Videos in emails - do they work?
Recently we've been reading a lot about videos in emails. It's a subject we get asked about from time to time. So, we posed this question to the Video SEO group we belong to on LinkedIn.
"I keep reading articles about how great video emailing campaign are. On the other hand the technology doesn't sound quite ready...
Have you ever tried to embed a video in an email? was it successful ? "
If we say so ourselves, what a good question! Here is what some our respondents had to say. We've edited the comments -- you can read them in full at the linkedin group page -- details on your screen now and in the page below this video.
Sam from Bath in the UK, made an important distinction between video emailing and videos embedded in emails
'"The former is an everyday opportunity for most. While I believe the latter can and has been done, my understanding is that it's convoluted and not cross platform compatible"
So you might get an embedded video email to work on your email browser, but... there are so many variations of these you can't be sure its going to work on all emails systems, or devices, be they pc, tablet or mobile phone based.
Bruce, a video storyteller was emphatic about NOT embedding a video for fear of losing current and potential clients. He says
Video files are too large and would bog down the recipient's machine
If my email blocks other more important emails it will piss off the customer.
An embedded video does NOTHING for my SEO. The idea of sending out an email is to drive traffic to my site. Putting all of the content in an email does the opposite.
Ezra commented on the HTML5 video standard which is increasingly being supported in email clients but wondered what the benefits would be if it wasn't an issue
"I think most of the time I'd prefer people consume the video on my site. I can do more with calls to action and other content, I can get better analytics and I can control the experience
There's some tradeoff with immediacy of video in the email -- though before pressing play, the recipient actually wouldn't know whether the video was going to play in the email or direct them to a site".
Michael, an online marketer, gave this commonsense advice
"you are better off embedding a jpg screen capture of the video which is a clickable link to the html page where the video is hosted. He also recommended that the jpeg has human faces in it.
That's good advice and it's what we do, in fact most replies mentioned this.
Of course you could also create the illusion of a video playing in the email with an animated gif.
But it seems the key to a good video email is first and foremost an enticing subject line that prompts people to open the email. This is more important than the technology debate.
Thereafter, it's down to your video and what you say.
Video SEO LinkedIn group: http://goo.gl/IhUa8Z