Sometimes, the email copy isn't enough to fully communicate your message to your audience. You can visually engage the imagination of your audience by using video — it's an obvious and effective way. Video makes complex topics simpler and more engaging for your audience, which helps in building loyal relationships with customers and leads.
Using videos in your email marketing also increases your click-through rates. A real magic bullet!
In this article, you'll find tips and ideas to make your video email marketing effective.
Technical note. It's important to understand that using videos in your email marketing does not imply that your recipients will watch videos in their inboxes. Instead, marketers can use a thumbnail image, CTA button, or a text link that leads to the video on a landing page or video hosting platform.
Always make sure to check your subscriber device analytics, and then make an informed decision about using the video for your next campaign.
Tip 1. Use video testimonials
One of the most effective techniques for growing a business is by creating videos from customer testimonials. Testimonials are a clear indication that the customer was pleased with your product experience. By sharing their stories with your audience, you convince other people to try out your product or service, which is why it's useful to learn about video testimonials.
Testimonials are marketing gold mines: they boost engagement, increase sales, and encourage loyal customers to become brand ambassadors. Testimonials can increase brand recognition with fewer words than a full-fledged campaign.
Of course, testimonial videos are a bit more expensive to produce compared to other types of content. However, the return on that investment is immense so it's best to leverage tools like an online video editor during the production process. A testimonial demonstrating how your product made their lives easier — or how your product helped them become the person they desired — will pay off handsomely.
Before purchasing any product, especially a new one, it is common for most customers to read reviews on that particular product they want to buy. Sharing the testimonial video through email builds confidence in your potential customers and helps them reach that purchasing decision.
Tip 2. Break your videos down into a series
A good video for email marketing should be short and to the point. Most people get bored with watching long videos and users might end up hating your product instead of converting to a customer.
You want to tell the story of someone who discovered your product and fell in love with it — to the point where they became a repeat customer, joined your loyalty program, and so on.
How will you communicate their story in a two-minute video? Create an email marketing campaign that breaks down the video into multiple parts. If the video can't be split apart, make it funny and engaging but remember to stick to the purpose.
With this tip, you can keep your audience interested, engaged, and even looking forward to your next emails. It's also an excellent technique to upsell and cross-sell products to your current customers.
By using these segmented videos, you can discover who might be interested in the product featured in the upcoming video ad. Who knows? Some if not most of the people who have shown interest in your product might appear on your next planned campaign.
Tip 3. Incorporate GIFs
Using an animated GIF is one of the greatest video-in-email-marketing strategies. GIFs have been around for a long time, and almost every email marketing tool now supports them.
Short and sweet nearly always wins when it comes to video consumption. Attention spans are shrinking in this world of distractions like Instagram and Snapchat, so replacing the video with a GIF may be the best option.
A great alternative to video, a GIF is a very short entertaining animation that can easily be inserted into your email template because it's an image file.
GIFs give you huge room to be creative with your design. Your team gets more freedom to decorate and spice up your emails to pique your audience's interest. It can be as silly as words jiggling around the page, a hilarious dancing move, or even cartoon fireworks.
GIFs are short and might seem useless in "serious" marketing, but I can guarantee that they play a significant role in sales by triggering the leads' curiosity.
Tip 4. Send targeted reminders to finish watching
Imagine that a user views a segment of a video on your website but doesn't finish it, and you notice a pattern when you look at your website statistics.
With the help of email personalization, you can automatically send that video to the user's email to remind them to finish watching the video. By doing so, you can increase your email click-through rates.
Reminders like these not only increase clicks and views of your blogs, but it also increases video views, and ultimately builds better relationships with customers.
Tip 5. Upsell to existing customers through video
There's always a higher chance of selling more to loyal customers compared to newly onboarded ones.
In most cases, the best market is the one that you already have because it is clear that they love your brand and they are using your products. When it comes to video content, a large part of the views will come from these existing customers. To be successful in your customer upsell campaign, collaborate with your team's email marketing expert to segment your list based on the products they've already purchased. This will help you identify the best upsell opportunities for each customer.
Tip 6. Use video as supplemental material
Consider sending out bonus content to your email subscribers. Because your email subscribers already love a wide range of your content, going above and beyond with surprise bonus content could keep them excited!
If you send out weekly newsletters, for example, you can include a link to a live webinar on Instagram Stories that you'll be presenting at the end of the month.
By doing this, you can generate excitement for the event, keep subscribers updated about what's going on at your company, and give them a reason to keep reading your emails.
You can also use emails to educate your subscribers on the principles that are most important to your brand. For example, you can add a video to a product-related email to tell the story about where the product materials come from.
Tip 7. Share company events and announcements through videos
Record company events, whether internal or external, and email them to your subscribers as a recap. This way, you give subscribers an insider perspective on how your brand works, which helps increase interest in your company's events and updates.
You can also use video to address your audience with an important company announcement, in good or bad times.
Final thoughts
The use of video in email marketing can do wonders for your KPIs. You can use videos to educate potential customers on your product features and benefits. You can also develop presentations that are convincing and give your customers inside knowledge about your product. Videos give the consumers a different but complete idea of what your product and company is like.
So use videos wisely, and hope our advice helps!
Don't wait for the muse. Apply this step-by-step method to write high-performing email campaigns in hours, not weeks.
