According to Nielsen Online, there were over 21 million UK visitors to TV, video or movie-related websites in September 2007. It’s continuing to grow – Hitwise says that UK Internet traffic to online video sites shot up 178 per cent in 2008. It’s no surprise to hear that YouTube is noted by both as more popular than all the sites of the TV networks combined. Marketers are beginning to take advantage of their popularity and using them in the marketing mix – including in emails.
Video + email = viral
People love to share videos. What makes video particularly appealing to marketers is the enormous pass-along potential. This sharing nature of video fits hand in glove with the sharing nature of email – the ‘forwarding to a colleague’ ability.
These viral superpowers, especially in tandem with email, are proving to be very enticing to marketers. But before jumping into the deep end of video production and deployment, marketers need to assess if it is a medium that suits their products and services.
Videos are still ‘cool’, but are quickly becoming commonplace. Once the novelty wears off on a ‘next big thing’, marketers can’t just depend on a click in an email just because it’s a video. That said, if what is being sent is relevant to the subscriber, it will naturally be of interest.
Videos should not be viewed as only for entertainment and consumer purposes. There is no reason why a B2B company can’t take advantage of the popularity of viewing video clips. Visual content is a very powerful communication channel. They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, so it stands to reason that a video clip could be worth 10,000 words.
While digital marketing is an important part of the marketing mix, video is currently a relatively small part of that mix; but marketers, even on small budgets, should experiment with it. Good video cameras are inexpensive these days, and a short video needs little editing/production. Even if you do decide to add some sizzle to a video, the required software is not expensive.
Video in B2B
While there have been the pure fun and clever videos that have captured the imagination of the public, the truth for most businesses – particularly in B2B – is that videos work best if they’re approached professionally and created to demonstrate a product or service, or instruct in its use. One idea is: ‘Tour’ videos – tours of company or manufacturing premises, as well as visits to the premises of customers that are using the products and services. They’re also powerful for documenting company’s events, webcasts, company speakers at events as well as AGMs, etc.
Getting emails with videos delivered
It’s imperative that marketers understand the use of video in an email has to be done correctly if they want the email to get delivered into the inbox and to display properly. As with other elements – such as JavaScript – that can get blocked automatically in most email clients and webmail services, videos have their own delivery challenges.
It is best not to embed code for a video in an email or attach video files to emails. The best solution at this time is to embed the video on a webpage, and use email to drive traffic to this page. In this scenario the marketer should create an email that draws attention by featuring a screenshot (.gif or .jpg) of the video, and also have the image live linked to the video. Because the email may be viewed with images off, a text link should be included below the image, as well as relevant information in the image’s ‘alt’ tag.
Test for results
One more thing: as with any other content offerings such as white papers, articles and links to websites, marketers have to work to entice subscribers to click videos. Just as with any other content you use in an email – test for best results. For example, test the use of the word video in the subject line, the placement of the link to the video in your copy, etc.
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