When done right, your email list contains individuals in your target audience who have given you contact information and have requested you send them content regularly. And the more engaging the content, the more likely individuals on your list will take action and become customers and sharers of your content.
If you’re looking to provide engaging content for your email subscribers, think video.
- Recipients are up to 3 times more likely to open an email that contains a video
- After watching a video, users are 64% more likely to buy a product
- Including a video with an ad increases engagement by 22%
Video combined with email marketing leads to more traffic and more user engagement.
Advantages of Using Video in Emails
Still not convinced? Advantages abound.
- Improved Click-Through Rate. It doesn’t matter how clever your email copy is if nobody reads it. And it doesn’t matter how many people read your email if nobody clicks through to your site. Videos get clicks.
- Increased Engagement. What do people do once they arrive on your site? If there’s an engaging video, they’ll stay on your site long enough to watch it.
- Better Insight. With video, you can track what’s being watched, which will help you create more targeted content. If, for example, your company sells running shoes and you notice individuals watch and re-watch inspirational videos and fast forward through videos full of technical information, you’ll know to focus more on inspiration.
- Better Data. The more data you collect, the more effective marketer you become. Video allows you to collect better data. If, for example, the only data you receive measures who opens your email and who clicks through, then you can get better at improving opens and click-throughs. If your data goes deeper, however, such as what users do once they get there, you’ve become a better marketer.
Focus on Your Goals
Your goals will ultimately determine whether or not to have the video thumbnail link to your website or to have the video play within the email. For most businesses, the goal is to get individuals to their website and get them to engage in content on their site. Here’s how email with videos accomplishes the task.
Once you’ve created quality content, follow these steps to serve more individuals in your target audience.
- Notify recipients on your list that the email contains a video. Accomplish this task by noting there’s a video in the email subject line, by including a link in the email text, or providing a video thumbnail in the body of the email.
- Include an attractive video thumbnail in the email–friendly faces produce more clicks. Overlay a play button on the thumbnail to increase click-through likelihood.
- Link the thumbnail to a page on your website. Rarely should you have the video play in the email.
- Limit the calls-to-action in the email. Your goal is to get them to watch your video, on your site, surrounded by other great content.
How to Grow Your Audience Using Video with Email Marketing
In addition to engaging individuals already on your list, video helps you grow that list. Please remember that the fundamental rules of content marketing applies to video marketing and email marketing: In order to engage customers and generate leads, you must produce quality content that solves a key problem for your target audience or inspires those in your target audience.
Here’s how to use quality content to grow your list, in addition to getting your target audience to your site.
- Compose an email that contains an attractive link to a video on your website
- Send the email to your loyal email subscribers
- Invite your audience to share the video
- An enthusiastic percentage of your audience will share the video, if it provides enough value
- Video shares expose new people to your content
- If the new people find the content useful, they sign up for more content
- Your audience grows
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
