How Videos in Email Newsletters Can Drive Engagement

Email marketing is one of many businesses’ most cost-effective yet challenging strategies. While sending newsletters requires a minimal budget, crafting messages that drive clicks and engagement takes skill and creativity.

With countless email newsletters hitting inboxes daily, standing out and capturing attention is no easy feat. To help you tackle this challenge, we’ll explore how incorporating video into your email newsletters can boost your campaign results. 

Scroll down to explore practical tips for maximizing engagement with video-enhanced email newsletters! But first, let’s understand all about engagement in email marketing.

Understanding Engagement in Email Marketing

Engagement in email marketing refers to how much your audience engages and interacts with the emails you send. This could mean opening your email, clicking links, or even responding to a call to action like signing up for something.

The more people engage with your emails, the better your chances of building a strong connection with your audience. High engagement also signals that your audience is interested and wants to know more about your offering.

Adding visuals like photos and videos to your emails seriously boosts engagement. HubSpot’s report shows that emails with multimedia content perform the best.

Why? Visuals make your emails more eye-catching and easier to digest. Readers tend to be more interested and likely to take action.

How Effective Are Videos in Email Marketing?

Videos capture attention by combining visuals, audio, and storytelling in a way that text alone can’t. People are naturally drawn to movement and sound, so videos quickly engage viewers and make your message stick.

You can use different types of videos for marketing, each with its strengths. For example, product demos help show your product in action, while testimonials build trust by sharing real customer experiences.

One particularly effective type of video is animated explainer videos. Animations allow for unlimited creativity. According to Breadnbeyond’s animated marketing report, 40.8% of marketers find animation somewhat effective in driving engagement. 

Embedding Videos in Email Newsletters

Combining video and email is a game-changer for boosting engagement rates. It adds color and makes your email more eye-catching. Videos in emails can boost click rates by up to 300%!

However, be careful when incorporating videos. Mistakes like not optimizing your video for email can only drive to failure. Here are some tips to remember when sending an email newsletter with videos.

Create a Relevant Video

Create a video that aligns with the purpose of your email and provides value to your audience. Aim for short and engaging content—keeping videos brief helps maintain interest and ensures your message is delivered quickly.

Avoid lengthy videos, which can maintain viewers’ attention and increase engagement. Stick to a 30 to 90-second time frame to ensure your content is ideal for videos in email newsletters. Here are three ways to add videos to your email newsletter.

Direct Embedding: Embedding a video directly in an email can be challenging, as not all email clients (like Outlook) support video playback. It can enhance engagement significantly for those who do, but compatibility is limited. 

HTML Code Example:

<video width=”320″ height=”240″ controls> 

<source src=”https://example.com/video.mp4″ type=”video/mp4″> Your text

</video>

For example, a marketing email announcing a product launch might include a teaser embedded with an HTML <video> tag, allowing users to experience the product instantly. However, since email clients like Outlook do not support video playback, it’s essential to include a fallback option, such as a static image with a play button overlay that links to a hosted video, ensuring all recipients can access the content seamlessly.

5 Practical Tips To Maximize Videos & Email Newsletters

It’s just as important to understand how to c where you can optimize In order to maximize engagement with your video and email newsletter make sure to follow these 5 tips.

Adding Alt Text

Use descriptive alt text on video images or GIFs so users with image-blocking settings understand what they’re missing and can click through to view the video.

Add a Strong CTA

You can include a CTA in your video or separately in your body email. This could be a button or link prompting them to visit your website, sign up for a special offer, or make a purchase.

Make sure your CTA is clear and stands out visually. A compelling CTA helps drive the next steps and turns viewers into engaged customers.

Reduce Video File Size

If you include a video file directly in your email newsletter, you must reduce its file size. Large video files can cause emails to load slowly and may not display properly on all devices.

To handle this, compress your video size without compromising too much on quality. This strategy makes your email load quickly and smoothly, which maintains the overall user experience.

Optimize for Mobile

Many people check their emails on smartphones. It’s essential to ensure your video and email layout look great on smartphones and tablets. Optimizing for mobile means fine-tuning your email load optimally on different viewing sizes.

Use responsive design techniques to adjust your video to different screen sizes. This way, your content is accessible and appealing on all devices.

Test First

Before launching your email newsletter, conduct thorough testing to see how your video performs across various devices and email clients. This includes checking the video’s appearance, playback quality, and overall integration with your email.

Testing helps you to spot and fix any issues before your email reaches a wider audience. This ensures a seamless experience for all recipients. Also, remember to always personalize your email.

Measuring Your Success

You must measure the success of your email newsletter campaign. The only way to do this is to track and analyze key metrics. Here’s a list of the essential metrics to monitor and optimize your engagement.

Click-Through Rates (CTR)

CTR reveals the number of people who clicked on links within your body email. If you have a video in your body email, this metric tracks how many viewers clicked on the video thumbnail to watch it.

A higher CTR means your content is compelling to readers. To optimize this metric, always send valuable email content.

Engagement

For videos, this metric includes play rates, watch time, and interaction rates (likes, comments, shares). It reveals how engaging your video content is and how well it resonates with your audience

Unsubscribe Rates

This metric shows how many recipients opted out of your email list after receiving your email. Monitoring this helps assess if your content is relevant and valuable to your audience.

Moreover, high unsubscribe rates may suggest the need for content adjustments. You may also need to experiment with different content formats.

Return on Investment (ROI)

You can do this manually. Calculate the ROI by comparing the revenue generated from your email and video marketing campaigns to the costs involved. This formula helps determine the overall financial effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Takeaway

If words alone are not effective in driving results, it’s your sign to incorporate videos into your email marketing strategy. Relevant and concise videos, along with optimization strategies, can enhance your email newsletter performance significantly.

Additional practices like segmenting your audience and A/B testing different approaches can further boost your results. You’ll be well on your way to creating more engaging and effective email newsletter campaigns.