A few clients have asked me lately, “How do I send a video via email”?
It’s a GREAT question and one that I highly recommend you follow this approach to increase the chances of someone actually watching your video.
Video is a powerful medium to engage with your audience.
Pretty much every email provider won’t allow you to send a video in email, because the video file size is far too big. This would be difficult to send, but also impact your email deliverability, sender reputation, as well as the recipient’s server (Gmail, Outlook and others).
We need to be a little creative in how we can deliver this to your email list.
We have two main ways in which we recommend to clients insert of inserting video files into emails.
Here they are:
OPTION 1 - Take A Screen Shot Of Your Video With A Play Button
We have all been trained very well that if we see a video, and we’re curious to watch it, we need to click on a play button, and it starts playing. The same theory applies here sending video through emails. We can create a thumbnail image or screenshot of the video and add a play button on top of it. Once you’ve created this image, you can embed this within the body of the email within your email marketing platform. Not sure about you, but it’s a way to unconsciously get more clicks from emails as it’s creating a common day-to-day experience, we are all used to. Therefore, readers will often unconsciously click on the play button without realising that it will move them from their email inbox to elsewhere to watch the video.
BONUS TIP – Don’t forget to embed this image within the body of the email, preferably somewhere close to the top of the email so it’s not lost below the fold.
See here for an example:
OPTION 2 – Add A GIF into Your Email
To generate even greater email engagement – opens rates as well as click through rates, another option you may wish to consider is inserting a GIF of the video into an email. A GIF is a silent and short animation. This allows for movement within the email. It may only last a few seconds but enough to get boost the attention of a reader.
There are a few services available to create GIFs from your video recordings, but one that might help is this Video to GIF article on Crello (We use Crello and feel free to access 25% off your Crello plans if you’re interested).
Word of Warning – Be careful not to make your GIFs too large in size, this may harm your email deliverability and email reputation. Also, I wouldn’t use GIFs all the time. Use GIFs as a pattern interrupt from what you normally send so it stands out amongst your email marketing efforts.
EXTRA TIPS AROUND SENDING VIDEOS IN EMAILS
TIP #1 - Send Traffic To YOUR Website/Landing Page
If you’re sending a video out to your email list, we recommend once a contact clicks on your video URL, you send them through to a page that you control. You may or may not have a video hosting platform sorted with the likes of YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia. This can be very tempting to just send traffic there to check out the video on your channel, as it’s really easy. Unfortunately, as you and I both know, we go to YouTube as viewers of a specific video…. and we come back a few days later, and we actually forgot what we went there in the first place for! If you’re sending traffic anywhere, you want to control what they see.
Depending on the nature of your video, if it’s for a blog article, then of course send them to the full blog post on your website. If it’s for promoting an offer (free/paid), you want to take them to a dedicated landing page. That way they aren’t distracted by other options on your website, they are focused on either signing up or leaving. Also, by sending traffic to one of your pages you can put a tracking pixel on the page too, which can help with running retargeting campaigns.
TIP #2 – Insert Links Multiple Times Within an Email
We recommend you insert a few links within your email. Firstly, of course on the image/GIF itself. Also add one or two more links within the body of the email on call to action words. This covers off those who won’t click on the image, but also allows you to use the wording to provide strong call to actions to drive your audience to watch the video. Remember the purpose of the email content is to get them to take action. Make sure you put a compelling case forward why they should click.
TIP #3 – Track Who’s Clicking
We also like to tag who’s clicking on some links. This is particularly useful if we’re running an offer, and we want to follow up with those who might be interested but hadn’t signed up, we can easily do a search for any contact who has that tag.
See an example of tag on an image/link in Keap Campaign Builder:
TIP #4 – Use Campaign Links
If you’re using something like Keap (or formerly known as Infusionsoft), we recommend you use Campaign Links on links that you’re using multiple times within a campaign. This allows you to easily update the link in one location if it were to change.
In Summary…
It’s awesome that you’re using video – it does take some time to write, record and edit your video content, so we want to make sure as many people see it as possible! Using one of the approaches above and following the additional video email marketing tips, this will boost your email engagement rates. Ultimately, this will lead to more of your email list will open, click, engage and take action from your videos.
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