3.5% higher than typical tourism results
  – Website traffic increased by 13%
  – The Visit Carlsbad Facebook page got 1,164 new “likes”
  – Videos posted got a total of 12,395 views.

Options for Adding Video to Email

Whether your video is a product demonstration, customer testimonial, or an educational message, many people would prefer (and be enticed) to watch a quick video rather than read a lot of information, especially on a mobile device’s small screen. If you’re considering adding video to your email-marketing campaigns, there are several ways to do so, including:

• Video upon click-through — In this approach, an image that looks like an embedded video with a big play button is placed in the email design. When recipients click on the play button, a browser window is opened, which takes the user to a site such as YouTube or Vimeo to see the video. Since all you’re doing is adding an image with a link to the location of the video, this is probably the easiest video email-marketing technique to implement. Other advantages of video upon click-through include: It works in all email clients, there are no large downloads, and you can track the clicks.
• Animated graphics interchange format (GIF) — With the acronym actually pronounced like “jif,” a GIF is a computer image file compressed to reduce transfer time. It consists of multiple frames that move as an animation, but it doesn’t have any sound. Other disadvantages: You can’t register or track the clicks, and you need to be careful about ensuring that the GIF doesn’t get too big, which would result in a long download time. But using an animated GIF does have a big advantage: It plays within the email itself as if it were truly embedded.
• Embedded video — This is the nirvana of video email marketing in which the video actually plays within the email itself. In other words, the user sees the player and the video without having to click away from the page. This type of fully playable video uses HTML5 video code. Although HTML5 is increasingly being supported in email clients and platforms on such popular devices as iPads, iPhones and Androids, a lot of your subscribers likely are unable to view a truly embedded video. Another downside of using embedded video is that you can’t easily measure the click-to-play as a clickthrough.

Additional Resources

For more information about how to boost your email-marketing performance with the latest video email-marketing technology available, check out the following resources:

• “The State of HTML5 Video”
  This is a great article covering the state of HTML5 video among the many browsers and email clients. What actually works is a bit of a moving target, but the tests summarized in this article may help if you plan to use HTML5 video. This article, however, is not about email clients specifically.
• “How To: HTML5 Video in Email”
  In this blog, you’ll not only find information about where HTML5 is supported in email, but also how to code for it.
• “Video Email Marketing Has Finally Arrived – The Case for Video in Email: Part 1”
  Written in 2012, this article discusses the state of embedded video in email. It also provides a great overview of where HTML5 video is accepted.
• “Realizing Agile Email Marketing: The Future of Video, Content, and Context”
  This is an article written by a friend and colleague, David Daniels of the Relevancy Group. He interviews Jordan Cohen of Movable Ink about video in email. There are some good points worth reviewing.
• “HTML5 and Video in Email”
  In this article, you’ll find a bit of a how to, including some code to test embedded video in email on your own. There’s also a discussion about how to use a fallback image for those cases in which HTML5 video is not supported by the email client.
• “The Advent of HTML5: Large Video Files, No Problem”
  This is a short blog speaking to the growth and acceptance of HTML5 video in email clients.

Interested in learning more about how you can use video to improve your email-marketing results? FulcrumTech can help. Email us or give us a call at 215-489-9336 today.