How To Use Video Email Marketing To Increase Your Open Rates
With a strong return on investment, emails remain a cost-effective tool to generate leads. According to the DMA Marketer Email Tracker 2019, for every dollar spent on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42.
We all know this is not a direct result of sending emails, however.
You need to deliver a message that will get recipients to read your email and respond to your call to action.
One solution is to add video email marketing to your arsenal of marketing strategies. According to recent studies, including videos in your email would have 65% more click-through rates and 19% more open rates.
Furthermore, more and more individuals are claiming that they are more likely to pay attention to videos and skip parts of audio and written content. This means that if you are someone who’s constantly sending the traditional type of email campaigns, your content would likely get buried under the pile of marketing videos being patronized by most people now.
Furthermore, 72% of customers expressed that they would rather learn about a specific product or service through a video. This leads to a 95% higher product information retention rate compared to a 10% retention rate being made by written content.
This is the reason why more businesses now are creating and using more videos while a large number of marketers are considering implementing videos into their digital marketing strategy.
Video email marketing is the new trend and your business needs to embrace it to keep up and overtake the competition.
How to Use Videos in Email Marketing
Email marketing done right has an awesome potential to boost your sales. However, you can guarantee a bigger profit for your business if you can leverage video email marketing to the fullest.
Here’s a quick video tutorial that includes a couple of examples:
It doesn’t just end up in simply injecting a video in your campaigns. It takes more than that if you want your video emails to be effective.
That said, besides using the best autoresponders in your marketing campaigns and other relevant tools, you should also find the right strategies to secure success in video email marketing.
What do you need to do then?
Add the Word ‘Video’ in the Subject Line
As previously mentioned, a huge number of consumers watch videos about a new product or service. So why not capitalize on this by making sure your email recipients know that you’re sharing a video? Combine this with the best video email marketing strategies in your arsenal and you can increase your mail’s open rate.
Directly inform recipients that your message contains video content that they would love. However, make sure that the subject line is relevant to your email content. If you are adding the word “video” remember to use the word properly. Do not push too hard to include it in your subject line. Think of how it would perfectly complement the email content.
Include a Sufficient Amount of Written Text in Your Emails
Never misinterpret that video email marketing campaigns are just all about videos. There is still a need for you to include written content in your campaigns for one main reason: SPAM.
Spam filters of email services are incapable of reading images and videos, resulting in your mail getting tagged as spam if it only contains videos and images and nothing else. To keep this from happening, your HTML must be accompanied by a few texts.
You should also follow the best practices in the design and development of HTML email campaigns and HTML5 videos in email. These include:
- Creating a single column layout
- Coding all structure using the table element
- Using email-safe fonts such as Arial and Verdana
- Making sure all CSS are inline before sending
- Avoiding Flash, JavaScript, and Complex CSS/HTML
Video Landing Page With Powerful CTA
Sometimes directly putting video content in your email campaign is not ideal due to the restrictions set by some email providers. So, how are you going to show your videos to your target audience if this is the case?
Simple: embed a thumbnail video image which contains the link to your landing page where your video plays.
Doing this would deliver you more benefits as it could contribute to the traffic on your site. Also, you would be able to drag your targets even closer to your CTAs.
Nonetheless, when doing this strategy, make sure to provide an effective CTA that would lure your prospects down to your sales funnel.
Use strong command verbs or words that would directly send your message. Keep your CTA short and concise but be sure to include all the essential ideas you need to generalize your intention towards your target. Most of all, be creative in injecting the idea of why these people need to have your service or product.
Use Short Yet Interesting Videos
According to a report on Adage, 33% of customers stop watching videos after 30 seconds, 45% after one minute, and 60% after two minutes. So, try to deliver your message in a very interesting way within that limited 30-second timeframe.
Remember that no recipient would pay attention to an hour-long video. That’s exhausting. Even a ten-minute video is probably too long unless you’ve established a reputation for creating content worth watching right through to the end.
Providing short videos with outstanding content can leave a mark on viewers. You should also personalize your videos and find creative ideas that you can use. No one wants a mainstream video that is already prevalent everywhere. Think and be creative!
Here are some of the other video ideas you might want to consider:
- Company Local Events
- Personalized Blog-like Videos
- Interviews
- Customer Story Videos and Testimonies
- New Products and Services
- How-to Videos
- Behind-the-Scene Videos
- Product Reviews and Demos
Use GIFS
Though we all love videos, there are other ways to create an appealing video email marketing campaign–GIFs!
