Email in Motion: Adding Video to Your Email Marketing

You’ve heard of email marketing, and you’ve heard of video marketing. But something you may not have heard about too much is Video Email Marketing. Yes, sending a video through email. Now obviously there are several conditions to follow. Standard videos, depending on the dimensions and how long they are, can be very large files, 100+mb. But when we’re talking email, videos that are even 5-10mb are too big. You must make your videos email-friendly, And, just like making your website mobile-friendly, you must make your videos mobile-friendly as well. According to MediaPost, 50% of the U.S. population has a smartphone. Another survey, by Poll Research Center, claims that 50% of people with smartphones, use them to send and receive email. That means we can assume that 25% of the total U.S. population accesses their email from their phones. Chances are pretty good that your email will be see on mobile device of some kind.

The easiest way to make your video email-friendly

Post your video on your Youtube channel. Mark it unlisted. This essentially makes the video private, inaccessible by anything other than the direct link you send someone. Another advantage to this is that if your recipient uses Gmail, the video will play right in their email.

Next, make your video mobile-friendly. This applies to video on your website that may be viewed on a smartphone. This is not exactly complicated, but there is a bit more to it. The two main brands to be sure you are compatible with are iPhone and Android. Android can see Flash and HTML 5 video. iPhone is a bit more picky. It only sees HTML5 video. So you need to make two versions of your video. I recommend not making flash videos. It’s an extra step you are doing so iPhones can view it, and that just seems like extra work, when you can just make an HTML5 video and all phones will see it.

Experian studies show that video in an email drove an average 21% higher conversion rate and a 24% higher order value. So if you are already having great success with email marketing, what do you think will happen when you add video to your next email marketing campaign? MailChimp, ConstantContact, and Aweber all know how to handle video and include viewing statistics in their analytics.

Feedback Loop

The great thing about video is it’s ability to work with other platforms you are already using, such as web, email, and social media. Users who receive video in their email and watch it are going to be more likely to share that video with their friends, people who are not currently on your mailing list.

It’s 2013. A new year. It’s time for a change in your marketing direction. Let’s sit down and talk about how video can change the perception and the reception of your marketing message.