Video Email: Should You Add It To Your Email Marketing Tools?
Email marketing is a funny thing, a mix of art and science, and part of that science is the technology behind it. Without the technology, we wouldn’t be able to measure email delivery, track open rates, or test how our email design renders. But not all technology makes sense all the time. Sometimes a new technology comes along and we as an email marketing company must ask: Is this something we should be encouraging our clients to do?
Video email is one of those new technologies that might or might not make sense for your email marketing initiatives. Video has become easier to do and easier to disseminate. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
We turned to our own email design guru to ask what email marketers should consider when exploring video email. Cameron gave us the following points to consider:
Video email makes sense if you have a complicated product. It also makes sense if you can tailor your video to the person watching it, as opposed to doing batch and blast, which is sadly still a rampant email marketing practice. Yes, there are ways to segment even your video email content! When personalized, video email response rates increase.
Similar to including alt text to make up for blocked images, use text to describe your video, including a call to action to get people to click through and watch it. Write it as a mini sales pitch, not just a description. It doesn’t work to put any rich media inside the email, including video. Your recipients will have to open the email and click through to watch it. Encourage them to do so.
Video email might involve follow up to make it work. Cameron calls it high tech followed by high touch: You have a mechanism to alert you when someone has viewed the video, then that person gets a follow up email or phone call from your sales team.
Make sure it works seamlessly, because unless you’re offering “can’t miss” content, your customers won’t wait for a slow video to load, or sit through a clunky one that’s painful to watch.
As with all email marketing campaigns, make sure your video email is relevant to the target audience. And, as always, test, test, test to make sure it’s worth your effort and your customer’s time to include the video in the first place!
P.S. Email Marketing Reports just posted some new information about video email, and the pros and cons of different ways of putting video into email. It’s definitely worth a look.
If you need some help exploring video email, feel free to contact us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.
Tags: email delivery, Email design, Email marketing company, Email marketing tools, video email
February 5th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Great ! I will add this to my bookmarks. TY