8 Tips to Upgrade Your Video Email Marketing Game

Are you using videos in your emails already?

If not, this is the perfect time to start.

Visuals have an uncanny ability to draw our attention. Our brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than texts. Thus, it takes less time to understand something from a video than from text or anything else.

So, using interactive videos in an email makes them more entertaining, gives a higher open rate and click-through rate, and eventually increases user engagement and retention. Many brands are already practicing this strategy successfully.

An example is B2B software company Igloo Software which created 200 videos in three months to showcase their company culture in their email marketing campaigns. This approach doubled their CTR.

In this blog, we will take you through A to Z of video email marketing and how to implement it right for your business. Let’s cover the basics first.

Video email marketing is just what it sounds- including videos in your emails to help them stand out in inboxes.

Emails have long been a fundamental marketing channel and often one of the most important for brands. It’s a powerful channel and videos simply amplify email's potential.

One of the most effective strategies to boost your marketing conversions is using email videos. Videos are captivating and make even the most common marketing channels more engaging and effective.

It is indeed the weapon that can make your emails hard to be overlooked.

Video is an excellent supplement to email as a value-added feature that viewers appreciate. You can use it for pretty much any type of email.

However, it does not mean you should include videos in your emails.

Break this down a little more and play smart. Rather than embedding a video, it's better to use a thumbnail image of the video and accompany it with a clickable link.

There are several options to engage your reader with videos. You can simply ask them to watch a video in your subject lines. Then give them a link to your video landing page. This strategy can enhance your open rate by up to 6%.

You can even create different videos around your marketing campaigns and use them while sending emails to your subscribers.

You can't fully implement a strategy until you understand its importance.

Video gives you the highest possibility of connecting with your target audience. It simplifies complex topics, appeals to audiences, and creates a bond that fosters long-term commitment. Videos in email grab people's imagination in a way that text simply cannot, especially in the B2B market, where buyers want to see intriguing things but all too often don't.

Here are some interesting video marketing statistics showing how videos can upturn your email marketing game.

Increases open rate: Videos can increase the open rates of your emails by 19 percent (Source: HighQ).

Increases click through rate: Video thumbnails can generate 65 percent more click-through rates. (Source: Campaign Monitor).

Reduces opt-outs: Videos in emails can cut down the opt-out rate by 75 percent (Source: DCD Agency).

Increases awareness: Videos for marketing can increase brand awareness by 54 percent (Source: Oberlo).

Increases Revenue: 64 percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase after seeing a video (Source: SocialMediaToday).

Reduces cost: Videos lower your cost per lead by up to 19 percent (Source: Vidyard).

Improves SEO: Videos in emails improve SEO and email marketing gets 41 percent more search traffic (Source: Vidyard).

Apart from this, using video in your emails will help you build a library that you can reuse again and again to achieve a similar lift across social media and your website.

Now that we have understood what video email marketing is and why you should send videos in email marketing campaigns, let's move forward to some of the proven ways to implement it.

Sending random product videos can result in a mishap.

Even though videos are the most loved form of entertainment, It's not like people begin to watch or appreciate any irrelevant video sent to them.

Every minute, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube alone. There is already a ton of content available online. So, why would people watch videos that you want them to see?

To enhance your YouTube video views, your videos need to stand out and capture the attention of your target audience.

Email personalization is a tried and tested method to engage your readers and increase conversions. Create a video online that your subscribers would be delighted to watch. It must both solve and entertain their problems.

Take a peek at this video email marketing sample crafted according to their subscriber's preferences.

Amid the rush and abundance of digital content, people tend to spend less and less time on one item and go on to another quickly.

So turning your blog content into podcasts or videos can be a good idea. While recording a video podcast may require some time and effort, it allows you to attract a larger audience to your blog. By diversifying your content, you cater to different preferences and reach more people, boosting your blog's visibility and engagement. In fact, many famous bloggers like Tim Ferris have been doing this for a long time.

A blog post that takes 7 minutes to read can usually be summarized in a 2-minute video. There's no need for any form of animation or beautiful vector graphics. Just place yourself or one of your content writers in front of the camera and begin telling the audience what you learned from your blog. It's as simple as that nowadays.

Once you create a video, you can link it to your emails and send it to your subscribers.

This will keep your readers interested in your blog postings and boost video conversions, which could be a pivotal moment in your business's profitability.

Every marketer should keep email optimization in mind, especially if they want their clients to be pleased.

Here are some important points to consider while optimizing emails:

The importance of A/B testing video content and the parts of your email campaign cannot be overstated. The performance of each video can be tracked, including how many people clicked on it, watched it all the way through, and went to your website. A/B testing will reveal how your subscribers react to your campaign and what needs to be tweaked.

When it comes to video email marketing, keep it short, sweet, engaging, and uncomplicated. Make your viewers spend as little time as possible watching your video or reading your email.

When it comes to videos, short and crisp almost always win.

Instead of embedding a video, you could use a GIF to promote a video. It's no secret that GIFs are utilized to increase engagement in anything from ordinary social media comments to Instagram posts and stories.

