Is Video Embedding In An Email A Good Option? Pros And Cons

Videos are a marketer’s best friend! Videos have become the de-facto medium of communication for sharing, informing, creating brand awareness, conversions, and engaging with people sans boundaries.

Brands continue to engage with consumers via email. According to the Litmus’ 2019 State of email Survey report, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the brand can expect a return of $42. This is a fantastic return on investment, which no other marketing channel can match.

Video now constitutes the largest primary content form for global companies. This just goes to show how vital a combination of email and video has become globally today.

Video emails can be used in lots of separate ways: Product information, DIY, customer testimonials, thought leadership, the list is endless. Let us look at some of the major advantages and disadvantages of using video email as part of your marketing strategy.

Pros

• Maximize Reach: With more than 4 Billion email users globally, email is the platform that provides the maximum impact at minimum cost. The reach and return of using video email are undoubtedly the best for any marketing channel.
• Increase Open Rates: Humans love videos! Videos in an email provide an additional hook or motivation to open the email and view the video, increasing open rates and click-through rates. Just having the word ‘video’ in the subject line boosts open rates.
• Better Conversions: By letting the user click on the thumbnail, you can direct them to your landing page, opening a plethora of targeted deals, cross-sell, and up-sell opportunities, leading to much higher conversion rates.
• Cost-Effectiveness: The cost of creating video has dropped drastically in recent years. The availability of free video editing software allows every brand or company to create professional-looking videos. Videos are also a content form that can be reused across all social media platforms.
• Metrics to Track & Analyze: Powerful video email technology provides a variety of tracking and analytic tools to understand individual viewership behavior like how many times the video was viewed, the number of shares, how long the video was viewed, etc. This granularity helps in creating the best drip campaign. These services can also host and send emails so that you can avoid the technical difficulties associated with sending to different email clients.
• Mobile-Friendly: Video emails are one of the most mobile-friendly ways to get viewers to watch your video. Mobiles allow people to access and view videos instantly and with complete privacy anytime and anywhere, as opposed to desktops and laptops.

Cons

• Technology Bumps: As compared to text messages, technology still plays a major role in embedding videos in emails. While you can embed videos, not all email clients will allow you to see them. It depends on specific clients.
• Lack Of A CTA: Embedding videos in email can be a great way of reaching your target audiences, but the interactivity of the embedded video is limited. It is crucial to have a CTA at the end of the video to direct the viewer to take suitable action.
• Negatively Impacts Brand Reputation: Many email clients and ISP’s can automatically block content they deem as malicious or dangerous. If consumers see your company email in their spam folder, it can negatively affect your brand’s image.
• Reputation: ISPs factor engagement levels into their spam detection algorithms, when email users do not engage with your videos due to any technical or other reasons, your sender reputation may be at stake.
• Lack Of A Video Email Strategy: While video is an incredibly powerful messaging medium, it works best when you amalgamate it with your overall marketing strategy. It can be expensive to pursue a video strategy without pre-defined aims and ROI measurements. Most video email campaigns will not be deemed successful if they have a low click rate or conversion.
• A Missed Opportunity: Even if a user views the video, in many cases, the user will ‘see it and forget it.’ The mail moves to the archive or trash bin, and its lifecycle ends. On the other hand, linking to a video on your website opens a whole new avenue for different types of engagement and interactions.
• Suboptimal Video Content: Video content should be perfect. Driven by the fear of missing out (FOMO) on the video craze, many brands jumped onto email video marketing bandwagons with poorly designed video content, which may not appeal to their target audiences. Viewers may close the video within seconds of viewing and dismiss your product, brand, or service in an instant.

Conclusion 

As videos get more intertwined in our lives, both from a professional and personal perspective, videos embedded in email are going to play an even more important role in overall marketing strategies. The advent of video technology standards like HTML5 within email platforms will make it easier to send video emails en mass.

The easy availability of video software platforms like Hippo Video makes the creation of compelling videos easier. Before starting your video email campaign, you need to consider your overall marketing goals, technical limitations, and overall experience for the user. In general, if planned and managed well, video emails provide the best user experience in a world already awash with data, information, and content.