How To Improve Your Email Marketing Campaign Using Videos

Videos increase your click-through rates, and marketers would be doing themselves a disservice if they didn’t employ them in their email campaigns. More than 3.5 million emails are sent every second, and you can safely assume that a sizeable of them are part of a brand’s marketing. 

People are bombarded with emails- left, right, and centre. Capturing your target market’s attention is the holy grail of every brand out there. If you can get it right, you are gold. One effective way to keep your email recipients engaged is by adding videos to them. 

In this article, we will see how you can improve your email marketing campaigns by leveraging the power of videos. 

What is video email marketing?

It is precisely what those three words say- you add videos to emails that you send to your subscribers. Most businesses use emails to connect with their customers. If people aren’t opening your emails and engaging with them, then you are losing out on getting customers. One of the best ways to boost engagement with your videos is to put video content in your emails. 

How to make your email marketing video content more effective?

The mere presence of videos in your emails isn’t going to help your cause. You need to have a repeatable strategy that will pique the interest of your email subscribers. Here’s what you can do to milk videos for your benefit in your email campaigns. 

1. Use the correct Call-to-action (CTA)

The whole point of creating the best video email marketing campaign is for the recipient to take the action you want. It could be as simple as downloading a lead magnet or taking a free trial of your product. This is where CTAs become extremely important. With videos, you can add an extra CTA apart from the one in your email. Make sure your CTA is clear, actionable, and conveys a sense of importance. 

2. Highlight the video in the subject line

Adding the word ‘video’ in the subject line increases your open rates. You might want to add more than just the word. Let’s say the email is a testimonial from a famous brand. 

Here’s how your subject line should look-” Video story of how ABC Corporation used our product to increase their lead pipeline by 63%.”

3. Send a personalized greeting

Personalized emails have greater open rates, and it sends a warm and fuzzy feeling to the customer. Why? Because it makes them feel appreciated. It increases their anticipation of your next email. 

4. Use customer success story videos

A great way to increase trust among your potential customers is to use a client’s success story. Adding such videos to your emails will increase the open rate as the recipients are people you are ‘nurturing.’  

You don’t have to write lengthy paragraphs to tell your prospects how good your offering is. Create videos that talk about your customers’ real-life experience of using your product. Place the video on top of the email body itself. 

5. Insert demo videos

People are 64% more likely to buy a product after watching its demo video. For prospective customers in the decision-making stage, you might want to send product demo videos to tilt the decision in your favour. It will give them a sneak peek into the experience they will get when using your product. Without forcing them to read content about you alone, you can convey the benefits of your product with a well-made demo. 

6. Personalized sales video pitch

For your bottom line to keep increasing, you need a stellar sales team equipped with all the resources. Pitching ideas over email is an idea that is as old as the city of Athens. The only way to stand out in a world where everyone is pitching something or the other is to send a personalized video sales pitch

Let’s say a prospect has a few queries, that were conveyed to your sales team. A point-by-point response over an email is good, but how do you take it to the next level? You email a personalized video outlining every point that they are concerned about. 

Personalized videos can hit home on a different level. No amount of pretty graphics or mellifluous words will match the vulnerability that a personalized video offers. 

7. Add captions to the video

People consume videos these days mostly without the sound on. Enable captions on your video so that people can watch it without missing out on the context or what you are trying to convey. It will also make your videos more accessible as well. 

8. Add GIFs

Time is not a luxury. You want to deliver your message in the shortest time possible because our attention span has only been shrinking with each year. Instead of videos, you can use GIFs to share what you intend to. It can be easily inserted into your emails as it is considered an image. 

A creative design by your team or a reference from pop culture might be all that you need to connect with your audience. Making GIFs for your video email campaigns is definitely worth it. 

9. Add videos to your newsletter

If your brand sends newsletters religiously but fails to add videos to them, you might be missing out on all the traction that you were supposed to get. You can create a video of your previous newsletters where you walk them through the entire month’s content, think of it more like a round-up video. 

Let’s say that your newsletter subscribers get text-only emails, your round-up video could contain a video of someone from your team sharing their thoughts. For those who want to get started on the ‘video email’ bandwagon, doing this might be a good start. 

Best practices for using videos in your email marketing campaigns

1. Have a solid plan in place

You can’t strike gold by sharing random videos about your brand in your emails. The objective is to gradually bring your subscribers deeper into the sales funnel. Create different kinds of videos for different audiences in various funnel stages. 

2. Keep your audience in mind

Have a clear picture of who you’re targeting. Think about the demographics of the audience when creating videos. 

3. Create an experience

Make sure your videos are engaging and interesting. Limit the amount of time for the video too. Stick with anywhere from 90 to 120 seconds. Add emotions to the video so that it leaves a lasting impression on the viewers. 

4. Optimize

You might want to send test emails to your internal team and a select set of audiences before you blast it to all your subscribers. Misaligned margins, formats, and other aspects are going to irk your audience. Find out what performs best and use the specifications accordingly. 

5. Reduce the thumbnail file size

Large files can trigger spam filters. You don’t want that. Adjust the size or compress it with tools like Newisty and Promo. 

Wrapping up:

Your emails are only as good as the content in them. You need to provide highly engaging and shareable content. Thankfully, videos are the types of content that give the highest engagement among all content types. Adding videos to your email campaigns might look like a lot of effort, but it will certainly show in the results. For those who are still hesitant about taking the plunge, you might want to check your email metrics.