Most email clients support GIFs; however, some only display the first frame. As a result, the initial frame of your GIF must have all of the information required to engage and interest the user. It can be based on a promotion, information, or a new product.

So make sure to include the necessary information in the first frame if your GIF won't play automatically. Also, add a "play" button graphic to your GIF that links to your video's webpage.

There is an alternative to embedding straight videos or using video thumbnails. You can follow in the footsteps of industry leaders like Frank Kern and Neil Patel.

Both are pretty popular, and their content is visible on all social platforms and in public places. They keep any visuals away from their emails. Instead, they put links to follow through to their content.

Neil simply writes some words on the page and tells you what you'll get. But oversimplification of emails may not work for all. People follow influencers because they share their knowledge. As a startup or a well-established firm, you also want to add value. However, overly simple emails, in the beginning, may go unnoticed.

As you can see in the example above, you could have three videos in one email. More specifically, there are three titles, each with a video link. This method will save you time and make your emails load faster.

In fact, including the term "video" in the subject line can increase your open rate by 19 percent.

Almost half of all users want to see a product demo before purchasing it. So, a short video on how your product can offer value would be more effective.

Your email recipients must take action that doesn't require them to stay in their inboxes.

You can include the video link in your email campaign and an appropriate copy. You may accomplish this by creating a very appealing video landing page. Subscribers who click on the video link will be taken to your page.

You can also use a variety of video platforms to create a better video landing page. Video hosting services such as Vidyard, Vimeo, and Brightcove can be relied upon. It's a little different than sending someone to your YouTube channel by email. Youtube alternatives are on the rise, and it will take you no time to learn, for example, how to download Vimeo videos, edit them, or distribute.

As a result, the strategy boosts your website's traffic and page authority, ultimately resulting in direct conversion.

Marketers frequently make the mistake of talking too much. Isn't it more convenient and effective to let pleased customers promote brands? And video is the best way to capture the feedback of your satisfied clientele.

Potential customers are more likely to form trust and make a purchase when they see an actual individual share their experience genuinely. Also, what could be better than to convey these strong client testimonials directly to a brand's leads inbox?

People love testimonials. In this day and age of global networks and social media, it is more common to give and read evaluations and share reviews in minutes. Before making a purchase, nearly 95% of shoppers read a review. According to Sean McCabe (Harvard Business Review), "a business sees a 5-9 percent gain in sales for every one-star increase on Yelp."

It may not seem like it, but buttons play an essential role in your video email marketing tactics.

Autoplay: Most people check their emails on their phone or tablet, which means they may be at work, out to dinner, or anywhere else where watching a video with the sound on is deemed impolite. So it’s advised not to use autoplay if you're sending a video email marketing campaign with HTML5. To be more inclusive, turn the sound off by default and apply subtitles instead. Using a subtitle generator provides you with different options to add subtitles to your videos and reach a bigger audience. According to Biteable, 64% of marketers have found that videos having captions are better performers than those without. Your subscribers must control when and how the video begins to play.

Animated Play Button: You could use an animated and transparent play button. This is a tried-and-true method of convincing recipients that a video is buffering in the email they just opened. As an overlay, simply utilize a static image of your video and an animated play button. It will make the image appear to be buffering, and it should work with most email clients.

Apart from the above strategies, here are a few things that will multiply the benefits of your marketing efforts.

1. Segment your email list - There is no one-size-fits-all, and neither do people prefer getting those generic emails. If you want to connect to your audience better, make segmentation and personalization your best buddies. Always group your subscribers based on their interests, behaviours, age, preferences, pain points, purchasing history, etc. And then craft emails with relevant content and videos.

2. Validate your email list - It’s essential to ensure that all your emails go to a valid address and not into the spam box or bounce back. So, if you don’t want your efforts to go in vain, make it a hard and fast rule to continuously validate and clean your email lists using an email verifier before sending out a campaign.


3. Optimize your emails for mobiles - It’s 2022, and people do almost everything from their dear mobile phones, checking their emails being no exception. According to Adestra, 45 percent of emails are opened on mobiles. Imagine opening an email, and the content doesn’t fit the screen, and the media doesn’t load? You leave without even trying to read that email. So, not having your emails optimized for mobiles can cost you a lot of possible engagement and conversions.

4. Don’t be 100 percent promotional - There are dozens of emails flooding people’s inboxes every day and with the same purpose- marketing and sales. If you don’t want to annoy your customers and want them to look forward to your emails, then you might need to change your marketing game a little and focus on winning your subscribers’ hearts.

You can try mixing different types of emails- it doesn’t always have to be promotional or about a product. It can also be about making customers happy with some funny gifs, puns related to what you do, or about appreciating them for being valued customers, or simply something informational and helpful.

Email Marketing is a very profitable channel. You just need to blend your video marketing strategy with your email marketing strategy efficiently for the best results.

Even the most distracted and busy prospects can be engaged with video in email marketing. Videos can immediately capture a user's attention and convey a message. They're more likely to become viral than texts, and people are more likely to remember them.