We have long been passionate about creating the best experience in email for your recipients and for years video has not been something that was viable. Different email clients offered different experiences and it was difficult to technically get it to work.
I’ve been spending some time testing and figuring out how to make using video a whole lot easier in email and although the email client support is the same - we can leverage some new techniques to allow us to use video and animations to enhance the experience of our recipients.
Why use video?
Video is cool and eye-catching, that’s why it works on every platform marketers are using - from LinkedIn to messaging and social media sites. You can apply these same ideas to email - previous posts on this subject have quoted:
- Boosts open rates by 19%.
- Increases click-through rates by 65%.
- Reduces unsubscribes by 26%.
Additionally, including video can lead to open rate increases of 6% - How video can directly influence someone to open an email I am not sure.
A quick search will lead you to plenty of articles claiming an ROI or increased brand affinity after including a video in your marketing. Video in email is not that widely used - but the stats that are out there show 64% increase in click through rate, although this was using a GIF with a ‘play’ button overlay.
Even if some of these stats are correct, or you get a fraction of the result, video can be a real game changer when it comes to increasing engagement and clicks for your emails.
Why isn’t everyone doing it?
Well it’s complicated. Unlike on a website, where you can quickly upload your video to YouTube, grab the link or embed player and paste it onto your website and it is done - you need to do a lot more!
Firstly - is it worth it for your audience? Although the techniques I’m sharing in part two will make it much easier to get a video in your email - having a fully featured video player with controls, only works in a few email clients:
- Apple Mail
- iOS Mail
- Outlook for MacOs*
- Samsung mail**
*Outlook for MacOS - you will need to add explicit instructions to ‘right click to play’
**Samsung mail is an older email client and although still in use, the percentage of users is small.
Getting an email client breakdown from your ESP, or using a third party tool that can give you this information will let you evaluate whether investing time into video in email is worth it.
Along with the right audience, you’ll also need to host your video somewhere - I explain this in the next blog post. But put simply - most ESPs and your current CDN or media storage you use to add links to your images in email may not be suitable for video.
Scaling to demand is the problem - a 100kb image that is downloaded by your 1 million email subscribers that open in the first minute you send is normal. Trying to get a 1mb (megabyte) video to download and buffer quick enough for the same 1 million is a lot of work for your file storage and as it is just a spike when you hit send - even if you stagger sends - it’s not a regular situation.
Lastly, you may need a developer or tool that helps you to get a video in your email and not every company has that resource. (ActionRocket can help here 🤓)
New tricks - Video as a progressive enhancement.
All of the above is assuming you need the full video controls and sound to get the benefit of including video - this is where some new tricks allow us to add progressive enhancement to your campaigns to gain the benefits of video, without the need to worry about the specific email clients.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the stats was 64% higher click through rate on a GIF with a play button overlay - GIFs have some limitations, such as 264 colors and due to large file sizes the more you include, tend to be quite short. We can’t eliminate the need for a GIF as one major email client, Gmail, will only support this animation type.
BUT - another image format, animated webp - allows full 24bit colour and compared to a GIF the file size is around 60% smaller. Allowing you to send longer animations with more colour for the same size file.
THEN - Apple Mail supports adding an mp4 file (video) in an image element that behaves like a looping GIF, no sound, no controls, but a full video playing!
Therefore following trends such as Instagram reels, YouTube shorts and many other social media sites - a short video with text overlaid on top could be included in an email.
What is the Goal of your video?
Whenever we are evaluating a technique like video, interactive email or a new campaign, we always ask what the goal is. When thinking about your video in email - what is the goal?
- Get more views on your new brand video
- Include an instructional video for a product
- Promote a product via video
- Sell ad revenue and get views on YouTube videos
- Plus many more…
Not all of the above can be achieved in email. Remember the experience is different across email clients and depending on the type of inclusion, whether traditional video with a fallback GIF or the progressive enhancement above - you won’t be able to track the number of times the video is played (views) or how far a video has been watched. If the goal is to get as many views as possible, linking to a website with the video will give you that information, similarly with YouTube ad revenue, you need the video to be watched via YouTube.
But with a large number of use cases, video will be a great addition to your email campaigns.
How?
Look out for the next post coming out before the end of the week for all the technical elements, plus a special Email Weekly featuring video on Friday - to see it all in action!
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