How Videos can be a Game Changer for Your Email Marketing: 7 Best Practices and Ideas

Intro

How many emails do you receive in a day? Dozens, hundreds? or is it too overwhelming to count? The average number of emails received by office workers is 121 per day. But do they open all emails landing in their inbox? Probably not.

As a digital marketer, you must already be aware of this issue. Your email marketing can go wrong with unattractive subjects and content. So, you need a new plan to make your email stand out and trigger receivers to land a click.

Adding videos to your email can be a game changer for your marketing strategy. Videos are one of the most engaging content for marketing purposes. It can be a solution to boost important metrics. In fact, most streaming movie platforms include videos into their email marketing to acquire and retain subscribers.

So, why don’t you try and prove it yourself? Below we’ve gathered some benefits of video in email marketing. Also, discover the best practices and ideas to optimize your email marketing strategy. Keep scrolling!

How Videos Boost Email Marketing: The Benefits

Can videos be a game changer for your email marketing? The answer is simply a ‘yes.’ Many marketers have gained positive results after adding explainer videos to their marketing emails. To know more details, check a list of the benefits below!

1. Boost Conversion and Click -Through Rates

High conversion and click-through rates (CTR) are some of the main goals of email marketing. A video in an initial email can gain CTR by 96%. With such a promising result, video in marketing emails sounds like a great idea.

2. Escalate Email Open Rates

Videos can evoke receivers to open the email you send. A trick you can try is by adding the word ‘video’ to your email subject. It can help boost open rates by 19% and CTR by 65%. This trick also prevents people from unsubscribing from your email.

3. Avoid Your Email Getting into Trash

Once a receiver puts your email into the trash, it’s a game over. Videos can be your lifesaver to level up your email marketing. With a higher chance of audiences opening your email, you can maintain good engagement with your potential customers.

4. Add Credibility and Raise Brand Awareness

Videos are also great agents to raise brand awareness. Product or company videos help marketers to expose their brands to more people. Videos can also add credibility to your business as a trustable party. In comparison with static UGC, videos create 3x more reliability, as people can perceive and get inspired by the excitement and expressions of the users.

"Video is a powerful tool that can help you connect with your customers and build relationships. When used in email marketing, video can add a personal touch that helps you stand out from the competition. I use video content in my email marketing campaigns to show my customers who I am, what I stand for, and why they should do business with me." says Denis Ristić, General Manager at AskGamblers

7 Best Practices and Ideas to Use Video in Email Marketing

As you’ve read how impactful videos are, now we’re down to discuss the best practices you can apply. Below is a list of some best practices for using video in email marketing. You can also discover some best video ideas to boost your marketing effort. Let’s dive in!

1. Keep Your Video Short and Sweet

It’s essential to keep your video short and sweet. You must find the ideal length for your video, but it’s best to keep it between 20-60 seconds. Short videos are best to engage people and keep them stay until the very last second.

However, if a video is the main content of your email, you can always add more length. Be as concise as possible to avoid dragging delivery.

“The last thing you want is for your subscribers to click on the video, only to find that it is a long, unedited commercial. Instead, keep your videos short and focused on a specific message.” says Harry Jones, Marketing Manager at NBABlast.

2. Make Attention-Grabber Beginning

The beginning of your video is key to locking audiences’ attention. You can develop a humorous or emotional story, or get straight by pinpointing target audience problems.

If you are unsure what to do, consider looking for inspiration online. Look for famous and iconic videos from big brands. Then, you can adapt one suitable for your products and target audience. You can also learn how your competitors make their videos.

3. Avoid Being Too Promotional

Never make your featured video too promotional. So, you should avoid overstating your brands or adding excessive CTA. No one likes being pushed to do something, especially purchasing specific products.

Keep your video content valuable. You can mention the exclusiveness of your products or brands. Tell audiences how your product can be a lifesaver for their problems. Add a powerful CTA at the end, and let audiences do the rest.

4. Produce High-Quality Visuals

Visuals are the main elements of your video. Whether you produce live-action or animation videos, having them crack-free, flawless, and authentic is a must.

You should use high-quality cameras and editing tools to produce excellent visuals. If it seems too hard to handle, you still have another exit.

Consider hiring a video company to help you create top-notch videos. Experienced video companies can help you decide which style to choose to make engaging and converting videos.

5. Add ‘Video’ on the Email Subject

Email subject comes first to the frontline of your audiences. Therefore, having it attractively and strategically structured is necessary. Your email subject will shape the following action by audiences, whether they open or abandon your email.

Consider including the word ‘video’ on your email subject to excite audiences. As stated, mentioning ‘video’ in the subject email can increase open and click-through rates.

6. Analyze and Adjust

It’s a natural need for digital marketers to analyze their marketing strategy. After sending your email to audiences, you should analyze key metrics to see how successful your email marketing is. Below are key metrics you should check. You can use a tool like Plus to put multiple metrics side-by-side and analyze them with updated data by the hour.

• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Open rate
• Bounce rate
• List Growth rate
• Email sharing/forwarding rate
• Overall ROI
• Unsubscribe rate

If the results after adding a video to your email are below expectations, you should make adjustments. You may want to optimize the subject and content of the email. Or finding better times to send your email. Make sure to use project time tracking tool to schedule and monitor your email marketing campaigns.

7. Get the Right Ideas

One of the main challenges to creating a video to feature in your marketing email is choosing the best ideas. You must refer to your target audience and product in deciding on a video type.

There are plenty of video types you can consider. Below we’ve listed seven video ideas that you can use to support your email.

Product Videos

Product videos are pretty simple to make. You can introduce and showcase your product briefly. Focus on highlighting your product features and benefits. You could also repurpose this video and share it on your social media channels using tools like Sprout Social, Planable, Hootsuite, etc. It’ll help a lot with boosting your engagement on social profiles beacuse users love a good product video – makes them fall in love with your brand.

Event Videos

Event videos are perfect for special occasions. For example, you can create event videos for welcoming the Black Friday event. While doing a BlackFriday campaign through email, you can add the video to your email.

Company Culture Videos

Company culture videos are best to introduce your company. You can share how your employees serve customers to show professionality. This type of video allows you to establish deeper relationships with customers.

Behind-the-Scene Videos

If you want to approach potential customers in a more fun way, behind-the-scenes videos can be a great option. You can show how your company produces, packs, and delivers products to customers’ doors. Don't forget about your branding elements, create your own logo and feature it in the videos for attention.

Tutorial Videos

Tutorial videos are simple yet effective in highlighting your product or service. Whether you're an eCommerce store or a game development company, you can directly show how your product can help audiences overcome their problems.

Testimonial Videos

Many big brands create testimonial videos to support their marketing efforts. The power of customer reviews is significant in influencing others. Consider working with influencers and ask them to give testimonials for your product.

Influencers and experts can be great magnets to board new buyers. Influencers already have a mass of audiences, while experts are someone many can trust.

Listicle Videos

Valuable content is essential to gather potential customers. You can try creating listicle videos about the product or service you offer. For example, you make a list of benefits customers can get from using your product.

Over to You

Using video as a booster is worth trying if your email marketing strategy doesn’t generate significant results. There have been many reviews from fellow marketers that videos are a game changer for their email marketing strategy.

No reason holds you for not using videos in your email. There are even some video types that don’t require you to splurge a big budget. The above best practices and ideas can come in handy if you want to add videos as a part of your email marketing.