Top 7 Ways to Use Video in Email Marketing

Email marketing is powerful. Video marketing is even more powerful. Here's how to fuse the two for superb marketing results.

Video and email are a match made in heaven. Both are brilliant tools to pass your message, drive engagement, boost conversions and increase sales.

Using videos in email marketing helps you to drive the point home. You can use plain-text emails, but they won't have the same effect as videos.

From our 40 Staggering Video Marketing Statistics article, we learned that:

• 92% of online marketers say that video is an important part of their marketing strategy.
• Video marketing boosts your lead generation by 66% per year.
• The most popular types of video are explainer videos (72%), presentations (49%), testimonials (48%) sales videos, (42%) and video ads (42%). (You will learn why this is important later in the post)
• 54% of users love watching videos from a business they support.
• If you use videos, you can grow your revenue 49% faster than non-video users.
• 43% of marketers say video reduced the number of support calls they received.

From these stats (and more from the aforementioned article), we can all see that video has a huge impact on digital marketing.

But what about email? Here are some facts from inbound marketing giant Hubspot.

• Email marketing generates an average of $38 bucks for every $1 spent.
• There are 4.2 billion daily email users.
• 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.
• Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
• 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention.

Email marketing is a powerful marketing tool. Couple that with video and you have the ultimate machinery to obliterate your competition.

Video email marketing will take your business to the next level. It doesn't matter what you do - just have fun with it!

If you're in doubt, ask these top 10 video marketing influencers and they will offer you the best of advice.

Tip for Newbies & Pros: If you're a WordPress developer, you should leverage our free proprietary SmartVideo plugin to offer your users a better video experience on every site you build.

Pros Only: We support a huge catalog of video hosting and cloud services, which makes distributing videos to your email subscribers a breeze.

Here's How to Use Videos in Email Marketing

This video email marketing business is pretty confusing. How do you use videos in email marketing? How do you ensure that your subscribers actually watch your videos?

Don't Embed the Actual Video Directly

If you had no idea, most email clients don't support embedded videos for security reasons.

That means it's counter-intuitive to send full videos in your emails because some people on your list can't play the video, to begin with.

To ensure people watch the video, it's best to link to a landing page where you've hosted the full video.

In your email, use a still image with a play button, a GIF animation, a link with anchor text such as "Watch Full Video" or something along those lines.

Whenever the receiver clicks on the image, GIF, or your "Watch Full Video" CTA, they will be redirected to your website, or wherever the full video is.

Most of the time, you want the receiver to take some action that happens outside the mailbox.

Using a video (or a GIF, such as Dell) is the perfect catalyst you need to send people straight to your landing page.

Firstly, you're offering them new visual content, which is always a great thing. Secondly, a video offers your email subscribers the impetus they need to click your CTA (call-to-action).

To win, create engaging thumbnails, GIFs, and CTAs for your emails. That GIF animation we're talking about could be the intro part of your video or anything else that makes people click through to watch the entire video.

Make Your Email Subject Line Pop!

Did you know over 65% of emails are ignored? That's right, well, according to Shep Hyken, leadership strategist and a regular contributor at Forbes.

So, how do you ensure more people actually open your email, read and take whatever action you desire?

Well, it's simple - make your email subject lines hard to ignore.

Ensure you add the term "video" to your email subject line. Add some emojis to the subject line as well to pique interest.

Simply adding the term "video" to your email subject line increases open rates by 19% and click-through rates by 65%.

Most marketing emails don't include the term "video." If you include the term "video," your email will stand out from the crowd.

If people are opening your emails, the battle is half won. Now, you simply need them to click your CTA, which we've already covered.

Use Customer Testimonials, Reviews & Case Studies

Video testimonials work like magic in email marketing. We all read online reviews and ask friends for recommendations before making a purchase.

It's human nature; we are drawn to do things that the people we like do. That's why social proof is a powerful marketing tool to use in your email marketing arsenal.

If you have videos of customers raving about your products lying around, it's time to repurpose the content for your email marketing campaigns.

Typically, marketers take up the stage and talk too much. Isn't it better to let your customers promote your products instead?

So, instead of sending marketing emails that bore your customers to death, use video testimonials in your emails.

Video testimonials are exactly what you need to convince any prospect still sitting on the fence. If I see "Case Study," "Customer Testimonial" or a similar subject line from a business I love, I'm more inclined to open that specific email.

