Use Video to Increase Email Marketing Engagement

When most of the world is moving completely digital, the need to stand out is critical. After the first four years of operating an eCommerce store, 50% to 60% of the long-term revenue is from returning customers. How can you keep your customers engaged and coming back?

Email stands out as one of the marketing channels that remains strong, has a great ROI, and is great for customer engagement. This channel combined with video marketing can be an effective way of connecting with your subscribers authentically and building stronger relationships with your customers.

Video marketing is one of the techniques adopted by email marketers to improve reach, visibility and ultimately win business. When you include videos in emails, it increases customer engagement and captures the attention of people who love visual content. It makes it easy for you to convey complex information quickly, as some people prefer watching over reading. Furthermore, videos are shareable on several social networks and have a high probability of going viral if positioned well.

Practical ways to incorporate video into your marketing emails

Tell a story: Video is a great way to convey the story behind your brand. You can use video to show customers what your brand is about by creating a video of a day at the office featuring your employees engaged in collaboration. You can show how your employees have fun by covering company outings. You can also show how much you care about your customers by showing consumers at company-sponsored events. You can use this type of content to promote and humanize your brand and give existing and potential customers an insider view of your company.

In this video, Patagonia features the voices of climbers in the community

Include video in your newsletters: Newsletters can include content such as how-to sections or resources that will help customers use the products they have already purchased from you. They are an excellent way to build customer loyalty. You can also include customer service information in these videos. Selling is just one part of the customer journey. If you want a happy and satisfied customer, you must pay attention to how you engage with your customer post-purchase. If you share as much information as possible on getting the most value out of your products or services, it will increase customer engagement and, ultimately, customer loyalty.  For example, Zendesk sends a link to its demo video in its emails.

HelloFresh introduced 60 Seconds Perfect, a new video series answering the most-searched “how to cook” questions

Promote your products: You can promote products and services, generate leads and convert your users by creating personalized videos for each customer. In such videos, you should talk about the features of a product or the service and more information about how the product or service will solve the customer's problems. You should keep your promotional videos as part of the mix and not always include promotional content in all emails. This will come across as sales-heavy and will turn your customer away. For example, Sephora promotes its loyalty program Beauty Insider along with its products in its emails.

In this promotional video, Skillshare focuses on how subscribers can explore their creativity using Skillshare.

Display social proof: You can also display top-rated products in your email and use social proof in showcasing your top products. You can either include customer testimonials or a video of customers using your products in their everyday lives. Product reviews are another part of social proof. Are content creators promoting your brand just because they love your product? There's nothing like an unbiased opinion to earn the trust of your potential customers.

In this video from Authority Hacker, real customer testimonials are shown to create trust.

Use video to upsell and cross-sell: Your existing customers are already familiar with your brand, and they watch your videos. Using the data you already have about their past purchases, you can upsell and cross-sell to them through videos. However, you must make sure that you share the right video content. If you make a long video that is irrelevant, it serves no purpose since customers are not likely to open it. You can send these emails to customers who have already made a purchase in the past and re-engage them by showing new and trending products. Amazon is great at cross-selling products based on past purchases.

Use video for deals and promotions: If you often have great deals for your products, why not create a video to inform customers about the promotion and display the product's best features? You can show how customers use the product and market your product too. The deals on the product will garner interest, and you will be able to increase sales.

Tips to increase your engagement with video marketing

Add 'video' in your subject line: If you include video content, make sure your consumers know about this upfront by adding it in your subject line. Add it in a way that piques your consumers' interest and make sure the subject line is relevant to your content. Most readers decide if the email is worth reading by looking at the subject line. If your subject line is engaging, your readers are likely to open your email and take action. Adding video in your email creates a sense of anticipation in your readers, increasing your open rates.

Personalize your videos: Customers prefer genuine and authentic communication. Make your email unique to your viewer so that your video looks tailored to the recipient. You can do this by using the data you have about the recipient. Have your users watched a part of the video and have stopped watching? You can gently remind them to watch the rest of the video with an email campaign.

Use GIFs: Graphics Interchange Format or GIF is a format that supports animated images for image files and is supported by email clients. Using this format, you can display a series of images or soundless videos in a loop. You can use GIFs to amuse your recipients without having to click on a link or click on play. Another advantage of GIFs is that they take less time to load when compared to a standard video, as they are smaller in size.

Include sufficient written text: To get past the spam filters of email service, you also need to have written content in your email to avoid your email getting marked as SPAM. This is bound to happen if your email only contains video and images. It is best if the text is above the video to convey your message to the user, even if they don't watch your video.

Keep your videos short: If you want subscribers to watch your videos, it's best to keep them short and to the point and under a minute. No one wants to watch a rambling video, and short videos will keep your audience engaged. Generally, short videos are preferred because they are easy to consume and remember. Additionally, these videos are easier to produce, although they require more planning, and they are ultimately cost-effective. Shorter videos also result in smaller file sizes which reduce buffering, rendering a seamless user experience. Use longer videos only after you've established trust with your audience and have created content that is informative and worth watching.

Turn off autoplay: Don't annoy your users by playing videos on autoplay. They might get startled when they open an email, and videos play unexpectedly with loud music, which will cause them to associate a negative feeling with your brand. If you must use autoplay, consider turning off the sound and prevent your users from getting annoyed.

Add a prominent Call to Action: What is the action you expect your user to take? Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter or make a purchase? Whatever your goal is, make sure that your Call to Action button is prominent and appropriate. If not, the user will leave your email without taking the necessary action.

Add an image as a thumbnail: Instead of adding a video directly to the body of your email, which might cause your email to be flagged as spam, add a relevant screenshot of your video as a thumbnail and link it to your landing page.

It is always better to link to videos on your brand's website or your platform instead of using videos hosted elsewhere. This is because the content on other platforms may be blocked or removed, which ultimately makes your brand look unprofessional. If you're using content from other platforms, you can either create or download and re-upload the videos to make sure you have control over the videos you upload.

Add social sharing buttons: Adding social media sharing links encourages your recipients to share your content on various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. if your users like the video content and want to share it with their network, they should be able to as painlessly as possible. This helps increase the views for your videos and ultimately clicks and conversion.

Wrap up

You can find creative ways of incorporating video in your marketing emails, regardless of your email marketing message. The same old techniques don't work anymore because of the vast number of emails that customers receive. If you want to stand out from a crowded inbox, you need to think of new and effective strategies. If done well, video marketing can help you provide valuable content to customers as well as increase your engagement and sales.

Furthermore, you should watch your video marketing metrics closely and tweak your strategy accordingly. You can always use A/B testing to find out what works best for your audience. Using the tips listed above, you can make video marketing an engaging experience for your audience and keep them coming back for more.