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When should you use videos as part your email marketing efforts?
Do you use videos for your email marketing? How often? How many videos per email do you use?
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4 Answers
Hi Ralph,
I tell all of my clients that their video is a tool to generate interest and not a tool to close the sale. If their video is visually stimulating, informative and short then it is more likely to generate results.
To answer your question there are two awesome ways to incorporate video into your e-mail marketing and one is direct and the other indirect.
Direct: Include the hyper-link to the video or create an html ad so the video will play when clicked onto within the body of the e-mail. When: When you are using e-mail as a tool to generate sales leads.
Indirect: Include the video link into your e-mail signature. I use eSigMarketing and have an interactive signature that has 4 buttons and 2 of those buttons are linked to YouTube videos that promote my services. You can add the link without using a service provider though. When: Every e-mail you send so that people will know you have a video.
E-mail me at cre8ivejg@yahoo.com if you want me to reply so you can see my interactive signature.
SHAMELESS PLUG:
http://www.bombbomb.com
We send ooodles of video-in-email deployments every day.
That aside; in regard to your question. Video can play a pivotal part in getting engagement and clicks through to your website or desired destination. Not every company/individual needs video, but those who can find a voice with video-in-email and use our services - +200% clicks and an avg of +50% in conversions. I'm not sure if Mr. Giles has any statistics for his sends, but I'm sure if he's found the right positioning for his emails, he can attest that video makes a huge difference.
The number of videos per email is typically one. This isn't a concrete strategy, but why dilute your message with multiple videos? The cadence of your email deployments shouldn't change with the addition of video, testing your cadence with the monitoring of engagement and unsubs should help you find the right frequency. From there the addition of video is just a plus.
I think people tend to mis-understand video, and as a result both overstate (or overuse) as well as underuse video.
First, my theoretical checklist for why, and when, to use video:
1. Capture and hold attention
2. Deliver AUDIO messages with visual support for more compelling delivery
3. Create emotional impact -- make messages "stickier"
4. Promote sharing -- videos are shared much more than text
5. Educate viewers, explain complex and important messages for greater understanding through video than text consumption
6. Increase search results to gain inbound leads
7. Help 3rd party people deliver messages more effectively: sales people, channel, customer sponsors, referral sources
8. Entertain
Companies that focus on video as a marketing tool are missing a huge opportunity to help the sales organization improve their effectiveness and shorten sales cycles.
Video must meet today's content criteria: be relevant to the specific interests of each viewer (vs. general, promotional, vendor oriented content). This introduces huge requirements and challenges for the creation, management, deployment and delivery process.
Well, good comments... like everything these days, the answer is a bit gray. I used to be a firm believer in the power of words, and I suppose I still am. You must have a compelling story... boring is boring in any media.
But I've become, after 30 years, a big believer in 'honest' video. Too slick and the video reinforces the advertising feel, something that most people these days have learned to turn off. But a 'real' video, maybe a bit under designed, is compelling and seems true. Consider: reality TV outperforms multimillion dollar network shows. Why? Network shows are like advertising -- fake and slick -- while reality TV is perceived as 'real.' Print ads, which were once my specialty, are fake from the get go... thus they've lost much of their value. What's left is video -- new cameras make shooting even in high def a snap and make precise lighting less of an issue... youtube let's you upload for free... and the combination of moving images plus tight copy (again, I've made a living at long copy ads... thus the length of this post.. but the Twitter generation wants more poetry than prose).
Video helps pack an emotional content into fewer words. Long story short -- get a Flip camera or a Canon T2i (5d Mark II even better) and see for yourself.
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