How to Use Video in Your Email Marketing

Almost all of us are inundated with emails daily so, if you use email marketing (which you should be), then you need a way to stand out from the crowd.

Your brand name alone appearing in someone’s inbox will often not be enough to ensure engagement – your email might get read, ignored, or deleted without much thought.

By using video as part of your email marketing strategy, however, you stand a much better chance at grabbing your audience’s attention and keeping it.

Video content is enticing and, because it is also rarer than other types of content, most people expect significant investment has gone into its production, making it ‘worth a watch’.

Sometimes words and pictures aren’t enough. By using video, you have the combination of sound, visuals, and narrative at your disposal to relay your message in the most effective way.

Even welcoming and engaging written content can seem a little anonymous at times, but video gives you a much more personal approach and helps to create trust, especially if they see you or your employees in the video.

While engaging with video does require your audience to both watch and listen for the set runtime, it is a lower level of effort to engage with than written content, which makes it more likely that they will. In addition to this, they are more likely to retain the information than if it was only available in text form.

Depending on your branding and existing marketing strategy, certain approaches will work better than others for your business, but here are a few general tips that can be applied to any type of video email marketing.

Your subject line has to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to your email marketing; along with your brand’s name, the subject is all the recipient has to go on when deciding whether they are going to open the email or not. Consider what content your audience wants to engage with and make sure to use the word ‘video’ in the subject line.

You want some text within your email, but don’t overload it; have faith that your video will do the talking. You should use your text to create some intrigue, but you can also use it to reiterate any next steps you want your audience to take that are mentioned in the video.

People are more likely to engage with content that isn’t going to take up a big chunk of their time. Videos under 2 minutes are best, much longer and you may get drop offs halfway through the video, or people ‘saving for later’ when they see the runtime and forgetting to ever come back.

Once your audience has clicked through to your video, you need to keep their attention. Even if the video is short, people may still tune out if it doesn’t get to the point quickly enough. Provide the key facts and create some curiosity, and then build on those points once the audience is hooked.

Your CTA should carry on naturally from the place your video leaves the audience, whether you want them to browse a new collection, pre-order a product or get in touch with you. 

Using video can massively improve the success of your email marketing campaign, improving your outreach efforts as a whole. If you need help creating videos to use in your email content, please get in touch and see how we can help.