If more people open your emails, you're halfway there. Plus, if they open the email, chances are high they will click through to your landing page (where, of course, they get to watch the entire testimonial, review, case study, etc.

Personalize Your Video Email Marketing

One of the reasons we ignore most emails is the lack of personalization. Most email marketers send out bland marketese that's as repulsive as a monkey in a negligee.

But you're not that type of marketer - you're smart and way better than that :)

You can add life to your emails using personalized video marketing. What does that even mean? And how do you use personalized videos to supercharge email marketing?

At the end of the day, it's always about the email receiver - you know - your prospect. So, how does that help?

Say, you check your video analytics and notice that a certain user didn't finish watching your video.

You can send them a personalized video reminder to return and watch the entire video. That way, you can easily drive more repeat traffic back to your website.

The best is you can do this automatically and without breaking the bank. Need a great example?

If so, Marketo did it. They send videos to their email subscribers automatically, which helped them to boost their CTR by over 144%.

Sending video reminders to your users makes them feel valued. Also, it nets you more clicks and views for your videos, which is what you want. No?

Another way to personalize video email marketing is by creating a sale video directed at one hot lead. If a customer abandoned the cart, for instance, you could record a quick video and send it to them via email.

Doing so helped a marketing company such as BluLeadz to increase their close rate by over 36%. Such video emails speed up the buyer's journey and save you a lot of time and money since they are cheap and easy to create, even using a smartphone.

Upsell Current Customers Using Video Email Marketing

Most marketers mainly use email marketing to nurture new leads. It's a great tool for the onboarding process and any welcome series you have prepped for new leads.

Most of the time, marketers usually forget about repeat business when incorporating email marketing into their overall marketing strategy.

But...

Did you know, according to conversion optimization experts, OptinMonster, the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5% and the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60%?

Well, that is good news to anybody looking for a bigger slice of that repeat-business pie. And video can help you keep the revenue coming in from your existing customer base.

Your email list is already full of people who are invested in your business. They are the kind of people who are most likely to watch any video you include in your email marketing.

As such, you have plenty of upselling opportunities in your email database. Testimonial, company culture, promotional and educational videos in your emails can help you sell new products to your existing market without stretching yourself thin.

Get creative ideas to market to your existing email list using all the videos at your disposal. Keep in mind that exceptional marketing videos tend to go viral, so do your best to shine.

Use Events to Your Advantage

Events offer you a lot of content to share with prospects who didn't attend. If your company hosts events, create videos surrounding the event and send them to your email subscribers.

You end up offering more visual content to your prospects and loop in the few (or many) who missed the event. It's like killing two birds with the same stone.

If you have an upcoming event, you can increase your attendance rate by sending videos of previous events to your email subscribers.

Many businesses, including music bands, do this on the regular. They send out recaps of previous events to build interest and boost attendance for future events.

It works all the time since we all love videos, and if users are already invested in your business, you're more likely to convert them to loyal attendees and brand ambassadors using event videos.

Besides, they learn more about your brand and how you work in action while building interest in your events.

"Whether it’s a professional video recapping last year’s event or a short-and-sweet video of an inspirational yoga teacher at work, video email is a powerful tool to push those on-the-fence attendees through your doors." - Margot Whitney.

Next, don't leave your video production team behind. Drag them to your events and shoot stunning videos to share with your email subscribers.

After all, there is no use wasting all that video content, especially when you can repurpose it later. Wink, wink.

Finally, Test, Rinse and Repeat

If you want to see if your video email marketing campaigns are working, you must make video analytics your friend.

You want to know the number of people who opened your email and clicked on your video CTAs.

Additionally, you want to know how much of your video they watched and why they left when they did.

Dive into your video analytics tool and see the results you're already getting from the videos you're sending in your emails.

After that, run some A/B tests and compare the results. You can try different subject lines, video lengths, content, and so on. Just ensure you're measuring your results.

Over time, you will have a better idea of what is working for your video email marketing campaign and what needs to bite the dust.

Adjust accordingly to boost your open, click-through, and, ultimately, conversion rates.

Final Words

Email and video go hand in hand like bread and butter. If you play your cards right using the tips we've shared, you'll notice better email open rates and more views for your videos.

Which are your favorite video email marketing tips? Please let us know via social media :) Cheers!