Email marketing is one of those product- or service-pushing strategies every business knows it should have, but struggles to actually implement. From literal content wording and building a reputable email list to making certain that emails are both opened and read, email marketing is a tricky task.
Fortunately, in today’s day and age, there’s yet another tool at the disposal of email marketers which promises to make the strategy a more successful one: video. In recent years, video has managed to make the lives of social media strategists and easier one through enhanced user engagement.
Truthfully, it’s about time for email marketing to do the exact same thing. That being said, due to the fact that not all email service providers are the best at providing video support for videos included within an emails main content structure—unfortunately, Gmail falls into this category—it’s often necessary that a few tricks of the email marketing trade be used to navigate around such an obstacle. The following are four of the best:
1) Video and a Site’s Landing Page
Once you’ve managed to redirect people from an email to a specific website, it’s important that very little of their time be chewed up having to search for a video. As a general rule of thumb, if it takes more than two clicks to get somewhere important, a website needs a bit of reconstruction.
If possible, embed the desired video directly onto the landing page you’ve presented to your audience. Seek to catch a user’s attention right away by implementing the powers of auto-play. While this lack of content control might be frustrating for some, more often than not, the results are positive.
2) Video Mimicry Through Images
By far the most clever of this miniature list, video mimicry does two things: provides a visual enhancement to an email’s body of text and indicates to a reader that, when clicked, a video is to be viewed. The catch? The video in question is to be viewed on a landing page, instead of within an email account’s interface.
This is easy to do and can be accomplished through a simple screenshot. However, make certain that a featured video image—or GIF, if you so please—is not only compelling, but also contains a play button over the top of it. This increases the likelihood of a clickable image seeing interaction.
3) Consider Video Length
Attention spans vary from person to person, but generally speaking, people are more easily distracted than they’ve ever been before. In fact, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, in just 13 short years, the average attention span of a human being has dropped from 12 seconds to a mere 8 seconds. Shockingly, this is one second less than the typical attention span of a goldfish.
Needless to say, the shorter a video—without sacrificing content quality, mind you—the better. Providing a few helpful specifics, says Ian Hutchinson of Vidyard, “As a general guideline, your video should be 30 to 90 seconds for top of funnel campaigns and 1 to 30 minutes for individuals further down the funnel.”
Obviously, targeting is of the utmost importance, but it’s necessary to recognize that any and all marketing videos can’t be treated the same way. Take a close look at your product or service’s potential clientele funnel and adapt the specificity of everything accordingly so as to limit user dissatisfaction.
4) Include a Call to Action Using Video
Basically, the idea with video and email marketing is that readers become viewers and viewers become clients. This can’t happen without one of traditional marketing’s most basic tactics—the call to action.
Whether it be a video share through a social button, an Eloqua form or email subscription, never—while being as non-intrusive as possible—allow for a video or landing page to be accessed without some sort of presented call to action.
Though just about any experienced email marketer has his or her own individual techniques for driving long-lasting sales conversion, the efficiency of video as a pillar of current email marketing procedure is undeniable. Simply put, take advantage of all that video has to offer professional email marketers and both you and your respective clients will be pleased.
* Image Credit: Shutterstock
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Email Marketing: 4 Tips for Overcoming Embedded Video Playback Challenges
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