Every day, more than 50 emails reach our inbox related to business, fun and entertainment. We choose to read the emails based on the sender, subject, attachments etc. It’s a natural tendency.

A lot of people consider opening an email purely based on the sender and subject line, followed by, content that is catchy and easy to consume. Here is where video comes into play. It is lively, quick and requires little concentration.

So let’s talk about how you can utilize videos in your email marketing campaigns today.

Why video in email marketing?

Traditional email marketing has rapidly changed. Thanks to multimedia, we now have improved marketing strategies and increased click-through rates. A recent report from Forrester Research found that, adding videos in email can increase the click-through rates by two to three times. This means more lead generation through email and a high possibility of it converting those leads to sales.

Grabs User Attention

Nothing catches the attention of users better than a video. While they skim through everything else, video grabs their attention and gets them interested.​Itis theeasiestway toeffectively communicateinless time. Italsoaids in creating an emotional impact in the minds of subscribers than normal texts.

Focus on Visual Learners

Videos have a clear advantage over regular email newsletters because they serve as a visual treat for visual learners. If you have a business where video tutorials are required, consider using them in your email marketing campaigns.

Consumer Behavior

Marketing revolves around consumer behavior. In the last two years, there has been a surge in mobile device usage, which has greatly increased access to videos. This is all the more reason to make use of this medium.

Going Viral

Why you shouldn’t create a video with the sole goal of “going viral”? There is always a chance that the recipient might fall in love with your video and share it on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Why miss the chance to go viral?miss the chance to go viral?

Link to a video, don’t embed it in email

By now, you must be thinking about embedding video in your email. Although certain email service provider:

• Embedded videos are blocked by internet service providers (ISPs)
• Email service clients such as Outlook and Gmail do not support video playback.

To prevent this, Zoho Campaigns provides custom, video-based merge tags (much friendlier than they sound). By using these merge tags, you can include a thumbnail image of the video that, gets redirected to the particular YouTube/ Vimeo video when the recipient clicks on it.

How video in email marketing works

Picturize Kabul as a newly-opened Afghani restaurant that specializes in different types of breads, ​kebabs and other Central Asian cuisine. ​The owner of Kabul works on different strategies to market his goods in a unique way. In one effort,​he hires a marketing consultant to explore innovative ways to market via the Internet.

Veronica is an independent Email Marketing Consultant and helps companies improve their email marketing results. When they marketers approach from Kabul, she suggests they use email marketing to convey their plan of hosting a food festival every month where they showcase specific styles of Central Asian cuisine.

To promote their food festival, Kabul sends monthly newsletters to the list of customers about the different offers for that particular month. Veronica takes it a step further and adds a virtual tour video along with the email. This video will give an idea on how dishes are prepared and presented. A visual treat for the customers who will now know what to expect when they walk in the door.

A Few best practices

Before you dive in and start adding videos in your email newsletters

• Keep the videos short. No longer than 60 seconds to ensure you keep the customers’ attention.
• Avoid using video in two/three column email templates, because this may stretch the template and spoil the alignment of the email.
• While selecting the play button, make sure it contrasts with the background image so that it creates an illusion of a real video present in the email.
• If you are using a merge tag in an email campaign, especially an Autoresponder email, we recommend not deleting such merge tags as this may stop the Autoresponder message.

Video marketing vs video in email marketing

Why video in email rather than direct video marketing - you ask? Although there is no doubt those videos in email increases the click-through rate, not everyone watches the video. There may be many reasons for the recipient to skip the video and only look at the content. The user may have a busy schedule, or he or she could be at work with Internet restrictions.

Therefore, your email needs compelling text, links and images, in addition to video. The success of email marketing lies in maintaining a clean mailing list and providing compelling content. Using video in the content is a great way to enhance the appeal of your email campaigns!

Every marketing strategy works fine when it pulls of a huge number of customer base. The targeted audience are need to be treated more with videos while sending campaigns in order to increase the chances of opt-in signups. A video has the power to dwell in a user’s mind for longer time than texts. On the other hand, it does grow a seed of buying the product on their minds. So, link more videos to your campaigns and stir attention!