An open rate, click-through rate and unsubscribe rate are among the most important KPIs in email marketing, and the addition of video to your email affects them all.
Embedding video in the email:
Currently, there is no one-fits-all solution to insert a video in the email that would reliably work for all email clients.
A small number of email clients support playing video in the inbox and would show the video to your subscribers properly. But the majority of email clients, including the most popular Gmail, can not play it in the inbox. So you’ll need alternative solutions that only “look like” a video in the email.
In the end, you can choose to go the simple route and use one of the workarounds. Or, if you have the resources and want to prioritize quality and higher results, you’ll need to use a more advanced solution. It involves sending an actual video and setting up a series of fallbacks for those email clients that can not support playing it.
If you still want to send actual videos to your email list, there are 2 requirements you need to meet:
To send a video, you need to add an HTML snippet to the email. You’d need a platform that lets you edit the HTML code of your email.
Most email services — such as Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail — can not do that. But some marketing platforms can.
If you work with an established business, chances are, you are already using one of these. If not, start with making an account on one — many of them have free plans.
The size and where the video is hosted play a major role in determining if it will play in your emails. The size of the video is best kept under 1 MB — larger sizes might take longer to load and affect your viewers’ user experience.
Also, hosting the video on YouTube or Vimeo will not work — you’ll need to host it on servers you control.
Once the hosting is cleared, it comes down to three steps:
To create a video, you can use After Effects Templates from Videvo. They provide a wide range of free and premium templates that can be used to create dynamic videos. The templates include customizable text and graphics, and they can be used to create professional-looking results in no time. Moreover, they come with detailed instructions on how to customize the templates and how to optimize the file size.
A thumbnail is a still image that is visible before the video starts playing. A good thumbnail does two things:
You can get a thumbnail by choosing from existing images on photo stocks like Unsplash and Pexels. It’s also easy to create one yourself: in Canva, Snappa, with Paint 3D (on Windows) or Photos app (on Mac).
Use a video editor like 123APPS or Veed (both work online, no need to install a program) to add a thumbnail to the video.
You can use the <video> tag of HTML5 to send the video in an email. You will also need to set up a fallback image for Gmail and other email clients that don’t support the tag.
The important attributes to include in the tag are:
There are other ways to “embed” video into an email aside from HTML5 — or rather to make it look like an embed.
The simplest way is to use a static image and add a Play button to it, then make it so that a link to the video opens in a new window once the image is clicked.
The upsides of this method are:
The downsides are:
Selzy builder can automatically add a screenshot from the video together with a Play button to save you time. All you need to do is select the Content tab and drag the Video content block into the email layout.
You can change the size of the video, center it in the email, and change the appearance, color, and size of the Play button.
These are steps to take if you choose to use a GIF:
The upsides of the GIF method are:
The disadvantage of using a GIF is the same as with a static image: if the viewer has the images in their inbox turned off by default, they will not see it.
Faux video is mobile responsive, it works with retina images, and because it imitates video-like movement with an interaction, it lets your subscribers feel as if they’re playing the video in their inbox. Faux video can be played in:
There is more than one faux video technique. For example, by combining image sprites (a strip of static images) with background images and CSS keyframes, it’s possible to show one static image frame after another quickly, which will create a “video” effect too. Another option is to build it on animated GIFs – that’s how faux videos are done at Litmus.
Here are some email marketing tips and best practices when it comes to thumbnails:
Consider keeping the thumbnail’s colors, background, and layout elements consistent with your other videos. Consistency is one of the answers if you are wondering how to create a good-looking email.
You could use a stock photo, a snapshot of a video frame, or take a new photo to use as a base. Online graphic design apps like Canva, BeFunky, Snappa, Crello, and others can help you easily create great thumbnail images for free, no editing skills needed. They also offer hundreds and thousands of templates to choose from, as well as stock photo and vector image databases.
The subject line along with preview text in email is what people see when they receive your message. It is prime real estate — a good subject line can raise an email’s open rate, while a bad one may do the opposite or even land the email in spam.
Long video means bulky, heavy file, and a heavy file means the email will take longer to load.
The problems here are:
This only applies to faux videos and embedded ones.
Video CTA (call-to-action) prompts people to do an action you want them to take after they’ve watched the video. A call-to-action depends on the goal of the video and can be anything from signing up for a free trial or webinar, to buying a product, subscribing to a paid course, or buying a book.
Here are a few tips and best practices for creating a good CTA:
A few examples of a call-to-action to get inspired:
A bright and obvious Play button with a CTA made as plain text. Tracksmith focuses completely on getting the subscribers to go see the video — everything else is removed from an email.
MacPaw blends an image with a Play button into the color scheme of the email.
A leader in cinematic footage licensing Filmsupply uses a beautiful visual with multiple scenes in its email.
Builder Designs uses a Play button on an image that perfectly matches its overall email design.
Musicbed’s email has a minimalistic layout with only four sections — the header with a full-scale image of the featured person, the video block, the hashtag, and a blockquote to get a stronger interest. It makes it clear there is a film waiting for its viewers.
Adding videos to your emails can have multiple benefits, from a boost in engagement and click-through rates, to a rise in conversion rates.
Video can help get your message through and do so in a powerful and persuasive way. Despite the technology not being perfect yet, there are multiple ways to make it work:
The first one is the most advanced, but the majority of email clients on the subscribers’ side do not support playing a video on the inbox — which means you need to set up a fallback (in the form of a faux video, GIF or static image) to account for it.
In practice, embedded videos are technically complicated to realize. The alternative is methods like GIFs and static images with a Play button — they are easy to make and work well enough.
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