Get the Best Traction on Your Emails by the Smart Use of Videos

Author: Arun Pillai

Teaser: Learn about the different ways in which you can take your emails beyond text, and also the advantages of using videos in emails.

An average person receives at least five marketing emails in his inbox every day, and many people receive much more than that.

If each of those emails contained reams of text about the product or service being marketed, the reader would quickly be put off. That is why marketers have started embedding pictures, GIF images and videos into emails. Forrester estimates that the click-through rate doubles or triples when there is a video in an email. Let us look at some of the most important aspects of using videos in your emails.

Types of Embedded Videos

Because of the restrictions and regulations of different email servers, marketers need to modify the type of video or animation that they plan to use inside their emails. Here are some of the common types:

Fallback Image with Play Button: The video can be played in either of two ways. When the viewer clicks on the ‘play’ button, the video could start playing inside the email itself, or it could open up a new window in which the video would play.

Autoplay Animated GIFs: Although not a video technically, most marketers group these GIFs with videos. An animated GIF is a picture with just a few frames of movement which keep getting repeated over and over again.

Animated Play Button: This is a mix of the static image with play button and the animated GIF. The animated GIF is used on top of the ‘play’ button to draw attention to it. This lures the viewer into clicking on the button and starting off the video.

Cinemagraphs: This is a mix of static picture and an animated GIF. Say the picture is of a tree during fall. The whole picture would be fixed and static, but only one part of it would be moving. For example, the falling leaves of this picture could be animated.

Benefits of videos in emails

If so many marketers are moving to the use of videos in their emails, there must be something good about them. Here are a few of them.

• Easier to explain – Suppose your company produces tools and equipment for construction, and you have developed a new tool for a different kind of shovel which is to be used in situations when you have balanced yourself with one hand and are working with the other. A short video about its use is much easier for the viewer than reading two long paragraphs about how to use it.
• Breaks Monotony – Your email might be one among 10 that have landed in your target recipient’s mailbox that day. And most of them would have him read through whatever it was that the marketer wanted to convey. It is a welcome relief to the customer, to look at a video instead of reading through text.
• Shareable – The cascading effect of social media is the biggest change in digital marketing from traditional modes of marketing. Email marketing and social media marketing are two important arms of digital marketing. Adding videos to your email means the reader can easily share the video on to his or her social media profiles, ensuring that the traction increases exponentially.

Possible Downsides

Most recipients open their emails in their offices, where they need to keep their computer or smartphone’s volume low or on mute. If your email has a video then part of your messaging might be lost, or worse misinterpreted. That is why you must also keep the text matter intact, as a backup.

A video also require good bandwidth to play smoothly without jerks, which might not always be available at the recipient’s end.