What is it?
Graphics Interchange Format or GIF is a format for image files that support both animated and static images. It allows you to animate images in small file sizes. They are shown as a series of images or soundless videos that loop continuously.
You can use this as a way to instantly amuse your recipients. No need to click on links or play buttons. No irritating auto-play sounds too. Just a convenient, lovely video playing again and again. Give it a try.
What’s Next?
Provide quality content to boost engagement.
Evading the spam box and creating striking subject lines aren’t the only things you should do. You should also provide valuable content to recipients to ensure that your next and future email campaigns would still be opened.
So, how do you do that? What things should you observe to provide quality video email marketing content?
Analytics
Your next email should be based on data.
Digging into analytics is the best way to improve your campaigns in the future. It could be quite tricky for someone who’s just starting to explore email marketing but I’ll tell you, it’s worth it.
Analytics can help you view the interaction you have with your targets. This includes the open rate of your campaigns, click rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, spam complaints, and more.
With this, you can easily analyze, manage, and measure the performance of your email marketing campaign. You can also find essential insights about the new trends and your customer’s behavior and preferences! Whatever needs improvement in your marketing campaign you will also find on the analytics report.
Say Yes to A/B Testing!
One of the best tools successful marketers are using is A/B testing or split testing. This allows marketers to do a “survey” that could help them determine which kind of campaign would give them higher open rates and click rates.
Using A/B testing, you can create two samples of campaigns and send it to a small percentage of your recipients to conduct a performance study. For instance, you create Email A and Email B that contains similar messages tweaked here and there. Based on how people respond to each email, you can determine which campaign would work best for your marketing needs.
No to Auto Play
People hate it. Period. There is no other way to spoil a good marketing campaign than to annoy a recipient with autoplay. Doing this would prevent them from reading the rest of your email. No matter how striking your video or GIF is, avoid auto-playing the video or audio.
Doing so will provide your target recipients with full control of their email. Make them feel they’re the boss. Offer the video but never push it down their throat through autoplay. If you would do this, they would probably remember you in a very negative way. This would hinder them from opening your future emails.
Instead of directly providing videos, you can provide attractive thumbnails. Also, provide a link to your site where your video is posted. This would benefit you more. By doing this, you would be able to generate traffic to your site and even help with your search engine ranking.
Call-To-Action
This is the very reason why you are sending your campaigns to people. You need to market your business. So, be sure that you would be able to lead your target audience to act on your campaign. Do not waste your chance once they have already opened your email.
You can provide them with the link to your site or affiliate links right after you present your offers to them. Nonetheless, you must first convince them. Give them some bait.
This would secure your position in your target’s heart. Provide relevant messages that would make them feel they need your business or service. By doing this, it is more likely for you to generate sales. Most of all, you would be able to make a connection with your customers. This is something you should always aim for.
Final Thoughts
Video email marketing is a great marketing strategy you can use not just to increase your open rates but to improve the standing of your business. This is the reason why there is a huge need for marketers to consider this as the new tactic to secure a future for their businesses.
With the right content to capture your target market, your campaigns would certainly be opened. Nonetheless, keep in mind that your goal isn’t just to increase your open rates. You should also aim to impress recipients to turn them into business customers. Remember that your campaigns should be composed to help you make a life-long bond with them.
Doing the aforementioned practices would make video marketing a picnic for you. Just like you would need a great autoresponder for affiliate marketing if you’re into this, you should also use the best tools and strategies to market your videos via email. Technology is designed to make your life easier, so take advantage of it. Coupled with effective time management strategies, marketing your business will be easier.
So, call your team and start planning your next campaign. Grab your video camera, explore, and start creating the perfect video content. With the right dosage of creativity, teamwork, and perseverance, nothing can stop you from creating effective video campaigns.
Larry Corbi is the owner of More Buzz Online, LLC., an internet marketing consultant, and blogger. With 10+ years of digital marketing experience, he’s passionate about leveraging the right strategic partnerships, content, and software to scale digital growth.
Larry lives in Southern California and writes about internet marketing for small businesses and professionals as well as blogging like a business owner, not another writer at https://morebuzzonline.com/
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