Video in email marketing: Tips for more conversions and growth

Even today, email marketing remains one of the most effective tools for customer outreach and generating higher conversion rates. By the same token, video content also enjoys a similar status: a fantastic marketing medium and an efficient tool for audience engagement.

It stands to reason that combining the two would result in the best possible outcome, but this is only partially true. Marrying email campaigns with video content can lead to better results, but only if you know what you’re doing.

In this piece, we go over all the best practices and strategies that professional video marketing companies use to effectively merge video and email marketing campaigns for higher engagement and conversion rates.

Using video in email: It only makes sense

Videos have become a staple in digital marketing, for good reason. Rather than reading a wall of text with information about a product or service, many consumers are more receptive to watching a video. In fact, 50% of shoppers watch videos before deciding which products to buy or talking to a sales representative.

Emails are all about facilitating outreach. Whether you use email campaigns to get recipients to subscribe to a new webinar, sign up for a live event, or promote a new product, emails are, at their core, a tool to connect with your audience and deliver a particular message effectively.

Merging video content with email stacks both tools’ strengths, creating a synergy that boosts a campaign’s overall effectiveness.

How to embed video content in emails

While using video content in your email campaigns can be very beneficial, this doesn’t mean that you should directly embed a video in the body of an email.

Most email service providers don’t support video content embedding, and while some do, they can take ages to load. This can lead to high open rates, but low click-through rates.

There are two alternative methods: pasting a video thumbnail (a static image) in your email or using a GIF. When clicked, both of these options will lead recipients to an external page where they can watch the video freely, without worrying about loading times.

For a thumbnail, follow these tips:

• The easiest way to create a thumbnail is to take a screenshot of the video and reduce it to thumbnail size, 1280×720 pixels.
• To let recipients know that it leads to a video, add a play button graphic to it while you’re editing it.
• Once the thumbnail is ready, add it to the email and use it as an anchor to the link that leads to where the video is hosted.

Using GIFs is a similar process. Here are some best practices:

• Convert a clip from a video into a GIF by using an online tool, and choose where it starts and ends. A loop from the beginning is a good go-to.
• Adding a play button is also a good idea when using GIFs. Recipients might assume that there’s no more content aside from the animation otherwise, so adding the play button tells them what you expect them to do.
• Take into account that some email providers show GIFs as static images, so the key information should be on the first frame to guarantee that all recipients get the essential details.
• Paste the GIF, along with the link to where the video is hosted, just as you would an image file.

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Where to host your video

Once your video and email format is ready, you’ll want to create a landing page to host it. While there are other options to host a video—like uploading it to your YouTube channel—the beauty of landing pages is you can design them from the ground up to prompt visitors into taking a specific action that synergizes with an email campaign’s objectives.

Moreover, if you choose to upload a video to a platform like YouTube, you’ll be missing out on some things. The most important is that to include a CTA, you would have to link to yet another page where the recipients can take action. If they’re jumping from their email platform to YouTube and then to a third place, chances are you’ll be losing a lot of recipients in the process.

Trying to keep things as simple as possible is key to improving video email conversion rates.

Optimizing video landing pages:

1. Specificity over the shotgun approach: The landing page should be designed around the goal you have in mind for your email campaign. Having too many calls to action and a lot of information about different things can confuse or irritate visitors and make them close the page without even watching the video.
2. Include good copy, but don’t depend on it: Apart from the video itself—which should have all the necessary information—the landing page should have a bit of good copy, but don’t assume most visitors will read it. Chances are they will think that everything they need to know is in the video. It’s best to have a bit of concise copy that highlights essential details and a CTA button that stands out from all other content for visitors to act on.
3. Customization goes a long way: If you’re thinking of implementing video content in your email marketing campaigns as a long-term strategy, it’s best to create a new landing page for each video you send out. Just like every video and email should be crafted with a clear goal in mind, asking viewers to take a specific action, your landing page should be designed around that goal exclusively as well.

Types of video content to use in emails

There are many types of videos you can send out to get recipients to take action.

Here are some examples:

• Whiteboard videos are short, engaging, animated videos that communicate to viewers a relevant message, which makes them a natural fit for email strategies. What’s awesome about adding whiteboard explainer videos to emails is that they’re highly customizable, so you can tailor them to your campaign’s goal.
• Product videos showcase to your recipients what you have to offer in engaging and enticing ways. Here, focus on catching their eye, making them curious, and wanting to know more, while communicating how your products can help:
• Testimonials are a type of video where a customer explains their experience with a brand. They’re effective because most people want to hear real stories, and watching someone talk about their positive experience with a product or service builds confidence and seals the deal for many. You can use testimonials to build brand trust and convince recipients to take action.

The finishing touch

Here are three more tips for using video in email to help you make the most out of the video-email synergy.

• Videos should be short: It can be hard to condense everything you want to show prospective customers, but the truth is that most people don’t want to watch long-winded marketing or promotional videos. Try to include videos that won’t require too much of the recipient’s tune. When in doubt, a two-minute video has become the gold standard for this type of content.
• Write a persuasive subject line that includes the word “VIDEO”: It sounds simple, but just by including this one word in caps or inside brackets in an email subject line, you pique recipients’ interest and, at the same time, set your content apart from the text-exclusive emails.
• Use captions in video content. Since people open their email whenever and wherever they can, don’t forget about mobile users. Adding captions ensures the content can be understood even by recipients checking their email on the go, and might not be able to listen to the content right then and there.

With the average U.S. resident watching almost two hours of digital video every day, there’s no doubt that video is a worthwhile addition to your email marketing campaigns.