Pros & Cons of Embedding Videos in Emails

It's no secret. Video drives engagement and engagement drives conversion. Email marketers are always looking for ways to drive conversions, whether it be opens, views, clicks, signups, or anything else you've defined as gaining traction with your marketing efforts. What better way to drive deeper engagement with your email marketing then to embed video in your email? Sounds great, right? Well, not so fast. The scattered email client landscape makes optimizing content for multiple web browsers look like child's play. Despite the lack of email client consistency, creating a usable experience for people viewing video embedded in email is still possible, with a few drawbacks.

The Bad:

Support for video in email is not yet widely adopted, but as email clients evolve, and webmail clients become more commonplace, this is becoming a more common tactic. While this can lead to an inconsistent user experience, consistency is emerging as technology evolves.

Outgoing links can't be embedded in the video. Not a huge deal, just remember to include a clear call to action with your email and video.

Deliverability can be a real pain. Email clients don't like 3rd party plugins, and usually send emails that require a plugin to the spam folder. The advent of HTML5 video and webmail go a long way to addressing this problem.

Video files are HUGE. Even short video can pile on the data. Again being able to embed content via the HTML5 tag resolves the need to attach the video file with your email.

The Good:

According the videoemail.com, videos that are embedded into email are watched 40% more than videos that require a click-through.

Animated GIFs or PNGs work in almost every email client, and make a great fallback for clients that don't support embedded video. A third fallback of a static image is always a great idea.

Content is king, and quality content rules the day. All the embedded email best practices in the world won't help poor or irrelevant content. Make it matter to your audience.

Support for HTML5 in email clients is expanding, and with that the deliverability of embedded video is becoming far more commonplace.

Here is an example from Gmail where a fallback image is displayed.

Here is an example for Apple Mail where an embedded player is used.

Those are just a few of the key points. Need a solution to embed video your next email campaign? Well look no further. Vid.ly, our encode once deliver to all devices universal video URL, has the ability to embed video in outgoing emails. Vid.ly offers a new version of our embed code that will enable you to include beautiful inline video within your HTML email campaigns. If the email client does not support video, a poster image with an overlay play button will be presented to drive users to play the Vid.ly in web browsers or mobile native players. It's that easy! Have more questions about video emails? Ask in the comments below, or contact us for a free consultation.

LINK:	http://features.encoding.com/blog/2013/11/21/pros-cons-embedding-video...
	See more stories from encoding

Most recent headlines