Is This the Year of Video Email Marketing?

If you believe the prediction lists everybody likes to make at the beginning of a new year, you’ll be sold on the idea of including video in your email marketing campaign. Everyone, from professional pundits to email marketing vendors themselves, seems to be proclaiming 2011 the year of video email. In general, conversion rates are much higher when video is part of an email campaign. According to a 2010 study by the Web Video Marketing Council, 73% of marketers believe that video-based email marketing is more likely to generate higher conversion and purchase rates than static content.

Video is a no-brainer, right?

The attraction seems obvious. The more you can get people involved with your product or service by seeing it in action, viewing customer testimonials or training, the more they have invested in it. Put another way, it can have a significant influence on conversion and click-through rates. And there is no denying that seeing is believing; video can have a greater impact on user actions than straight text.

But is it ready for prime time?

Traditionally, video has faced difficulties including deliverability and compatibility. Although progress has been made, there is no one standard video format that works for all email clients in a way that will allow video to play within the mail client directly. Different email marketing vendors accommodate video in different ways. Most use video merge tags to create a screenshot of the video, and then embed a link into the email that leads to the video. When a user clicks on the link, the video pops up in a separate window.

If your email marketing vendor offers video, should you give it a try?

As with all things, test video out on a small sample and see how it affects conversion and click-through rates. New technology isn’t bad, but diving in without thorough testing is always a mistake.

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