As remote work becomes the new normal, marketers need new ways to connect with customers in an increasingly cluttered digital world. Video is more important than ever for crossing physical and virtual barriers to engage and convert customers online.
Many marketers who utilize video on social media and other channels neglect video email marketing because it can be daunting to embed videos in emails.
Wait, can videos even be embedded in marketing emails?
Yes, you can embed videos in marketing emails!
However, embedding videos in a marketing email requires careful planning, as you must account for the way that the video will be rendered across different email clients.
Around 40% of email users will be able to watch videos in their email. While some email clients, like Apple Mail, Samsung and Outlook for Mac do support HTML5 video players, many popular email clients do not support video in email, including Gmail and Outlook for PC. (See the complete list of which email clients support video in email).
We’ll discuss why it’s worth investing the time in video email marketing and then circle back to how to embed videos in emails properly.
Why video email marketing is worth it
So why is it worth it to stress over perfecting a video email code snippet, or take the time to build out a perfect video landing page, when there are much easier ways to separately send emails and share videos with your audience?
Video email marketing can supercharge your growth. It helps you stand out from the crowd and truly engage and convert the leads enrolled in your email workflows.
1. Increase email engagement 40%+ compared to text & images
Email marketing A/B tests have shown that videos in email can increase email click-thru-rates 40%+, and revenue attributed to email campaigns 190%+.
Videos interrupt the usual pattern. In a world where we’re all receiving 100+ marketing emails per day, a moving, dynamic video email cuts through the noise and captures attention.
Also, video allows us to build emotional connections with our buyers. Whether we are featuring ourselves, our coworkers, our customers, influencers, or even animations with the right background music, we are able to convey nonverbal cues that could not be expressed with text or images alone.
And of course, video is fun. Four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than reading about it. Whether we’re TikTok teens or Fortune 500 CEOs, we can all enjoy a little spark of fun.
2. Show, rather than tell
Video also helps us convey more information faster. The average reading speed is 300-450 words per minute. Most marketing emails are 100+ words, which take 13.3-20 seconds to read. Meanwhile, the human brain can process images in as little as 13 milliseconds.
So a 20-second video email might take the same amount of time for our recipient to process, but in that video, we are able to include far more information.
When you are looking to share detailed information – such as your unique value proposition, how to get started using your product, or a customer success story – a video is more efficient and effective than text.
3. Nudge leads at the perfect time
One of the most powerful aspects of email marketing is that it allows you to trigger emails and messages to connect with customers at the right time, with the right message, in the most engaging way.
Someone has signed up for your SaaS platform but not activated yet? Send a video email.
Someone has reached their “a-ha” moment, and should now be talking with your sales team? Send a video email.
Someone has purchased your product recently, and it’s time for them to buy again? Send a video email.
Someone needs a little more convincing before they buy, and should see a customer testimonial? Send a video email.
While social media marketing helps you reach audiences based on their interests and demographic information, email marketing helps you reach high-value leads based on the actions they have (or haven’t) taken, to nudge them through the marketing funnel.
How to embed videos in marketing emails
To ensure that your video marketing email will render for all of your recipients, you need to embed the video in an HTML5 video tag and provide a fallback option for when the HTML5 video player is not supported.
The fallback option should include an image or GIF preview of the video, with a link the viewer can click to watch the video in their browser.
This way, ~40% of viewers will watch the video in their inboxes, and the other ~60% will be able to watch the videos in their browsers.
The code you need to embed video in marketing emails
When you embed videos in marketing emails, your code snippet must include these elements:
- Video: The url of your video, hosted online in an .mp4 format
- Fallback Image: The fallback image preview that will show up when HTML5 video players are not supported, hosted online in an image format. GIFs work well here too!
- Video Landing Page: The fallback url for your video landing page, where recipients can watch your video in their browsers if HTML5 video players are not supported in their email client
A simplified code snippet will look something like this:
<video width=”100%” height=”auto” controls=”controls” src=[Video]“> <!– fallback –> <a href=[Video Landing Page] style=”cursor: pointer; <img src=”Fallback Image” alt=”Video Preview Image” style=”width: 100%;”/> </a> </video>
However, practically you will need to account for a few additional video email complexities.
The easiest way to send videos in marketing emails
To streamline the process, you can use Sendspark to automatically optimize your video content for email.
Sendspark was built by marketers for marketers to not just make it easy to send videos in emails, but also to ensure that videos are extremely effective for converting viewers.
With Sendspark, you can record a video on your desktop, upload a pre-recorded video or request a video from customers or whomever else.
Then, you can customize videos for your goal, with your own branding, your viewer’s name & logo, and a call-to-action.
Sendspark then automatically generates the video email embed code, video preview image, and video landing page all within the one platform.
Start sending video emails to grow faster
There’s no time like today to supercharge your newsletters and drip email sequences with videos! Get started using the Lumen5 video maker to create your content, and the Sendspark video email platform to automatically optimize your videos to send out via Hubspot, Marketo, Klaviyo, or any major email sending platform.
