4 creative ways of using Videos in Email Marketing

The tremendous impact shown by video marketing has multiplied its demand across the globe. Marketers are now trying to implement its use in most of the sought out methods of marketing. The recent effort of marketers is the use of videos in email. Email monks and Getresponse have done an research on how videos in email can affect the response of marketing. The results they have obtained were

• 55% increase in click-through rates.
• 44% more time spent reading emails.
• 41% more email sharing and forwarding.
• 24% increase in conversion rates
• a return 280% higher than traditional email.

But, in most of the tried and tested methods of using a video in email marketing, marketers have realized the fact that it has a limited scope. It is found that there is no universal video format compatible with all email clients. Only two-thirds of email clients today can play embedded videos. Neither Gmail (which holds a 40% market share for webmail) , Outlook (23%) nor Yahoo (21%) can play embedded videos. To handle this drawback we give you some tips and examples on how to use this powerful marketing tool to foster marketing, sales and business.

Tip 1.Use of HTML5

HTML5 gave the world , the possibility of “embedded videos”. Until then embedding videos in email was beyond the reach of marketers. Unfortunately, HTML5 works for only 25% of email clients. HTML5 is limited to the latest versions of Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer 9.0 . The main disadvantage that lies here is that HTML5 is incompatible with Outlook, a software support which is commonly used by most of the marketers. The mobile web browsers that come pre-installed on iPhones, iPads, and Android phones all have excellent support for HTML5. Here are some tutorials that can help dealing with HTML5 embed with videos.

• A How-To Guide to Embedding HTML5 Video in Email – from Email on Acid
• A How-To Guide to Embedding HTML5 Video in Email – From Spark Email
• How to Code HTML5 Video Background in Email – from Litmus

Tip 2.Use of Cinemagraphs as illusions of video

These images are often mistaken as “Animated GIFs “, but these are termed as Cinemagraphs . Though the format of the file is still .gif, the categories are conceptually different. The term “cinemagraph” was coined by photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck in 2011. They were the first photographers to really put cinemagraphs on the map through their stunningly beautiful fashion photography in conjunction with model, Coco Rocha. Cinemagraph is the combination of an image and a video together, where only part of the image is animated, and the rest remains static. It loops endlessly, and creates a surreal image, that gives an illusion that the image is frozen at time. An excerpt from advertising age -“Brands need to be paying attention to cinemagraphs for visual storytelling, because each image has all the visual punch and immediacy of video, without the barrier to entry of a play button. We have found through our research that cinemagraph content tends to have more virality, with 71% higher organic reach than still photographs.” Companies like Pixel and Shutterstock have extended the reach of making cinemagraphs to marketers to enhance their business.

Tip 3. Use of Animated gifs

When marketers realised that use of videos in email is beyond the technical scope , they have used the enhanced idea of using an animated gif posing as a video embedded in the email. Many brands which implemented this idea have seen a huge difference in the response they have got. Animated gifs was taken as a compromise between a static image and a video in the email marketing. Technically, if 3 to 4 frames of animated gifs can be combined, it can give an illusion of a video to the viewers. Here is an example. Amazon’s Black Friday drip email campaign kicked off with this very effective animated gif that shows a fireplace that is burning on all kinds of devices. Another effective example of using a video in email marketing is Women’s clothing shop Ann Taylor LOFT. She had created a suspense in the gif which lets the customer to click through to view it.

Tip 4. Link+image tactic

This was a tactic used by many marketers as a dynamic alternative to videos in email. Instead of just including a text link to the video, they have embedded a static image from the video and superimposed a play button over it, which gives an illusion of a playable video. When recipients click on the image, they’re taken to either a social video site like YouTube or their own website, where the video is hosted. Linking to the the landing page where the video is hosted is considered to be a good alternative. It is surveyed that 29% of successful marketers link to a video landing page while 23% use the video embed method. And 52% link to a video landing page on their site or on a video sharing network. However, there are certain email service providers who have made it possible to embed videos in email.

• Mailchimp
• Getresponse
• Emma
• Campaign monitor
• Aweber

Videos in email marketing is definitely a goal stricken formula for success, but unfortunately does not imply for the time being. The techniques mentioned above substitutes the use of videos in emails and executes marketing successfully. If you have any other innovative techniques of use of videos in email, please comment below.